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Why would he take such a risk? How a famous Chinese author befriended his censor by Mu Rongxuecun, read by Zhang Wangli. Some names have been changed. It is 2013. For four full months, Liu Li Peng engages in dereliction of duty. Every hour, the system sends him a huge volume of posts, but he hardly ever deletes a single word. After three or four thousand posts accumulate, he likely clicks his mouse and the whole lot is released.
In the jargon of censors, this is a total pass in one click after which all the posts appear on China's version of in our Weibo to be read by millions than we posted and discussed. He locks onto the Weibo management page, where many words are flat. Orange designates sensitive words that require careful examination, words like freedom and democracy, and the three characters that make up Xi Jinping's name.
While such words regularly appear in newspapers or on TV, that does not mean ordinary citizens can use them at will. Red is for high-risk words that cannot be published and must be deleted.
Falun Gong, the band Spiritual 64, representing June 4th, the date of the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre, the names of Liu Xiaobo and the Dalai Lama, Jasmine, because after the Tunisian Revolution of 2011, Several small-scale demonstrations that have come to be known as China's Jasmine Revolution have made the Chinese government nervous. After three years as a censor, Liu detests his job. He detests the white office ceiling, the grey industrial carpet and the office that feels more like a factory.
He also detests his 200-odd colleagues sitting in their cubicles, each concentrating on their mouse and keyboard as they delete or hide content. One afternoon, the office boredom is disturbed when Chun Min in the next cubicle suddenly jumps up, limbs flailing as that. He has uncovered Wang Dan's Weibo account.
All the censors know that Wang Dan, one of the 1989 student leaders, political criminal and exile, is considered by the Chinese government to be one of the most important enemies of the state. Finding him is a big deal. And the news is immediately reported to the Sina Weibo office in Beijing. It might even be reported to the Public Security Bureau. The following month, a senior manager comes specially from Beijing to highly commend Chen Min for discovering intelligence about the enemy.
praising his acuity and high level of awareness and bestows on him a small bonus. All his colleagues applaud and shout in admiration. All except Liu. He sits amid the crowd and glares at Chen Min's face, flushed red with excitement, and asks himself, is this worth it? The day shift is 11 hours and the night shift is longer, 13 hours. During the breaks, most of the censors sneak away to smoke and chat in the stairwell. Liu doesn't smoke and has nothing in common with the others to gossip about.
He locks onto a VPN service to circumvent the Great Firewall of China and uses Google Earth to wander streets in unfamiliar cities, fantasizing about the people there and their lives. He often locks onto the Weibo webpage, not as a sensor, but as an ordinary user. On Weibo, his username is Ordinary Fashion. It's a satirical name, but Liu is unsure whom it satirizes. Hardly any of the censors use Weibo themselves, and Liu never tells his colleagues that he died.
It would not occur to them that Liu has so much to say on Weibo and posts so much unhealthy and inappropriate, let alone illegal and reactionary content. Liu never gets into trouble. He knows all the sensitive words that are flagged and how to avoid it. In these days, Weibo posts are limited to 140 characters. That will change later. And he resorts to all kinds of users to ridicule the Communist Party and mock the government.
He employs sensitive words, but the censors ignore them because they are too busy looking for those flagged orange or red. In spring 2014, the Chinese government begins to purge influential Weibo users, the so-called Big V, as in verified accounts. A journalist at the People's Liberation Army Daily is so impassioned that he publishes a post on Weibo calling all Big V's vermin who must be dealt with severely.
A few minutes later, Ordinary Fascist posts an extremely vulgar comment that essentially suggests the journalist should engage in forensic sexual congress with his mother. This post generates even more comments and reposts. Many further abuse gratifying, but no one knows that the author is himself a censor. Ordinary fascist is tasked with following more than 300 Weibo users, mostly big Vs, the majority of whom are people brave enough to occasionally criticize the political system.
