An anti-American propaganda piece by Chinese state media said the United States is “penetrating China’s lowest classes” and trying to influence five Chinese groups that are in the way of development, lawyers among them. A number of Chinese lawyers took exception to that and commented on their social media blogs.
The Aug. 2 article on People’s Daily, written by a director of the Communist Party’s University of Foreign Relations, said the United States is “interfering with China’s development model by nonmilitary means.” It listed Human rights lawyers, underground churches and religions, dissidents, Internet personalities, and the disadvantaged and ethnic minorities as the five Chinese problem groups America is trying to influence. Netizens quickly dubbed these five groups as the new five Black Categories, recalling the five black categories singled out by Mao for suppression in the 1950s and 1960s.
