A CJR article on the rise of the netizen movement in China————-Early in 2003, like millions of other migrants of his generation, Sun Zhigang, a young graphic designer, left central China, where he had attended university, and headed for the country’s booming industrial Southeast. His quest: work, and with luck, fortune.
When he entered an Internet café one evening, shortly after his arrival in Guangzhou, he was stopped by police who demanded to see his ID, which he had left behind in his nearby apartment. It was a costly mistake. The police had just launched a large-scale dragnet of illegal migrants, and as was common at the time for people without papers, he was promptly hauled off to detention.