The following post by writer and traditional culture expert Wuman Lanjiang (雾满拦江) dealing with political secrecy in China was deleted from Sina Weibo sometime before 6:34pm Hong Kong time yesterday, April 17, 2012. Wuman Lanjiang currently has more than 164,000 followers, according to numbers from Sina Weibo. [More on deleted posts at the WeiboScope Search, by the Journalism and Media Studies Centre].
Yang Hengjun (杨恒均) wrote on his blog: in bookstores in the Hong Kong airport, you can see a huge section of the shelves all devoted to inside secrets of the Chinese government, insider looks at political affairs, and at the lives of leaders. If these disclosures were happening in Western countries, you could go right to the government archives and have a look at them, but in China they’ve become secrets . . . Another article said that in our country the people’s right to know is so insignificant as to be pathetic, and we live in a world where we cannot know.
The post was accompanied by the following cartoon, in which a probing journalist trying to report on government affairs — in the background, an official leaps up across a serious of bigger and bigger official red stamps representing power — is shielded from the facts.
The original Chinese post by Wuman Lanjiang follows:
杨恒均在他的博客里说：在香港机场逛书店，看到整整一大片书架上，几乎全部都是揭秘中国政府、政务内幕、领导人情况的，而这些揭露的内幕如果放在西方国家的话，你都可以到政府档案馆去查阅，在中国却成了秘密……另有文章称：我国民众的知情权少得可怜，活在一个不可知的世界上。要不犯傻，要不犯法。
NOTE: All posts to The Anti-Social List are listed as “permission denied” in the Sina Weibo API, which means they were deleted by Weibo managers, not by users themselves.
