The authorities are seeking a college student who sneaked into a lecture hall at one of Chinas most prestigious universities on Thursday and tossed eggs and shoes at a computer scientist both lionized and reviled as the architect of Chinas strict Internet controls.
According to Twitter postings from a man claiming responsibility for the attack, the eggs missed, but at least one shoe hit its intended target: Fang Binxing, popularly described as the father of the Great Firewall, who was giving a talk on Internet security. The student, known for the moment only by his Twitter handle, @hanunyi, apparently fled the scene in bare feet.
Although there has been no official acknowledgment of the incident, The Associated Press quoted a local police official as saying that the case was under investigation.
The attack and its messy aftermath were described through postings by @hanunyi, as well as several other students who said they saw the assault, which took place at Wuhan University in central Hubei Province. At least three other people, encouraged by a Twitter posting announcing Mr. Fangs lecture at the department of computer science, had planned to join the protest but bailed out at the last moment. We saw our professor and graduate supervisor there and immediately lost courage, one of them wrote on Twitter.
With his talk interrupted and the classroom in chaos, Mr. Fang appeared to have cut short his lecture and left for the airport.
In the hours that followed, a firestorm of approving sentiment ricocheted across the Chinese Internet much of which was promptly deleted by censors. Postings hailed @hanunyi a student at Huazhong University of Science and Technology as a hero and promised all manner of recompense, from iPads and designer shoes to carnal rewards offered by admiring women of the sort that Chinas Internet guardians would likely deem harmful to the nations morality.
If you, the shoe thrower, get kicked out of school for this, my company will hire you in a minute, said one anonymous posting on a Wuhan University student message board.
Mr. Fang, the president of Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, has hailed Internet censorship as a necessary defense against Western governments and democracy activists who seek to harm China through incendiary information.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/20/world/asia/20china.html?ref=china
You guys even despise censorship itself. Why continue to defend it? Party-induced patriotism maybe?
According to Twitter postings from a man claiming responsibility for the attack, the eggs missed, but at least one shoe hit its intended target: Fang Binxing, popularly described as the father of the Great Firewall, who was giving a talk on Internet security. The student, known for the moment only by his Twitter handle, @hanunyi, apparently fled the scene in bare feet.
Although there has been no official acknowledgment of the incident, The Associated Press quoted a local police official as saying that the case was under investigation.
The attack and its messy aftermath were described through postings by @hanunyi, as well as several other students who said they saw the assault, which took place at Wuhan University in central Hubei Province. At least three other people, encouraged by a Twitter posting announcing Mr. Fangs lecture at the department of computer science, had planned to join the protest but bailed out at the last moment. We saw our professor and graduate supervisor there and immediately lost courage, one of them wrote on Twitter.
With his talk interrupted and the classroom in chaos, Mr. Fang appeared to have cut short his lecture and left for the airport.
In the hours that followed, a firestorm of approving sentiment ricocheted across the Chinese Internet much of which was promptly deleted by censors. Postings hailed @hanunyi a student at Huazhong University of Science and Technology as a hero and promised all manner of recompense, from iPads and designer shoes to carnal rewards offered by admiring women of the sort that Chinas Internet guardians would likely deem harmful to the nations morality.
If you, the shoe thrower, get kicked out of school for this, my company will hire you in a minute, said one anonymous posting on a Wuhan University student message board.
Mr. Fang, the president of Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, has hailed Internet censorship as a necessary defense against Western governments and democracy activists who seek to harm China through incendiary information.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/20/world/asia/20china.html?ref=china
You guys even despise censorship itself. Why continue to defend it? Party-induced patriotism maybe?