In the official view, they are factors of instability, and thus dangerous elements. Among them are journalists, professors, lawyers, and even an occasional star of the big and small screens. Although most of their posts are tactful and restrained, likening the government to a violent husband or a pissant blowing their own trumpet, Do you realize that they are witnessing the pinnacle of freedom of speech in communist China? The golden age for a generation.
No matter how tactful, restrained, and oblique the criticism, the Communist Party still detects A lot of content is deleted, and accounts of ordinary fascist watchlists frequently disappear for no apparent reason. These people are banned from posting. Their accounts are shut. And some of the individuals behind them are even arrested by the police. Liu appreciates and sympathizes He sometimes uses his powers to furtively lift the bands on frozen accounts and salvage deleted or hidden powers.
Years later, Jenny Ho still remembers Liu's help restoring her frozen account. She is from Hong Kong and in 2013 publishes several posts about the Hong Kong protests. She is then banned and for several weeks cannot post anything. Just as Jenny prepares to register a new account, Liu sends her an email telling her he has surreptitiously unblocked her account. I didn't know him, but he helped me a lot, says Jenny. I often wonder, what sort of person is that? Why would he risk doing that?
From Liu's point of view, there was no danger. If discovered, I might get a dressing down or lose a few points on my performance evaluation. The worst possible outcome would be termination, which was no big deal because I had already decided to quit. At this point, Liu has just turned 30. He has a childish face, though a few grey hairs have appeared prematurely. He is also unrealistically optimistic.
His violation of workplace ethics is far more dangerous than he imagines. And even more dangerous is his collecting of Weibo censorship files. The most significant files are the sensors shift hand over file. because they record the orders from superiors when a new sensitive incident occurs, when a new sensitive individual's name or sensitive word is added to the forbidden word.
And when instructions are issued on how to employ more efficiently the four lethal weapons available. Delete, Hide, Stop, and Make Private. Liu doesn't know why he is collecting those files other than his belief that they are important. They are a part of contemporary history. When he hands in his request to resign from the job, Liu feels relieved. At last, he thinks, I can finally leave this shithole.
Five days later, as Leo is completing his resignation paperwork, he locks onto the Weibo backend management page. He notices that one of the big V accounts he follows is cancelled. It belongs to the author, Mu Rong Xiuquan. Me... It is 2013 and I am a best-selling author and a verified Weibo user with a small blue capital V after my name. In a little over two years, I published more than 1,800 posts on Weibo.
Many of these posts criticize or ridicule the Communist Party. They are wildly popular, generating countless comments and reposts. I am frequently praised for my bravery. But upon reflection, my indirect criticism and mockery is not true bravery. Everything I say is permissible. Everything I publish is also permitted. At most, I hit a few aces.
In this, I am no different to many public intellectuals of this time who never point at the elephant in the room and call for an end to Communist Party rule. Of course, should I say things like that, my account will be immediately cancelled and I will probably be disappeared. By May 2013, I have close to 4 million followers on Wave. Such large accounts are not handled by Liu. Weibo allocates a personal sensor known as a Weibo gatekeeper. Mine is Jaja.
Whenever I write inappropriate content, she phones Mr. Mu, that post of yours won't do. I deleted it for you. Sometimes she tells me the names of the people and the events that cannot be mentioned, so I can take a detour around the forbidden zone. She says we, not you. When she refers to such matters, she speaks softly. her tone suggesting that this is a consultation as though she were a sister or a close friend
I never meet Jia Jia, but I feel obliged to say I quite like her work style. Yes, she is a censor, yet she is so gentle in her work, so considerate, not lacking in human warmth. In China, senses like her are rare and precious. I don't know why my account is cancelled and no one tells me the reason. Jaja won't tell me.
