The following post by “Old News Soldier” (新闻老兵), the deputy editor-in-chief of Chizi Magazine, was deleted from Sina Weibo sometime before 6:00 p.m. yesterday, November 25, 2012. The post includes an image of President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao smiling at the recent 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party. “Old News Soldier” currently has more than 38,000 followers, according to numbers from Sina Weibo. [More on deleted posts at the WeiboScope Search, by the Journalism and Media Studies Centre]
[They] say high-sounding things about fighting corruption, but they can’t speak in loftier tones [on this front] than Mao did. [They] say high-sounding things about reform, but they can’t speak in loftier tones [on this front] than Deng Xiaoping. Without their own tunes, just blowing the horns of others, how can they make a place for themselves in history? The clarion call that needs to be sounded right now is for constitutionalism, democracy and rule of law. Blowing anything else right now is pointless, even if you blow until you’re blue in the face.
The original Chinese-language post follows:
高调反腐，调子高不过老毛。高调改革，调子高不过小平。没有自己的调子，吹别人的喇叭，难以青史留名。现在应该吹的调子，只有宪政、民主、法治，吹别的都荒腔走板，吹得冒汗也没用。
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.
