Fang Zhouzi (方舟子 - pen name, real name Fang Shimin 方是民）is a unique character, in fact a phenomenon by himself. Press surveys rank him among the 50 most famous persons in China, on par with say Zhang Ziyi or Yang Zhenning, and recently he was featured in a New York Times article

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/world/asia/07fraud.html

It is however far from easy to describe exactly what his achievements are.

Before continuing, I should explain that I once had a quarrel with him. If you read Chinese, you can find my side of the story here http://sinazen.com/方舟子/ - you wont find his side of the story anywhere since  I am not important enough for him to bother. But, back to him

Fang was one of the Tiananmen Square survivors in June 1989, and soon afterwards he went to do PhD in bio science at Michigan State University; he was however more into IT at the time, and was a pioneer in MUD games, producing a kungfu based game that had quite a bit of following - in those days the idea that one could turn such things into multi-billion dollar companies had not yet occurrd to anyone, and the intellectual property arrangement to fulfil such potential was not built in so his game was not commercialized. In the late 90s WWW came along, and this time he was better prepared, by putting together a team of collaborators to work on a Chinese literature website, xys.org However, team members had a falling out in 1997 over commercialization issues, and he outmanouvred his detractors by registering the site as a business operation with supporters. However, he missed the 1999 dotcom IPO wave, though the site continued to expand its audience. After 2000 he abandoned his postdoc career in bio science and started operating in China as a web entrepreneur; by then he had some good connections in Chinese universities, particularly because of some successful science popularization writings, his critique of Falungong, and exposing some exaggerated claims in US based chinese.scientists who tried to start things in China and some health supplement products made in China. This was also the time I became a reagular reader of xys.org and even started contributing to its literary web magazine, mainly with articles on ancient history.

After a 2001 to Beijing University, however, Fang started attacking the quality of research work in Chinese universities as well as their general modes of doing things. At the time I did not understand, and though he was just upset by not being taken seriously - wounded vanity. Most of the poor quality or dishonest work he exposed seemed to be too minor to call for public attacks. Gradually however I came to see that the problem was indeed very serious and very wide spread. Nevertheless, I did not become his supporter or even sympathizer, first because I was not sufficiently familiar with things in Chinese universities to form judgement with the limited information about each case, most outside my domain of expertise; second because I find his attitude towards people and events much too harsh, so that I did not think I would be able to accept his evaluations with confidence, and finally, seeing the numerous enemies he made, I thought he was doomed to fail in his campaign. However, things have turned out very unexpectedly. While he did not make the universities and their research better (though people say things would have gone worse without his whistelblowing), he became a very influential person, partily because of the number of enemies he made everywhere - you keep coming across blogs and articles attacking him as well as praising him, so reporters and TV programme producers keep coming to him to give his opinion on all kinds of fraud related issues, and there have been so many such frauds that he appeared in the press non stop over a decade.

But though he became more and more a media personality, he also became less effective in improving other people's research operations, which are specialized and can be understood only by experts. Ascertaining errors and fraud, then correcting them, require people who are part of the system. If all the people in the system, university presidents, deans, department heads, project leaders, etc, dismiss Fang as just a publicity seeking muckraker, then they can ignore him, as long as they can come up with some kind of vaguely worded assurances that things are fine. 

Like many others, I was impressed and intrigued, and wondered how long this would last. Would university presidents complain to the government and ban his websites, even arrest him? Such events did not occur, but a couple of thugs turned up one day and tried to hit him with hammers

photo shows Fang in front of the building (I believe a restaurant) where the attempt occurred; police soon tracked down the assailants, and the sensational news went around the world including NYTimes, but the gang of five arrested, including a prominent medical doctor from Wuhan who had a big grievance and hired the attackers, were sentenced to just a few months of prison time each. Fearing for his and his family's future safety, Fang has to hire his own security detail.

Fang's rise to fame was such a unique event that it is all but impossible to form an opinion on it or predct future possibilities; all I can say is: he was the right person in the right place at the right time, and I myself would not want to join him there..