The Internet era has transformed the saying "the public's eyes are sharp" into "the netizens' eyes are sharp." In the extraordinary year that is about to pass, we have experienced too much joy and pain. Fortunately, we have all witnessed the power of netizens' love and heard the cries for justice from netizens. In 2007, netizens exposed the so-called "tiger photo" as a fake; in 2008, netizens uncovered more truths behind various events.
1. Chinese netizens around the world expose the distortion and inaccurate reporting by Western media on the "3·14" incident
Western media often claim to be "objective," but in their reporting on the "3·14" incident, some media heavily manipulated news facts, throwing objectivity and truth out the window, with fabrication techniques that were astonishing. Firstly, they inverted black and white, such as describing police officers rescuing injured victims as "police arresting Tibetans"; secondly, they mislabeled an ambulance marked with "emergency" and a red cross as indicating "a large number of troops in Lhasa"; thirdly, they mismatched photos, such as labeling pictures of foreign police dispersing protesters as "Chinese police suppressing protesters in Tibet"; fourthly, they cut-and-pasted old photos of armed police distributing costumes for a movie shoot six years ago as evidence of "Chinese soldiers disguising themselves as monks"... We thank Chinese netizens around the world who discovered and exposed the falsifications of certain Western media, pinning these false reports to the pillar of shame.
2. A female mayor loses her position due to online public opinion
On the morning of March 17, Mayor Fan Xiaolan of Dangyang was driving a Toyota SUV when she hit and killed Wang Jiayang, a fifth-grade student at Chuangxin Primary School who was crossing the road. Immediately after the accident, Fan Xiaolan got out of the car and asked bystanders to call 110. The next day, she visited the child’s parents to apologize, knelt down begging for forgiveness, and paid 200,000 yuan in compensation and 20,000 yuan in condolence fees, signing an agreement with them not to pursue further legal action. The matter seemed settled until over twenty days later, when a post titled "Shock: Dangyang Mayor Uses Official Car Privately and Runs Over Female Child Before Being Driven Away" appeared quietly on Hubei Donghu Community Network. Because the main culprit was a female mayor and it involved an official car, this quickly triggered sensitive "keywords" online. The post was quickly forwarded to various BBS forums, becoming a hot topic among netizens and causing ripples in real life. On April 14, the Dangyang police determined that Mayor Fan Xiaolan was fully responsible for the accident. On April 22, the Standing Committee of the Dangyang Municipal People's Congress decided to accept Fan Xiaolan's resignation as mayor of Dangyang City. Regardless of whether the netizens' words were overly harsh, without the pressure of online public opinion, this matter might not have developed to this extent. The female mayor ran over a primary school student, and the online public opinion also "ran over" the female mayor.
3. Online reports lead to the downfall of a district party secretary
Before being reported online, District Party Secretary Dong Feng's misconduct had already been anonymously reported via letters for two months, but there was no response. Therefore, Wang Peirong, an associate professor at China University of Mining and Technology, who was entrusted by Dong Feng's wife Sui Chuanxia to report Dong Feng, shifted the battleground to the Internet. On the evening of July 6, he began posting on online forums, exposing "the most licentious district party secretary in the country and the most powerful criminal force." The article described Dong Feng's various misconducts related to his "two wives," and even published the tracking numbers of the previously sent complaint express packages for netizens to check. After being widely discussed online, the Discipline Inspection Commission of Xuzhou found Wang Peirong to understand the situation, and Dong Feng was suspended. The Xuzhou Municipal Party Committee admitted that the posts online prompted the committee to accelerate measures against Dong Feng.
4. Netizens expose that Kangshifu's "selected high-quality water source" is actually tap water
On July 24, the Tianya community posted an article titled "Kangshifu: Where is Your High-Quality Water Source?" revealing that the "high-quality water source" claimed in Kangshifu mineral water advertisements was actually tap water. This post immediately attracted a large number of netizens to support it, quickly becoming popular across major forums. After the exposure of the "water source gate" incident involving Kangshifu, more or less true scandals about Kangshifu were gradually reported online, demonstrating the "butterfly effect." Due to strong reactions in the consumer market, Kangshifu had to massively discount its mineral water.
5. Journalist's blog exposes a major safety responsibility accident
On August 1, a landslide occurred at an iron mine in娄烦County, Shanxi Province. According to local media reports, 11 people were buried. Later, this was determined to be a natural disaster caused by a landslide. At the end of August, Sun Chunlong, a journalist for《Outlook Eastern Weekly》, published an article titled "Lugan: Delayed Truth," pointing out that the Lugan accident involved underreporting and lying, with at least 41 deaths, making it a major liability accident. However, this report did not cause much reaction. On September 15, a letter to Governor Wang Jun of Shanxi Province appeared on Sun Chunlong's blog. This letter finally caught the attention of central leaders and eventually led to the State Council forming an investigation team to thoroughly investigate the Lugan accident.
6. Continuous revelations by netizens trigger a trust crisis in search engines
On September 12, a netizen uploaded a document titled "Suggestion for Sanlu Group Crisis PR," revealing that Sanlu PR had suggested contacting Baidu, hoping that Baidu would help delete recent negative information. Despite Baidu immediately denying ever shielding any search results related to the Sanlu incident, netizens continued to expose issues with Baidu searches afterward. When netizens revealed that Baidu's bidding ranking contained false medical information that harmed netizens, it led to CCTV's follow-up reporting and widespread attention across society. The credibility of Baidu, Google, and other search engines was universally questioned.
7. "Chimewangliang2009" exposes the chaos of officials' public-funded tourism
"Chimewangliang2009" is just an ordinary IT technician in Shanghai. By accidentally finding detailed information about officials' public-funded tourism and first exposing it on the People's Daily Online under the title "List of Expenses for a Certain City's Civil Servants' Overseas Inspection," the information spread throughout domestic internet, "having a great impact." Not only did the civil servants involved in this event receive disciplinary actions, but the shockwave initiated by him targeting public-funded overseas tourism is getting stronger and stronger. If it weren't for the netizens' revelations, you would never have imagined in some government departments claiming information disclosure that 23 civil servants could spend 640,000 yuan on overseas inspections or that 11 civil servants could spend over 330,000 yuan on overseas tourism.
8. Netizens uncover the issue of excessive deputy positions in some places
The Liaoning Tieling municipal government website drew netizens' attention, showing that under the "government agencies" section, there were as many as nine vice mayors and twenty deputy secretaries general. Not long after the exposure, the website quickly removed the list of twenty deputy secretaries general, but on the "government agencies" page, the names of the nine vice mayors were still present. Since then, a trend of "exposing deputy officials" has rapidly swept across the internet, with netizens rushing to disclose the number of vice mayors or vice county magistrates in various places online. Subsequently, a netizen posted that the number of vice mayors in Xinxiang City, Henan Province, "exceeds even Tieling," with eleven vice mayors, sixteen deputy secretaries general, and six researchers. Currently, the search for the "city with the most vice mayors" is quietly continuing online.