The following post by Lang Yaoyuan (郎遥远), the editor of World Chinese Business magazine, was deleted from Sina Weibo sometime before 1:31pm Hong Kong time on March 26, 2012. Lang Yaoyuan currently has just over 74,000 followers, according to numbers from Sina Weibo. [More on deleted posts at the WeiboScope Search, by the Journalism and Media Studies Centre].

Recently, 106-year-old linguist Zhou Youguang (周有光), the “father of pinyin Chinese” was interviewed by the BBC in Beijing and said with seriousness: “”China will have to release itself from communism. The future will be dark if it doesn’t.” He also pointed out that if mainland China cannot peacefully make the transition to freedom and democracy, there will be a violent revolution, and this is just a matter of time. “I have to speak the truth, and what can they do!”

The Weibo post refers to Michael Bristow’s March 22 article on Zhou Youguang, which can be found here. The final sentence in the Weibo post presumably refers to the section in Bristow’s article that reads as follows: “He is critical of the party that governs China – and old enough not to care who is listening to what he has to say. ‘What are they going to do, come and take me away?’ he said in an interview with the BBC in his sparsely furnished Beijing home.
The following image of Zhou Youguang was included with Lang Yaoyuan’s post:

日前，106岁的著名文字语言学家、中国“汉语拼音之父”周有光在北京住所接受英国广播电台（BBC）专访时，神情严肃地说道：“只要一天离不开共产主义，中国就无法摆脱黑暗”；他更指中国大陆若不能向自由民主和平过渡，将会有革命抗暴，那是迟早的事情。“我就要说真话，他们能把我怎么样！”