On March 27, 2013, China's official news service Xinhua published an article entitled "Coordinate Social Management, End Pig Dumping." An excerpt:
In his 2006 novel "Life and Death are Wearing Me Out," China's Nobel Laureate Mo Yan tells a story of dead pigs being illegally dumped into a river at night, after authorities refuse to offer farmers subsidies to properly dispose of the carcasses.This screenshot was taken on March 15, and shows that a search for "Pigs Tossed Shanghai" (猪投上海) on Sina Weibo returned no results, just a censorship notice.
Unfortunately, life recently imitated art, and over 14,000 pig carcasses had been retrieved from a section of the Huangpu River near Shanghai as of last week.
While the dead pigs didn't end up on dinner tables, they did become a point of concern for Shanghai's 20 million residents, for whom the Huangpu River is a major source of drinking water.
The case had revealed a lack of coordination in China's social management strategies, in which solving one problem often creates another.
This screenshot was taken on March 25, and shows that a search for "Huangpu River Dead Pigs" (黄浦江 死猪) on Sina Weibo returned no results, just a censorship notice.
