The activists shining light on China’s dark corners

China’s 'netizens’ skip censorship and brave beatings to expose the torment of a blind lawyer, Chen Guangcheng.

Chinese activist Wang Xuezhen buying stationery for Kesi the daughter of blind lawyer activist Chen Guangcheng using donation collected from concerned online users Photo: Peter Foster

By Peter Foster, Dongshigu

The policeman’s hand slapped the woman’s face with an audible crack. Standing only five feet tall in her trainers, barely the height of her assailant’s epaulettes, she took the blow without a cry.

This scene was witnessed by The Daily Telegraph on Wednesday in a small police station near a village in Shandong province, north-east China, that has become a magnet for activists of all stripes protesting against a dark corner of the Chinese state that operates beyond the law.

The woman who took the slap, 30-year-old Wang Xuezhen, is one of a stream of people who have marshalled themselves over the internet and travelled to Dongshigu village to support a man they believe is being persecuted, a blind lawyer named Chen Guangcheng.

Stumbling out of the police station and holding her stinging face, Miss Wang bitterly observed a truth about contemporary China: the country’s lawlessness begins with the law itself.

Then she turned on her mobile phone and asked a friend to post a message on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, relaying the news of the assault to the world.

Almost immediately, her supporters began passing on the message and posting their own messages of support. By the evening the slap had been picked up by an Asian television channel.

“These animals, they lack all humanity, I hate them so much. I wish I could go and join your fight!” wrote one of her followers.

The power and speed of China’s social networks has alarmed the government, which announced plans on Wednesday to police the buzz of messages more tightly, in the name of maintaining what it calls “social stability”.

In the two years since it was launched, the Weibo platform has attracted more than 200 million Chinese, creating a chorus of commentary on the failings of an authoritarian state that often questions and contradicts the output of the tightly-controlled state media.

Even though the Weibo microblogs are carefully policed, with censors blocking and deleting content deemed seditious, the controls are often overwhelmed by the sheer volume of outpourings by the so-called “netizens” – a “Chinglish” coinage for online activists and contributors.

“Operation Free Chen Guangcheng” is perhaps one of the clearest examples of what frightens the Communist Party. It began earlier this year when activists began suggesting online that people should go as “tourists” to visit the 39-year-old blind lawyer, who has been kept under illegal house arrest for more than a year.

Read more at The Telegraph