Ren Zhiqiang (任志强) has become the talk of the week – both in China’s domestic media, as in the international headlines. The Chinese opinion leader (38 million Weibo followers) and retired real estate entrepreneur, who is known for his critical stance on political and social issues, commented on President’s Xi’s February 19 tour of Chinese media through his Weibo account earlier this week.
According to Ren, China’s media should serve the people – not the government. “When all media have surnames and do not represent the people’s interests, the people will be cast aside into a forgotten corner!” he wrote on his Weibo (The Economist).
Just five months ago, Ren Zhiqiang was also hot news on Sina Weibo. Ren Zhiqiang then responded to a Weibo post of the Communist Youth League (the youth movement of the Communist Party of China) that reiterated their strong belief in communism. Ren replied with a post titled “Are we the successors of Communism?”
In his blog, Ren critiqued the Communist Youth League, saying: “We’ve been deceived by these communist slogans for years!” He wrote about his experience with communism in the past, and shared his views for it in the future.
“We’ve been deceived for years. The Cultural Revolution only let me know the class struggle under a proletarian dictatorship. And that there is no next generation of communism,” Ren wrote: “The invincible Mao Zedong Thought has let thousands of people starve to death, and we don’t even know who many people died through persecution during the Cultural Revolution. Maybe even more people died because of wrong political policies than because of the war.”
The post instantly became a trending topic and received thousands of messages of sympathy from Weibo users. Although the discussion about communism was moderated by Weibo censors, commenters did write some strong uncensored statements (“what the f*ck is communism?!“)
But with his critique of the past week, Ren seemed to have taken it too far. His Weibo account has now been closed. Dagongbao writes on Weibo: “On February 28, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) ordered Sina, Tencent and other blogs to comply with the law and close Ren Zhiqiang’s accounts. As stated by CAC spokesperson Jiang Jun, netizens have reported Ren Zhiqiang to have a negative influence and persistently publish illegal news.”
The news of Ren’s Weibo account being shut down (“任志强微博被关”) was shared amongst Weibo netizens, with some finding it hard to believe. “Was Ren Zhiqiang’s account really closed?” Shenzhen Interview wonders: “It seems to be real..”.
Chinese television pundit and writer Sima Nan (司马南) responded to the issue on Weibo with a somewhat cryptic comment, saying that “Ren Zhiqiang has broken the rules, but the issue is definitely not as simple as just breaking Party discipline,” and that “this issue of critiquing Party discipline should be handled within the Party.” He also insinuated that there was no freedom of speech on the internet and wrote that “the only solution is to learn from America’s CIA”. Although his post initially attracted over 4855 comments, a few minutes later only 11 comments remained uncensored (see screenshots).
Although Ren Zhiqiang no longer has a Weibo account, his name is not blocked from China’s (social) media. How and what is discussed, however, remains moderated by Weibo’s censors. In that regards, it is business as usual. Ren’s statements of last September, that remained online for nearly six months, now seem to have been the exception to the rule.
– By Manya Koetse
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