Enemy of the State – the Street Violinist Chen Pingfu

• Author: China Law Digest

Chen PingFu (55), from Gansu Province Gaolan County, graduated with a Bachelor of Mathematics degree from Northwest Normal University in 1982. He had taught Mathematics for 20 years at a school owned by a state-owned enterprise located in Gaolan County.

He lost his job after this enterprise liquidated in 2008. This, coupled with the unfortunate fact that he suffered from heart disease, resulted in him being deeply in debt. With few means to make money, Chen began playing violin on the street in order to repay the debt and make a living. He was constantly assaulted by government officials including city managers, securities and police; he was once thrown into a prison van with all his 4 limbs caught, and then being abandoned in the wild countryside. Soon after Chen found a teaching job in Yunnan Province, the school which employed him was forced to dismiss him. In the end, Chen was arrested by Guolan County police cross-Province and was sent back home.

With his university-level education and his tragic experience, Chen began to give thoughts to the social problems. From July 2007 onwards, Chen registered several blogs and micro-blogs with his real name Chen PingFu on portal site including www.163.com, Baidu, Sohu, MTimes, Sina, Tianya, etc., and wrote and shared more than 30 articles on them.

On March 11, 2011, when being questioned by police of Lanzhou City Public Security Bureau, Chen said, “The articles I posted were partly...