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Hao Wu freed

In March I posted about the detention of filmmaker Hao Wu (or Wu Hao) in China, with a rather bleak update a couple of weeks later. Good news: he's been released. He still hasn't updated his blog, Beijing or Bust; word is that he "needs some silence for now." I'm not so sure he would've been released had it not been for support from Global Voices, the international aggregate blog. GV members spread the word.

Support was strong across the blogsphere, with hundreds of fellow bloggers posting on Nina and Hao’s story, as well as putting up Free Hao Wu tags. Support was there from some mainstream media, with the Wall Street Journal chipping in just a week ago, and a piece written in The Washington Post by Global Voices co-founder Rebecca MacKinnon coinciding with Chinese president Hu Jintao’s visit to America:

“Hao turned 34 this week. He personifies a generation of urban Chinese who have flourished thanks to the Communist Party’s embrace of market-style capitalism and greater cultural openness. He got his MBA from

the University of Michigan and worked for EarthLink before returning to China to pursue his dream of becoming a documentary filmmaker. He and his sister, Nina Wu, who works in finance and lives a comfortable

middle-class life in Shanghai, have enjoyed freedoms of expression, travel, lifestyle and career choice that their parents could never have dreamed of. They are proof of how U.S. economic engagement with China has been overwhelmingly good for many Chinese.”

jon posted this at 8:52 AM
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