http://www.transfabric.org/

DECEMBER 22, 2011

“China rises” versus “China lacks”

A recent NYT times article by John Markoff and David Barboza on the contemporary IT and innovation landscape in China sparked a series of commentaries (see for example James Landay, Tricia Wang, James Fallow). The article offers a constructive alternative to the usual utopian and dystopian stories that either cast China as the looming power yet to come and soon to take over the (Western) world or as a place that inherently lags behind the West as such warranting foreign intervention. Instead of falling into the trap of adopting either one or the other of these common narratives about China’s change, Markoff and Barboza, tell a different story, one that includes voices from both within China and abroad and challenges our current (often Western-centric) framing of innovation. How, they ask, can we think of innovation and creativity differently, when we do not begin with models, frameworks and tools that are intrinsic to our Western modes of IT corporations, knowledge productions and politics?

Given the quite nuanced approach that Markoff and Barboza took, I was surprised when I encountered James Landay’s quite harsh critique of the article. Landay accuses Markoff and Barboza of providing an account that portrays China as the next rising IT powerhouse, which he proclaims is far from now or anytime soon turning into tangible reality. Landay rejects a “China rises” view by pointing to problems in the educational system, misleading claims in regards to China’s forays in super computing, the lack of significant academic publications coming out of Chinese universities, hierarchical power structures at academic institutions, and an inherent lack of creativity amongst China’s students.

I agree with Landay that the countless publications on the rise of China (and the fall of the West) are counterproductive and often hide actual challenges and opportunities. And I also very much so agree with Tricia Wang that establishing networks of trust could enable new forms of collaborations in China (and I have written about issues of trust also in my own research on online gaming). BUT: What is problematic about “what China lacks” stories – as Landay’s – is that they often feed right into powerful governmental narratives that render their own citizens as the main source for China’s lacking and lagging behind. Anthropologist Susan Greenhalgh (2011), for example, illustrates in ethnographic depth that the “what China lacks” story has become a powerdul political narrative in China employed by government officials to justify a series of social engineering projects that are aimed at building a “healthy” and globally competitive, technologically savvy workforce for China’s future role in the global knowledge economy.

Not too dissimilar from James Landay’s suggestions for improvement, official documents in China, Greenhalgh illustrates, often cite the following factors as crucial for moving China out of its lagging behind position: a better education that creates flexible individuals, an increase in creativity and new forms of innovation, often seen as enabled by advances in modern science and technology. For example, in 2010, at the biennial conference of China’s two leading science and technology organizations at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, president Hu Jintao stresses the role of science and technology in building an innovative and globally competitive nation.

For me, Markoff and Barboza provide a nice counter narrative to either of these two stories, one about the rise and the other about what China lacks (which is also often about what the West can then contribute). Quoting Clyde V. Prestowitz Jr., president of the Economic Strategy Institute, for example, they propose the idea that there exist many different forms of innovation. What form can innovation take when we move beyond the western-centric and silicon-valley centric ideal of tech creation out of the garage?

As our technologies today travel, so are some of their values that are tied up with their designs. Prior research by scholars such as Gabriella Coleman, Fred Turner and Christopher Kelty, for example, illustrates the mobilization of values and ideological commitments such as Internet freedom, Do It Yourself production and flexible work across different sites and regions. However, these scholars also highlight that the translation of these values never occurs smoothly or in the form of a linear uptake from here to there. Rather, they point to frictions and glitches in the transfer of technologies and ideas of what innovation means in different local sites.

A similar argument is made by Markoff and Barboza. They quote Orville Schell, for example, who emphasizes that “through Chinese eyes it [China’s technological, urban and social transformation] looks tremendously uncertain and provisional. They are not filled with self-confidence.” In my own ethnographic work, I have attempted to account for these practices and views as seen and expressed “through Chinese eyes” and voices. My research allowed me to be part of numerous debates and discussions, where people across different ages and incomes debate exactly those issues that Landay brings up. Rather than a lack of creative ideas about how to tackle the challenges people face in China today, I encountered a collective of people who is very aware of these challenges (see for example Hu Yong’s excellent research on the topic, or Isaac Mao’s writings or the work that is happening at xindanwei and xinchejian). Across these, I found an active reflection on China as a nation that is often rendered as lacking and lagging behind the West.

Engaged in cross-cultural and translocal research and design work, I consider it crucial – especially for people working with students like Landay and myself – to be particularly attuned to political narratives and how we might run risk – even if intentionally – take them up in our own efforts. What kind of existing power systems (in the west, in china and in between) might we support when we position China as a place of inherent lack?

I believe it might be fruitful to begin our conversation not with what Landay suggests to be one of the key questions when it comes to China (“where is China with respect to the US and the West in terms of computing today?”), but with the idea that there exist many different forms innovation and creativity.

