There’s been a media blackout on the Gao Qinrong case, Jonathan Ansfield reports on China Digital Times.
Baidu News search turns up no articles newer than Sunday; the reprint of Democracy and Law‘s article that ran in China Times this morning is not indexed. Baidu has also completely filtered “高勤荣” as a keyword, but as the previous search shows, clever manipulation of the search term still returns results. The image at left compares a web search for Gao’s name, which comes back empty, and a search for his name in quotes, which gives results.
The original SMD and SW interviews are still up on their papers’ websites as of this writing, but reposted copies have mostly been taken down – as in past media blackouts, it seems like the lesser-trafficked portals keep copies up longer.
And this afternoon, China Daily online reposted ESWN’s translation of the Southern Metropolis Daily interview with Gao along with Danwei’s translation of Wang Renlong’s commentary on corruption investigations (originals here and here). A sign of the disconnect between the way China’s propaganda efforts deal matters for internal consumption and those for promotion abroad, a bold editor making a daring statement, or just another example of the vacuum in which the CD website operates? Your pick. (There’s a screencap here if the link gets taken down.)