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Zhang refused to take down his tweet, and he does not expect this will result in any serious repercussions, for four reasons. The first is that he expects he will never be able to return to China, and hopes to obtain permanent resident status here in Canada after he graduates from UBC. The second reason: Twitter is banned in China, and the censors have little cause to fret about a tweet that Chinese people can’t see. The third reason involves a concession of sorts that appears to have placated the police in Wuyi, arranged through an intermediary in the local propaganda bureau.

Photo by Hasan Bratic / AP

The propaganda official told Zhang’s parents that everything would likely blow over if Zhang agreed to remove two posts he’d put up on Weibo, the popular Chinese social-media platform. One mentions a rumpus at a soccer match in Germany last November, where the Chinese under-20 team suspended its tour because of the feelings-hurting presence of protesters waving Tibetan flags in the stands.

The other is a photograph of a man in a grocery store holding up an English language copy of Communist Party strongman Xi Jinping’s The Governance of China in one hand, and a package of steamed pork buns in the other. Xi’s nickname is Xi Baozi. Steamed Bun Xi.

Zhang’s online impudence came to the attention of Wuyi’s public security police thanks to an editor at Global Times, a Communist Party disinformation and propaganda organ that launched its English-language editions eight years ago with a $6.6-billion budget. An editor with the Chinese-language editions noticed the Tibetan flag Zhang posted and dashed off a snitch on Weibo that posed a series of questions about Zhang. Is he really Chinese? What will his parents think? Maybe his whole family has emigrated?