The Chinese government has been on a serious crusade to control the media, quashing any work or journalist that is critical of the Communist Party, especially its leader, President Xi Jinping.
Unable to cope with this crushing burden by the government, one top Chinese journalist announced that he is to resign.
Yu Shaolei, an editor at Southern Metropolis Daily, has had enough of the government’s unending control over the media, and posted his resignation note on social media. On Monday evening, Yu uploaded a photo of his resignation form to his Sin Weibo microblog account.
Yu was certainly cheeky in his post; under the “reason for resignation” section, he put down “Unable to bear your surname”.
This unassuming line is actually a clever dig at President Xi’s demand that journalists must give absolute loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party, and “bear the surname of the Party”.
“I’m getting old, and my knees can’t stand it after so many years [of kneeling],” Yu wrote.
Yu continued his sarcastic tone by wishing well to those responsible for censoring his social media account. He wrote in a message, “To the person responsible for watching my weibo feed and notifying their superiors about what to delete, you can heave a sigh of relief now, apologies for causing you stress over the last few years, and I sincerely wish your career will head in a new direction.”
The government was quick to shut Yu down, deleting his post with urgency. However, the BBC has provided us with a link to a cached copy, which was still available on monitoring sites online.
When John Sudworth of the BBC in Beijing approached Mr. Yu, he told the reporter that he had said everything he wanted to say on social media, not wanting to comment further on his resignation.
Mr. Sudworth also reported that it is unknown if Mr. Yu had received any admonishment from Chinese authorities.
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