The attack on Fang Binxing – a figure popularly reviled by China's young tech-savvy elite – caused instant uproar and delight on the Chinese internet after the students posted an account of their protest on micro-blogging platforms.
The unusually daring protest comes as China's leaders move to tighten internet controls following the wave of Jasmine revolutions in the Middle East, and indicated the depths of frustration felt by some young Chinese towards the censorship.
Four students apparently sought out Mr Fang as he gave a talk at the Computer Sciences Department of Wuhan University in central China, pre-arming themselves with eggs purchased for the occasion at a nearby market, according to their own account on Twitter.
"I definitely hit Fang. As for whether there are pictures will depends on the two students," read a post by one of the students,
@hanunyi, "I came by myself. It was not difficult to hit with my shoes but a little bit harder to target him really successfully." Two others,
@zfangzhou and
@yinhm, said the protest has been organised spontaneously after hearing word that Mr Fang was on the campus.
"It was not prepared in advance. We heard the news [of Mr Fang's presence] at noon. We then went to the agricultural market near the computer department. My friend bought eggs and went to scope out the place, where we meet @hanunyi
"We were are thinking of doing it ourselves and then unfortunately noticed that our professor was there and our graduate supervisor, and we immediately lost courage. Then we met @hanunyi, he was really courageous and did the thing directly." Photographs were also posted online purportedly showing the four holding the eggs that were allegedly thrown at Mr Fang and, later, the bare feet of @hanunyi after the protest which echoed that of an Iraqi journalist who hurled his shoes at George W Bush in Baghdad in December 2008.
The identity of @hanyunyi is unclear, however his Twitter account uses a picture of the jailed artist Ai Weiwei, with the sentence "If you don't want to release Ai Weiwei, then just pull me in too." Another photograph posted online appeared to show police or security guards at the scene, but messages posted on Twitter indicated the students had managed to leave the campus before being caught. Other students Tweeted that the police vans were on campus.
Police said they were seeking a man following the incident.
The protest is the first known physical attack on Mr Fang, however last December he was subjected to the virtual equivalent of an assault after online users discovered he had opened an account on Sina Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter.
Mr Fang, the principal of Beijing University of Posts & Telecommunications, was forced to close the account hours later after being deluged by thousands of incensed 'netizens' who left expletive-laden messages denouncing him as an agent of repression.
China has some of the harshest censorship rules in the world, blocking many overseas sites such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube and spending billions of pounds and man-hours policing the internet for information deemed to be inimical to the ideal of a "harmonious society".
The attack on Mr Fang sent the censors scrambling to delete jubilant posts on Weibo in which online users offered to shower gifts on the two protestors from expensive meals to cash prizes, with one user even offering herself to the 'heroes'.
When censors at Sina Weibo were forced to declare searches for "Fang Binxing" illegal, the irony was not lost on many users. "Kind of poetic, really," observed one Twitter user, "The blocker, blocked."
When an account of the protest was posted on China's Netease web portal by a blogger using an alias, other online users rushed to offer "prizes".
One promised the use of a luxury flat in Shanghai for three months - worth GBP3,000 – while another offered the students "10 VPNs" - the relatively costly Virtual Proxy Network software used by students to "leap the Wall" and circumvent internet censorship.
"I offer a package of tourist tickets for Suzhou gardens to those who hit Fang successfully," said another, while a third from the US, said "I offer a pair of Nike shoes to the one that threw his smelly shoes at Fang."
Michael Anti, a veteran Chinese journalist and blogger who has campaigned for free speech in China, said the reaction of China's online users to the stunt showed how deeply many resented Chinese internet controls.
"The netizens were happy to see this scene. The Great Firewall not only blocks political content, but also prevents the most intelligent minds in China getting useful, up-to-date information from the outside world in science, technology, and other non-political spheres.
"We Chinese have now become second-class citizens in the Internet Age. A whole generation is suffering from the lack of freedom of information, and definitely, Fang should be blamed for this."
The idea for the protest appears to have been originally planted by a Hong Kong-based activist and freelance writer Jia Jia, who posted Mr Fang’s whereabouts online at around 11am and urged students go prepared to show their displeasure towards him.
“All persons with lofty ideas are welcomed to be present,” wrote the activist, “The host won’t offer tomatoes, horse sh*t, 50 cent coins, rotten eggs, etc, so students please prepare them by yourselves.”
Mr Jia said he was surprised at the students’ response to his post which was re-Tweeted on student bulletin boards, but said the reaction showed the high levels of anger among the students at internet controls.
“It reflected their dissatisfaction about current internet controls and it showed people’s willingness to make an effort and pay a cost to break down internet controls,” Mr Jia said in a phone interview with The Telegraph.
Concerns were mounting last night about what would now happen to @hanunyi who is a student at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, according to Mr Jia, who said he feared he would be charged with causing a disturbance.
Isaac Mao, the man who wrote China’s first blog in 2002, said he had exchanged several direct messages with @hanunyi via Twitter immediately after the incident, said he was now concerned for the protestor.
“He sent a message after this happened saying that he felt this was something he needed to do, that he had not prepared it in advance, but he said he had not been at all prepared for the strength of the netizens’ response,” Mr Mao told The Telegraph.
“This is China. There could be two very different responses by the authorities. They could be lenient, and play the episode down so that more people do not learn about it, or they could not.”
Peter Foster @
'The Telegraph'
