Chicago Mediation

Global Voices Online » China: Eluding the Cat Investigation, Netizen’s Power or Government PR?
In response to the netizens’ talks and comments about the “eluding cat” incident, the Yunnan provincial Publicity Department’s Press and Publication Administration decided to form an investigative committee on Feb 20. Moreover, the department had invited netizens to form a investigative committee. In a few hours, 510 netizens registered to be involved in the committee, and the Yunnan government randomly selected 8 netizens and public members as part of the committee, together with 3 official representatives and 3 media representatives. The incident of course shows how netizens’ power in giving pressure to the government, however, many doubt the investigative committee being a PR show for cooling down the public discontent.

Eluding the cat incident

ESWN has translated “eluding the cat” incident on 17 of Feb. In brief, a young Yunnan man Li Qiaoming was arrested for illegal logging in Beicheng town. He was then seriously injured in the detention center in Feb 8 and died in four days because of brain injury. The police report said that he ran into a wall when he was playing “eluding the cat” game with other jail mates.

The whole story was so incredible and netizens started to use “eluding the cat” in their online jokes.

Internet popular terms are very powerful in China, earlier on we have Weng’an “push ups”, and it has discredited local government even though the final report came out and showed that local police hadn’t lie about the incident - the suspect was doing push ups on the bridge when the girl drowned herself in the river.