Who is Chris Devonshire Ellis – Part II

I have already decided leave this Chris Devonshire Ellis (a.k.a cde) alone after I briefly wrote this blog entry: Who is Chris Devonshire Ellis. As I said, I don’t care who he is – good or bad – it is just completely not my business. He was brought to my attention just because the three pretty silly threatening emails, and two phone calls. Well. I received a few of them because of some other people’s comment on my blog (and interestingly, more than half of the threatening letter comes because they want me to delete their own comment on this blog, like this).

But, things get more and more interesting these days, and I cannot help write something about this person, to provide some more information to help people understand some aspects of this “well-known” and “well-connected” guy.

Threatening Instead of Requesting

As I stated in my previous blog, he asked me to remove some comments about him on this blog entry: Second-Generation Identity Card. Then he wrote blog stating that it is about Chinese people libel about foreign people. I even don’t bother to argue that it is him who distinguish Chinese and foreign people in treating comments.

Now the problem is, it is not about requesting for something that is right (or wrong), it is all about threatening.

Recently, in his email to Lostlaowai.com, he threatened to report his website to Public Security Bureau to revoke his visa because Ryan wrote an article: Would the real Chris Devonshire-Ellis please stand up. Unfortunately, this entry was removed, and I fully understood that he actually does not deserve any attention. This CDE has done this to many bloggers, including myself. In all these letter, he not only stated that he asked certain content about him removed (which if he has the right evidence, it is pretty reasonable request), he *threaten* people of all kinds of terrible things.

The Threatening Emails I Got

Although he treated other bloggers and me terribly, I still want to play nicely to certain rules. Although I believe I have very reason to publish the threatening emails on this blog (I am not sure though, any legal advice from my readers?), I choose not to, and just quote indirectly about the pretty length emails.

The last email (the third similar emails) he sent to me, he mentioned that he will have meetings with the Minister of Industry, and he told me that he will bring this matter concerning me, and my employer to the minister’s personal attention. He also threatened to take legal steps for damages for defamation. I have no problem that he brings this matter to the court at all – follow the law, and I think that is the simplest way to do it, but it sounds so silly and even fool to threaten a blogger to bring his blog to the minister of the country. Wow. I will be flattered if you do so. In the end, he re-stated that I must face the consequences if I do not follow exactly what he told me to do.

The previous two are equally lengthy and “rude” (sorry but this was my feeling). Interestingly, after the three emails, I received phone call to my mobile from a girl who claimed to be his lawyer, and asked me to remove the comments, and my new blog article about him. I asked her to send me emails or fax and tell me which part of my article has problems, and she didn’t reply ever since. (I am not surprised to receive emails, but feel pretty funny that his employee also tried so hard to “protect” his boss’s already pretty bad image online – search the term Chris Devonshire Ellis on Google to see).

Old Stories in the New Background

When all these happened, I did a search in my own inbox, and found out this Chris Devonshire Ellis has already been the “old friend” of blogger, and expat community. My friends have ever been threatened by this guy back in 2007, and this person sent thousands of comments of the similar thing to his website. Pretty amazing, isn’t it?

Then I took some time to read the article about Chris Devonshire Ellis that I posted: Second-Generation Identity Card. If you read the comment carefully, you see many people stood up to express their support to Chris Devonshire Ellis. I promised not to reveal private information about commenters, but what I can tell you is, it is the same IP address, and same client behind all these supporting comments, and the IP address comes from Hong Kong SAR. There are more and more these comments coming before I was forced to close the comment section of that article. I am sure that many bloggers experienced the same thing – tell us if you are also one of the victim of this CDE.

Chris Devonshire Ellis on the News

The even more interesting movement recently was about the fake stories, and fake interview this Chris Devonshire Ellis claimed to conducted with Chinese officials. And China Bank Regulatory Committee (CBRC) put an announcement on their website to tell the truth. His false report even made big jump in the RMB to USD exchange rate. Check out some bloggers’ report on this issue:

#cde Became a Top 10 Trend in Twitter

You can check out Twitter now at channel #cde. It is pretty hot – I mean now, at 0:05 AM, February 21, 2009 (Shanghai Time). So many people annoyed by this single person #cde gathered there, and the channel #cde even became top 10 trends (hottest topic on Twitter worldwide) today. I even started to admire how powerful this person became to have so many die-hard enemies on the Internet – not an easy job to accomplish.

Finally, Let’s Stop Here after Learning the Lessons

There are some lessons to learn for #cde this time.

