1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows: A Memoir

by Weiwei Ai

Now, three years after Sun’s death, another event triggered renewed online debate about social justice. In May 2006, a laptop belonging to Zhong Nanshan, a spokesperson for the medical profession in China, was stolen in Guangzhou. Zhong was so outraged that he appealed for a reinstatement of the detention system, arguing, “When designing the legal system, what kind of person should we prioritize? We should design the system so that it operates in the interests of good people and not bad people: leniency to enemies means cruelty to the people.” Seizing on this fallacious argument, I reopened the debate on the detention system. Intellectuals like Zhong were serving as defenders of this inhumane system, abandoning principles and standing on the side of power, as they so often did. On my blog I asked: “If a community denies the facts and covers up mistakes, is there any chance it will improve itself? On what sort of foundation is today’s political life built?” When these words were read and reposted hundreds of thousands of times, in a matter of hours, I knew I had touched a sensitive spot. At the time I had no idea that in 2020 Zhong Nanshan would become mired in controversy once again when he was accused of involvement in the cover-up of the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan.