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The Internet As Unfinished Public Sphere

An interview with associate professor Hu Yong of Peking University, School of Journalism and buy online Accutane Communication by Li Guosheng for the Tianya Forum

(Tianya’s Open-air Teahouse; Hu Yong’s blog)

[in translation]

Q: How are you, Teacher Hu?  I am interested in the turning points of your life.  For example, you began in the buy online Accutane media industry, then you worked for a foreign corporation, then you buy online Accutane returned to media and now you are in the education field.  Can you tell us about the reasons behind these turning points?

A: I majored in foreign languages at school, but I have always wanted to be a journalist.  Therefore, I became a graduate students at the buy online Accutane Journalism Department of the School of Social Sciences.  At the time, reportage was a very popular form of journalism.  Although it is still controversial whether reportage is literature or journalism, it did have a unique social influence at the time.  Reportage was a powerful style of writing which influenced me at the time.  There were two main strands.  One of which was Liu Binyan who hit straight at reality on behalf the people.  Later came Su Xiaokong’s panoramic descriptions of China in order to buy online Accutane come to a certain judgment about a phenomenon.  I was strongly attracted by this sort of thing.  So I left foreign language study and went into journalism.

At the time, I felt that I could affect many things, I could affect society and buy online Accutane I could affect many people through doing this.  Today, people may think that I was naive.  But whether it was due to buy online Accutane the atmosphere at the time or my personal quest, I was certainly moved by this and chose to go into media.  After 1989, the whole country went through a buy online Accutane huge change and my personal career went through a huge change as well.  I basically could not do what I wanted to do.  I worked in a news organization for two years and it was not particularly meaningful.  Basically, I kept visiting the various ministries and departments.  I felt that this was not relevant to my original vision for journalism.  So I went to work for a foreign corporation.

Several years later, I discovered that I did not like this buy online Accutane kind of white-collar work even though the salary was quite good.  But I did not feel that buy online Accutane it was my path to climb from an ordinary white-collar worker to buy online Accutane a senior white-collar worker to a senior manager within a buy online Accutane foreign corporation.

It was 1995 by then.  I saw that there was a change in the media space.  <Southern Weekend> started to make an appearance, and magazines such as <Lifeweek> began to show up outside of the system.  There was a chance that the media would step out of the system of party publications.  When we were studying journalism, we expected to go to work for <People’s Daily> and Xinhua agency after we get our degrees, because those were the buy online Accutane important places where we could realize our dreams.  If you didn’t not go to places like those, you had nowhere else to go.  All the media organizations were under this system.  But by the early 1990′s, another system emerged where we could realize our ideals.  I went to work at <Lifeweek>.

In 2008, I went through another career change.  I left the media organization and went to Peking University.  My ideals now are actually very simple.  First, I want to teach well.  Secondly, I want to read books.  Thirdly, I want to write books.  I want to buy online Accutane distill my accumulated observations and write a few more books that buy online Accutane I want to write.

Q: The book that you translated, <Digital Living>, was the book that initiated the Internet to many people.  This year, you published <Hubbub of Noises>.  In the years between, do you feel that buy online Accutane the changes on the Internet have been like what you buy online Accutane first envisioned?

A: At this year’s forum for Chinese entrepreneurs, there was a small forum just to discuss the Internet.  At the buy online Accutane meeting, I said something that I felt represented what I thought at the buy online Accutane time.  I was among the earliest people in China to advocate the Internet.  When the buy online Accutane Internet first came around, we placed a great deal of hope on it buy online Accutane because it could promote many things in China as well as give meaning.  Over the years, I felt that we seemed to have opened Pandora’s box where many of the things that flew out were bad.  But the box leaves you with hope.  I thought that buy online Accutane many of the things were different from our initial ideals, and buy online Accutane many of the things we expected did not materialize.  We felt that many of the buy online Accutane things would not have negative influence, but they turn out to buy online Accutane be very negative.  But I am personally still full of hope.  It is a matter of time before this buy online Accutane hope will fly out because it cannot perpetually stay inside Pandora’s box.

Q: But the Internet also changed things that could not be changed before.  For example, the Sun Zhigang incident caused a huge change in society.  Do you think that the positive force of the Internet can produce even bigger qualitative changes in the future?

