![]() In the same year, we invested in the locally produced film, Paradise in Service and co-produced 20 Once Again with CJ Entertainment for the Chinese market. ![]() The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.In 2014, in addition to distributing the movies CATCHPLAY loves, we embarked in earnest co-production and investment projects, venturing into content creation. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. ![]() (SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR. But if indeed Ruan Xiaohuan is Program Think, as is widely suspected now, the chances seem slim that a legal appeal will lead to him being released. RUWITCH: Bei is determined to fight for her husband's freedom. RUWITCH: The message says his friends and the international community are now following his case.īEI: (Through interpreter) And it says, we hope he won't be down and that he can relax because his family is still safe. RUWITCH: She turned on a loudspeaker with a prerecorded message.īEI: (Through interpreter) I am telling him we know he's Program Think. On the other side is the detention center where her husband is locked up. So this past spring, on weekends, Bei would drive her scooter up to a towering wall in an apartment complex in Shanghai. Bei is working on his appeal and trying to support him in every way she can. This February, he was sentenced to seven years in prison. Police took Ruan Xiaohuan away the next day. And so is this - Program Think's last post was on May 9, 2021. Then she looked at posts around the end of 2017 and early 2018, a time when Ruan was sick in bed.īEI: (Through interpreter) I checked, and in the posts around that time, each one said, sorry, I've been really busy these days, so I'm late in posting this. There was a reference to "V For Vendetta," which was one of her husband's favorite films. RUWITCH: The writing style was familiar too. It would be something direct, like Program Think. An article popped up about Program Think.īEI: (Through interpreter) My husband is so straight that he wouldn't pick a fun or fancy blog name. RUWITCH: She went to a foreign search engine blocked in China and typed in the words missing blogger. His lawyers refused to divulge details about the case, saying it involved state secrets.īEI: (Through interpreter) After I learned how to get over the Great Firewall, I went to an internet cafe to get online. RUWITCH: Bei Zhenying didn't know any of it. QIANG: So all of those element added together made him a sort of mystical status. It was a period of ever-tightening restrictions on speech in China. The blogger used his cybersecurity expertise to stay anonymous and keep active for 12 years. RUWITCH: And Program Think pulled off something extraordinary, he says. XIAO QIANG: His blog became a magnet - attract, actually, hundreds of thousands of people who read this person who, just like them - they live inside of China, within the Great Firewall, but are capable of thinking independently to see through the propaganda. Xiao Qiang with the University of California, Berkeley's School of Information says the blog was eloquent, logical and important. It mapped out the connections and wealth of senior Communist Party members, and it pushed back hard against Beijing's propaganda. It taught people how to scale China's so-called Great Firewall to access blocked overseas websites. ![]() RUWITCH: Bei didn't know it at the time, but her husband had apparently been keeping a blog called Program Think. We thought my husband wouldn't have been scared to write a few sensitive things, but it was impossible, given his character, that it could have been very extreme. He would hole up in his study for hours doing what he said was work.īEI: (Through interpreter) I talked with his parents. He was an independent thinker, but he wasn't openly political and generally minded his own business. Her husband was a nerd - a computer programmer who had worked on internet security during the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. I couldn't imagine my husband could write such things, if he'd done what they said. They told Bei her husband had an overseas blog and was suspected of subverting state power.īEI: (Through interpreter) I was really scared. RUWITCH: The police separated them and confiscated their phones and computers. His wife, Bei Zhenying was in the kitchen.īEI ZHENYING: (Through interpreter) That day at midday, he was in his study. JOHN RUWITCH, BYLINE: Police came to arrest Ruan Xiaohuan on a hot day in May 2021. NPR's John Ruwitch has more from Shanghai. ![]() And now to China for a story about a mysterious blogger and a woman left to discover who her husband really was after the police hauled him away. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |