Chinabounder is back, with a name and a book

Chinabounder’s target reader

In August 2006, the blog hosting service Blogspot was unblocked in China. A psychology professor named Zhang Jiehai checked it out and found, to his displeasure, that a British English teacher calling himself ‘Chinabounder’ was writing a blog about his sexual exploits with young Chinese women in Shanghai.

Professor Zhang launched an Internet manhunt for Chinabounder, who soon stopped blogging. Someone claiming to be Chinabounder responded to enquiries from journalists saying that the “authors” of the blog were a group of performance artists who had fabricated its content as an investigation into online vigilante behavior.

Soon afterwards, Chinabounder disappeared from the Internet. (See the Guardian story linked below for a good summary of the case).

Now it seems Chinabounder is back.

Danwei received an email today titled ‘News from Chinabounder’:

PRESS RELEASE

FAULT LINES ON THE FACE OF CHINA: 50 REASONS WHY CHINA WILL NEVER BE GREAT

‘China has NOT changed’ say the authors of ‘FAULT LINES ON THE FACE OF CHINA: 50 REASONS WHY CHINA WILL NEVER BE GREAT,’ David Marriott and Karl Lacroix.

‘FAULT LINES’ peels back the political stage make-up, thickly applied by China’s communist government on the visage of ‘the people’s motherland.’

Published in Japan on May 21st 2008 by Random House Kodansha, ‘FAULT LINES ON THE FACE OF CHINA’ presents China bare-faced, by revealing 50 real-time and deeply scarring fissures that prevent the country’s march towards global superpower status.

‘FAULT LINES’ may unfortunately incite Chinese rage, into a storm of anger, instead of what is really needed – perfect reason. As an example the authors will reveal the identity of ‘ChinaBounder,’ the blogger who enraged Chinese public opinion in 2006…

One of the authors, David Marriot, was previously identified by several online commenters as being the real name of Chinabounder (see the ‘Who is Chinabounder’ blog linked below).

Since the book’s press release was sent as “News from Chinabounder” and includes links to Chinabounder’s blog, it seems safe to assume that David Marriot is in fact Chinabounder.

Perhaps the thrill of philandering in Shanghai and enraging Chinese psychology professors can only be replaced by the thrill of encouraging Sinophobia in Japan.