China’s Censorship Backfires in ‘Li Gang’ Case
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/18/world/asia/18li.html
BAODING, China — One night in late October, a college student named Chen Xiaofeng was in-line skating with a friend on the grounds of Hebei University in central China. They were gliding past the campus grocery when a Volkswagen sedan raced down a narrow lane and struck them head-on.
十月下旬的一个晚上，河北大学学生陈晓凤和朋友一起在校园里玩轮滑。正当她们滑过校园超市时，一辆大众轿车冲到路边便道迎面撞上了她们。
The impact sent Ms. Chen flying and broke the other woman’s leg. The 22-year-old driver, who was intoxicated, tried to speed away. Security guards intercepted him, but he was undeterred. He warned them, “My father is Li Gang!”
陈晓凤被撞飞，另一名女生腿被撞断。事发后，22岁的酒后驾车的肇事者企图开车逃逸。学校保安将其拦住，但肇事者冷漠嚣张，还大喊：“我爸是李刚！”
“The two girls were motionless,” one passer-by that night, a student who identified himself only by his surname, Duan, said this week. “There was a small pool of blood.” The next day, Ms. Chen was dead.
本周，当晚事件目击者、河北大学一名姓段的学生说：“（当时）两个女孩儿都躺在那儿不动了。地上有一滩血。”事发第二天，陈晓凤身亡。
Chen Xiaofeng was a poor farm girl. The man accused of killing her, Li Qiming, is the son of Li Gang, the deputy police chief in the Beishi district of Baoding. The tale of her death is precisely the sort of gripping socio-drama — a commoner grievously wronged; a privileged transgressor pulling strings to escape punishment — that sets off alarm bells in the offices of Communist Party censors. And in fact, party propaganda officials moved swiftly after the accident to ensure that the story never gained traction.
陈晓凤是个普通的农村女孩儿，而涉嫌酒后驾车撞人致死的李启铭是河北保定市北市区公安分局副局长李刚。陈晓凤的死完全就是一出扣人心弦的社会戏剧（socio-drama）——一边是受到不公的平民；一边是享受特权的企图利用关系逃脱法律制裁的犯法者。这出戏剧给共产党的审查机构敲响了警钟。事实上，宣传部官员已在事发后第一时间采取措施以确保这则消息不会带来太大的负面效应。（gain traction）
Curiously, however, the opposite has happened. A month after the accident, much of China knows the story, and “My father is Li Gang” has become a bitter inside joke, a catchphrase for shirking any responsibility — washing the dishes, being faithful to a girlfriend — with impunity. Even the government’s heavy-handed effort to control the story has become the object of scorn among younger, savvier Chinese.
然而，说起来也怪，事实恰恰相反。事故发生一个月之后，大半个中国都知道了这件事儿，而‘我爸是李刚’已经成了一个大家都能意会的笑话，也是成了逃脱诸如洗碗、忠诚于女友等责任并免受处罚的一句口头禅。而政府控制消息传播的企图(heavy-handed?)也成了年轻、明理的中国人嘲讽的对象。
“There was a little on the school news channel at first,” one Hebei University student who offered only his surname, Wang, said in an interview last week. “But then it went completely quiet. We’re really disappointed in the press for stopping coverage of this major news.”
河北大学一名姓王（汪）的学生上周接受采访时说：“开始的时候学校新闻频道有一点相关报道。但是后来全部失声了。对于媒体关于这样的大新闻集体失声，我们感到非常失望。”
In many ways, the Li Gang case, as it is known, exemplifies how China’s propaganda machine — able to slant or kill any news in the age of printing presses and television — is sometimes hamstrung in the age of the Internet, especially when it tries to manipulate a pithy narrative about the abuse of power.
众所周知，中国的宣传机器能在这个平面和电视媒体时代歪曲报道或是审查掉一些新闻，而李刚事件从许多方面来讲都是中国的宣传机器在网络时代如何被‘阉割’的典型，尤其是在它试图操控权利滥用的有力报道的时候。
“Frequently we’ll see directives on coverage, but those directives don’t necessarily mean there is no coverage,” said David Bandurski, an analyst at the University of Hong Kong’s China Media Project. “They’re not all that effective.”
