A Policeman Hero for China’s Netizens

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In the “something you don’t see everyday in China” category, a new (to me at least) site called chinasmack (www.chinasmack.com) features pictures of a Nanjing traffic policeman stopping (gasp!) a car with military plates for running a red light (you can actually see the light is green in the other direction in the photos). The occupants of the vehicle are clearly outraged at being stopped. They are also evidently not the kind of high ranking officers who are given such cars but children or other hangers on. Obviously, this sort of thing rarely happens in China, where connections are still the currency of power. That doesn’t stop people being angry about the situation though and the netizens comments translated along with the pictures of the incident reflect the rage bubbling not far under the surface of daily Chinese life. Many of the comments call for the infamous “human flesh search engine” –a vigilant search mob that is common on the Chinese internet–to find out who these people are and name and shame them. Be interesting to see how this plays out and how long the extremely vitriolic comments stay undeleted.