Whistle-blower 'Huazong' becomes latest victim of online speech crackdown

Beijing police on Tuesday detained another outspoken online celebrity, a businessman-turned-whistle-blower, in an escalating campaign against the vibrant online community of government critics and influential liberal opinion leaders.

Chinese media reported that the 35-year-old businessman, writer and corruption whistle-blower who goes by the pen name of “Huazong” was taken away by police for questionging at the criminal police division of Chaoyang Police Department in Beijing on unknown criminal charges.

Huazong, short for "Secretary General of the Flower and Fruit Mountain" in Chinese, is a humourous reference to the Monkey King in the classic Ming-dynasty novel Journey to the West.

Several friends of Huazong, who declined to give their names or the real name of the writer, told the South China Morning Post that calls to the writer’s several phone numbers went unanswered starting at around noon on Tuesday.

Ouyang Kun, a businessman and self-claimed luxury industry expert who has had a bitter legal dispute with Huazong over the past few years, told the Post earlier that he was contacted by Beijing police who asked him to act as a witness against the suspect, Huazong, on Tuesday morning.

The police said that Huazong was detained on supicion of “distributing rumours online, blackmailing and extortion,” Ouyang told the Post.