“Censorship is increasingly unpopular in China,” he added. “We know how unpopular it is, because they have to keep the guidelines themselves under wraps.”
香港大学中国传媒研究项目的分析师David Bandurski说：“我们常常能看到有关新闻报道范围的指示，但是这些指示并不一定说明就不会有相关报道。审查制度在中国越来越不得人心。我们知道它到底有多不得人心，因为有关部门的所谓指导方针也见不得光。”
A gadfly blog, sarcastically titled Ministry of Truth, has begun to puncture the veil surrounding censorship, anonymously posting secret government directives leaked by free-speech sympathizers. According to the blog’s sources, the Central Propaganda Department issued a directive on Oct. 28, 10 days after the accident, “ensuring there is no more hype regarding the disturbance over traffic at Hebei University.”
一个讽刺地命名为‘真理部’的草根博客（gadfly blog）已经着手掀开审查制度的面纱。博客上匿名发表了言论自由支持者透露的政府机密指示。根据博客的消息来源，中共中央宣传部于车祸发生10天后，即10月28日，发布了一份指示：确保不再出现关于河北大学交通骚乱的大肆报道。
On that same day, censors prohibited reporting on six other incidents. One involved another girl’s death in police custody. Others included an investigation of a Hunan Province security official, the sexual dalliance of a Maoming vice mayor, the abandonment of closed pavilions at Shanghai’s World Expo and the increasing censorship of Internet chat rooms.
同一天，审查机构又禁止报道其它六个事件。其中一个有关另一个女孩儿在警方监禁期间死亡。其它还包括对湖南省一名安全系统官员的调查，茂名副市长玩弄女记者事件，上海世博会闭幕后场馆的遗弃，以及网上聊天室内日益增强的审查监控。
But the Li Gang case was hard to suppress, partly because it personified an enduring grievance: the belief that the powerful can flout the rules to which ordinary folk are forced to submit. Increasingly, that grievance focuses on what Chinese mockingly call the “guan er dai” and “fu er dai” — the “second generation,” children of privileged government officials and the super-rich.
然而，李刚事件难以压制，部分原因是这一事件使人们长期以来对‘只许州官放火不许百姓点灯’的不满具体化。这种不满越来越集中在‘官二代’和‘富二代’身上——享尽特权的政府官员和有钱人的孩子。
Realizing the delicacy of the matter, the government tried to shape public reaction in more ways than by simply restricting coverage. After Internet bulletin boards began buzzing with outrage, China’s national television network, CCTV, broadcast an Oct. 22 interview with Li Gang and his son, filled with effusive apologies for the accident. On Oct. 24, the news media reported that Li Qiming, who had been detained by the police the day after the accident, had been arrested.
意识到这一事件的微妙，政府除了严控新闻报道之外还采取了其它多种措施来引导公众对此事件的反应。网民纷纷在网络上表达愤怒之后，中国国家电视台——中央电视台于10月22号播出了一段对李刚和李启铭的采访，两人在采访中流露出深深的忏悔。10月24日，新闻媒体报道，事发后第二天已被拘留的肇事者李启铭已经被逮捕。
Police regulations ostensibly bar interviews with detainees. A Baoding police spokeswoman who identified herself as Ms. Zhou said in an e-mail that the network obtained the interview because it had been approved by the local party propaganda office.
警方表面上规定，被羁留人员严禁接受采访。保定警方的一位发言人周女士在邮件中说中央电视台之所以得以采访李启铭是因为获得了中宣部当地办事处的批准。
Ms. Chen’s survivors were not afforded the same access. In early November, Fenghuang Satellite Television, a news channel based in Hong Kong that is available to some in mainland China, broadcast an angry interview with Ms. Chen’s brother, Chen Lin. On Nov. 4, the Central Propaganda Department banned further news of the interview.
