Inside China Today

Chinese democracy advocates plan to sue Chinese website

3 Chinese democratic advocates have joined together online in a proposed law suit against Chinese online news portal 163.com for including them in its blacklist. The trio, Guo Quan, Zhen Zhuchun and Wang Zhaojun have all published open letters to the leaders of the Chinese communist regime urging political reform.
leaked documents from 163.com shows that the internet company has included leaders of the Communist Party and phrases relating to political reform, the Tiananmen incident and Falun Gong in its terms.

Acting Leader of the China Democracy Party Guo Quan says that in fact Chinese websites all have similar phrase specific filtering systems, and when phrases deemed as “sensitive” appear on the internet, it will either be deleted entirely, or passed over to internet police or to Internet Service Providers to carry out investigation. If articles were found to contain anti-communism or anti-autocracy sentiments it would be reported to Chinese national security personnel who will track down the person who posted the article through tracking the IP address. These authors will then be subjected to surveillance as sensitive individuals and some are even captured and sent to jail.

Representative of the USA and Canadian region of the China Democracy Party Zhen Zhuchun says the “blacklist” was discovered on November 7, and they are sueing the website because the trio’s names appear next time derogatory terms, and were categorised as “bad terms”. Zhen says this amounts to an insult to the trio’s character.

If 163.com does not provide a reply to the satisfaction of the trio by Friday this week, they will formally sue the website. Wang Zhaojun, former committee member of the Anhui Provincial Political Consultative Conference told SOH that it is regrettable for 163.com, a news service, to cooperate with the Communist Party Central Propaganda Department to control media instead of opposing such measures. Wang says 163.com itself is like a slave and is cracking the whip on itself.

The trio has written open letters to the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party Wen Jiabao and Hu Jingtao around October and November 2007 to urge political reform. The letters outlined the various social problems facing China today and possible solutions, and encouraged Wen and Hu to embark on a similar path taken by Boris Yieltsen to break up the Communist Party.

The above news is brought to you by Qing Yui, Xi-Wen and was hosted Chris Thomas for Inside China Today on the SOH Radio Network.