A few weeks ago a letter appeared online in China calling for Premier Xi Jinping to resign. Little notice was taken of the missive until the Chinese security services let their paranoia over criticism of communist party and its leader get the best of them. It wasn't until they decided to give the letter the full Rambo treatment that people became aware that the letter had been published. That's what happens when turn the paranoia level up to 11.
It wasn’t a very long letter - the equivalent of about 920 words in English and it appeared only briefly on a Chinese website.
But its content was potentially incendiary. It called for president Xi Jinping to resign.
Many China watchers initially dismissed it as a prank, as opposed to a sign of real dissension within the ruling Communist party.
But only a few weeks later, the mysterious letter has taken on a life of its own – largely because of the government’s reaction to it.
State security agents have detained more than two dozen people thought to be linked to the letter’s distribution. They scrubbed the Chinese internet of all search terms related to it. They have also detained and harassed family members of exiled Chinese journalists who commented on the letter, and even tried to get one of those commentaries retracted by a German broadcaster.
They're not only searching for the person or persons who wrote the offending letter. Families of Chinese dissidents who live outside the country are being harassed and arrested. You know it's gone completely around the bend when they try pressure media outlets in other countries to stop reporting on the letter.
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