Mob Rule on China's Internet

Alien54 writes to mention an International Herald Tribune article about the growing phenomenon in China known as internet hunting; Using the web to track down individuals who have violated social more or broken the law. From the article: "In recent cases, people have scrutinized husbands suspected of cheating on their wives, fraud on Internet auction sites, the secret lives of celebrities and unsolved crimes. One case that drew a huge following involved the poisoning of a Tsinghua University student - an event that dates to 1994, but was revived by curious strangers after word spread on the Internet that the only suspect in the case had been questioned and released. Even a recent scandal involving a top Chinese computer scientist dismissed for copying an American processor design came to light in part because of Internet hunting, with scores of online commentators raising questions about the project and putting pressure on the scientist's sponsors to look into allegations about intellectual property theft."

Is this what happens...

[ericspinder]

Is this what happens when you keep people from looking at porn all day? Perhaps it represents the amount of time that intelligent people 'waste' discussing politics.\ Or has the Internet awoken community interest, and those discussions are just the first steps to a more open society.

every time one of these come up

[Epicanthics]

...it seems the discussion devolves into one of indiscriminant China bashing. I say indiscriminant because it usually ends up including not only comments on the government (justified, most of the time), but also attacks on the people and culture that would get one's faced punched in if they said it to a Chinese person's face. Some of the things I have read here are as bad if not worse than what is described in the article. From an overseas Chinese student who is sick of borderline racism disguised as concern for human rights, I hope that some of the masses here never gain the power to smash China's hope of becoming a strong, democratic country.

Re:No clear voice of Moral Authority

[Jherek Carnelian]

My wife, an agnostic like myself, wonders if there is some value in most people having Religion in order to hold the more selfish, destructive behaviors in check.

George Washington thought so, in his Farewell Address he said:

Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect, that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

It is pretty well established that Washington himself was at least a Deist, if not agnostic to the point of soft atheism.

(As an aside, here is something very interesting - as I was looking for the exact quote to cut-n-paste into this message, I ran across an article by Michael Novak slamming the ACLU and attempting to justify it with the above quotation from George Washington. Except, Novak misquoted Washington [nationalreview.com] in a fashion that hides Washington's clearly judgemental opinion of the type of people who 'need' religion.)

Re:No clear voice of Moral Authority

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice post and I believe correct for the most part. I am also married to a Chinese national, living in the United States. The internet mob mentality is not confined to China. It exists in the US as well among Chinese nationals. It can be found on Chinese forums such as mitbbs which is largely visited by college students as one example. I don't believe that and drastic circumstances such as the ones mentioned in the article have occurred here though. My wife and I were subjected to this same phenomenon over the course of at least 2 years and it wasn't pleasant.

Re:No clear voice of Moral Authority

[ThesQuid]

One of the reasons for this happening is that for the most part in China, the police don't give a damn. They do not have the Cop Mentality of "Let's catch bad guys" like most (but of course not all) western police do. Just getting them to open a case on anything, even the most blatant criminal behavior, is like pulling teeth.