Man behind 'Great Firewall of China' pelted with eggs

GWC Community Off-Topic/Other
#1

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/8523806/Man-behind-Great-Firewall-of-China-pelted-with-eggs.html

Long story short, the leading designer of the Great Firewall of China, Feng Bin-xing was about to make a speech at Wuhan University in China, where he was met by four students throwing eggs and shoes at him to protest suppression of free speech. These students discussed their plans via Twitter. One of the student was successful and hit Mr. Feng in the face with a shoe. They all escaped into the crowd before the police and professors could catch them.

The best part of this story is not available in this article:

Apparently, Feng, who is also the principal of Beijing University of Posts & Telecommunications, was furious about being hit by a shoe. After learning that the students posted their plans beforehand on Twitter, he demanded to know why the host organization for the speech failed to protect him. To which the host organization replied: “We can’t get on twitter, because it is blocked by the Great Firewall of China.”

#2

I lol’d. It’s nice when people get their comeuppance.

#3

Poetic justice.

Is throwing shoes a Chinese thing? Or did they pick that up from the Arabs?

#4

He’s lucky that it was only eggs. Granted it probably wasn’t his idea to put up the firewall, but he was part of it. To me that’s fairly evil.

#5

Careful you might spark off the whole Death Star civilian contractor debate…oops too late!

#6

the shoe thrower was imitating the shoe throwing at President George W.

the eggs are more the Chinese thing.

#7

the thing is he seems really proud of what he did and relishes his role as the protector of social harmony.

i don’t think setting up a national firewall is that technically challenging. The hardest part is having the government’s support and mandate every telecomm company go through the firewall.

what would be challenging is how to screen and filter out anti government information and quickly discovering the actual identity of internet opinion posters. that’s the real killer for me regarding the GFW.

and he seem particularly proud of thousands of people are being arrested from their homes and disappearing for stating obvious facts about social conditions every year.

#8

there’s a Chinese saying (“cheng yu”) for this : when one gets bitten back by the own laws one creates… which I can’t remember… sorry y’all

#9

The saying came from the story of Sang Yang (390 BC – 338 BC) during the Warring States period.

Sang came from a noble family from the state of Wei, and was studying under the Prime minister’s house. The Prime minister of Wei was growing old and when he was about to die, he told the king of Wei “Yang is the brightest man I’ve ever known, either let Sang Yang take charge after I die, or kill him before he goes to work for another state”.

The king of Wei thought the prime minister was close to dying and delusional and didn’t take his advice. Sang left Wei to search for better opportunities and arrived at the state of Qin where he became the prime minister.

Sang was a strong beliver of absolute and strict law and punishment. He put forth a series of judicial reforms that boarded extremes. One of such new laws is if you harbor a fugitive, whether you know that the person was a fugitive or not, your all family will be killed.

Sang’s strict laws goes as far as punishing the prince’s teachers by cutting off their noses for a crime that the prince committed.

It was of course just Sang’s luck that when the old king of Qin died, that prince became the new king. The teachers that had their noses sliced off accused Sang of treason.

Sang had to flee the capital and when the soldiers caught up with him, he begged people for letting him hide. People being afraid of having their families killed for harboring fugitive refused.

And there came the saying “Making a law to tie up oneself”.

Sang was killed having 5 horses tied to his head and limbs and torn apart by 5 chariots, and everyone of his family killed as well. All of which are his own laws. Interestingly, before he died, Sang led Qin to defeat the state of Wei, making the king of Wei crying with the words “I should have listened to my prime minister”. And after he died, his laws and national strategy made Qin the strongest state, and eventually Qin conquered all other states and became the first chinese empire.

#10

newest development.

I guess Feng got mad after he was hit by a shoe.

Previously since China blocked the use of proxies, the last resort to access free internet (here free as in liberty) was to use VPN to connect to servers outside of China. That is how students that staged the protest got on Twitter which is banned by the GFW.

Now there are reports of VPN blocking as well. A number of businesses, research institutions, even IBM labs have reported that they can no longer connect to their private VPN. The method used to block VPN access was simple. The GFW cuts off any connection to foreign IPs.

So there, one more terrifying steps to stripe freedom in name of social harmony.