Fang Zhouzi and Julian Assange have much in common. First, they are both very famous. Assange was given the most votes by Time Magazine web readers  in its online poll on who should be the 2010 Man of the Year (though the award committee gave the honour to Mark Zuckerberg founder of Facebook who was ranked only  No. 10 in the poll).  Fang is less known internationally but would be no less a celebrity (and for a longer period of time) in China than Assange. They both performed a series of highly eye catching actions, though it is far from easy what real benefits arose from them.

The documents released by Wikileaks confirmed many of our suspicions about the goings on in government circles, though not giving us anything major. Some of the diplomatic conversations reported were embarrassing to the speakers and would lead to some apologies, clarifications, denials, etc, but the contents were more or less one would have expected. In short, the leaks allowed many people to say “aha, I told you so/I thought it all along”, so they and other people feel better; I see little that would lead to policy shifts and substantial improvements. Similarly, the exposes of academic misconduct, fake degrees, enhanced resumes, harmful/useless health products, false prophets, poor quality press reports, etc, published by Fang have so far led to little substantial changes.

Since we do not see much that would actually threaten national security in the large amounts of material on Wikileaks, we cannot take seriously comparisons of him to terrorists; he has undoubtedly distributed stolen goods, but the owners of these properties seemed to have not done enough to keep the material secure – if 30 thousand people can access a document, it takes only one of them to leak it. Similarly, I cannot take seriously charges about Fang being an American government or biotech company agent out to disrupt Chinese society or promote genetically modified agricultural products. At the same time, I find it hard to acknowledge them as noble and heroic figures out to do good in the world – the motivation seems to be a more personal one, out of certain psychological needs.

Another commonality between Fang and Assange is their shortcoming in applying the same standards to themselves. For a person promoting transparency in government, Assange is highly secretive. For a person promoting academic rigour and scientific standards, Fang has not always displayed these same traits in his own reporting, and others have sought to exploit this for their particular purposes.

In a recent incident, Fang published a brief report that a New China News Agency reporter, based in a provincial city, published several articles on her own family members and promoted businesses of her relatives. The Agency verified these wrongdoings and transferred her as punishment? A satisfactory outcome? Now Fang’s wife happens to be a NCNA reporter in the Beijing office, and gossip immediately started that she was the source of the information, out to undermine a colleague. Whether that is true or not, NCNA staff and journalists in other organizations automatically believed it; someone then wrote a web posting pointing out that Mrs Fang wrote an article 11 years ago in praise of Fang, so was guilty of the same offense. It is quite possible that the leaking of the original information to Fang, putting the blame on Mrs Fang, and tainting her with the same charge, were part of a planned attack on Fang (as well as the NCNA regional office reporter – two birds with one stone).

Will Assange also be felled by some kind of conspiracy? Some say he already has, that the two Swedish women accusing him of sexual assault are CIA operatives, though I doubt that. Fame is a powerful aphrodisiac,  and Assange was more attractive to women than was good for him, a simple case of two angry lovers out to get a two-timing boyfriend.