Yul Kwon:
The passage of the new criminal procedure law has provoked a sharp debate in China's social media. One businessman named Xue Manzi, who has more than two million followers on Sina Weibo, launched a poll asking if the vote on the new procedures should be postponed. The poll was quickly suppressed, but before it was taken down, 93 percent of respondents said that more discussion was needed before the law should be voted on.

One post sarcastically had this advice for the NPC:
"Pass it. And at the same time, pass a Shoot-to-Kill law and a Bury-Alive law. Also pass a law to allow officials to have mistresses, to drink Maotai, to drive in Ferraris, to possess millions of dollars in savings."

On Renren, China's equivalent of Facebook, one post read:
"Once the law is passed, our country would become a police state following suit with North Korea, East Germany, and the Soviet Union."

The post was re-posted many times.

The dissident artist Ai Weiwei also spoke up. Last spring, Ai had been secretly held for 81 days. His post was directed at the Communist party:
"The air, mountains, earth, rivers are yours," Ai wrote. "So you can arrest people, jail them, sentence them, put them in mental houses and even kill them."