  • It is OK to send legal statement requesting something as long as there is a legitimate reason behind it, but it is NOT OK to threaten anyone, just like report to PBS, mention something to high officials, or promise a DDOS attack – bloggers typically won’t do something just because he/she is scared of this.
  • To post too many positive comments under different IDs is too simple and naive. People know that, and it is just a matter of time about when people discover it.
  • Don’t over-react – this is a typical case where a very small comment that no one will notice became a big event in blogsphere. It can be completely avoided if Chris Devonshire Ellis, and his employees didn’t over-react to a level that no one can tolerate.
  • A bonus tip: to have a phone call is even worse than threatening email – that makes people really angry.

Chris, you have my email and mobile phone – it has been listed on the homepage of this blog for 7 years. Feel free to write or call, but please be aware, as I started in my privacy statement, I reserve the right to publish content you sent to email address jianshuo @ hotmail.com, or call my mobile phone. If you don’t want your threatening email to be published, don’t send them, and you are encouraged to directly go to court to sue me, or even better, talk about this blog with your high-ranking official friends that you imagined by yourself. Peace. I just hope I can get back to my normal life of blogging (a much more fun work to do than dealing with #cde), and just let this ridiculous event disappear from everyone’s attention.

28 thoughts on “Who is Chris Devonshire Ellis – Part II

  1. Amen to that! Well said JianShuo. Imaginary friends online, imaginary officials. Which minister would ever consider a request to bully a Chinese blogger who does nothing wrong? I do not know any person stupid enough to take such a request to a minister, not even a bureau head. Especially if it comes from some arrogant British guy.

    I am sure that after his “interviews” no official wants to be seen within a mile from him anyway. Made trouble at the highest levels of government….not good. He just seems to behave like a street rat.

    I think your policy of “friendly requests will be taken into consideration, bullies will be thrown out’ is very good. And you can always do as in the restaurant during your bad lunch, call 110 and maybe there will be a policeman in his office within 3 minutes too.

    If I read your posts I see that your are a very friendly and happy person. Other people think so too, that’s why your blog is so popular and that is why you do not need imaginary friends. This blog has a lot of positive and interesting items on it often enough to bring a smile to peoples faces and brighten up their day.

    Thank you!

  2. This is an exceptional post, Jianshuo.

    I’ve learned 2 things:

    1. What to do and what NOT to do if you feel unfairly criticized on the Internet. If you are passionately pursuing a cause, you can and WILL create enemies. The #cde affair is a cautionary tale of what not to do.

    2. What TO do if you are a blogger unfairly attacked by another company or person. Key learnings: (a) incoming emails are not confidential and privileged information unless mutually agreed upon between the parties, and (b) publish a clear commenting policy and enforce that policy on your site. Focus the community on the purpose of commenting which is to move forward the community’s understanding about the issues brought up by the blogger.

    Thanks for turning this whole unpleasant incident into a great learning opportunity for bloggers and PR people alike.

  3. I believe you would be well within your rights to publish quotations of the sections in which he made threats against you. He cannot claim that they were private communications if he was threatening to do something which was actually illegal (i.e., accuse you of a crime of which you are innocent). This was essentially blackmail – and should be exposed as such.

  4. If you want, you can now forward the emails (or parts thereof) to us. We will then publish them for you on the new website dedicated to The Truth About Chris Devonshire-Ellis.

    We would also like to receive your permission to republish all your posts (incl. comments) on that same website.

    Look forward to hear from you!

    The Truth

  5. Excellent post Jianshuo. I have to agree with FOARP, now that I think of it – the e-mail threats I received for the Lost Laowai post I wrote and subsequently took down had definite emphasis on non-legal threats, which I think fits very well into the definition of blackmail.

  6. @ Ryan . Yes that is blackmail. Any of these emails can be published without a problem. If you want to expose the man as a thug with a bow tie this is it. I read he threatened to have visa canceled and stuff like that. I hope he was not too confused to write that to JianShuo as well :-)

    I think the #cde strategy to bully his way out of this is not going to work. If he continues on this path of blackmail and threats he might be the one without a visa. The solution for him is quite simple: No lies then also no need to blackmail people because the animosity on the web seems to center around his lies. His responses only caused more problems for him. Strange man.

  7. I’m not even going to try to hide how I feel or try to be politically correct. CDE is a low down, stinky, smelly, twat.

    Jianshuo, if this is too direct, please delete, I don’t want to get you into any trouble.

  8. @The Truth, yes, you have my permission to re-publish content from this site to yours. Thanks for asking. Actually, as I stated in my Terms and Conditions, quote from this site, or copy few pages is OK.

