A year ago Jiao Guobiao was a little- known professor, quietly teaching
journalism and advising graduate students at Peking University. Then the former journalist decided to write a scathing, online attack against the Communist Party’s Propaganda Department. Mr. Jiao said the department’s officials were as powerful and
self-righteous as the Roman Catholic Church of the Middle Ages. "Anyone
who touches them will get burned," he wrote.

Indeed, we can be thankful that Jiao  Guobiao isn’t in jail.

Thanks to the long arm of the Internet, Chinese and English versions of the essay were soon being read around the world, propelling the gentle-mannered scholar into the international spotlight…
He was fired in April — right after leaving China to take a fellowship at the National Endowment for Democracy, in Washington.
Mr. Jiao is the latest casualty in the Chinese government’s war against academic dissent, a campaign that has caught many scholars by surprise. Shortly before a new, younger generation of Chinese leaders took office in 2002, intellectuals in Beijing were hoping that Hu Jintao, who is now the country’s president, would be a force for reform.
Since taking the reins of power, however, the new regime has launched a bitter attack on freedom of expression. Newspapers have been shut down, books banned, journalists and dissidents imprisoned, and scholars brought under increased pressure to toe the official line. The political situation is the worst it has been in years, many scholars say.