Xi Jinping has just ascended to power and hasn't yet revealed his true intentions. Many people still place high hopes on him. They think he will take China on the path to democracy. Soon, however, an internal document called 7 Things Not To Talk About breaks their hearts. This document clearly shows Xi's aspirations. It prohibits university-level teachers from discussing seven topics in class.
freedom of the press, civil society, civil rights, historical mistakes of the Communist Party, powerful bourgeoisie and judicial independence. The day the document is leaked, I have a busy schedule. I give a public lecture at a library and then rush to a gathering. In the car on the way to this meeting, I write a short comment on Weibo. suggest that the seven things not to talk about is just one thing. Culture is prohibited. The gathering is in a fancy restaurant in the center of Beijing.
There are a dozen or so of us. Professors, lawyers, journalists and human rights activists. We'll drink a few bottles of wine, eat some expensive dishes and discuss the future of China. At this time, many are confident the Communist Party's rule cannot possibly last much longer. China will have a bright future. The sky will soon be light, a professor says to me. We will definitely see it. None of the participants foresees that in 10 years, half the people around the table will be in jail.
Some, like me, will be living in exile. Those still in Beijing will have long been silenced and will not utter a word. The optimism that we share at this distinguished gathering will feel illusory and distant, like a fleeting dream. On the way home from the get-together, I received a message from a friend whose Weibo account was closed the previous day.
I, like most Weibo users, consider account banning a serious matter. So I published a harshly worded question on Weibo. Who gave you the right to arbitrarily deprive citizens of their freedom of speech? Retribution is swift. Within 20 minutes of this posting, my account is cancelled. The Cyberspace Administration of China is the premier censorship agency in China.
The newly appointed boss, Lu Wei, popularly known as the Internet Czar, begins to implement a series of severe purges of online speech. Countless accounts are cancelled, and many people are thrown behind bars for what they wrote online. But that's just guessing. In China, there's no need for a good reason to block someone's account. A powerful government agency can simply issue an order to make a person disappear from public life.
Many people feel my treatment is unfair. They light virtual candles for me and hold memorial services. My Weibo gatekeeper, Jia Jia, the gentle censer, telephones me and, though apologetic, she too thinks I should be a little more careful. There's no need for you to get into direct conflict with them, don't you think? She declines to tell me which agency issued the order, only referring to higher levels.
I hope that, in consideration of our close relationship, Jar Jar will tell me the details, while she responds. I'm sorry, Mr. Mu. I really cannot review this. You know we signed non-disclosure agreements. Please show me some empathy. I have a life too, right? It's my last telephone conversation with Jaja. I then register multiple accounts, but each one is cancelled. I imagine Jaja is aware of this, but she does not contact me.
The next day, around dusk, my friend, Yu Da You, calls to tell me he received an email from a stranger. The email is about me, and it follows me. It is just one line. Please forward to Mu Rongxuecun. There are two attached images. There are screenshots of the Weibo management page that contain detailed information about my account.
time of registration, IP address, my mobile phone number, the reason for the deletion of each of my posts, and the blocking of my account, as well as the answer to the question I passed at Chacha about Which agency and who ordered my account to be cancelled? It is Liu's last day at Sina Weibo. The handover is complete and his possessions are packed. He just needs to endure a few more hours and he can leave that putrid place. Liu does not know me and has not read my book.
He has read a few of my posts in his role as a censor, but they don't leave a deep impression. He sees the momentous memorial for my Weibo account and then goes out of his way to look at the Weibo administrative page. At first, he doesn't think much about it, but gradually an idea forms in his mind. Perhaps he can do something.
He considers rescuing the Mu Rong Shui Cun Weibo account, but the order to cancel it has come from a very high level, so it is impossible to quietly reactivate it like other accounts without anyone noticing. Liu has signed the same census non-disclosure agreement as Jaja, though he is determined to violate When no one notices, he furtively copies two screenshots onto his own flash drive. He knows the value of the two images, but he can't send them directly. He must find an intermediary.
Liu finds Yu Da You in the list of Mu Rongxue Chun's followers. Yu is a not particularly successful businessman, and his words and actions never overstepped the boundaries. Liu calculates that you will escape Liu spends a little time reviewing Mu Rong's communication records to determine that Mu Rong and Yu are in contact with each other. This is the one, Liu tells himself. The time to leave a rat.
