I’d wondered if China’s thugs would ever threaten me for all the posts I’ve made about the China Worldcon. Well, you know what they say: Be careful what you wish for, or you may live in interesting times. Before the sun came up this morning, I had my life threatened on Twitter. Since originally posting this, I’ve received new information and updated this post.

Let’s start at the beginning. In today’s news I read that one Xiaolei Wu was arrested for threatening violence against a pro-Chinese freedom activist. I did a search on Twitter to see what I could find about Xiaolei Wu and found a post by a person using that name. As we know all too well, names on Twitter prove nothing, but this person claimed to “represent the future of China” and was begging to the Chinese ambassador for help. I later learned that the holder of this account is an impersonator, so I was threatened, but as a bad joke and not by the same person who was arrested. Here’s the reply I got:

Google translates the text in the reply as “Those who commit crimes against China will be punished even if they are far away.”

I’ve reported the threat to Twitter. Even though it now appears not to have come from the actual Xiaolei Wu, it was a statement which I think any reasonable person would interpret as a threat of violence, so my report stands. I’m feeling less alarmed now.

Update: Twitter eventually got back to me and said they didn’t see any problem with this overt threat. I don’t use Twitter anymore, so it doesn’t really matter except to confirm I was right to walk away.