My colleague Jessie Jiang examines the attack this weekend on a prominent Chinese writer:
As many followers of the Chinese blogosphere will know, Xu Lai, a popular blogger and reporter whose blog “ProState In Flames ” has become a major source of political humor for many, was stabbed by two unidentified men on Valentine’s Day at an eastern Beijing bookstore. The attack, which was not fatal, has stirred both sympathy for Xu and lingering questions over the motivation behind it. “We have as little idea as you do about who the attackers are and why they did that,” says Xiao Sanlang, Xu’s editor at The Beijing News.
Despite the government’s hard-line policy against online dissent, including the shutdown of bullog.cn in early January, most bloggers believe that the attack was more likely an act of personal grudge. “I don’t think there is a political motivation in it,” says veteran Chinese blogger Michael Anti, who first came up with the English name “ProState In Flames” for Xu’s blog. “Neither do I believe that it’s completely irrelevant to his blog. He might just have pissed someone off even though he shows little personal judgment in what he writes.”
The popular ProState In Flames blog is largely a news aggregator, where Xu selectively re-posts news stories and comments without elaborating his own opinions. Having known Xu for years, Anti describes him as a nice, humble guy who makes “a very unlikely target of hatred being who he is.” According to the Southern Metropolis Daily, one of the suspects was heard saying to Xu, “Now you know you offended someone?”
Zhou Shuguang, a blogger and civil rights activist also known as Zola, first broke the news on twitter.com after he was informed of it Saturday afternoon. Although he doesn’t know Xu personally, Zola agrees with the private retaliation theory. The authorities rarely resort to physical assaults, he says. But after this weekend’s attack on Xu, mainland journalists and bloggers have one more threat to worry about.