Let me illustrate with a brief example. Something that has been heavily debated across the wider IT landscape in China as a new form of innovation is the Chinese copycat phenomenon (shanzhai 山寨). The core idea behind 山寨is that the widespread practice of copying end-consumer products in China, such as the mobile phone or Apple product, has today evolved into something else: into the production of new artifacts enabled by the creative labour of the shanzhai factory workers. Tricia Wang, Eddie Wu & Makiko Taniguchi from IDEO and Lyn Jeffrey, for example, have discussed shanzhai and highlighted how factory workers made use of old thrown-away phones, took their working components and created entirely new products, often tailored towards specific markets and needs such as low-income populations. David Li, one of the co-founders of the Shanghai hackerspace xinchejian, summarizes how this form of shanzhai can be seen as innovation with Chinese characteristics: “We want people to take shanzhai seriously. Underneath the surface of Chinese counterfeits, Shanzhai represents a super efficient micro manufacture system that operate on the principle of open source and open innovations. Instead of spending months and millions of dollars to design the one perfect product with millions of units, the Shanzhai vendors adopt a market driven rapid prototyping approach to the market. For example, upon observing the prayers habits of Muslim in the middle East market, Shanzhai makers produced phones with a digital compass and a reminder system, years before the big brands caught on.”

My goal here is not so much to judge if the shanzhai production (in its material and cultural form) is or will lead to the innovative product that Landay and many others are watching out for. The key is to understand the kinds of work that the idea and existing shanzhai production today together perform for people active in China’s hackerspaces and its IT scene writ large. What shanzhai currently allows are two things. First, through shanzhai people have explored alternate modes of tech creation and collaboration. Many who embrace shanzhai in China today also embrace ideas of creative commons and the open sharing of code and knowledge. Second, shanzhai challenges our very notion of originality, authenticity and innovation. In a recent publication, Byung-Chul Han traces shanzhai production back to artistic creation in both Europe and Asia, where the detailed copy of an artistic masterpiece was treated as deep admiration of the “original” creators work of art. Copy was praise. The original was not seen as a stable unit that suggests unique authenticity, but as a thing that continuously evolves (through its appropriation by many). Every add-on, every copy, every modification was seen as creative process of the original itself. Byung-Chul Han argues that what eventually lead to the quite different take on copy and fakes in the West was in part motivated by tourist travel in the 18^th century that lead to the restoration of buildings and art works to communicate their authentic historical and cultural identity.

I believe what Shanzhai, as a vision and material practice, can teach us today is begin with the idea that there can be many different understandings of a copy or a fake, many different possible forms of innovation, none of them having a single authentic source nor remaining stable originals. What it teaches us as well is that instead of falling into the trap of repeating already powerful and often told stories, let’s focus on the sites, people and places that aren’t mentioned, e.g. the factory floor of a shanzhai factory in shenzhen.

by Silvia Lindtner

http://www.ubergizmo.com/2012/01/china-half-billion-internet-users/

By Edwin Kee on 01/16/2012 10:08 PST

China’s government might be pretty restrictive when it comes to what their citizens can and cannot see over the Internet, while ensuring not a single person of the general populace is able to own a Facebook account, but that does not mean Internet usage is surpressed. No sir, in fact, it seems that the number of Chinese citizens who are able to access the Internet has already surpassed the half billion mark, which is more than one third of China’s total population. This statistic is furnished by the China Internet Network Information Center, a state-run organization, so it is as close as it can get to the actual figure.

It would be interesting to see how the Internet generation in China will help shape and grow the country, which might eventually become the world’s largest economy as it steps on the accelerator to overtake the US after they sped past Japan last year. According to a translated quotation from the China Media Project in Hong Kong, journalist Hu Yong mentioned the importance of the explosion of Internet use in China by summing it up, “The Internet cannot usher in dramatic change to political life in China, but it can promote the creation of social capital on the basis of citizen rights and duties, giving rise to and strengthening social forces independent of the Chinese state.”

http://www.voanews.com/chinese/news/20120116-World-Press-Coverage-on-China-137441333.html

2012年 1月 16日

世界媒体看中国：互联网发展与控制

记者: 齐之丰 | 华盛顿

中国官方的中国互联网络信息中心(CNNIC)星期一发表报告说，“截至2011年12月底，中国网民数量突破5亿，达到5.13亿，全年新增网民5580万。互联网普及率较上年底提升4个百分点，达到38.3%。”

报告接着说，“总结过去五年中国网民增长情况，从2006年互联网普及率升至10.5%开始，网民规模迎来一轮快速增长，平均每年普及率提升约6个百分点，尤其在2008年和2009年，网民年增长量接近9000万。在2011年，这一增长势头出现减缓迹象。”

在2011年是中国政府明显加强对互联网控制的一年。中国当局采取多种措施，试图控制中国网民的言论，限制他们对政府和执政党共产党的批评。

*发展与控制*

日本共同社星期一在报道中国互联网络信息中心的最新报告的消息时所用的题目是，“中国网民人口达到5亿1千万人、当局强化对互联网的管理。”

美联社星期一发表工商新闻记者乔·麦克唐纳从北京发出的报道，题目是“中国互联网用户数目达到5亿1千3百万。”报道说，“互联网在中国人气大增，推动了有利可图的网络公司的爆炸性增长，也使一些中国企业家发财，尽管政府控制着公众可以在网上看到什么东西。”

关于中国政府对互联网的控制，麦克唐纳的报道说：

“（中国）共产党政府鼓励人们使用互联网从事商业和教育活动，但竭力阻止人们通过互联网获取政府所认为的色情或颠覆性的材料。在去年7月发生高速列车相撞事故导致40人死亡、并引发公众强烈批判政府对事故的应对措施之后，政府一直在加强对用户众多的互联网微博的控制。”

