China’s leading online portal has shut down the microblog of a watch enthusiast who rose to prominence pointing out the excesses of Communist party officials by identifying and valuing their expensive watches.

　　中国领先的门户网站已关闭了一位钟表爱好者的微博账户。因对中共官员佩戴的价值昂贵的手表进行鉴定和估价，这位博主一度名声大噪。

　　Daniel Wu, a long-time timepiece aficionado, began his accidental crusade when he noticed in a news photograph of the deadly high-speed rail crash in July that Sheng Guangzu, the railway minister, appeared to be wearing a Rolex Oyster Perpetual, which retails for Rmb70,000 ($11,000) in China.

　　丹尼尔·吴(Daniel Wu)长期以来一直是一位“钟表控”。他开始对官员所戴手表进行鉴定完全是出于偶然：今年7月，他在一张动车追尾事故的新闻图片上注意到，铁道部部长盛光祖戴的是一块“劳力士蚝式恒动系列”手表(Rolex Oyster Perpetual)——该款手表在中国的零售价为7万元人民币（合1.1万美元）。

　　“I did a simple search for minister Sheng and was astonished to find him wearing many more watches,” Mr Wu told the Financial Times.

　　丹尼尔向英国《金融时报》表示：“我只是简单地在网上搜索了一下盛光祖，结果惊奇地发现，他还有其它多款名表。”

　　Mr Wu, 33, said this inspired him to cast his net more widely. He searched for other officials and compared photographs of the wristwatches to pictures from official product catalogues. The number of people who followed his microblog on Sina, the online portal, quickly jumped from 2,000 to more than 20,000 before it was shut last weekend.

　　今年33岁的丹尼尔表示，这让他产生了把“网”撒得更大的想法。他在网上搜索其他官员佩戴手表的图片，并将这些手表与相应品牌的官方产品目录进行比照。在在其新浪微博上周末被关闭之前，丹尼尔的“粉丝”数量迅速从2000人飙升至两万人。

　　“That was when I got a bit addicted,” said Mr Wu, who added that his “watch evaluation” was taking up most of his spare time when he was not running his software company.

　　丹尼尔表示：“当时我有些沉溺其中。”他补充称，“鉴表”占用了他大部分的空闲时间。丹尼尔经营着一家软件公司。

　　Mr Wu stresses he does not equate the possession of a luxury watch with corruption. But the fact that Chinese officials do not have to declare publicly their financial assets, and that some of the watches on display were believed to cost the equivalent of many months of the officials’ salary, has driven many of his followers to see him as a graftbuster.

　　丹尼尔强调，他并不把官员拥有名表等同于腐败。但是，中国官员不必公开申报自己的财产，而某些曝光手表的价值据信相当于官员们很多个月的薪水，这些事实让丹尼尔的许多粉丝将他视为一名反腐斗士。

　　The blogger says he tried to exclude the possibility of mistaking fake watches for expensive originals by using as high-resolution pictures as possible. Even so, he has used phrases such as “appears to wear” in most cases.

　　丹尼尔表示，他尽可能使用高分辨率的图片，避免错把山寨货当成了价值不菲真表。即便如此，在多数情况下他仍使用了“似乎佩戴着……”这样的词语。

　　Mr Wu’s original post about the railway minister was soon removed by Sina’s in-house censors who monitor the chatter of their more than 200m registered Weibo users on behalf of the ruling Communist party.

　　丹尼尔最初那篇关于盛光祖所戴手表的博文，很快就被新浪内部审查人员删除。这些审查人员站在执政的中国共产党的角度，对逾两亿新浪微博用户的网络言论进行监督。

　　Mr Sheng has never commented on Mr Wu’s revelations. The blogger says he has only ever heard back from three of the more than 100 officials he wrote about.

　　盛光祖从未就丹尼尔的博文置评。丹尼尔表示，在博文中提到的100多位官员中，只有3位进行了回应。

　　Mr Wu says he and the censors were soon testing each other’s limits. “I had.?.?.?the impression that we had achieved a tacit understanding: I would not touch the most expensive watches and the highest-ranking officials and I would get away with that.”

　　丹尼尔表示，他和审查人员很快就测试出彼此的底线。“我有……一种我们已经达成某种默契的感觉：我不会关注那些最昂贵的名表和最高级别的官员，我会避开他们。”

　　But last week, Sina told him party pressure had grown too strong. Charles Chao, chief executive, told an industry forum on Sunday the company was stepping up censorship.

　　但上周，新浪向丹尼尔表示来自官方的压力太大。新浪首席执行官曹国伟(Charles Chao)上周日在一个行业论坛上表示，该公司正在加大审查力度。

　　Corruption is one of the most widespread topics of criticism in China’s blogosphere. Earlier this year, censors closed websites on which citizens could report their encounters with corrupt officials, typically by reporting anonymously how they had bribed someone. Mr Wu plans to keep up his hobby on other websites.

　　“腐败”是中国博客圈最为普遍的批评话题之一。今年早些时候，审查机构关闭了一些人们曝光自己所遇到的腐败官员的网站，人们通常在上面匿名讲述他们如何行贿官员。丹尼尔打算在其它网站上继续自己的业余爱好。