Local Chinese Court Steals Money from Fang Zhouzi's Wife

One of the most significant fraud case exposed by Fang Zhouzi was that involving Professor Xiao Chuanguo, a self-claimed world-famous urologist. The case first came to light in September, 2005, when Xiao Chuanguo was being nominated to become an Academician. Fang Zhouzi publicly accused Xiao Chuanguo for having engaged in various acts of exageration in his credentials.

Xiao Chuanguo's Academician candidacy was then denied by Chinese Academy of Science. Xiao Chuanguo blamed his lose entirely on Fang Zhouzi's words and sued the later in local courts in Wuhan, Beijing, as well as New York.

He won his case in Wuhan, whose court issued a few ridiculous justification for its verdict that had become running jokes on the Internet, such as the definition of "international journal," the validity of Xiao Chuanguo's award claim, and a procedure supposed to be named after him. The case gained its dramatic status after Xiao Chuanguo published a foul-mouthed open letter of his own and hundreds of Chinese scholars co-signed an open letter to support Fang Zhouzi.

After losing his appeal, Fang Zhouzi has refused to obey the court order of apologizing to Xiao Chuanguo and paying a fine. The case seemed to have disappeared from public view, especially after many officials of that local court, including the judge in the case, were later disciplined for corruption charges. Fang Zhouzi had assumed that the case was forgotten.

Until now.

Messages posted by Xiao Chuanguo's well known pseudo-name showed up in online forums lately, boasting that he had received monetary judgement from Fang Zhouzi. It was not until Fang Zhouzi was alerted of the messages when he discovered that a sum of more than 40,000 Yuan (5,840 USD) has disappeared from his wife's private bank account. Upon inquiry, the bank confirmed that they transferred the money at the order of the Wuhan local court.

The unusual and stealth way that the court has taken the money both surprised and angered Fang Zhouzi, as well as many of his supporters on New Threads. Fang Zhouzi vowed to fight for this unlawful case. He explained that he and his wife have maintained independent financial records and his wife is never involved in his efforts of exposing frauds that led to his various court troubles.

Professor Fined for his Language

Two years ago, Professor Zhang Boting (张博庭) wrote a post in his blog answering a newspaper report, which criticizes hydro-power development. Being an expert on the subject, Zhang Boting rebuffed the arguemtns presented in the newspaper article and claimed the reporter as "ignorant and shameless" (无知无耻). In the article, he also labeled the reporter as a retard (弱智).

The reporter sued and won the case. Yesterday a lcoal court in Beijing sided with the reporter and decided that Zhang Boting has commited personal insult and therefore is liable to defamation. He was ordered to openly apologize and pay a fine of 2,000 Yuan (290 USD).

In the court proceddings, Zhang Boting defended himself by saying that the langauge was a precise description of the said reporter. The court did turn down the plantiff's initial request of 10,000 Yuan for emotional distress. There is no word if Zhang Boting is going to appeal.

Zhang Boting has been a frequent writer for New Thread, using a pen name 水博.

Did Einstein Believe in God?

That's the title of Fang Zhouzi's new book which just became available in China. The book has a subtitle "Fang Zhouzi Explains Famous Puzzling Cases in the History of Science" and is a collection of many essays and columns by the author previously published in newspapers and web sites.

In the Preface titled as "Scientists are humans too," the author made it clear that the book is about many controversies surrounding famous scientists and their discoveries of the past, some of which involved issues of personal integrity.

The book comes with high praise and recommendation by several famous Chinese scientists including Rao Yi.