Liu carries his scant belongings out of their grey skyscraper and walks a few hundred meters along the ancient Grand Canal that connects Beijing to Hangzhou, pondering whether to do it. Getting caught would certainly mean arrest and possibly a prison sentence. How long? Two years? Three years? At most three years. No longer. He walks into an internet bar, finds a secluded seat, and registers a new email account with a username, Nameless.
He sends the two images to Yu Da You and adds a one-sentence match. After sending the email, he sits silently in front of the computer for a while, recalling the three years of his life as a sensor. He thinks about his family and his girlfriend, Ellie. In a few days, he will marry Alice. She probably will not understand the significance of what he has just done. Best not tell her to avoid making her worry. After 40 minutes, Yu Dayo replies. The friend asks, can this be made public?
Liu has already thought this through. As soon as the images are published, Sina Weibo will definitely try to track down the leaker. They may make a police report. Liu hesitates. He considers the number of people who have accessed that page, at least three or four hundred. They would not necessarily suspect him. Okay to make public, Lil replies. In any case, they are unlikely to find me.
He locks out of the email account and erases his browsing history. He then checks again to be sure he has not left any traces before he is confident enough to stand up. There are a lot of youths playing video games all around. They are engrossed with their computer screens and yell out chaotically. None of them notices him. Liu silently walks out of the internet bar, head lowered. It will soon be dark.
He brushes his sleeves as though flicking off three years of crime. He walks quickly to merge with the people strolling at dusk. Продолжение следует... Thanks for listening to The Guardian Long Read. We'll be back after this. Hello, I'm Faye Carruthers, host of the Guardian Women's Football Weekly. Every week we bring you the very latest from the Women's Super League, the FA Cup, Champions League.
and leagues around the world. And as we get ready for the all-important Women's European Championship in the summer, our panel of experts join me and football writer Susie Rak. Check in with how Serena Viegman's lionesses are preparing. So listen to the Guardian Women's Football Weekly wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to the Guardian Long Read
The two screenshots nameless sends me contain many names. Weibo censors, some censorship managers, as well as the name of the person who cancelled my account. And then there is old Mr. Chen, the editor-in-chief of Waymo. He was once my friend, but our friendship ends here. In his eyes, I must have become a sensitive element like a pathogen to be avoided. The key name in the screenshot is that of Minister Peng.
He has just been promoted to vice ministerial rank, becoming a member of China's privileged class, the lawless nomenclature. He delivers speeches and meetings claiming he will thoroughly cleanse cyberspace. That is, he will eliminate all voices detrimental to the party, which is the reason he issues the order to cancel all my social media accounts. One afternoon, two months later, I cannot restrain myself any longer. I used a newly registered account to write a threatening post upon on Weibo.
In it, I say, if my account is cancelled again, I will deploy all my resources to investigate your corrupt deeds and make them public. The day this account is cancelled is also the day you will be jailed. Don't say you weren't warned.
these words are not me firing blindly in the dark before his promotion pung was a journalist an editor and a publisher We have many mutual acquaintances and friends, and despite the constant refrain of words such as honest and upstanding on his lips, many people suspect that he is corrupt and licentious. Common sense suggests that a high official with as much power as Peng is unlikely to be as honest and upright as he claims to be.
Perhaps that is why Peng is apprehensive about dealing with my threat. After about a month, my new Weibo account is at around midnight. I have just returned to my apartment when I received a call from the editor-in-chief of Sina Weibo, my erstwhile friend, old Mr. Chen, who featured in the screenshot. He sounds very nervous.
He says the order to cancel my account comes from an organization and has nothing to do with Peng. He admonishes me not to be used by others, that is, by Peng's political enemies. He's the same as the two of us. We're all the same, says old Mr. Chan. Moreover, when he cancelled your account last time, it was not of his own volition. He was following orders, so don't fuck with him, okay? Chen then suggests I meet with Peng for a chat.
