Huang Jingao

In late 2004, I saw an incredible opinion piece on the China Daily website titled, "Fighting Corruption Using Media Power." The author extolled the use of media to uncover government corruption, and latched onto the open letter by one presumably honest official in Southern China who claimed to be locked in a battle against corrupt officials. He dramatically titled his letter, "Why I Wore a Bullet-Proof Vest for the Last Six Years."

I was elated that the Chinese government was finally seeing the usefulness of transparency and media oversight.

A few days after the story was spread over the official Chinese websites such as Xinhua, etc., it abruptly disappeared. What followed was a very strange chain of events, eventually culminating in the recent sentencing of Huang to life in prison. The local authorities first issued a Mao-era refutation of Huang's letter, and much like the local authorities' response to the Taishi news, that was supposedly the end of the matter. What was left was simply to cast all sorts of evil assertions on Huang: he had six mistresses, embezzelled funds, etc. In the end, it may very well be that Huang Jingao was an evil and nasty person, but, then again, his trial was a closed-hearing affair, so how can we know?