How careful are you about the things you retweet online? A Foshan man named Shang Laicheng learned the hard way that in China the simple act of reposting something can be a serious crime after he was detained in secret for ten days over a message about a local prosecutor.
Specifically, Shang had reposted a message written by someone else that suggested a local prosecutor had visited prostitutes at a sauna. Then on February 17 after he left work, he was suddenly arrested by a team of police, according to a coworker who happened to witness it. He still hasn’t returned to work or posted online. Nor was his family informed of his whereabouts until ten days later, when they received notification that he was being held in criminal detention. Interestingly, the official detention notice — which Shang’s family didn’t receive until the 27th — says he wasn’t arrested until February 18th.
The police later told reporters from the Southern Metropolis Daily that they originally believed Shang to be the original author of the post, and had arrested him for making a false post on the internet and suspected involvement in attempted framing. The message had actually been posted to a website Shang worked for; he was simply passing it along. It read as follows:
After Spring Festival, the two prosecutors from the Foshan Chancheng District prosecutors’ office received ‘one-stop service’ from our sisters [i.e., prostitutes] at a sauna, and were caught completely naked at the scene by police from the Zumiao PSB substation. But the two were driving around and strolling the streets the next day, they didn’t get in any trouble whatsoever. Boo hoo, and yet our sisters are still suffering.
It’s unclear whether the post is true or not; it has been “confirmed” as false by the implicated prosecutors’ office, but many netizens have pointed out there’s an obvious conflict of interest there and have suggested the veracity of the post should be investigated by officials at a higher level.
In any event, after discovering that Shang Laicheng wasn’t the post’s original author, police moved him from criminal detention to administrative detention, where he remains (although police said he may be released as early as today). Police are still trying to find the post’s original author, but legal experts told Southern Metropolis Daily that because the message doesn’t contain the actual names of any prosecutors, it shouldn’t be possible to charge anyone with attempted framing.
The case is just one of many — Shang is far from the first — that lays bare a number of flaws in China’s justice system, and it also has implications for China’s millions of internet users. The free flow of information on the internet has led to the spread of unsubstantiated rumors, but it has also led to increased transparency. If net users are all registered with their real names and they know they could “be disappeared” by police if they piss off the wrong local official, how likely is anyone going to be to pass along information they can’t personally confirm and prove is accurate?
If the flow of information slows because people are afraid of the police, that will certainly cut down on the spread of rumors, but it will also cut down on the spread of accurate information whenever that information is something someone in the government might not like. It reduces transparency, and personally I’d argue that’s almost never a good thing.
[Southern Metropolis Daily via Sina Tech]