Now, just the three of us. We'll go somewhere for a drink and talk about this. Okay? During the next two hours, I received six phone calls like that from old Mr. Chen and Punk's instigator. Apart from old Mr. Chen, a mutual friend calls to say something along the lines of, don't fuck with him. Starting a vendetta will not be good. I ignored them all. I began to draw for public announcement, offering a 200,000 yuan reward for evidence of Peng's corruption.
and then you down your telephones. If you keep this up, Peng will be very dangerous. If you can't beat him, the guy who gave you the tip-off will be in deep trouble. He helped you out of the goodness of his heart, so you can't implicate him. Liu knows nothing. He does not read my essay and does not know about my war with Peng. In the summer of 2013, he marries Alice and holds a reception at a fancy restaurant in the city of Tianjin.
There is a throng of well-wishers, relatives and friends. Liu drinks a lot of alcohol. He occasionally thinks of his former career as a censer, which still makes him feel nauseated. After the wedding, a relative introduces Liu to a temporary job in a state-owned enterprise. Alice is carrying their first child. To earn more, Liu takes a job at the TV and film streaming service, where he is a quality control manager. The work has no connection to censorship, but he works alongside censorship.
Every day, he sees new official censorship order. Some of the orders are unbelievable. One variety shall compare says it almost died laughing. In subtitles, the word died must be put inside double quotation marks. Otherwise, it is a breach of regulation. It's as though viewers are considered not intelligent enough to understand an extremely simple phrase.
Liu begins to collate these orders. He copies censorship orders page by page, then uploads them to cloud servers outside China's Great Firewall. After four years, he comes to believe the material is extraordinarily significant. He secretly vows that one day he will release it to the public. As the censorship file grows, he becomes increasingly nervous. He has no illusions that what he is doing is more than enough for a three-year jail sentence at minimum.
Five or six years is entirely possible, and eight or ten years is not impossible. His son has just begun to walk, and his daughter has just been born. The police drag him away. The family will be destroyed. Liu stays quiet. He refrains from making new friends and doesn't share his true feelings with anyone. He walks around with his head lowered out of fear of attracting attention. In a city of 15 million people, not a single person knows that he is engaged in dangerous work.
By now, I have vanished from public life in China. My books cannot be sold. My essays cannot be published. I live in isolation in a small apartment in Beijing. I frequently have money worries and I frequently think about nameless. What sort of person are you? Why take such an enormous risk to disclose sensitive information to me? Yu Da You and I agree that whoever they are, that person is extraordinary.
If this riddle is ever solved, says Yu, I will definitely treat that person to a good meal. I too want to thank them. Meanwhile, Pug's political career progresses smoothly. He is constantly on TV and quoted in newspapers. hosts meetings and publishes speeches that call for people to study well, publicize well, and implement well the spirit of General Secretary Xi Jinping's important speeches.
His power grows. In addition to managing public opinion on the internet, he is also responsible for the prevention of and dealing with cults, that is, the repression of and attacks upon faith communities. My religious friends are beaten and arrested. In 2018, Peng becomes a professor of journalism at China's most important university, Peking University. In the classroom, he tells students, I'm not an official. I'm just a foot soldier and a line of fire.
At the end of 2019 and in early 2020, COVID-19 spread. first in Wuhan, and then to the whole world. Within a few years, several million people lose their lives. In China, Xi pushes his cruel Covid policies that transformed the country into a huge prison. At the slightest pretext, cities with populations in the millions are completely locked down.
No one can leave their homes without permission even to buy food. This applies also to people with urgent medical conditions or pregnant women about to go into labor. Liu decides to leave China because he can't take any more of living like a prisoner. He is even more concerned about the censorship materials he has collected. The Chinese government begins to deploy QR codes to control the lives of Chinese people. Trucking codes, value codes, health codes.