“微博服务公司被命令更密切地监督用户的微博言论，删除当局所不喜欢的东西。与此同时，新闻媒体接到禁令，不得在没有得到第一手的证实的情况下报道网上的材料。尽管政府采取了这些控制措施，新浪和搜狐等门户网站，优酷和土豆等视频录像网站，以及搜索网站百度依然是点击量增加，收入增长。”

*互联网还是局域网*

中国互联网用户人数如今已经是世界第一。与此同时，中国政府用于互联网封锁的资金和人力无疑也是绝对世界第一。中国专门监视和控制网络舆论的警察数以万计。在2011年，中国明显加强了封杀网络批评意见的努力，在2010年则把互联网网站减少了132万个，占前一年中国互联网网站总数的将近一半。

中国当局将中国网民封锁在当局设定的信息柏林墙之内的做法，导致西安理工大学计算机学院网络工程系教师张翔公开抱怨说，“全球百强的网站，我们在大陆80%都不能访问，此外还有很多技术博客被限制，大量的教学视频无法观看，怎么去学习先进的文化知识。”

在中国互联网络信息中心报告中国互联网用户超过五亿之际，网名“独孤跑者Vincent94”的网民通过新浪微博评论道：“五亿里有多少能自由上国外网站的？上不去的请改为局域网，不要乱用互联网的名头。”

*中国互联网数字水分*

美国报道全球信息技术产业消息的IDN新闻社星期一发表记者麦克尔·肯的报道，对中国互联网络信息中心报告提供的数字进行了一番解读：

“跟中国政府有关系的非营利团体中国互联网络信息中心星期一报告说，截至去年12月底，中国有互联网用户5亿1千3百万。这一数字使中国的互联网普及率达到38.3％，比去年上升4％。根据互联网世界统计网站的数字，美国的总体互联网普及率是78.2％。”

“中国互联网用户增长近年来放缓，每半年的增长率已经下降到单位数……一些分析家表示，中国互联网络信息中心提供的统计数字有水分。该中心把互联网用户定义为6岁以上、在过去的6个月里曾经上网的人。”

*互联网统计有趣的数字*

中国互联网络信息中心的报告说：“2011年，使用台式电脑上网的网民比例为73.4%，比2010年底降低5个百分点，手机上升至69.3%，笔记本电脑也略增至46.8%。随着台式电脑使用率走低，手机终端的使用率正不断逼近传统台式电脑。”

法新社星期一发表有关中国互联网络信息中心报告的报道，注意到中国互联网发展的不平衡：

“互联网普及率地区差异明显，北京达到70.3%，西南省份贵州则只是24.2%……中国五分之四以上的用户年龄在10岁和39岁之间。中国30%以上的大中小学校学生上网，但政府部门和共产党领导干部上网的人只有0.7%。”

*政府思维落后于互联网发展*

中国社会网络化发展迅速，中国执政党和政府从思想观念到管理措施都明显落后、落伍。北京大学研究网络传媒的学者胡泳日前发表文章说，“我们已然拥有一个网络化的民间社会，但我们却还欠缺网络化的治理者。”

在题为“2011，中国网络舆论有‘三大变化’”的文章中，胡泳写道：

“互联网固有地从最终用户而不是集中化的守门人那里生成知识和价值，接入、访问和发布的权利在某种程度上内在于互联网的设计。循此，互联网治理的政策框架 应该沿着这样的路径发展：增强竞争，鼓励创新，允许自由表达，提升信任，进行最少的政府干涉……非常遗憾，当下中国互联网的治理路径与此截然相反。”

胡泳呼吁中国政府和民间共建中国网络社会，为此中国政府“首先需要调整治理思路，从全能政府转向服务型政府，”因为“全能型政府孕育暴民型网民，服务型政府培养责任型网民。”

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2012/01/chinese-web-users-grow-to-513-million.html

THE BUSINESS AND CULTURE OF OUR DIGITAL LIVES,
FROM THE L.A. TIMES

Number of Web users in China hits 513 million

January 16, 2012 | 3:37 am

The number of Web users in China soared past 500 million last year, a tech-industry group said Monday, capping a period of explosive growth that has elevated Chinese Internet companies and challenged social and political discourse in the communist-controlled state.

The government-run China Internet Network Information Center said Monday that the number of Web users in China grew 12% in December, to 513 million, compared with the same period in 2010.

Chinese Internet giants such as search engine Baidu Inc., news portal Sina Corp. and gaming and messaging service provider Tencent Holdings added millions of users, raising the profile of the increasingly lucrative sector.

But 2011 was also a year that saw the increasing social might of Chinese micro-blogs, which became engines of public opinion that often challenged the authority of state-sanctioned news.

The number of micro-blog users quadrupled last year to just under 250 million, the China Internet Network Information Center said in its recent report.

Known in China as weibo, micro-blogs act much like Twitter, allowing users to post short messages with links that can then be read by subscribers.

The speed and scope in which the services operate create difficulties for government censors, who have more success blocking access to foreign websites such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter using filters, better known as the Great Firewall of China.

