This week is a little more somber than usual. There is no joke of the week, and the content of today’s Internet miscellanea is darker than we'd like. The barbarism in Paris is part of it; the Chinese Communist Party can be thanked for the rest. Heilongjiang prosecutor Han Miao, however, a model of male restraint, offers a note of comic relief.
Best of Weibo
@Rongjian2001: “Aung San Suu Kyi is the daughter of Aung San, the leader of Myanmar’s independence movement. Considering the Communist Party’s tradition of ”red inheritance,“Aung San Suu Kyi is a natural successor as state leader. However she was put under house arrest for 21 years by the military government for pro-democracy activism, and won the Nobel Peace Prize because of that. South Korea’s incumbent president Park Geun-hye is the daughter of former dictator Park Chung-hee, but she did not live under the shadow of her father. Instead, she won the forgiveness and support of the South Korean people through democratic elections. Without a doubt, both should serve as good models for those ’second generation officials’ [in China].”
—Botanwang
Explanation: This is a pointed reference to Xi Jinping, son of the Party’s revolutionary leader Xi Zhongxun, and what the writer appears to see as his historical responsibility.
That Sounds Familiar
Shanghai-based online outlet The Paper posted a weibo message summarizing how ISIS makes money to support its terrorist activities. The methods listed included selling oil, robbing banks, kidnapping hostages, selling human organs, and more. A top-rated comment said “why do all these methods sound so familiar to me?” Another comment said: “Putting the rest aside, the Communist Party is very good at making money from selling human organs.”
Explanation: Before defeating the Nationalists and founding the People’s Republic of China, the Chinese Communist Party used to kidnap wealthy people and use the ransom to support their army (or simply extort capitalists). The regime is also widely believed to have harvested and sold the organs from numerous death row prisoners, and tens of thousands of Falun Gong prisoners of conscience.
Visit to the Dentist as National Security Threat
The famous Chinese human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng was recently denied the right to visit a dentist for reasons of “national security.” Gao, who is still under house arrest after being released from prison, has suffered forced disappearances and torture since 2006. As a result, he now only has 11 teeth left, and has difficulty even drinking powdered milk.
Geng He, Gao Zhisheng’s wife, said Gao only eats rice porridge owing to his tooth pain. His family found a house for lease in Xi'an, the capital of Shaanxi province, so Gao could stay there while having his teeth treated. Upon learning this, China’s state security officers made lengthy threatening phone calls to the house owner, who had no choice but to cancel the lease. On Nov. 10, Gao’s home was also invaded by three state security officers who warned him to stop leaving his current cave-home.
Some netizens left messages expressing their respect and blessings for Gao. One of them said: “The brutality of the evil Chinese Communist Party is unmatched even by the Nazis.” Another said: “The Party treating its own people as enemies shows it going mad at the end of its days.”
‘Slept in clothes on the same bed’
Han Miao, a male prosecutor in Qing'an County, Heilongjiang Province, was recently removed from office for “sleeping in a hotel bed with a female.”
The official disciplinary verdict said: “On July 17, Han Miao picked up his female classmate Ms. Lin from Harbin and took her to a local hotel in Qing'an… They talked in the hotel room. When it was time for Han to return to his apartment, Ms. Lin stopped him because he looked tired. That night they slept in clothes on the same bed but did not have a sexual relationship.”
The announcement continued that Han’s “improper act” nevertheless had a negative impact on the image of the provincial procuratorate after it was exposed in the press; in addition, Han and his wife were found to have lied to the disciplinary investigation team. As a result, Han was dismissed: “his acts seriously violated vocational and social ethics.”
Predictably, the news became a hot topic on weibo. Many mocked the description “slept in clothes on the same bed but did not have a sexual relationship.” A user commented: “Why should this guy be dismissed? He should be promoted as a model of morality!” Another added: “This guy is not only a failure as a governmental official, but also a failure as a man!”
A cartoon making light of the official explanation also circulated online in China, picturing the pair, kneeling at close quarters on a bed, covered by only the official’s clothing. The man says: “We just went to bed together in clothes. Nothing happened…”
The spurious explanation offered by the authorities was linked to an official death report that news readers also found difficult to believe.
This report claimed that the police chief—also the secretary of the Political and Legal Affairs Commission and a member of the municipal Party Committee—of Jiaohe city, Jilin province, fell from his 6-storey office when “cleaning the window.” A weibo comment quipped: “A prosecutor with a mind purer than a monk, and a police chief more diligent than a cleaner. They are truly good comrades of the Party!”
In China, many people have lost their trust in official explanations after a number of obviously ridiculous stories were presented to the public as explanations for unusual deaths, sometimes in custody. The most infamous is the case of “death when playing hide-and-seek," in which Li Qiaoming, a healthy 24-year-old, died in a Yunnan jail after being hospitalized with severe brain injuries. Police claimed he fell while playing the harmless children’s game in prison.