而陈晓凤的家人却没有同等的访问权限。11月初，香港凤凰台（在中国大陆，一部分人可以看到凤凰台的节目）播出了一段陈晓凤的哥哥陈林愤怒的采访画面。11月4号，中宣部下令禁止有关该采访的进一步报道。
But censorship officials were seeking to control a message that had already spread widely.
On Oct. 20, a female blogger in northern China nicknamed Piggy Feet Beta announced a contest to incorporate the phrase “Li Gang is my father” into classical Chinese poetry. Six thousand applicants replied, one modifying a famous poem by Mao to read “it’s all in the past, talk about heroes, my father is Li Gang.”
事实上，新闻审查官员是在企图控制一条已经广泛传播的消息。10月20日，华北一名网名为Piggy Feet Beta的网友发起了一项‘我爸是李刚’诗歌大赛，约6000名网友进行了回复。其中一名网友改编了毛泽东的一首词：俱往矣，数风流人物，我爸是李刚。
Copycat competitions, using ad slogans and song lyrics, sprang up elsewhere on the Internet. In the southern metropolis of Chongqing, an artist created an installation based on the phrase.
类似的使用广告语和歌词比赛在网络上层出不穷。在中国西南部城市重庆，一位艺术家根据这个流行语创作了an installation?
On Nov. 9, Internet chatter on the case abruptly withered. But some have continued to dodge Web censors: starting in early November, the Beijing artist and activist Ai Weiwei posted on his Web site an interview with Ms. Chen’s father and brother, who said he had rejected appeals to negotiate a settlement.
“In society they say everyone is equal, but in every corner there is inequality,” Chen Lin said.
“How can you live in this country and this society without any worry?” he added.
11月9日，网络上有关这一事件的讨论突然销声匿迹了。但仍有一部分躲开了新闻审查的进攻。11月初，艺术家和政治积极分子艾未未在自己的网页上发布了对陈晓凤父亲和哥哥的采访。陈晓凤的哥哥表示他们已经拒绝了私下和解的请求。
Censors repeatedly blocked the interview. Mr. Ai has played a cat-and-mouse game, moving it to a new Web site every time.
Finally, last Thursday, the Chens’ lawyer, Zhang Kai, received a telephone call from his clients. “They thanked me for all the efforts I put into this case,” he said, “but they told me they have resolved their dispute with Li Gang’s family. Half an hour after the call, they came to my office and handed in a termination contract. And after that, they just disappeared.”
新闻审查部门不厌其烦地封杀这段采访。而艾未未则玩儿起了猫捉老鼠的游戏，每次都把这段录像搬到不同的网页上。最终，陈家的代理律师张凯于上周四接到了其客户的电话。张律师说：“他们感谢我为这个案子所作的一切努力，但是告诉我他们的事情已经解决了。半个小时后，他们到律师事务所解除了合同。”
Mr. Zhang said many of his cases involving conflicts between ordinary citizens and powerful people had ended the same way. “In current Chinese society, people put an emphasis on power more than on individual liberty,” he said.
If the settlement was intended to quash chatter about the Li Gang case, it, too, seems to have accomplished the opposite.
张律师说，这类普通公民和有权势的人之间的纷争大多都以这种类似的方式收场。他说：“当今中国社会中，人们把权力看得比个人自由看得更重。”
In Baoding, Hebei students questioned at random this week uniformly denounced the handling of the Chen case. “I’d see the case to the end,” said one man who gave only his surname, Zhang. “Go through the legal process and seek justice.”
A second student, Zhao, was unsparing. “This is the kind of society we live in,” he said angrily. “People who have power, they can cover up the sky. We want this settled according to the law.”
在河北保定，记者本周随机采访的学生一致谴责对陈晓凤案件的处理。一位张姓同学说：“我想看看这起案件的最终结果。应该走法律程序，伸张正义。”另一位姓赵的学生言辞激烈地说：“这就是我们生活的社会，有权有势的人能一手遮天。我们希望这起案子能通过正当的法律途径解决。”
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