Micro-blogs were instrumental last year in exposing government mishandling of a deadly high-speed rail collision in the eastern city of Wenzhou, protests concerning a chemical plant in the northern city of Dalian and corruption in the southern village of Wukan.

A recent decision by Beijing authorities to report the extent of the city’s air pollution with greater accuracy is largely credited to an online campaign started from the micro-blog account of well-known property developer Pan Shiyi,

“Today we can say without hesitation that an independent and richly participatory civil society is emerging on China’s Internet,” wrote Hu Yong, a journalist and commentator in a recent article translated by the China Media Project at the University of Hong Kong.

“The Internet cannot usher in dramatic change to political life in China, but it can promote the creation of social capital on the basis of citizen rights and duties, giving rise to and strengthening social forces independent of the Chinese state,” Hu continued.

The rising popularity and influence of micro-blogs has worried the central government, a fear exacerbated by the role of social media in the so-called Arab Spring uprisings. Chinese authorities have intensified efforts to quash domestic opposition in the last year, jailing and detaining a number of activists.

Damien Ma, an analyst at the Eurasia Group, wrote in a post on Atlantic magazine’s website earlier this month that China’s leaders regard social media as “western-invented weapons of mass dissemination as potentially powerful as nuclear bombs.”

Since the Wenzhou train crash in July, authorities have increased pressure on micro-blog providers (namely Sina and Tencent) to crack down on “rumors,” a euphemism for government criticism.

In October, the Communist Party’s Central Committee vowed to strengthen control of the Internet, threatening to punish those responsible for spreading “harmful information.”

Last month, cities announced new rules requiring micro-blog users to register their accounts with their real names, making it more risky for individuals to challenge authorities.

How much China’s leaders are willing to rein in the Web remains to be seen -– a question investors will have to grapple with in a market otherwise filled with potential.

The Internet sector is the only major industry in China still dominated by private companies. But given the attention to reestablishing government order, 2012 may be defined by how much the state ultimately encroaches online.

One sign is regulators’ approval last week for an online unit of the Communist Party’s mouthpiece, the People’s Daily, to offer shares in Shanghai. The newspaper plans to raise $83 million to challenge established Web portals such as Sina and Sohu.

– David Pierson

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2012/01/first-sopa-then-identity-what-we-can-learn-chinese-censorship/47537/

First SOPA, Then Identity: What We Can Learn from Chinese Censorship

REBECCA GREENFIELD JAN 18, 2012

With the U.S. government trying to pass what Google’s Sergey Brin has called “China-like censorship,” China has found a new way to tamp down free expression on the Internet: make people use their real names. After the Chinese government realized that Weibo, a Twitter-esque microblogging service, gave rise to “irrational voices and negative opinions and harmful information” — in the words of Wang Chen the deputy director of Communist Party’s propaganda department — it has decided to clamp down by requiring all bloggers to register their identities with the government, reports The New York Times’ Michael Wines. A lesson for U.S. Internet users, after old-school government control of websites comes censorship 2.0: Total removal of online anonymity.

If you think this can’t possibly happen in the U.S., this identity issue is already being debated and enforced, however the main actors have been the tech giants who are championing the SOPA protests. When Google launched its social network Google+, like China’s policy, required users to register under their real names. After some public outrage, Google revised that policy. But the debate still lives on with people like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg calling Internet anonymity unethical. “Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity,” Zuckerberg has said. But it’s not just Internet folk that are debating and enforcing these issues, our favorite SOPA advocate, Lamar Smith, has introduced legislation (the Internet Safety Act) that would require Americans to register every time they used the Internet.

In China, the real-name policy is an assault on China’s growing (and powerful) blogger community. Serving as a Chinese breaking news service — like Twitter here — Weibos has provided alternative (and accurate) perspectives to the state-monitored media service. We saw it earlier this year, when bloggers fleshed out a full report of a covered-up train accident. “I just watched the news on the train crash in Wenzhou, but I feel like I still don’t even know what happened. Nothing is reliable anymore. I feel like I can’t even believe the weather forecast. Is there anything that we can still trust?” wrote one blogger, highlighted by The New York Times. A few months after that incident, the government implemented a trial program, forcing users to disclose their identities in order to blog. Though, on the site users can still use nicknames, the fact that the government can trace an avatar back to an identity will discourage some from speaking out, argues Peking University Journalism professor Hu Yong. “Certainly some people will not dare to speak out about certain issues,” he told Wines.

Want to add to this story? Let us know in comments or send an email to the author atrgreenfield@theatlantic.com. You can share ideas for stories on the Open Wire.

Topics: Blogger, Censorship, China

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/19/world/asia/china-expands-program-requiring-real-name-registration-online.html

China Expands Program Requiring Real-Name Registration Online

By MICHAEL WINES

Published: January 18, 2012

BEIJING — China will expand nationwide a trial program that requires users of the country’s wildly popular microblog services to disclose their identities to the government in order to post comments online, the government’s top Internet regulator said Wednesday.

The official, Wang Chen, said at a news conference that registration trials in five major eastern Chinese cities would continue until wrinkles were worked out. But he said that eventually all 250 million users of microblogs, called weibos here, would have to register, beginning first with new users.

