Ai Weiwei and Politics on Weibo

Sina can't stop the signal, apparently.

Ai Weiwei’s name is a banned search term on Sina Weibo. His account is blocked. And yet, Sina Weibo is still talking about him.

Take, for example, this post by Hu Xijin, the editor-in-chief of the Global Times and the man who likely penned the op-ed in that paper calling Ai’s online fundraising campaign into question (that campaign, by the way, has raised nearly $1 million so far). Hu wrote China needs people like Ai and his supporters because China is a diverse society, but that it also needs to suppress them in order to move forward in the spirit of cooperation.

The post, which went up yesterday afternoon, has already attracted over 1,500 comments and nearly all of them are negative. Here’s a small sample (unfortunately there’s no way to directly link to comments from a Weibo post as far as I’m aware):

This kind of dumbass thinking isn’t even worth a response.

Why are there tears in my eyes? Because I love this land deeply, but nowadays this country is being run by bastards.

[Hu is] talking crap again. Diversity? Ample diversity? If that’s the case, then why did you have to write “Ai w wei” [instead of using his real name and risking the post being blocked or deleted by Sina].

You have the gall to talk about diversity openly in the Global Times, yet [you say] any differing voice can only be a small minority causing trouble. If that’s “diversity,” then the Qing-dynasty practice of imprisoning people for their writings is “enlightened.”

Seeing all these mocking, sarcastic comments, I’m not sure how long Hu can last!