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Professor Hu Xingdou of the Beijing Institute of Technology considers himself both a patriot and an academic of conscience. He set up his own independent website, using his full name as its web name and address – www.huxingdou.com.cn – in December 2000. He proceeded to post numerous proposals, commentaries, interviews and speeches about modern Chinese society.
Hu is a strong critic of certain aspects of China’s legal system, including the re-education through labor system that allows authorities to send people to labor camps without trial; the “letters and visits” system that allows people to petition the government over injustices, but which is highly ineffective; and the household registration system that controls people’s place of residence. He has also exposed examples of poor governance and official corruption.
Although there are many Chinese scholars who attempt to promote reforms in China, this 47-year-old professor is more active than most. He is often interviewed or asked to comment on current affairs for foreign media. Yet he works within the state system. Most professors in the country are still “within the state system,” as most universities are state-owned.
Being within the system has advantages and disadvantages. It gives the state a certain degree of control over its employees. However, if someone is “outside the state system,” it often implies a lack of protection at the same time.
In late March, Professor Hu suddenly received an email notice from his website’s Internet service provider, the Beijing Xin Net Technology Corp., saying that his site had been closed for carrying “illegal content.” Screen shots of three specific articles on the site were presented in the notice – one about the reeducation camps, one about supervision of the news media, and the third about Chinese officials’ corruption in the Siemens’ bribery case of 2007.
Hu is not a radical activist or a would-be politician. He is confident that his moderate reformist views are within the scope of the law – therefore he couldn’t accept the judgment that his website included “illegal content.”
Hu filed a lawsuit against the Beijing Xin Net Technology Corp. in early April; he then decided to file another lawsuit against the body that issued the order to Xin Net – the department of the cyber police in Suzhou city, Jiangsu province, where the Xin Net server is located.
A court date was set for May 12 in Beijing, but Xin Net sent no representative to attend. Instead, the company made a phone call to the court saying it would like to go through mediation, and would accept whatever terms Hu set. But the judge said a court case couldn’t be terminated this way once it had begun. Eight days later, the court issued an official verdict announcing that Professor Hu had won the case, citing Xin Net’s failure to provide persuasive proof of its claim.
Hu’s trial attorney, well-known lawyer Zhang Xingshui, commented that the victory was a milestone, as it was the first time for an individual whose website was unreasonably closed to win a suit against an Internet service provider. Previous cases of this kind either failed to win a court hearing, or lost the case.
Another of Hu’s legal representatives, Wang Haiyang – a famous expert known for helping civilians sue officials – said that Hu’s case set a precedent so that Internet service providers could not shut down their clients’ websites as easily as they used to, upon receiving orders from higher authorities. They would need to consider the consequences, Wang said.
Zhu Ruifeng, editor of an anti-corruption website and coordinator of Hu’s case, told some foreign media that the order to close Hu’s site might have come because of an article he wrote criticizing local media for biased reporting on a major environmental protection and livelihood issue. It seemed the media had sided with the local government – therefore Hu’s criticisms of their reports might have angered the local authority, according to Zhu.
Whatever the reason behind the Suzhou cyber police’s order, the good news for Chinese netizens was that Professor Hu, along with a support group of about 40 volunteer lawyers and law experts, conquered the powerful authorities with his courage in pursuing justice.
Hu of course was pleased with the outcome of the trial, which he said embodied the principle of following the rule of law. Legal affairs should be handled according to the law, he said, and political affairs should be handled according to political principles. Hu reiterated that his approach is to pursue a civilized and lawful Chinese society as an academic, not a politician.
The closure and subsequent rescue of Hu’s website attracted a great deal of attention from Chinese society, especially as thousands of websites and blogs are currently being shut down as part of an ongoing “Internet rectification period.”
In fact, on the second day of the closure of Hu’s site, an unidentified official in Beijing helped transfer the site to another server so that it could be operated and visited normally. This reveals that Beijing officials are well aware of Hu’s activities and have decided to allow him to continue speaking out – even if the officials in Suzhou feel differently.
The incident at least has given some hope to Chinese Internet users that they have some recourse against the often irrational and arbitrary decisions of the anonymous but all-pervasive cyber police.
