International Law

China Net-activism and the Rule of Law

By Stan

A few hours after a message appeared on an Internet forum alleging relief tents destined for earthquake victims had been embezzled, millions of Internet users in China got outraged and prompted officials to investigate the scandal.

A netizen who named himself “Peaceful Heart” posted a message exposing embezzlement of relief tents on a local Internet forum last Tuesday. The tents were pitched in wealthy residential areas of Chengdu which were not damaged by the recent Sichuan earthquake. He questioned how the tents ended up in these places and called on the public to “catch the ghosts” who had embezzled the relief materials.

The message was immediately copied onto a number of Internet forums and websites in China and aroused massive public outrage over the scandal.

A few hours afterwards, several hundred Chengdu residents besieged a street relief tent whose owner was apparently not an earthquake victim, demanding to know the origin of the tent.

They also called local police and urged them to confiscate the tent. A scuffle broke out when the police failed to appease the crowd’s anger, according to Southern Metropolis News.

My wife was following this story on several BBSs earlier this week, so I’ve been keeping an eye out for related info. Emotions are running high, and I think this sort of net-activism has a lot of potential - it is potentially very empowering (Fons has some nice links here) and potentially very dangerous.

It’s wonderful when millions of people are out there watching to make sure that quake relief goes where it should, that government acts properly, that private companies follow the law, etc.

However, there is a danger of vigilantism and people acting much too quickly before all the facts are in on a given situation. The anecdote above about the guy with the tent is frightening, and those are the types of situations that could easily end in violence.

"Rule of Law" does not just mean curtailing the sale of pirated DVDs on the corner, it means having an adequate system of redressing criminal and other illegal acts sufficiently such that people do not take things into their own hands.

Free flow of information = good. Rush to judgment = not so good.

Full post as published by China Hearsay on May 28, 2008 (boomark / email).