    @warped0ne, don’t worry – the only reason I really delete spam without any explanation is because of spam. Meanwhile, I would want to keep a clear line between stating the truth, or opinion, and personal attack. My way to judge is simple: To say: “This is the stupidest idea I have ever seen” is OK, or “this behavior is naive” is also OK, but “this person is bad” slips to the area of personal attack. :-) So based on this, your comment is, well, hmmmm, ops!,…. in the area of personal attack. I would ask everyone to be polite and constructive – to beat someone in the face after he beats us does not make ourselves more right than he is. This is always what I personally believe. But, again, I won’t delete this little-bit-cross-the-line comment. Thanks for your consideration, warped0ne.

  9. I do not understand this person. I truly don’t. Why bully webmasters if you write lies yourself? Is not libel to expose them. That’s why he can only choose for intimidation to get them taken down. Give him the middle finger!

  10. Hello Jian Shuo:

    Thank you for your link. Perhaps those who are most sensitive to any unkind words about them have the most to hide?

    Also there is some hypocrisy here, as Fidel was well-known, as I understand, for writing harsh things about others online when he was angry with them.

    Finally, I would wonder how successful a businessman could be when that person spends so much time and energy searching for his name online, and attacking people for even the smallest, most irrelevant comment. A comment that no one would even notice if he didn’t make such a big deal of it.

    I am not going to let this issue go. The cyber-bullying is ugly, but the pretending to be a lawyer is serious and gets to his basic sense of morality and honesty.

    As warpedOne wrote, please feel free to delete this comment if needed. I will write much stronger things on my blog anyway ;-)

    And if you ever have some legal issue, please do contact me, I would be very happy to help you as a friend.

  11. Just to jump into the fray here and add my two bits: I have never had any business dealings with Mr. CDE but have met and conversed with him a couple times over the years in various venues in China.

    To quote from WarpedOne above: “…is a low down, stinky, smelly, twat.” and I add to this with a “Drunken, low down, stinky, smelly twat.”

  12. Name calling does no good. It was not necessarily his bullying that got him deported. It was his misuse of journalistic license, pressure of the powers that be in the gov, and probably more than a little encouragement from his partners. What the blogsphere episodes did do was exposure his character for a lot of people to see. Rumor has it he’s in HK.

    http://tinyurl.com/b8ch84

  13. A midget thug capitalizing on his bow tie and skin colour, trying too hard to convince us that he is a giant.

    Just another media-whore trying to extend his 15 secs of fame and milk it for money.

  14. I just saw this news. I didn’t know the details. But the man who did these behaviors is very appropriate and wrong.

  15. Sorry, I put wrong sentence.It should be ” But the man who did these behaviors is very inappropriate and wrong.”

  16. “Due to the serious error of judgment I made publishing details of off-the-record meetings with Chinese ministers, I have decided to step down from these roles,”

    Hah hah !

    Yep, just like my off-the-record meeting with Obama, my off-the-record majong session with the french prime minister, and my off the record fandango with Hillary Clinton.

    You see, they really, truely, did happen. Unfortunately they were OFF THE RECORD.

  17. The Cult of the Narcissist

    The narcissist is the guru at the center of a cult. Like other gurus, he demands complete obedience from his flock: his spouse, his offspring, other family members, friends, and colleagues. He feels entitled to adulation and special treatment by his followers. He punishes the wayward and the straying lambs. He enforces discipline, adherence to his teachings, and common goals. The less accomplished he is in reality – the more stringent his mastery and the more pervasive the brainwashing.

    The – often involuntary – members of the narcissist’s mini-cult inhabit a twilight zone of his own construction. He imposes on them a shared psychosis, replete with persecutory delusions, “enemies”, mythical narratives, and apocalyptic scenarios if he is flouted.

    The narcissist’s control is based on ambiguity, unpredictability, fuzziness, and ambient abuse. His ever-shifting whims exclusively define right versus wrong, desirable and unwanted, what is to be pursued and what to be avoided. He alone determines the rights and obligations of his disciples and alters them at will.

    The narcissist is a micro-manager. He exerts control over the minutest details and behaviors. He punishes severely and abuses withholders of information and those who fail to conform to his wishes and goals.

    The narcissist does not respect the boundaries and privacy of his reluctant adherents. He ignores their wishes and treats them as objects or instruments of gratification. He seeks to control both situations and people compulsively.

    He strongly disapproves of others’ personal autonomy and independence. Even innocuous activities, such as meeting a friend or visiting one’s family require his permission. Gradually, he isolates his nearest and dearest until they are fully dependent on him emotionally, sexually, financially, and socially.