Mr. Wang indicated that under the program, users could continue to use nicknames online, even though they would still be required to register their true identities.

The announcement was long expected. Because the registration rules apply to Internet companies — most of which are in Beijing or the other four cities covered under the trial — the practical effect is to certify that the government will now formally require those companies to register all users of weibos eventually. Some users and analysts had suggested that such a requirement would be met with a public outcry. In fact, the response has been comparatively muted.

Mr. Wang leads the State Council Information Office, which regulates the Internet and the government’s domestic public relations machine. He also is a deputy director of the Communist Party’s propaganda department and, in particular, is in charge of China’s lavishly financed recent efforts to burnish its image worldwide.

The government has said that it is studying real-name registration of microbloggers to limit the spread of malicious rumors, pornography, swindles and other unhealthy practices on microblogs, which have become a major source of news for many Chinese.

Free speech advocates generally condemn the move, saying that the microblogs’ freewheeling debate and frequent criticism of official misconduct will be neutered if the government knows the identity of everyone who posts a comment. Real-name use also would allow security officers to identify microblog users who consistently post comments about delicate issues, even if their individual remarks do not attract large numbers of readers.

With a population of about 1.3 billion, China counted 513 million people online in 2011. That was a sharp increase from 2010, but microblogs have grown even more spectacularly, quadrupling the number of users in the past year. They revealed their power to drive public opinion last July, after a high-speed train crash in Zhejiang Province prompted tens of millions of online comments, many condemning the government’s stewardship of the rail system and its response to the accident.

The government soon stepped up its efforts to monitor and censor online dialogue on delicate topics, with senior Communist Party officials visiting major Internet companies to underscore their concern. The trial requirement of real-name registration was announced last month.

Mr. Wang said Wednesday that the government broadly supported citizens’ use of microblogs, on which posts are typically limited in size, as on Twitter, noting that an average day sees 150 million new comments posted online. “Weibos can indeed reflect people’s opinion and spread positive voices and enrich information services,” he said. “But they have also made it easy for some irrational voices and negative opinions and harmful information to spread quickly.”

Real-name registration will have a chilling effect on some kinds of online comment, Hu Yong, an associate professor at Peking University’s school of journalism and communications, said Wednesday in a telephone interview. But it remains to be seen how many users will be dissuaded from speaking out on controversial issues, Mr. Hu added.

“Certainly some people will not dare to speak out about certain issues,” he said. “But a lot of people already are using their real names, even in discussing current affairs. And the user base of weibos is so huge that if something happens to highly concern their own interests, I think you’ll still hear a loud uproar.”

At Wednesday’s news conference, Mr. Wang also suggested that the government and the Communist Party would continue to expand and improve the domestic and global public relations machines, starting with training for press officers, who are increasingly deployed in government offices.

Some press officers are “putting the government on the back foot in dealing with emergency events,” he said, because they have not yet learned how to respond quickly and accurately to requests for information. He said public relations officials would be trained in “political thought” and “the spirit of speaking truth,” adding: “Speaking honestly is the most valuable quality of news spokespersons. Skills are necessary, but that comes second.”

On the foreign front, Mr. Wang said, “We will spread the voice of China to the world with an even more open attitude and more efficient methods.”

The goal, he said, is to educate foreigners about China’s domestic and foreign policies, values and culture “so that we can show off a national image of being civilized, democratic, open and progressive.”

Edy Yin contributed research.

A version of this article appeared in print on January 19, 2012, on page A9 of the New York edition with the headline: China Expands Online Registration Rules.

http://cmp.hku.hk/2012/01/16/18013/

Three trends on China’s internet in 2011

Posted on 2012-01-16

Looking back at China’s internet in 2011, there were three broad trends that deserve greater attention. The first trend was a general shift from emotionally-driven nationalist chatter as the defining tone of China’s internet toward a more basic attention to issues of public welfare. The second was the rise of what we can call the “social power of the internet” (网络社会力). And the third trend was a more pronounced deficit in understanding on the government’s part about the role it should play in a networked society. While it became readily apparent, that is, that we now have a networked civil society in China, it became clearer at the same time that we lack government administrators who are internet literate (网络化的治理者).

The Turn from Online Nationalism

Nationalism has been a defining issue on China’s internet since the very beginning. For example, People’s University of China professor Peng Lan (彭兰) has argued that one landmark event in the emergence of online public opinion in China [as a social force] was internet-based opposition by the international Chinese community (including mainland Chinese) against attacks on ethnic Chinese during the Indonesian riots in May 1998.

In “The Glory and Promise of Online Public Opinion” (网上舆论的光荣与梦想), written by Lin Chufang (林楚方) and Zhao Ling (赵凌) and published in Southern Weekly on June 5, 2003, the authors argued that, “The turning-point date when domestic [Chinese] web platforms were used to voice public opinion was May 9, 1999, when People’s Daily Online opened up a forum to rally opposition to the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade by NATO forces. This was the first current affairs news-related forum to be opened up by the website of a traditional media outlet.”

Nationalist sentiment has long persisted as a perennial hot topic on China’s internet. Issues like Sino-American relations, Sino-Japanese relations and the question of Taiwan have always invited fierce activity on the internet in China, even sometimes setting off mass rallies offline. This trend has been noted frequently by observers outside China. The Economist magazine even at one time devoted a sub-headed section to China’s “online nationalism” in a report on the digital era nationalism called “Cyber-nationalism: The Brave New World of E-Hatred”.

