Zhu Ling Case triggered White House with Petitions 朱令案

An unsolved case of poisoning of Zhu Ling(朱令) triggered a wave of petitions（请愿qǐnɡ yuàn） to the White House（白宫bái ɡōnɡ）. However, the enthusiasm for petitioning White House reflects the shortage of a leveraging voice.

Zhuling, a 19-year college student in 1994 resurfaced in the Chinese social media sphere. It not only grabbed the wide attention of Chinese netizens, but also triggered a wave of petitions to the White House.

Zhu Ling, a promising sophomore at the most prestigious university in China then, was diagnosed as having been intentionally poisoned by thallium, a highly toxic chemical used in insect poisons. She remains mostly bed-bound now and is taken care of by her old parents.

Zhu’s roommate, Sun Wei, was the major suspect at the time and was the only one who was questioned by the police but was soon cleared. The hearsay circulated around has been that Sun's political-related family allowed her to escape justice. Disappointed by a lack of judicial independence in China, netizens turned to the White House.

Obama is photoshopped into Bao Zheng（包拯Bāo Zhěnɡ）, an ancient Chinese figure symbolizing justice. Photo from Weibo User.

On May 3, 2013, a Chinese-American living in Florida submitted an online petition, which has drawn more than 145,000 signatures so far, on the White House’s “We the People” platform(平台pínɡ tái). Sun is believed to be residing in the United States and thus the Chinese called on the Obama administration to deport the suspect.

After the petition was circulated on Sina Weibo and other online forums, the Chinese netizens crammed the White House’ petition website in the following days with a variety of petitions such as: to nail down the official taste of bean curd stew (a kind of Chinese tofu), to improve Sina staff ‘s meal subsidies, and to cancel the university admission exams. Some petitions were written in poor English while others were written simply in Chinese.

However, the enthusiasm for petitioning White House reflects the shortage of a leveraging voice and the venting of resentment for Chinese back home. In fact, Sina Weibo made an attempt to censor the name of Zhu Ling at the very beginning, but only found that it was too late to block the issue. Upon seeing a call for justice turned into a petition drama, many netizens blame the dereliction of duty of the Chinese government.

Although the current signatures regarding deporting Zhu Ling have surpassed the threshold of 100,000, the petitions haven't received any official response yet. Many are crystal clear that the petitions will not necessarily lead to any practical result, including Zhu Ling’s parents, who expressed their preference to solve the case through regular domestic channels instead of resorting to the United States.