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Codebreaker

Chinese egg and shoe attack possible

John Moe May 20, 2011

Weird headline, I know. Weird story too. A Twitter user who claims to be in China has claimed to have thrown an egg and a shoe at Fang Binxing, the architect of what’s called the Great Firewall of China. He designed the system of intense online censorship that keeps all of China largely in the dark about the world as it actually is. Thing is, the web offers some anonymity and people really hate him there and find ways to say so. A tweet on the Twitter account of @hanunyi claims to have thrown an egg and a shoe at Fang during an appearance at a university. Fang denies it, the university says it has no evidence of such an attack. BUT the government is now actively looking to arrest this guy and he’s become something of a folk hero in Chinese internet circles. So what’s interesting here is not whether the attack happened but what the idea of the attack stirs up.

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