The nationalist trend online peaked in 2008 following March riots in Tibet that year, and in the midst of the international torch relay for the Beijing Olympics. That time marked an unfortunate setback in the relations of China and the West, ushering in a deeper sense of isolation in China that threatened to push China into a more protective and less open posture. This is an ongoing issue, and if the West continues to take an antagonistic attitude toward China’s rise, it is conceivable that China could be pushed back further, even onto its old path of isolation and decline.

The successful hosting of the Beijing Olympics in 2008 was a symbolic moment for China’s rise, and a moment of deep pride for Chinese. But just as the curtain closed on the Olympics, the revelation of widespread melamine contamination throughout China’s dairy industry, a scandal directly impacting millions of Chinese families, came a jarring reminder that external glory cannot disguise internal decay. The impact on Chinese society and on the country’s manufacturing sector was profound. The widespread sense of debilitating setback was conveyed by Chinese internet users in a vivid couplet:

We labor half a year to turn a new page, 辛辛苦苦大半年，
And in a single night are returned to the pre-Olympic age. 一夜回到奥运前.

Ever since that time, the confident tone of a China rising has flattened into notes of sorrow among Chinese. Shanghai successfully hosted the World Expo in 2010, but quite quickly came news of a disastrous fire in Shanghai that claimed 58 lives and injured scores of others. Just as in the eyes of some the so-called China Model was in its flushest moment of success, even meriting emulation by other countries, the high-speed rail collision last summer completely annihilated this fantasy.

People started questioning whether this was really a model at all. Online public opinion grew turbulent, and one user famously wrote: “China, please slow your soaring steps, wait for your people, wait for your soul, wait for your morals, wait for your conscience! We don’t want train collisions or bridge collapses. We don’t want our roads becoming pitfalls, or our homes becoming deathtraps. Move more slowly. Let all lives enjoy freedom and dignity, so that no one is cast aside by the times, so that every person can reach our destination smoothly and in peace.”

Many people still sympathetically push for greater Chinese nationalism, calling for a stronger China. But ever since 2008 the trend has been for nationalistic agendas to take a back seat to agendas relating to the welfare of the people. As social tensions in China have grown more serious, Chinese have devoted more attention to social development issues that are more concretely relevant to their lives. As the anniversary of Japan’s invasion of China approached in 2010, the mood at Sina Weibo, one of China’s top social media platforms, was extremely tense — the fear being that Chinese might try to organize anti-Japanese rallies, drawing the ire of the authorities to the Sina Weibo platform itself, which at the time was merely a “beta version” and could be shuttered at a moment’s notice.

In the end, “September 18″, this date that had erstwhile been so sensitive, never became a major topic of discussion on Sina Weibo in 2010. Instead, the hottest discussion centered on the Yihuang self-immolation case in southern China’s Jiangxi province, a case exposing the evils of forced property demolition in China and lack of rights protection.

Clearly, the winds are changing. When you cannot find safe milk for your child to drink, when their school buses are hazardous, when you worry that you might be exposed to dangerous recycled cooking oils if you go out to a local restaurant, when the city where you live is choked with pollution and you have no idea what the actual PM2.5 measures for the most dangerous air particles are, the question that possesses you above all else is what direction Chinese society is heading. You care more about how the people of China can enjoy lives of peace and prosperity, and less about the murderous logic of the Boxer Rebellion. [NOTE: Hu is suggesting here that trends of extreme nationalism in China are marked with the same sort of anti-foreign violence seen during the Boxer Rebellion.]

Online Social Power Emerges

The second trend in 2011 was the growing maturing of what we can call “online social power” (网络社会力). Since the 1970s, researchers in China have talked about the need to encourage the development of non-governmental organizations, to move away from the old work unit system to form new urban communities and to carry out collective actions and social movements in order to find new points of development. Today we can say without hesitation that an independent and richly participatory civil society is emerging on China’s internet. The internet in China today has quite a different political function from what we see in countries with relatively full political freedoms. The internet cannot usher in dramatic change to political life in China, but it can promote the creation of social capital on the basis of citizen rights and duties, giving rise to and strengthening social forces independent of the Chinese state.

China is entering an era of “rights.” Farmers, workers and an newly-emerging middle class are all fighting for their civil rights. Since the 1990s, along with a number of “important turns and other reversals” (Sun Liping’s phrase), there has been a clear expansion of social conflict and opposition in China, both in terms of frequency and scale. Researchers have observed that perhaps one of the most apparent new characteristics of this [social unrest] is the use of sophisticated electronic technologies, which enable protesters to connect more readily and make it possible also to communicate with media and supporters in the international community.

Thanks to technology, new social relationships and bonds are forming in China, and new forms of mutual interest taking shape. As a direct result, the mobilization capacity (动员能力) for related social movements has increased. The recent Wukan incident in Guangdong is a prime example of this trend.

