A Proclaimer for each Criticism Article

There are disclaimers, and there are proclaimers.

Fang Zhouzi challenged the action by a local Wuhan court to deduct money from his wife's bank account without their knowledge on two accounts: a) neither he nor his wife had received any notice on the impending action; b) he and his wife had a formal agreement on the separation of their financial accounts. Based on these facts, the action by the local court is both inappropriate and illegal.

His challenge was predictably rejected. The court responded that a) they had previously sent out notifications (never mind that they were not received by their recipients) and b) Since the beneficiary Xiao Chuanguo did not have any pre-knowledge of the financial agreement between Fang Zhouzi and his wife, the agreement is declared as non-applicable to the case.

Absurd as the second point sounds, it actually might have some base in the vague language of the Chinese marital law, whose applicability to this case is questionable.

As a measure of defiance and avoid a similar scenario in the future, Fang Zhouzi is making a public proclaimer to "all those who had been and shall be criticized by him" that "Fang Zhouzi and his wife had already agreed to separate their financial matters. Those who are criticized by Fang Zhouzi shall have no right to dispatch local court officials to seize the legal properties of Fang Zhouzi's wife."

This proclaimer will be headlined in every future articles of his that criticizes any person, until the local Wuhan court returns the seized property.

Another Academician Who Plagiarized

Several days ago, Fang Zhouzi received copies of two published papers from an alert netter. The two papers were almost identical word-by-word, including the titles, abstracts, contents, and cited references. The only difference was an extra half-sentence added in the abstract of the latter paper. The first paper was published in December, 1998, by a pair of authors in Hunan University (湖南大学). The latter paper was published in September, 2003 by a different pair of authors from the same school. It was obvious that the second paper was a blatant practice of plagiarism.

One of the authors of the second paper was Zhu Yinghao (朱英浩), who is a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. He had also been a professor at Hunan University starting in 2000, during which the second paper was published. However, he could not have been part of the research that was first published two years before his arrival there.

After Fang Zhouzi publicized the plagiarism case, he received two more papers that showed blatant plagiarism committed by the same academician and his co-author. One copied from a book and another from another paper, each with only minor text modifications.

"Unlikely Victim"?

UPI Asia reported the news that Fang Zhouzi's New Threads is recently blocked in China, as "an unlikely victim of China's censorship".

In reality, the site has been blocked more often than not. Some of its long-running mirror sites have also been blocked this time around, apparently for the safety and "harmony" ahead of the coming National Day celebration.

New mirror sites are being set up to get around the censorship.