An op-ed writer who claimed that ex-Google China head and Innovation Works CEO Kaifu Lee faked a diagnosis of cancer allegedly operated an illegal pornographic website, Beijing News reports.
There was a great outpouring of sympathy for Lee on both the English and Chinese-language web in September when he revealed that he had been diagnosed with lymphoma. However, as China Real Time explains, things turned ugly this week:
Major Chinese Internet portals have republished an essay from an official media website that calls the former head of Google's China operations a "loser" and implies he lied about being diagnosed with cancer, in what some of his supporters are calling a coordinated ad hominem effort to discredit the influential tech figure.
The essay attacking Kai-fu Lee consists of 10 questions, one of which says, "How, as a loser, do you talk big about the study of success?"
Others ask about his relationship with the U.S. and his mockery of China’s anti-rumor campaign, among other topics. It culminated with a question suggesting that Mr. Lee’s lymphoma — which he revealed online in September before returning to his native Taiwan for treatment — was bogus.
Zhou Xiaoping's essay was originally published on the website of Dangjian, a magazine managed by the Ministry of Propaganda, and presumably had the approval of high-ups in the propaganda department. It was later republished on all major online news portals, and the websites of Xinhua and the People's Daily. (As Richard McGregor has reported, the propaganda department is populated largely by self-selecting die hard leftists.)
After he was criticised online for, you know, being an asshole who accused someone of faking a cancer diagnosis, Zhou compared his critics to the Red Guard: "Dare to criticise Kai-fu Lee and people take a page from the Cultural Revolution, slapping the '50 Center' hat on you. In the end, who is the real 50 Center?"
While many critics of Zhou settled for just insulting him, some dug into his past and unearthed some evidence that they say shows he was the proprietor of a porn site, New Link, which was shut down by public security officials. Zhou denied the allegations.
Another interesting element to this story is, if Kaifu Lee can prove satisfactorily that he does have cancer, will Zhou Xiaoping (and his allies in state media) be prosecuted for spreading rumours?
[Via @chubailiang // Image via Flickr]
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