http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7d110688-0174-11df-8c54-00144feabdc0.html

Daring blogger tests the limits

By Kathrin Hille in Beijing

Published: January 15 2010 02:00 | Last updated: January 15 2010 02:00

Han Han, China’s most popular blogger, is used to being asked how he pursues a double career as bestselling novelist and racing driver.

“Driving is safer,” he said in a recent interview with the Financial Times. “If one day they tell me, ‘you can’t write any more’, I can still make a living racing. Of course racing is safer than writing. At least it won’t land you in jail.”

But now, in the face of Google’s threat to quit the country over China’s unrelenting efforts to tighten censorship, Han Han might take such risks much more seriously.

The 27-year-old’s cheeky personal style, which he uses in his books, on his blogs and in real life, has helped him accumulate more than 306m hits on his blog, a larger online following than any other personal blog in China and probably in the world.

Last week, he apologetically told his readers that a magazine he planned to start publishing this month would be delayed.

Under the strictures of China’s current publishing system, “it now looks like the first issue won’t come out in the foreseeable future”, he said, asking both authors and readers for forgiveness.

It has long seemed like a miracle that Han Han could somehow say and write things that would get others in trouble.

He caused uproar last year when, walking past a racetrack rostrum where high-ranking officials were seated, he raised his middle finger at them – but no action was subsequently taken against him.

On his blog, he has regularly accused government or Communist party officials of corruption, without getting into trouble.

He does not mince his words. Arguing that the Communist party should establish laws to make its workings more transparent, he says: “For example, I believe China has the world’s biggest sex and gambling industries [both are banned in China], their biggest customers are maybe our Communist party members.”

Han’s secret protective shield is probably a mixture of his popularity and the fact that he never challenges the party’s supremacy in principle.

“I don’t agree with some people who call for elections and a multi-party system in China now. That is clearly not realistic,” he said.

However, there are clear signs that not challenging the big political taboos is no longer enough to guarantee being left alone.

Late last month, Hecaitou, Lian Yue and Hu Yong – three well known commentators – found that the blogs they run on foreign servers were blocked by China’s censors. While all three express criticisms in their writings, none comes close to being a dissident.

Han Han said that for him, relations with the authorities were not all that serious. “Sometimes when they tell me to take a blog post down, I take it down, and I won’t be very upset. We’re all playing a game with certain rules. As long as they let us continue playing, I think there’s no problem.”

That same principle would apply to his magazine, Han claimed just a few weeks ago. He would try to be more daring than other magazine editors but he did not plan to publish an opposition pamphlet, he said. If the censors said no to a certain story, he would just leave a white space.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010.