The efforts by Chinese to fight for their civil rights are of course tied up with efforts to fight for their right to information. In the broadest sense, the right to information means the freedom to converse, connect, gather and coordinate without fear. These rights are the same rights guaranteed through the human rights documents of the United Nations and the constitutions of various countries, all of which collectively affirm the right of citizens to access and share information. For example, Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms that: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

In terms of basic rights on the internet, an international consensus has already emerged, including a firm commitment to freedom of access and the freedom to share information (发布自由). Internet rights, therefore, already exist as a matter of convention within the [international] political context, where many people argue that the same standards of freedom and human rights that operate offline apply to the online environment as well.

Lacking a Networked Mindset in Governance

This brings the third trend that has become clearer in China’s online public opinion environment. This is that while we already have a networked civil society in China, we continue to lack a networked leadership — which is to say a government that understands and accommodates the internet on its own terms.

The internet naturally generates knowledge and value from the end user and not from centralized gatekeepers — and the right to connectivity, use and dissemination are to a great degree built into the fabric of the internet. For this reason, the building of internet governance policies should proceed along the same lines, raising competition, encouraging innovation, permitting free expression, raising credibility, all with minimal government interference.

Unfortunately, internet governance in China at present goes entirely against these principles. If China’s internet is to continue to develop, internet users and the government will have to work together toward mutual interests, jointly formulating principles [for internet use and development].

For the government’s part, it must be clear that web users are not only to be monitored but also to be served — that in fact the principal attitude must be one of service. A totalistic approach [to internet governance] by the government will only engender an internet mob (暴民型网民), while service-oriented [internet governance] will foster a population of responsible internet users. For the government’s part, building a networked society requires first and foremost a change of attitude in governance, a transition from totalistic governance (全能政府) to service-oriented governance (服务型政府).

In such a government approach, internet-related problems should be solved in a “web user–market–society–government” sequence. Issues, that is, that web users can solve themselves should be solved by web users; issues web users cannot solve on their own that can be solved by the market should be solved by the market; issues that the market cannot resolve and that can be resolved by society should be resolved by society; for issues that cannot be resolved by society, the government should step up to offer services and guidance.

A service-oriented government does not mean entirely eliminating controls, only that controls are implemented for the sake of service, not for the sake of controls themselves. Such controls would be restricted the law, with a fixed scope and procedures and a clear system of responsibility.

When people are denied the opportunity to participate in the formulation of rules, these rules lose acceptance and credibility, and stability is difficult to achieve. This principal is as true online as offline.

It is impossible for the government to serve as the only source of public administration (公共治理者) in an atmosphere as complex and diverse as China’s today. The government will have to coordinate with non-governmental organizations, social groups and the public to better manage public affairs. And in the same way, an approach to internet governance based on serving the interests of web users would necessitate a fundamental change in the government’s role.

Drawing hundreds of millions of Chinese web users into the process of internet governance requires, first of all, respect for the basic rights of Chinese internet users. The benefits for China in such a shift would be substantial. Chinese internet users today are not unlike Chinese farmers thirty years ago, or township and village enterprises twenty years ago, capable of unleashing immense [productive] forces outside the state system (非体制的力量).

This commentary was translated and edited from a piece originally appearing in China Newsweekly magazine on January 13.

http://asiasociety.org/blog/asia/2011-hu-yong-looks-back-year-chinese-media-new-and-old

2011: Hu Yong Looks Back on the Year in Chinese Media (New and Old)

December 28th, 2011 by Susan Jakes
Hu Yong is one of China’s leading experts on new media.

This post is part of a series of year-end posts on Asia Blog written by Asia Society experts and Associate Fellows looking back on noteworthy events in 2011. You can read the entire series here.

Asia Society Arthur Ross Fellow Susan Jakes talked with Center on U.S-China Relations visiting fellow Hu Yong (Twitter) about internet trends, the Chinese media and what he learned on his visits to Zuccotti Park. Hu, a former print and television journalist, is a professor at Peking University’s School of Journalism and Communication and a leading authority on the Chinese Internet.

SUSAN JAKES: What do you think the most significant developments in world of the Chinese media have been over the course of the last year?

HU YONG: There’s a very important trend unfolding right now that not only pertains to the media but the society at large. It centers around the Chinese word minsheng, or “the people’s welfare,” which is a term that was part of [Chinese revolutionary leader] SunYat-sen’s Three People’s Principles [nationalism, democracy and people’s welfare]. It’s a word the current Chinese government has been using lately to try to legitimize itself and to show that it is doing its job of taking care of the basic social services — healthcare, educating, housing etc. — that are its job.

The reason I mention this word is because I’ve been noticing a trend on the Chinese internet that I call the transition from minzuzhuyi, nationalism, to minsheng. I think the nationalist thing is in a downturn. It peaked during the Olympic Games in 2008. That was the year we also had the riots in Tibet. But after the Olympics, people just didn’t find this nationalist logic as appealing as before. The government still plays its nationalist cards — the Shenzhou space program, the launch of the country’s first aircraft carrier. They’re still doing these types of things to rouse people’s nationalist feeling, but I don’t think they’ve been that effective. [Conversations in Chinese cyberspace] revolve around minsheng issues. The high speed train crash in July, was a huge event in Chinese cyberspace. People are deeply concerned about environmental issues, school bus safety, etc.

