White Collar Photo Gate

(New Express Daily via Wenxue City) 

The name 石靖 recently shot up to become the most popular search term at the Baidu and Google search engines.  

Who is this?  The person is alleged to be Jessica Shi Jing, an administrative assistant to a senior Electrolux executive in China.  There are different versions of her story, and it is hard to tell truth from fiction.  But one thing is for certain -- there is a series of photographs of a woman.

Some of these photographs are regular poses by the woman, either at work or leisure.

Another more daring series featured the woman in bikini inside a room.

And then there are the Category 3: Obscene photographs at Discuss.com.hk and any number of other websites.

The first version of the story was that Shi Jing published those photographs herself.  According to a blog post that is allegedly written by her: "Since my parents did not give me a pretty face, I could not become a model.  But that is still a dream of mine.  Therefore, I got a friend to take those photographs.  I don't mind if there are consequences such that the photographs being disseminated across the Internet, or that it may give some new and perverse excitement to certain people.  I think that it is worth it."  However, the blog has been deleted.  It is doubtful that Shi Jing wants to promote herself in that way, because her job position does not require her to become "red hot" through this type of exposure.  But in another purported blog post, she wrote: "I am willing to live with poisonous snakes.  This continues to give me courage and resist the discrimination in the world.  I am destined to follow my own path, even if it is a path with no return."

The second version is that Electrolux is trying to become better known through hyping.  Indeed, Electrolux crashed into the top 10 search terms together with Shi Jing.  But this is not credible.  As an international brand, Electrolux could not conceivably choose negative publicity in order to increase brand awareness and recognition.  A variation of this version is that Electrolux seized the opportunity to hype this affair once it became known and Shi Jing was just an innocent victim caught in the Internet storm.  <Beijing Youth Daily> contacted Electrolux and was informed by the company public relation specialist that Shi Jing is the assistant to the manager of the home electronics division and she is presently on leave due to mental pressure.

The third version is that a 42-year-old American man named Robert Kugler had a photo album, which contained photographs of other women as well (use Google to search for "jessica_confidentially site:pbase.com" and click on the cache).  Shi Jing was one of the girls, and those photographs were taken when they went on vacation together in Hainan.  This photo album was broken into and the photographs were extracted and distributed so as to accumulate millions of viewings within a few days.  There are other netizens who believe that the photographs came from Don Gadsen, the top man for Electrolux in China, and Robert Kugler is only a friend acting as the 'smokescreen.'

There are many "angry young people" among the commentators and they are not very polite.  Here are some comments:

"The problem with Shi Jing is not that she posed nude, or she had intercourse with someone.  There are so many Japanese adult video girls, but why should any normal person scold them?  Shi Jing's problem was that 'she wants to look aloof in front of her compatriots, but she acts like a dog in front of foreigners'."

"Let us unite all our powers and find out the true identity of this foreigner." (see 6park and Tianya)

As indicated already, this would not be too big a deal if this was just some photographs of an ordinary Chinese woman.  This case was dynamite because of two other factors: One, she works at an internationally renowned company.  Two, an American has been cavorting with Chinese women and that touches some nerves.

Relevant Link: 关于伊莱克斯总裁助理石靖裸照事件的声明