Man charged for knife attack on ProState in Flames blogger

The blogger at a book reading

Xu Lai, the journalist who kept the popular blog ProState in Flames (钱烈宪要发言), was stabbed in a bathroom following a book reading event on February 14.

Yesterday, Beijing newspapers named his attacker and reported that he was motivated by revenge. From the Mirror‘s Friday edition:

There are new developments in blogger ProState in Flames’ stabbing case. This paper learned today that Yang Chun has been charged with intentional injury and the case has been accepted by the Chaoyang Court.

The public prosecution claims that at 4pm on February 14, 2009, in the second-floor bathroom of the One Way Street Bookstore in Wanda Plaza, Chaoyang District, Yang Chun stabbed Xu Lai (the ProState in Flames blogger) in the abdomen, resulting in serious injuries.

The prosecution says that Xu Lai, the stabbing victim, was an editor at a newspaper in Beijing. Yang Chun believed that information he published harmed the reputation of one of his friends, so he stabbed him. On February 20, Yang Chun was arrested in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province.

Reportedly, the thirty-three-year-old Yang Chun had been sentenced to prison for three years for embezzlement of public funds and was released in April, 2006.

The procuratorate believes that Yang used violence to cause bodily harm to another individual, resulting in serious injury, and should be prosecuted for the crime of intentional injury. Yang’s crime occured within five years of the completion of his previous sentence, so he should face more serious punishment.

Xu is also from Jiangsu.

Reports have not revealed whose reputation Yang though had been insulted, what it was Xu wrote that caught his attention, or even whether the information was contained in a blog post or a newspaper article.