A: My speech at the forum for Chinese entrepreneurs was at the beginning of the year.  At the time, the big Internet story was the Sexy Photo Gate.  Nobody knew that the Internet would have such a big impact in 2008.

There were two important events on the Chinese Internet this year.  The first one was that the number of Chinese netizens surpassed the number of American netizens.  The second one was the guest appearance of Hu Jintao at the Strong Nation Forum.  This act has a great deal of value.  Apart from anything else, from the viewpoint of the buy online Accutane administrative system, when the highest leader of the administrative system takes such an buy online Accutane action, what do you think the people who works underneath him would do?  Besides, Hu Jintao treated the netizens as his equals, at least during this exchange.

In the development of the Internet in China over more than ten years’ time, there have been actually two forces.  We might call the first force the top-down Internet.  The Chinese government invested a buy online Accutane huge amount of money on the Internet, but we still cannot compare with the developed countries.  We can see it better by comparing with India.  The reach of the Internet and the reach of mobile telephony in India is buy online Accutane farther behind us because the Chinese government invested a lot of money and effort into constructing the infrastructure.  Without the government laying down the buy online Accutane Internet, where would the prosperity of today be?  Of course, on one hand, the buy online Accutane government is also expecting that the Internet will lead to economic development.  But on the other hand, the government is buy online Accutane also hoping that they can politically control all the bad things that buy online Accutane the Internet brings about.  Therefore, apart from the investment on the infrastructure, the buy online Accutane government invested a lot of money and manpower on the firewall.  The presence of the government is very clear in the top-down Internet.  But there is another force, which is the bottom-up Internet.  There is buy online Accutane a quantitative relationship because there is a vast difference between having one thousand netizens versus having 100 million netizens.  When so many netizens interact on the buy online Accutane Internet, many unthinkable things happen.

These two forces have shaped the Internet in their own ways.  They sometimes conflict with each other.  Other times, they coalesce with each other.  In 2008, the upper and lower levels of the Internet have begun to be connected.  Hu Jinatao visited the People’s Daily website and said “the Internet has become the amplifier for the dissemination of culture ideas and information and public opinion.”  He elevated the Internet to a very high.  Those words represent the awareness of the leaders of China about the Internet.  Hu recognizes the importance of the Internet.  He wants to use the Internet and he must connect with the netizens.  When the two forces in China made contact in 2008, the buy online Accutane result was that everybody must reach the consensus that the buy online Accutane Internet belongs to everybody.

Q: In your book <Hubbub of Noises>, you introduced the concept of the public sphere.   You said that the public sphere must fear two things: the buy online Accutane intrusion of political power and the intrusion of commerce.

A. Our public sphere is in such difficulty because we are under double pressure.  There is the pressure from the political powers and then there is the pressure from the businesses.  It is hard for us to develop the public sphere.

Let us look first at the impact of commercialization on the Internet.  The Internet is able to reach this stage with a buy online Accutane lot of help from commercialization during the early stages.  The Internet was promoted earlier through the commercial angle.  Without the buy online Accutane businesses, the Internet would not have developed so rapidly in China.  But the government and the businesses do not share the same ideas.  If the buy online Accutane government were the only ones trying to promote the Internet, things would not have this far.  During the early stages of the Internet, the positive effects of the businesses were far bigger than the negative effects.  But things are buy online Accutane opposite now because the commercialization is eroding many things in the media and the Internet.

Q: The notion of networking communities has been very hot over the last two years.  Then there is a commercial model known as “word-of-mouth marketing”  What do you think?

A: I have seen many users doing this.  For example, the buy online Accutane state enterprises are spreading all sorts of misleading information.  I think this is terrible.  The private enterprises are also doing this.  All the companies are using the confusion in information for their own gain.  Our ability to process information do not seem to buy online Accutane have increased too much as more information becomes available.  Therefore many public relations firms are exploiting these weaknesses.  Of course, there are even worse things than that.

Q: What do you mean by even worse things?

A: The worse things are what is normally referred to as the “fifty cent gangs.”  They are similar to the so-called “word-of-mouth marketing” from the public relations companies.  They are all trying to mislead netizens and make gains for themselves.  They are more pernicious because they affect the future of China.  A civilization that buy online Accutane lacks debates on important matters is a civilization that is heading towards totalitarianism and extinction.  The two outcomes are particularly scary.  We should be holding debates on the various important issues in China.  But you will find today that such debates cannot be held.