I would say this is a general trend. A lot of Western observers are concerned about Chinese nationalism and particularly, about its use in cyberspace, but I think these concerns overestimate the role of nationalism.

So you think the internet has the potential to make the Chinese government more responsive to popular concerns and demands?

It’s not just because I study it, but to a great extent, the only useful outlet for the expression of popular concerns in China is the internet. In China we usually don’t have other outlets like elections, so people can’t hold officials accountable, especially not township or above officials. We don’t have an independent judicial system and the traditional media are heavily controlled by the propaganda departments, so that leaves the Internet as, it could be said, the only venue for people to voice their opinions and concerns.

I don’t think many Chinese officials go online, but they do have a mechanism for the aggregation of public opinion by certain personnel. These people are online trying to gather what people are saying and they turn it into a regular reports that are very popular among Chinese government officials.

I think it’s strongly reflected in these reports that the issues in Chinese cyberspace are always these bread and butter issues, and, a lot of “mass incidents” are related to those issues — land grabbing, demolition, even the taxation of small enterprises.

And these events are reported on people’s microblogs?

The message usually appears on microblogs first. People will start to post photographs, what people are saying and sometimes video from the local people who happen to be traveling there. Those kinds of incidents — more than 50 percent — will be reported first on microblogs.

You are painting a somewhat positive picture of the way microblogs are functioning as a channel for popular concerns to reach the leadership and affect national policy …

I do think it’s highly positive. But I haven’t mentioned the other side of the story. I think weibo [similar to Twitter] plays a large role in supplying the news. But, at the same time, I’m very doubtful about the extent to which reports of these incidents can truly affect Chinese politics. The leadership’s invoking of minsheng is a response to what it’s hearing about popular concerns via channels like Sina weibo, but it’s not a real response. It’s not a systemic response. Even in the case of the train crash, we know some cadres got punished and the victims received a lot of money by Chinese government standards, but still the State Council promised Chinese netizens it would publish a thorough report on the accident, and it hasn’t. So a lot of problems are just addressed at a superficial level and people are still powerless whenever there are tragedies. So I think it’s only the beginning. The weibo, and the Chinese Internet play a very important role, but not a decisive role. I don’t think they will transform Chinese politics. That’s only a fantasy.

What about the traditional media in China? Everywhere else in the world tools like Sina weibo have changed the way journalists work in traditional media. What does that relationship look like in China?

Well first of all, the Chinese media industry is not a monolith. There are still the hardcore media: party newspapers, most of the television stations and radio stations, each province’s provincial newspaper. These are all under the tight control of the propaganda departments. They comprise the traditional channel for the government to try to push information down to the media. But in the past roughly 20 years of the commercialization of the Chinese media there have arisen quite a number of metropolitan newspapers or dushibao. These papers have taken a radical attitude toward the market because they have to compete with other media in terms of advertising revenue, subscriptions, etc. They play to the market. So on a lot of occasions they content does reflect the current transformations of Chinese society. By trying to be close to their readers, these papers reflect much more reality than those of the Party media system.

Then we have new media. The commercial media have a very close relationship with new media, not only because they are trying to migrate content online, they’re trying to use new distribution channels, creating their own apps. But also usually their editors and journalists are highly active in weibo and social media. Some metropolitan newspapers have even made it a policy that journalists and editors must have a weibo account. It’s related to their job performance. They have to be saying something about the newspaper itself or about society in general.

So those journalists active on weibo gather a lot of information from the internet. And people who are not working in the media who have something they want to communicate can easily get direct messages to the journalists. A lot of journalists use their real names and post their news organizations. So there’s a close relationship between the audience and those active journalists.

You’ve just spent around four months here in New York. Even given that you’re highly connected to China via the internet, has being away changed anything about how you see the media or society, has it had an effect on your views of things you pay attention to?

It’s been very fruitful to be in the U.S. Right after I arrived in New York, the Occupy Wall Street movement began. So I went to see the protests and I also read a lot of new media reports on this movement. I think I learned useful lessons from this. In my work, I’m thinking about the different forms and different ways of growing social movements in the Chinese context. So while observing Occupy Wall Street, I was also thinking about how it’s relevant to Chinese social movements in the Chinese context.

And how is it relevant? Because to many observers it might seem the political environments in the U.S. and China are different enough to make comparisons of social movements in the two countries very difficult.

In China, it’s very hard for social mobilization and social movements to be led or organized by individuals, because the government is very heavy handed. Usually, Chinese social mobilization is temporary, improvised and does not have any support from organizations, like those that exist in the U.S., whose main purpose is to organize advocacy, protests, etc. But Occupy Wall Street is not a traditional U.S. social movement.

I was on hand to observe the so-called general assemblies. Everybody could participate, use the “people’s mike.” They take turns speaking, and it’s chaotic. But this leaderless movement is relevant to the Chinese side. As I mentioned just now, I think in China if you have a movement that is highly concentrated on personal leadership, it would be crushed very quickly.

It’s just been reported that the leader of the uprising in the village of Wukan in Guangdong has been beaten to death, by the police.

So I’m saying that the new kind of social movement, one characteristic is the leaderless organization and the other thing I’m keen on observing how they’re using social media like live streaming, the WePay platform for people to donate, and the Tumblr thing is very emotional and very moving.