Chinese police seek blogger who revealed death of Neil Heywood

[alp227]

Source: The Observer

The Chinese reporter who first revealed Neil Heywood's death on his microblog – apparently unaware of its alleged connection to the family of senior communist party leader Bo Xilai – has been sought by officials, he has revealed .

Chinese state media announced last week that Bo's wife, Gu Kailai, and a family employee were in custody on suspicion of murdering the Briton, who died in Chongqing last November.

Bo, then party secretary of the south-western city, has been suspended from key political roles and is under investigation for disciplinary violations.

Journalist Chu Chaoxin wrote on his microblog: "I don't deny that I posted the name of Neil Heywood first in March. Because of this, yesterday there were public people [presumably police] without licences who were trying to find me and harassed my friend and intended to take him to the police station with the excuse that he didn't have a temporary residency certificate (for the city)."

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/apr/15/china-neil-heywood-death-blogger

[MADem]

1. So, the Chinese police have the idea that, after someone has left the barn door open,

and the horse has escaped, the way to solve that problem is to find the person who mentioned that someone left the barn door open, and beat the shit out of them for saying so!

Yeah, that would do it--that will magically put the horse back in the barn and lock that barn door!

[FailureToCommunicate]

2. It sends a clear message: "wú-fa"!

[saras]

3. They're just copying its long history of success in America...

[MADem]

4. ? They're arresting bloggers in America for reporting murders by the wives of politicians?

Which/whose success in America? I'm not quite clear on the point.

[saras]

8. No, and we weren't Chinese either.

So, the Chinese police have the idea that, after someone has left the barn door open, and the horse has escaped, the way to solve that problem is to find the person who mentioned that someone left the barn door open, and beat the shit out of them for saying so!

They're just copying its long history of success in America...


Is that better? In America we call them "whistleblowers". Like, say, Karen Silkwood. Or Bradley Manning.

It's kind of interesting to google "murder whistleblower" too. Lots of facts, lots of dead people, lots of solid reporting, all over the world - except America where no one but conspiracy theorists will touch the subject, no matter now many scientists and others opposed to BP die under strange circumstances, for example. Talk about American exceptionalism.

[David__77]

5. I think it's because they want to fabricate a legal case against Gu Kailai.

They have detained Bo Xilai for allegedly conspiring to obstruct justice by shielding Gu, but it's doubtful that there is even real evidence that there was a murder in the first place. This could get very embarrassing for the Chinese insistence that this purge was a manifestation of concern for "legality."

[MADem]

6. There was no murder? Was it "natural causes" then, do you think?

I don't know much about this case--I am still getting the bubble on it.

[David__77]

7. It strikes me as odd and improbable.

CCDI - the inspection body - does not cover as much as it should, but it certainly keeps tabs on all central committee members, let alone politburo members. It tends to keep them in line when it comes to personal indiscretions of such a nature. CPC may adopt capitalist ideology, but it is culturally, very much a communist party governed in Leninist fashion.

I believe that there was no murder performed or ordered by Bo or Gu. Bo was making lots of people nervous that he would end as China's Gorbachev. Until he came to Chongqing, he was very pro-market/pro-political reform. I had grown to think that the "sing red" campaigns, and statues of Mao going up, are a distraction, a means to gain national notoriety as an alternative to the grey mass of the collective politburo membership. That alone is a parallel of energetic Gorbachev vs. rigid/bland/wooden Soviet leaders.

CPC isn't interested in allowing personalistic leadership style to once again emerge. Nor does it want people politically mobilized by such leadership. It wants Chinese people to quietly aspire to be uplifted by "advanced socialist culture with Chinese characteristics" and to work very hard so as to bring to fruition the sublime goal of bringing about a "moderately developed country" by 2050. Seriously... But they want to it to be done quietly - no street marches - and under a perfectly unified Politburo Standing Committee. With Bo gone, that plan just might come off for the "fifth generation" to be led by Xi, even more smoothly than it has for the "fourth generation" led by Hu.