Investigating crime in China, still not perfect

This articles tells the story of a man in the Puning County Jail in Beijing who died in a game similar to Marco Polo. The official report was that he fell and suffered an extreme head injury. Chinese citizens did not believe this report and took to the internet to express themselves.

In response to this outrage, Wu Hao, an official in the propaganda office explained why the outrage was not suppressed, rather an effort was made to restore confidence.

“Past experience has shown that the doubts of the netizens will not shift or recede on their own over time,” he said. “Instead, the doubts will actually rise.”

His conclusion: “A matter of Internet public opinion must be solved by Internet methods.”

The appointed a team from volunteers to conduct a study into this and they would report back to the 'netizens.' Long story short, the investigation was limited and later these same netizens found out the all the 'volunteers' were current or former employees of state-run media.

While the approach was noble and had elements of giving the people what they want, the propoganda department did not take into account how resourceful netizens are and how easy it would be for them to unravel information about the investigation team. With the amount of information out there, I'm sure it did not take long. I do applaud them for taking the steps to address and validate the concerns of the people, however next time, they might want to work on their execution.