In late January, Chinese authorities announced that they are considering formal charges against Pu Zhiqiang, one of China’s most prominent human rights lawyers, who has been in detention since last May. Pu’s friends fear that even a life sentence is possible. The crime? “Picking fights and causing trouble,” and other related offenses, on his microblog. Even amid a growing wave of repression under the leadership of Xi Jinping, the outlandish nature of these pending charges stands out. Pu’s short, Twitter-like posts to his Weibo account are unusual for their cleverness, but do not really stand out by the standards of the Chinese Internet. After the authorities’ list of allegedly criminal posts was leaked, comments like this appeared: “What’s so new? We’ve been talking like this for years” and “If these are crimes, can the prisons hold a few million more?”[Source]
