A Chinese journalist's "I cannot bear your surname" resignation letter made headlines after he posted the letter through his social media account. The editor of a Chinese newspaper was resigning from his position due to one reason, he wrote, "I cannot bear your surname" pertaining to his rebellion against President Xi Jinping's increased control over the media.
Yu Shaolei, a culture editor of Southern Metropolis Daily posted a cached version of his "I cannot bear your surname" resignation letter on his Weibo account. Yu served the Guangzhou-based newspaper for 16 years. His resignation letter was a follow up to Xi, who visited various media companies in February urging them to take the Communist party's surname and to live to serve the government, according to SMH. Yu's "I cannot bear your surname" resignation letter could have been controlled but the AFP got a cached copy of the letter. The censors deleted it in Yu's Weibo account.
"I'm getting old and have been kneeling so long I can't bear it. Now I'd like to try to change posture," he wrote in the post.
It is the latest attack against the government of Xi after property tycoon, Ren Zhiqiang's social media accounts were deleted by censors. Zhiqiang strongly condemned Xi's comments in his social media accounts saying the media must serve the people first and not the party, The Guardian reports. In China, journalists are under strict government censorship and are guided by directives on which news items must be avoided. However, veteran journalists claimed that China's media climate has changed in the recent years.
As Lawyer Herald previously reported, 16 people have gone missing during Xi's crackdown on the author of an anonymous letter urging Xi to resign. A source claimed that a senior editor, a senior manager and another 10 people who worked in a related technology company were taken away. A well known dissident Chinese staying in the U.S. attested that three of his family members were taken amidst the investigation.
Media's criticism of the top leaders is strongly banned in China. However, Chinese journalists have been vocal in the recent years about their resistance in the Communist party's control over the media. There's no update on Yu whose resignation letter is now all over the media across the world.
