Stolen Sex Pictures Shake Up Hong Kong - and Reveal a Lot About the Web in China

Filed in archive Internet on February 13, 2008

How would you like to see a discussion thread on your online bulletin board get 25 million hits? The combination of celebrity gossip and sex scandal has done that in the past week or so for one China web board, according to the NY Times.

The story is simple, and it would seem common place in most Western countries - which is not to say it wouldn't attract it's fair share of traffic here. But you'd think of Paris Hilton's video, or maybe Britney Spears showing off for the cameras...

Hong Kong rap singer and actor edison chen had some tech guys work on his laptop. The techies seem to have done a little snooping on his hard drive. Now there are pictures of him out there online having sex with at least six different women - most of them celebrities in China in their own right.

It's not a story about private equity or venture capital, per se. But with the amount of money that gets poured into the tech sector and with the new investment rules for technology, the tightening up of rules on online video sharing, the ongoing censorship efforts in china, etc., the story seemed, well, instructive...





China's netizens are fascinated by celebrity lifestyle. Hong Kong residents are also deeply into democracy issues - like freedom of speech. Add sex to the mix and you've got the makings of quite a ruckus.

The short version is that the pictures and a video have begun popping up, a few at a time, on website all over the world since late January. Among Chen's more well know sex partners is Gillian Chung - a Cantonese pop singer with a following of teen girls. Chung has made speaking out against pre-marital sex one of her big things. So pictures of her in the throes of passion with Chen have caused a real stir.

But the story behind the story is just the power of the Internet in China. Pictures go online. Pictures get censored or blocked. Thousands of people see them anyway - in the few hours (or minutes) before they get blocks. Then people talk about it all on forums and websites all over China.

There've been street protests over the question of free speech. many Hong Kong residents evidently don't understand why there's plenty of porn, but these particular pictures get censored.

One blogger summed up the situation well, I thought:

I'm sorry, but I just don't get it. Other than the fact that explicit photos were stolen from the guy's laptop and illegally distributed, violating several individuals' right to privacy, which is totally wrong, and that, yes, Chen seems particularly fascinated with ... taking sexxxy pictures (insert Asian camera joke here), where's the scandal?

I'll leave you to think of an answer. But the real story, as I see it, is that the Internet in China is powerful and the government of China is unpredictable...