No matter where you go, QR codes must be scanned and reported to the government to detail your movements and location. One little error and you are subject to searches or even imprisonment. If they look through my mobile phone, I'll be finished." Leo thinks, I have to leave immediately. But there are hardly any flesh. Tianjin airport is closed. He takes Alice and their two children to Beijing and catches one of the last planes in Los Angeles.
Once the plane is in the air, he is finally able to relax, even though he wonders whether he will ever be able to return to China. Later, he would tell me it was like a desperate escape from a house on fire. About the same time, I buy a train ticket and sneak into Wuhan, which is still under lockdown. I stay a month in the city interviewing people about their experiences during the lockdown.
Then hide in a hotel in the mountains of southwestern China, where I spent several months writing Deadly Quiet City, stories from Ojai. When the book is about to be published, I carry a single suitcase to make it look like I'm taking a short trip. I tremble with fear as I am leaving China. Until the moment I clear customs, I'm uncertain whether the government will permit this sensitive element to leave China.
once on the plane, just like Liu one year earlier. I realized that I may never be able to return to my country again. By this time, Peng is suspended from his job and under- This means his government career is over. According to official reports, he has taken bribes totaling $54,640,000 5.6 million pounds People in China know that bribery is not his only crime, and perhaps not his most serious.
Where high officials like Peng are punished, it is because they have sided with the wrong political faction or shown insufficient political loyalty. Despite his constant studying, publicizing and implementation of the spirit of President Xi, it appears that Xi still felt Peng was insufficiently loyal.
meanwhile leo is enjoying his american life the day they arrive in los angeles his family eats at in and out He likes it so much that he will make a tradition of going to this restaurant every year on this date to buy a few burgers. Big bag of fries and cups of soda. Every time. Then raise the cups. Commemorate their friends. lives. One day, Liu sends me a direct message on... She's excessively polite.
He writes, Mr. Mu Rong, please forgive me for presently disturbing you, before asking whether I remember the email sent via Yu Da Yeo with the two screenshots. My heart is pounding. I say, yes, I remember that. I wonder who sent that email. I am most grateful. We have a long phone call like long lost friends. We describe everything we have done since leaving China. She says, I wish to testify that although I was a Weibo sensor, I am not a bad person. I reply, I will speak on your behalf.
Many publications report on Liu. He is praised for being like the secret agent in the film The Lives of Others or North Korean Refugee. He eagerly takes a job at China Digital Times, where he works on editing the censorship files he collected. They are published one by one, making them freely available to anyone who wants to read them, to gain insight into just how evil is the system in which he once was.
I used to be a censor, but now I'm engaged in anti-censorship work, Liu tells me. It really is like... Liu and I agree to get together one day in the future, either in Australia or the US. We will toast to our freedom and everything he did in that nameless era. In my homeland, high security prisons hold many of my friends, lawyers, journalists, priests, whose suffering is intimidating. Now, Punk joins the rest.
In November 2022, he makes his final public appearance on TV at his trial. He wears a navy blue Mao suit and thick black framed glasses as he stands impassively in the dark. Official reports say he has committed many crimes including a collapse of ideals and beliefs, disloyalty to the party. engaging in superstitious practices, violations of the rules against attending private clubs, as well as accepting bribes for a total amount that includes the inauspicious number 64.
He is sentenced to 14 years in jail. Punk declared to the court that he State TV devotes barely two minutes to reporting Punk's case. There are many close-ups of this 64-year-old former high official, former professor, and former foot soldier in the line of fire, framed between two towering police officers, making him appear weak, and it is dotage. his remaining completely white. Thanks again for listening to The Guardian Long Read. That was, why would he take such a risk?
How a Famous Chinese Author Befriended His Censor by Murong Xuecun, read by Zhang Wangli. and produced by Nicola Alexandro and Joshan Chanan. The executive producer was Ali Bury. A longer version of this piece was first published and made in China Journal. For more God-in-law and text on a go to theguardian.com slash long read.