    He acts in a patronizing and condescending manner and criticizes often. He alternates between emphasizing the minutest faults (devalues) and exaggerating the talents, traits, and skills (idealizes) of the members of his cult. He is wildly unrealistic in his expectations – which legitimizes his subsequent abusive conduct.

    The narcissist claims to be infallible, superior, talented, skillful, omnipotent, and omniscient. He often lies and confabulates to support these unfounded claims. Within his cult, he expects awe, admiration, adulation, and constant attention commensurate with his outlandish stories and assertions. He reinterprets reality to fit his fantasies.

    His thinking is dogmatic, rigid, and doctrinaire. He does not countenance free thought, pluralism, or free speech and doesn’t brook criticism and disagreement. He demands – and often gets – complete trust and the relegation to his capable hands of all decision-making.

    He forces the participants in his cult to be hostile to critics, the authorities, institutions, his personal enemies, or the media – if they try to uncover his actions and reveal the truth. He closely monitors and censors information from the outside, exposing his captive audience only to selective data and analyses.

    The narcissist’s cult is “missionary” and “imperialistic”. He is always on the lookout for new recruits – his spouse’s friends, his daughter’s girlfriends, his neighbors, new colleagues at work. He immediately attempts to “convert” them to his “creed” – to convince them how wonderful and admirable he is. In other words, he tries to render them sources of narcissistic supply.

    Often, his behavior on these “recruiting missions” is different to his conduct within the “cult”. In the first phases of wooing new admirers and proselytizing to potential “conscripts” – the narcissist is attentive, compassionate, empathic, flexible, self-effacing, and helpful. At home, among the “veterans” he is tyrannical, demanding, willful, opinionated, aggressive, and exploitative.

    As the leader of his congregation, the narcissist feels entitled to special amenities and benefits not accorded the “rank and file”. He expects to be waited on hand and foot, to make free use of everyone’s money and dispose of their assets liberally, and to be cynically exempt from the rules that he himself established (if such violation is pleasurable or gainful).

    In extreme cases, the narcissist feels above the law – any kind of law. This grandiose and haughty conviction leads to criminal acts, incestuous or polygamous relationships, and recurrent friction with the authorities.

    Hence the narcissist’s panicky and sometimes violent reactions to “dropouts” from his cult. There’s a lot going on that the narcissist wants kept under wraps. Moreover, the narcissist stabilizes his fluctuating sense of self-worth by deriving narcissistic supply from his victims. Abandonment threatens the narcissist’s precariously balanced personality.

    Add to that the narcissist’s paranoid and schizoid tendencies, his lack of introspective self-awareness, and his stunted sense of humor (lack of self-deprecation) and the risks to the grudging members of his cult are clear.

    The narcissist sees enemies and conspiracies everywhere. He often casts himself as the heroic victim (martyr) of dark and stupendous forces. In every deviation from his tenets he espies malevolent and ominous subversion. He, therefore, is bent on disempowering his devotees. By any and all means.

    The narcissist is dangerous

  18. Well thats the end of him anyway. Comitted suicide today in Delhi. Sleeping pills, its all over the newswires. Good riddance to bad rubbish. Threatening blogs, he deserved it.

  19. Its just been on HK ATV World tonight, with a brief summary. Britsih Businessman Dead. Him alright. Guess he deserved it and he’s in Hell now. Said jumped though, not pills. Either way, that will teach people who think they can get in the way of fre speech and bully people in China. Neo-coloniast Britsh asshole exploting people until we turned against him. He get what he deserve. China dont need people like CDE anymore we should run them all out. Go burn some HELL money you feel sorry. He was scum all his pretending and free magaiznes make him seem important. ShhiiiTTT!!!!

  20. Why would Mr. Ellis post such rumors about his own demise whilst still alive, tire kicking and getting pissed in Mumbay and Beijing? A very sick man indeed.

  21. Remember when Chris Devonshire-Ellis got caught in his lies about interviewing the chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission and getting inside data in possible exchange rate fluctuations? Well apparently being labeled a fraud directly by the CBRC and People’s Bank has hurt his already decaying business and now he’s fighting back.

    Devonshire-Ellis has just posted a few paragraphs of drivel about how he really does have access to Chinese ministers of state, but they are all “secret” and he cannot comment on what they tell him.

    I think it is necessary to send a message to the People’s Bank governor and ask just who is the liar: Devonshire or the CBRC?

    Of course we all know it is Devonshire. He’s been a liar and a fraud from day one.

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