THE PRICE OF BLOGGING IN CHINA

4 Chinese sentenced for talking of politics (NY Times, 5/29/2003)

BEIJING - Four young friends who met on university campuses to discuss their progressive politics and posted occasional essays on the Internet have been sentenced to long prison terms, accused of "subverting state power."

The Beijing Intermediate People's Court sentenced Xu Wei, 28, and Jin Haike, 26, to 10 years. Yang Zilin, 32, and Zhang Honghai, 29, were sentenced to eight years ...

This reminds me of a story from Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago. A man was sentenced to 20 years in the gulag, and a guard asked him what he had done. The man replied, "Nothing at all." The guard then beat him, saying, "You're lying! The punishment for nothing at all is ten years."

How lucky we are to be Americans.

Posted by Paul Jaminet at May 29, 2003 4:25 PM