MURONG XUECUN:Beijing’s Rising Smear Power

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SEPT. 21, 2014

BEIJING — Chinese dissidents are constantly subject to all sorts of harassment. The artist Ai Weiwei can’t leave the country to attend exhibitions of his own work. Hu Jia, a human rights activist who spent more than three years in jail on charges of subverting state power, is frequently put under house arrest. And of course many dissidents get hauled off on spurious charges, like the 81-year-old Beijing writer and underground publisher Tie Liu, who was detained by the police early this month.

I recently gained notoriety as a victim of another method used to deal with perceived enemies of the state: a vicious online smear campaign.

On Aug. 21, a series of articles titled “The Past and Present Life of Murong Xuecun” appeared on Literature City, a website based outside of China that claims to be the No.1 portal for overseas Chinese. Several of the essays are signed by the likes of “Black Talk,” “Mr. Negative” and “Forest,” but most didn’t bother carrying a signature.

Similarities in style indicate that the essays are the work of a single team. They show zealous patriotism and moral obsession; they quote sources that can’t be verified. The biggest giveaway that this was a coordinated attack by government allies (no one can prove Beijing is actually to blame) was that the same title — “The Past and Present Life of … ” — was used on posts to smear other dissidents this year.
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