Justin Sun, the founder of TRON blockchain and numerous stablecoins, the owner of Poloniex, and an advisor to HTX, has been celebrating a recent victory in a Chinese court against Chongqing Business Media Group. However, the question remains: will this victory extend to him outside the mainland? The answer is most likely no.
A court in Chongqing stated that Chongqing Business Media Group claimed that Sun was under investigation by the FBI for insider trading. However, the court found these claims to be “completely groundless,” and Sun emerged victorious on the grounds of defamation.
Many of these claims stemmed from a Verge article in March 2022, none of which have been retracted since publication.
Protos previously reported on Sun’s false claims regarding diplomatic immunity and alleged unchecked policies towards BitTorrent.
However, Sun cannot expect to file and win lawsuits against media companies outside of China, mainly due to the much stricter and less flexible rules and regulations in China.
Unlike in free democratic countries like the United States, where defamation and libel cases have almost no success, China places the burden of proof on media companies or individual journalists. Article 51 of the Chinese Constitution states: “When citizens of the People’s Republic of China exercise their freedoms and rights, they may not infringe upon the interests of the State, of society or of the collective, or upon the lawful freedoms and rights of other citizens.”
However, Reporters Without Borders reports that China ranks near the bottom in terms of press freedom (172 out of 180 countries), with over 100 journalists currently imprisoned.
In this situation, Chongqing Business Media Group getting away with a simple apology and paying a fine of 500 yuan (69 USD) is not all that bad.
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