Sex blog triggers manhunt in Shanghai

HONG KONG: Incensed netizens in Shanghai have launched a manhunt for a Western expatriate English tutor who posts a blog chronicling his sexual conquests with the city's racy young girls, including some of his former students.

The sexually graphic postings — and some gratuitous criticism of Chinese men, society and the polity — by the blogger, identified only by the handle 'Chinabounder', have enraged mainland Chinese netizens, who have resolved to identify and “kick the foreign trash out of China”.

More disturbingly, a few hot-headed vigilantes have even threatened the blogger with bodily harm once he’s identified.

The online chatter on websites and blogs across China has in recent days turned particularly vitriolic and acquired the characteristics of a racial confrontation in the making. It also shows insightful aspects of Chinese society in rapid transformation in Shanghai.

In his blog "Sex and Shanghai: Western Scoundrel in Shanghai Tells All", Chinabounder narrates his sexual experiences as an English-teaching Western expat in the city where social mores are changing faster than fashion lines. Controversially, many of his partners are his former students, including married women and teenagers.

From time to time, Chinabounder uses his own experiences as a springboard to make sweeping generalisations on, among other things, the sexual frustrations in Chinese marriages, the failings of Chinese men, and the overly tradition-bound upbringing of Chinese girls which makes them rebellious and sexually adventurous.  Chinese netizens have routinely been posting venomous messages on his blog in response to his pop-social commentaries — and his occasional outpourings on the Cultural Revolution and Mao Zedong’s womanising ways.

But last week, a professor of psychology at the prestigious Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences gave new direction to this hyperventilating when he called for an Internet manhunt “to find this foreign trash until we kick him out of China.” In a posting on his own blog, Prof. Zhang Jiehai said that Chinabounder, “an immoral foreigner”, had routinely used “obscene and filthy language to record how he used his status as a teacher to dally with Chinese women… At the same time, he did everything that he could to insult the Chinese government and men.”

Giving sparse details about Chinabounder's identity (he's probably a 34-year-old Briton) Zhang called on “Chinese netizens and compatriots” to join this “Internet hunt for the immoral foreigner”. That message has found echo in numerous Chinese websites and blogs, which have resonated with calls for lynching Chinabounder.

There have been expressions of concern that Britons in Shanghai could become targets of random attacks because of the emotions whipped up this expatriate.