Abstract
This chapter explores how, besides attacks directed at the book and author, other supporters of Fang Fang and Wuhan Diary were also targeted by online trolls. This resulted in a “witch hunt” whereby individuals who had spoken up in defense of Fang Fang were also targeted, attacked, and silenced. In some cases, these attacks carried severe repercussions to various individuals, such as Professor Liang Yanping who was stripped from her Chinese Communist Party membership and banned from teaching. The chapter outlines cases of intellectuals like Cui Yongyuan, Yan Geling, and Yan Lianke who spoke up in Fang Fang’s defense (often to have their own posts deleted) while putting the crackdown against Wuhan Diary in a broader context of media censorship during times of instability or crisis. The witch hunt against Wuhan Diary was particularly visible on social media platforms like Weibo and WeChat where groups like “the Little Red Soldiers” used Cultural Revolution-era tactics to openly threaten Fang Fang’s friends and supporters. The witch hunt also resulted in skewing public debate about Wuhan Diary, effectively silencing the voice of many supporters and leaving detractors to rise up and dominate discussion in both official and non-official spaces.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Fan Bingbing is a leading Chinese actress, producer, model, singer, and product spokesperson. During the height of her popularity, Cui Yongyuan leaked photos of her so-called yin-yang contracts 陰陽合約online. The contracts showed that there were two versions of the same contract, each listed a markedly different salary. The images set off a major scandal that reverberated throughout the Chinese film industry. Fan was detained by Chinese authorities and offered a public apology for tax evasion after her eventual release nearly three months later. She was forced to pay fines in excess of 127 million USD and the government enacted a new taxation scale for high-earning figures in the entertainment industry. The new tax scale resulted in major financial losses for the film industry and made Cui Yongyuan, the whistleblower, the target of widespread online attacks and death threats.
- 2.
Cui Yongyuan 崔永元. “A Lesson for Fang Fang” (Gei Fang Fang shang yi ke 給方方生一課). The essay was originally uploaded to Weibo but quickly censored. Fortunately, the article has been reported by numerous other websites and users (often as a jpeg image or even as YouTube style video essay in order to avoid further censorship). The essay can be found here: https://www.xiaxiaoqiang.net/previous-lesson/.html.
- 3.
Ibid.
- 4.
Ibid.
- 5.
Yan Geling “Hide! Hide! Hide” has been translated by Nicky Harman and is available on the Paper Republic website: https://paper-republic.org/pubs/read/hide-hide-hide/. Fang Fang refers to the essay in the March 16 installment of her diary. (In the English translation of Wuhan Diary the Yan Geling essay is translated as “Conceal, conceal, conceal.” The Chinese term man could also be rendered as muffle.)
- 6.
Yang, Guobin. The Wuhan Lockdown. New York: Columbia University Press: 2021. Pg. 10.
- 7.
Becker, Jasper. Made in China: Wuhan, COVID and the Quest for Biotech Supremacy. London: C. Hurst & Co. 2021. Pg. 265.
- 8.
Tooze, Adam. Shutdown: How Covid Shook the World’s Economy. New York: Viking, 2021. Pg. 56.
- 9.
Author interview with Eric Liu, May 11, 2021.
- 10.
Rojas, Carlos. Homesickness: Culture, Contagion, and National Transformation in Modern China. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015. Pg. 164.
- 11.
“Novel Coronavirus: The ‘Battle to Delete Posts’ Beyond Wuhan” (“Feiyan yiqing: Wuhan zhiwai de ‘shantiezhan’”) BBC News Chinese Online. March, 11, 2020. https://www.bbc.com/zhongwen/simp/chinese-news-51830859
- 12.
Ibid.
- 13.
Hernandez, Javier C. “As China Cracks Down on Coronavirus Coverage, Journalists Fight back” New York Times, March 14, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/14/business/media/coronavirus-china-journalists.html
- 14.
Raymond Zhong, Paul Mozur, Jeff Kao and Aaron Krolik. “No ‘Negative’ News: How China Censored the Coronavirus” New York Times, December 19, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/19/technology/china-coronavirus-censorship.html?smid=em-share
- 15.
“Some Remarks on the Investigation into Hubei University Professor Liang Yanping” (“Tantan Hubei daxue diaocha Liang Yanping jiaoshou” 〈談談湖北大學調查梁艷萍教授〉) on Red China (RedChinaCn.net) on April 28, 2020. (No author is formally listed, but based on the text, the author seems to be Yu Nie 余涅.) http://redchinacn.org/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=16793&extra=page%3D1
- 16.
Professor Liang Yanping’s investigation was widely covered in both the Chinese and Western media. For more on the investigation, see https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3089929/chinese-professor-banned-teaching-over-hong-kong-protest.
- 17.
Even the fact that Jia Qianqian “co-authored” a book with Fang Fang is a rather tenuous claim meant to overexaggerate the relationship between Jia and Fang. In reality, the book in question was a collection of essays entitled Our Fathers (Women de fuqin 我們的父親) published by Wuhan University Press, which featured contributions from 25 contributors; Fang Fang and Jia Qianqian (along with Cui Yongyuan) happen to be the three contributors highlighted on the book’s cover.
- 18.
Tuo Wang. The Cultural Revolution and Overacting: Dynamics Between Politics and Performance. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2014. Pg. 34.
- 19.
Ibid. Pg. 34.
- 20.
- 21.
- 22.
In an interview with Asahi Shimbun, Fang Fang told a reporter that she is unable to publish her latest novel and other books in China, which she described as a form of “cold violence.” Fang Fang stated: “Publishing houses across the nation suddenly stopped issuing my books…It is natural that authorities have exerted pressure on them by some means.” Kanako Miyajima. “Author of ‘Wuhan Diary’ now finds herself muzzled in China” The Asahi Shimbun, December 15, 2020. http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/13988776.
- 23.
Fang Fang. “I Will Face it All with No Misgivings: After Wuhan Diary” in Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City. Revised Paperback edition. HarperVia, 2022. pg. 364–365.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Berry, M. (2022). Witch Hunt. In: Translation, Disinformation, and Wuhan Diary. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16859-8_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16859-8_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-16858-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-16859-8
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)