BEIJING, Nov 5 — You could call it the “People’s War” version 2.0. That clarion call to mass mobilisation Mao Zedong used in revolutionary China has found a modern-day, cyber cousin — the ren rou sou suo, or “human flesh search”.
Triggered by what they see as incidents of injustice or a violation of public morals, some in China's army of 250 million Internet users unleash themselves online to hunt down perpetrators and expose every sordid shred of their personal lives.
Their usual targets: individuals involved in extramarital affairs, sex scandals or assault cases.
It is a sort of Internet vigilantism perhaps uniquely prevalent in China.
A freewheeling Internet culture and weak privacy regulation are partly responsible. But so is the sense that the web offers a recourse for justice — or revenge — that real life does not.
A case which is keeping Chinese cyberspace abuzz in recent days drives home this point.
Internet postings and online videos provided a blow-by-blow account — unverified, no doubt — of how an official allegedly pinched an 11-year-old girl's neck and tried to molest her at a seafood restaurant in southern Shenzhen city last Wednesday.
According to local news reports citing closed-circuit TV footage posted online, the pot-bellied man had grabbed the girl by the neck and tried to force her into the men's toilet after asking her for directions to the restroom.
The girl was then seen running back to her family members in the dining area. When her father confronted the official, the latter reportedly taunted him with a brusque “I did it, so what?”
Throwing the weight of his official position at them, he reportedly offered to silence them with money.
When the police arrived, they apparently excused the man's behaviour by saying that he was drunk and let him go for “lack of evidence”.
But given this chance to pounce on an all-too-typical bullying official, China's Internet Zorros were not about to let him get away so easily.
Once the news of the incident was posted online, netizens launched a “human flesh search” for the official, tracking him down by his white shirt and rotund figure.
They found and posted pictures of him, and identified him — by name, age, workplace and political rank: Lin Jia-xiang, Shenzhen Maritime Bureau party chief, 58.
From the margins of Internet chatter, this as-yet-unfinished story has made it into the mainstream press and even the state media.
Following utter condemnation of Mr Lin online, the Transport Ministry said on Monday that he had been sacked and was being investigated. It also promised serious punishment if he was found guilty — as charged by the jury of the net.
The ministry said on its web site: “Shenzhen Maritime Bureau chief Lin Jiaxiang has caused an extremely negative influence on society with his uncontrolled remarks and behaviour after he became drunk.”
Whatever the outcome of the case, the online witch-hunt it sparked clearly taps into a deep sense of injustice ordinary Chinese feel, particularly against corrupt officials.
One posting on a popular Chinese forum read: “You use public funds to eat and drink, we put up with it.
“You show off your public-funded cars, we put up with it.
“You have third and fourth ‘wives’, we put up with it.
“You have many villas, we put up with it.
“Now you won’t even leave our own children alone...”
The 'human flesh search' which allows an online mob to play judge and jury in a hurry is clearly powerful at letting people vent their frustrations and seek vengeance.
But it is not always a force for good.
In the first case of its kind in Beijing, the former employer of a resident, identified only as Mr Yan, was ordered to pay him some 11,000 yuan (S$2,400) in damages for 'emotional stress' and 'economic loss' in September, the official People's Daily said.
The employer had posted a 'Wanted' notice online, labelling Mr Yan a 'thief' and advertising his identification number and address. This led netizens to hurl abuse at Mr Yan.
The court ruled that the 'Wanted' poster had misled ordinary readers into thinking that Mr Yan had committed a crime and had tarnished his reputation.
Another 'human flesh search' victim was Ms Grace Wang, a Chinese student at Duke University in the US, who suffered real-world consequences.
The 20-year-old from the eastern port city of Qingdao was deemed to have been 'unpatriotic' when she tried to mediate between a pro-Tibet group of students on her campus and a crowd of counter-demonstrating Chinese students in April.
The next day, a video of the episode was posted online and, within hours, a virtual mob denounced her as a 'traitor to her country' on hugely popular mainland forum web sites such as Tianya.
One anonymous post read: “Makes us lose so much face. Shoot her where she stands.”
An online hunt was launched and Ms Wang's identity card number, schoolgirl mugshot, secondary school details and Qingdao home address were soon plastered on discussion sites.
Her parents were forced to go into hiding while their home was vandalised with graffiti and excrement.
With its controlled social space, China's cyber world has offered its citizens an outlet for all sorts of angst. But as 'human flesh search engines' with Chinese characteristics prove, the Net can be a many-headed monster even in the hands of a few self-styled heroes. — Straits Times Singapore
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Let us not let up on our finance minister. Let us hawk on him and make sure that he and his cronies do not continue to cheat us of our hard earned saving.
If the EPF board do not buckup, let us check and reveal their private life, lest they live off our savings.