Former journalist and popular blogger pleads guilty over comments that insulted Chinese soldiers depicted in blockbuster war movie

• A popular blogger has pleaded guilty to making defamatory comments about Chinese soldiers that were depicted in a state-backed film.
• Luo said that the Chinese troops who froze to death in "The Battle at Lake Changjin" were "stupid."

A popular Chinese blogger has pleaded guilty to making defamatory comments about the Chinese soldiers depicted in a government-sponsored blockbuster movie about the Korean War.

"Luo Changping infringed on the reputation and honor of the heroic martyrs," the Chengjiao People's Court in Sanya, Hainan province, said in a notice on Wednesday posted on the social media platform WeChat.

Luo has pleaded guilty and is repentant, the notice added. The 41-year-old's sentencing will be held at a later date.

Luo, a former journalist and a popular social media figure, was detained in October after making comments online about the Chinese soldiers depicted in the propaganda film "The Battle at Lake Changjin." The state-backed film depicts Chinese soldiers defeating American troops during a Korean War battle in 1950 amid freezing weather.

In a commentary posted on China's Twitter-like Weibo platform, Luo had said that the Chinese troops who froze to death in the film were "stupid," per the South China Morning Post. He also questioned the legal justification of China's role in the war, The New York Times reported.

Luo was detained two days after making the comments and his Weibo account was blocked, per The Times. The social media star had around two million followers at the time, according to The Associated Press. Before he quit to start his own legal consultancy business, Luo was a well-known journalist who had exposed the financial wrongdoings of more than 100 senior government officials, per CNN.

Luo's case is reminiscent of popular blogger Qiu Ziming, who was jailed in June over online posts that suggested the death toll in the 2020 China-India border clash was higher than reported. The 38-year-old, who had 2.5 million followers on Weibo, was subsequently sentenced to eight months in prison under a 2018 law outlawing the defamation of "heroes and martyrs," per The Guardian.