Enigma of China(11)

“Can you give me an example, Peiqin?”

“Recently, there was one in Yunnan Province. An amateur hacker broke into a local Party official’s laptop, downloaded his diary, and put it online. That official, named Miao, was the head of the county tobacco bureau. He wasn’t a particularly high-ranking cadre, but he had a lucrative position. The contents of the diary proved to be very spicy. It included detailed descriptions of his extramarital affairs, his under-the-table deals done in the name of Party interests, his pocketing government funds, and his bribing others while others bribed him, all in a complex cobweb of connections. The diary reads like a novel, with the persons involved labeled only by initials—such as B, M, S, and so on—but with dates and locations too. You might think this would be no big deal, since no one could tell if the diary was true or not. But you know what? A crowd-sourced search started immediately. Netizens threw themselves into it wholeheartedly, like kids at a carnival. All the women mentioned as having been in a sexual relationship with the official were located. They even found photos of most of them. The same with the other Party officials connected to him. By relentlessly digging into the dates and locations, the forum members were able to establish the authenticity of the diary beyond question.

“Consequently, Miao was fired and jailed for being an official corrupted by the evil Western bourgeois influence.”

“So these netizens did a good job of sorting out a rotten egg,” Chen said. “On the other hand, who gave them the right to invade others’ privacy?”

“No one did. But who gave the Party officials the right to do all those horrible things in the first place? China has a one-party system, with absolute power, absolute media control, and an absolute highway to corruption. People have to do something, right? No problem is really solved by conducting a crowd-sourced search like that. But exposing one Party official is better than none. These searches have now developed a pattern. When an official is first named on the Internet, he or she denies any wrongdoing, fights back, and threatens to take legal action against anyone posting about them online. The government, meanwhile, supports the targeted official while, it goes without saying, remaining in the background. But the ongoing search inevitably brings up new hard evidence, irrefutable, of corruption and abuse of power, much to the embarrassment of the government. The government then has no choice but to shuanggui the official thus exposed.”

“I’ve heard about the role played by these netizens in bringing the melamine-contaminated milk powder scandal to the nation’s attention,” Yu chipped in again. “The local government tried to suppress the stories because the milk powder company was important to the local economy, but once they were on the Internet, the stories spread like wildfire. There were statements and pictures posted online of some of the victims of the contaminated milk powder. Ultimately, the Party authorities had no choice but to put the head of the company in prison.”

“Back to these crowd-sourced ‘human-flesh’ searches, Peiqin,” Chen said. “Have you heard about what happened to an official named Zhou—and all because of a pack of cigarettes?”

“Oh yes, the pack of 95 Supreme Majesty. It was just the rottenest luck for that guy.”

“What do you mean, Peiqin?”

“Let me begin by telling you something about a small store close to my restaurant, Chief Inspector Chen. The store specializes in buying back and reselling expensive cigarettes and liquors. As you may know, Party officials of a certain rank usually are given one or two cartons of cigarettes per month for their so-called socialist business needs. The cigarettes they are given may not be as pricey as 95 Supreme Majesty, but they sell for at least five or six hundred yuan a carton.”

“Yes, I have to admit, I get a carton every month,” Chen said, “but I always finish it before the end of the month.”

“But nonsmoking officials also get them as a perk of their Party positions; they get cartons and cartons as ‘gifts.’ Because the gift isn’t cash, they have nothing to worry about. They could never finish all those cigarettes, even if they did smoke. Instead, they sell the cartons back to stores like the one next to my restaurant and pocket the cash. It’s no secret.”

Chen couldn’t think of a response. He, too, had such “gifts” pushed onto him occasionally, though he’d never tried to sell them back for cash.

“As expensive as 95 Supreme Majesty may be, it is not surprising or scandalizing in itself. The Chinese people have seen too much. You know the term socialism with Chinese characteristics, do you? A big shot like Zhou would have surprised people more if he smoked a less expensive brand.”