In China, don’t question the heroes.
Last week, at least seven people were threatened, detained or arrested after casting doubt on the government’s report on the deaths of Chinese soldiers during a clash last year with Indian troops. Three of them are held for seven to 15 days. The other four face criminal charges, including a man who lives outside China.
“The Internet is not a lawless place,” say police warnings issued in their lawsuits. “Blasphemies of heroes and martyrs will not be tolerated.”
Their punishment could have gone unnoticed had it not been for an online database of speech crimes in China. A simple Google spreadsheet open for all to see, it lists almost 2,000 times when people were punished by the government for what they said online and offline.
The list – which links directly to publicly issued verdicts, police notifications and official news reports from the past eight years – is far from complete. Most punishments take place behind closed doors.
Still, the list paints a gloomy picture of a government that punishes its citizens for the slightest hint of criticism. It shows how China’s legal system can be random and unforgiving when it punishes its citizens for what they say, even though freedom of expression is enshrined in China’s Constitution.
The list describes dissidents sentenced to long prison terms for attacking the government. It speaks of petitioners, those who directly appeal to the government to correct the mistakes made against them, arrested for making a very loud outcry. It covers almost 600 people punished for what they said about Covid-19, and many others who cursed the police, usually after receiving parking tickets.
The person behind the list is somewhat mysterious. In an interview, he described himself as a young man with the surname Wang. Of course, if the government found out more about him, he could end up in prison.
Wang said he decided to compile the list after reading about people who were punished for allegedly insulting the country during the celebrations of the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic in October 2019. Although young, he told me, he remembers more freedom of expression before Xi Jinping became the main leader of the Communist Party in late 2012.
“I knew there were speech crimes in China, but I never thought it was so bad,” Wang published in August. on your Twitter account, where he writes in English and Chinese. He wrote that he was depressed after reading more than 1,000 verdicts.
“Big Brother is watching you”, he wrote. “I tried to look for Big Brother’s eyes and ended up finding them everywhere.”
The list, bluntly, entitled “An inventory of speech crimes in China in recent years”, details what happened to those who questioned Beijing’s official account of the June confrontation between Chinese and Indian forces on its disputed border in Himalayas. The Indian government then said that 20 of its soldiers died. Last week, the Chinese government finally said that four of its soldiers died.
State media in China called them heroes, but some people had doubts. One, a former journalist, asked if others had died, a matter of intense interest inside and outside the country. According to the statement in the linked spreadsheet, the former journalist was accused of causing fights and causing confusion – a common complaint from authorities against those who speak out – and could face up to five years in prison.
Reading the list, it is clear how well Xi and his government controlled the Chinese internet. In the past, people thought the Internet was unmanageable, even in China. But Xi has long seen the Internet as a threat to be contained and a tool to guide public opinion.
“The Internet is the biggest variant we face,” he said in a 2018 speech. “If we can win the war over the Internet it will have a direct impact on national political security.”
Liberal trends and voices were the first to be silenced. So the internet platforms themselves – the Chinese versions of Twitter and YouTube, among many others – were punished for what they allowed.
Chinese Internet companies now boast of their ability to control content. Online nationalist users report speeches they find offensive. Of the seven people accused of insulting heroes and martyrs, six were reported by other users, according to police notices. In a way, the Chinese internet is self-policing.
China’s police, which are widely detested for their broad powers to arrest people indefinitely, are big beneficiaries. According to the spreadsheet, people were arrested for calling police officers “dogs”, “bandits” and “bastards”. Most are imprisoned for only a few days, but a man in Liaoning Province was sentenced to 10 months in prison for writing five offensive posts on its WeChat schedule.
Petitioners are among those who suffer most. In a spreadsheet case, a woman in Sichuan province whose son died suddenly at school and whose husband committed suicide was sentenced to three years in prison on charges that included the disclosure of false information. The verdict listed the headlines of 10 articles she posted and the page views they obtained. The majority got 1,615 page views, while the smallest got just 18.
Perhaps the most depressing items are those about people who have been punished for what they said about the Covid-19 pandemic. At the top of the list is Dr. Li Wenliang, who was reprimanded on January 1, 2020, along with seven others for trying to alert the country about the coronavirus. He died in early February last year with the virus and is now remembered as the whistleblower who tried to alert the world to the coronavirus outbreak. But the spreadsheet lists 587 other cases.
Even tacky skits by aspiring online influencers can be considered offensive. Two men in the northwest of Shaanxi province broadcast live a funeral they performed for a sheep. In the video, one man wept over a photo of the sheep while the other dug the grave. They were detained for 10 days for violating social customs.
But the spreadsheet also highlights inspiring cases where people spoke to challenge authority.
In 2018, a 19-year-old man in the northwestern city of Yinchuan decided to test the newly passed law that prohibits questioning and criticizing heroes and martyrs. He posted on Weibo that two famous martyrs died of meaningless death and wanted to see if he would be arrested, which shows the lack of freedom of expression in China. He was detained for 10 days and fined $ 70.
One man, Feng Zhouguan, criticized Mr. Xi and was accused of causing fights by local police in Xiamen city. He was detained for five days, but he appealed after his release, arguing that the police had unduly interfered in a possible defamation case between two individuals. The local police, he argued, “are not the military bodyguard or family militia of the national leader”. The court upheld the sentence.
Even so, many people pay a higher price.
Huang Genbao, 45, was a senior engineer at a state-owned company in the eastern city of Xuzhou. Two years ago he was arrested and sentenced to 16 months in prison for insulting the national leader and damaging the national image on platforms like Twitter. He shared a cell with up to more than 20 people and had to follow a strict routine, including breaks to go to the bathroom. He and his wife lost their jobs and now he delivers meals to support his family.
“My life in the detention center reminded me of the ‘1984’ book,” he said in an interview. “Many of the experiences are probably worse than the plots in the book.”