{"id":168378,"date":"2014-01-30T22:58:40","date_gmt":"2014-01-31T06:58:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/?p=168378"},"modified":"2014-01-30T22:58:40","modified_gmt":"2014-01-31T06:58:40","slug":"billionaire-activists-brief-public-re-emergence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2014\/01\/billionaire-activists-brief-public-re-emergence\/","title":{"rendered":"A Billionaire Activist\u2019s Brief Public Re-Emergence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tea Leaf Nation&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tealeafnation.com\/2014\/01\/a-billionaire-activists-brief-public-re-emergence\/\"><strong>David Wertime notes the appearance and swift deletion of a <em>weibo<\/em> account believed to have belonged to Wang Gongquan<\/strong><\/a>, wealthy backer of <a href=\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2014\/01\/xu-zhiyong\/\">Xu Zhiyong<\/a>&#8216;s New Citizens&#8217; Movement. <a href=\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2013\/09\/billionaire-wang-gongquan-detained-civil-society-crackdown\/\">Wang was detained in October<\/a> but released last week after <a href=\"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2014\/01\/china-puts-two-activists-trial\/\">confessing to his own and Xu&#8217;s involvement in &#8220;organizing and inciting criminal activities to assemble a crowd to disrupt order in a public place.&#8221;<\/a> Xu was subsequently <a href=\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2014\/01\/new-citizen-xu-zhiyong-sentenced-four-years-prison\/\">sentenced to four years in prison<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cOne hundred and thirty four days later, I returned home. My wife said I looked thin, and a bit tired.\u201d These appear to have been the words of Wang Gongquan, a Chinese venture capitalist turned activist, in a Jan. 29\u00a0post\u00a0on Sina Weibo, China\u2019s Twitter, that has since been deleted. If so, it marks a surprising, if brief, re-engagement with social media, the same medium that helped land Wang in Communist Party cross-hairs in the first place.<\/p>\n<p>[\u2026] About two hours after its first post, the account shared a photograph of a handkerchief inscribed with a heart and the words, \u201cI love you.\u201d The account holder wrote that his wife had given him the cloth while he was in prison. \u201cI could not hold back tears\u201d upon reading it, the post read. The author also wrote that \u201cduring the trial\u201d he \u201cdecided to give up\u201d on what he called \u201c60 straight days of defiance and games\u201d by choosing to confess.\u00a0Sharon Hom, executive director of overseas Chinese NGO Human Rights in China, told\u00a0Foreign Policy\u00a0that her organization has heard reports of Wang spending 60 days in solitary confinement. The post may have been an oblique attempt for Wang to explain that he did not wish to confess, but was driven to do so. [<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.tealeafnation.com\/2014\/01\/a-billionaire-activists-brief-public-re-emergence\/\">Source<\/a><\/strong>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Wang&#8217;s return to Weibo coincides with the release of <a href=\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2014\/01\/sina-weibo-stifled-amid-internet-crackdown\/\">research for The Daily Telegraph indicating a sharp drop in activity on the service<\/a>. See <a href=\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/china\/new-citizens-movement\/\">more on the New Citizens crackdown<\/a> via CDT.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tea Leaf Nation&#8217;s David Wertime notes the appearance and swift deletion of a weibo account believed to have belonged to Wang Gongquan, wealthy backer of Xu Zhiyong&#8216;s New Citizens&#8217; Movement. Wang was detained in October but released last week after confessing to his own and Xu&#8217;s involvement in &#8220;organizing and inciting criminal activities to assemble [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":962,"featured_media":168379,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[7,10,14744,14745,14746,100,6,5],"tags":[8247,16126,14561,16306,14820,3604],"class_list":["post-168378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-information-revolution","category-law","category-level-2-article","category-level-3-article","category-level-4-article","category-politics","category-sci-tech","category-society","tag-detention","tag-new-citizens-movement","tag-sina-weibo","tag-wang-gongquan","tag-weibo","tag-xu-zhiyong","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.1 (Yoast SEO v24.1) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>A Billionaire Activist\u2019s Brief Public Re-Emergence<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2014\/01\/billionaire-activists-brief-public-re-emergence\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Billionaire Activist\u2019s Brief Public Re-Emergence\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Tea Leaf Nation&#8217;s David Wertime notes the appearance and swift deletion of a weibo account believed to have belonged to Wang Gongquan, wealthy backer of Xu Zhiyong&#8216;s New Citizens&#8217; Movement. Wang was detained in October but released last week after confessing to his own and Xu&#8217;s involvement in &#8220;organizing and inciting criminal activities to assemble [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2014\/01\/billionaire-activists-brief-public-re-emergence\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"China Digital Times (CDT)\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ChinaDigitalTimes\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-01-31T06:58:40+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/rewang.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"960\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"699\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Samuel Wade\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" 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