Page 112 - Feasibility Study of New Media Technology on Constructing Online Public Sphere

Feasibility Study of New Media Technology
on Constructing Online Public Sphere

experts, scholars and lawyers wrote articles and declarations, staged several waves

of online protests and raised petitions that sought legal justice for Sun (ibid). Even
the Study Times, a Central Party School publication, said that ‘the case should not be
glossed over by processing it as an isolated incident (Hand, 2007, p.123)’ and appealed
for amendments to the legal system to prevent such abuses in the future. The case also
stimulated a wave of reporting on other abuses in the C&R system (Chen, 2013).

5.2.3 The launch of online activism and public participation

The nationwide reports and heated discussions on the internet finally drew the
central government’s attention. As the Southern Metropolis Daily reported, both the
central government official and the provincial leader had ordered the police department
to investigate this case to protect the civil rights of every Chinese citizen and to give

justice to Sun’s family. On 13 May, Xinhua and other news outlets announced that the
authorities had detained twelve suspects, including five employees at the C&R Centre,
who were being investigated by the procuratorate (Lu, 2003).
If it was not for the spontaneous collective efforts of reporters, media outlets,

legal experts and lawyers, the news of the arrests might have led to the case fading
from public consciousness, but Chinese legal reformers occupied a vital position in the
sphere of public discourse. Legal experts and lawyers discussed the problems involved
in Sun’s case on online forums and at meetings. They then conveyed the outcome of

the discussions to the press, which transformed the issue of legitimacy to one of public
outrage over the incident. Several innovative legal petitions were also submitted. On 14
May, one day after the arrests of suspects, three legal scholars, Xu Zhiyong (from Bei-
jing University of Posts and Telecommunications), Teng Biao (from China University

of Political Science and Law) and Yu Jiang (from Huazhong University of Science and
Technology), submitted a formal petition (a Review Petition) to the Standing Commit-
tee of the National People’s Congress (NPCSC) stating that regulations in the C&R
system for detaining migrant workers and sending them to their home place was a vi-

olation of the Constitution and demanded that Congress conduct further investigation.
They stated that:

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