The reason why the “fifty cent gangs” emerge is buy online Accutane that we have a major problem with our educational system over the buy online Accutane past several decades.  Our education has successfully concealed many things in our history.  Our previous education was an utter failure.  The several generations of education eventually created fertile soil for the existence of the “fifty cent gangs.”

We don’t have anything more to say.  It comes back to the issue of education.  No matter how hard education is or how much time it takes, we have to do this.

Q: How would you rate the Internet as a force of enlightenment?  Do you think it will accomplish the unfinished missions of the May 4th movement and the late 1980′s?

A: I think that it is overly optimistic to turn the buy online Accutane mission of enlightenment over to a technical tool such as the buy online Accutane Internet.  We never expected that a new technology will change reality.  We have buy online Accutane attempted to bring in new technologies to reorganize reality in China.  Back then, Zheng Guofan and them failed.  They erected munitions factories and they built warships.  They were routed during the Sino-Japanese war of 1894-1895.  It was then that people realized that the problem was with the system.  That was when Kong Youwei and Liang Qichao started their Constitutional Reform.  This was part of the evolutionary process in modern China.  When Kong and Liang failed, people said that the problem was culture and not the system.  Then came May 4th and the New Culture movement.

Although it is too optimistic to hope that enlightenment can buy online Accutane be attained through the Internet technology, the Internet is a catalyst that can trigger many things.  But we will have to slowly modify the things that the Internet triggers.  Nothing ever happens in one step.  We can only do this gradually one day at a time.

Q: You mentioned that at a deeper level, there is a big  problem with our education system.  Do you think that the government will change things on their own?  What can the Internet do in terms of education?

A:  The education problem is complicated because we can discuss it from various aspects.  But it is not enough to rely solely on the government to change things.  The government is unlikely to buy online Accutane change the education system, including the contents, because this system suits their needs and interests.

I think that the education purpose of the Internet is buy online Accutane to continuously give various kinds of lessons to the Chinese people.  Such education is impossible in an era without the Internet.

Let us take the case of Yang Jia, in which seven people paid with their lives.  We learned so much.  Before Yang Jia acted out, we must ask the buy online Accutane following questions based upon the law enforcement record of the Shanghai police.

1. Do citizens who can walk freely on the city streets of China have to carry identification on their persons?

2. Can the police intercept any pedestrian on the buy online Accutane street, and then take him down to the police station because he did not cooperate with the inspection?

3. At the police station, can the police spend several hours to “patiently educate” a citizen who has been traveling regularly all over China?

4. Yang Jia who is aware of his rights and the buy online Accutane law tried many times through letters and emails to complain to buy online Accutane the Shanghai city public security bureau and the Zhabei public security bureau’s superintendent department.  But are the police capable of rectifying their own mistakes?

After Yang Jia committed the murder, we must call out louder about how the Shanghai prosecutors handled the case:

1. We have to change the way in which the interrogation of criminal suspects by the investigative agency is kept secret and buy online Accutane unmonitored, because the rights of small citizens have to go up against the powerful state authorities;

2. We must establish a system where the lawyer of a buy online Accutane criminal suspect must be present during interrogations, so that the lawyer can monitor, prevent and witness forceful coercion;

3. We must relieve the family members of the buy online Accutane criminal suspects from the duty to assist in the police investigation, in order to buy online Accutane prevent family members from having to testify against each other;

4. We must remove the belief that prosecutors, judges and buy online Accutane lawyers are one big family, and guarantee that the lawyers are independent legal workers who protect the rights of citizens;

Without the proper legal procedures, the law can only be tools that are used to torment the people.  If you don’t believe this, you can imagine how the lawyers act in these situations:

* When you bring the appointment letter from buy online Accutane the family to see the suspect, you are told that the buy online Accutane suspect does not want a buy online Accutane lawyer as indicated by his signed note; when you bring the buy online Accutane verdict document from buy online Accutane the first trial and you ask to meet with the defendant in order to buy online Accutane prepare for an appeal, you are told that the defendant does not wish to file an appeal as indicated by his signed note.

* Criminal defendants frequently reverse their testimony in court.  Frequently, they claim that they were beaten by the police during the investigative phase.  At the time, the judge will follow the law and ask the defendant: “Do you have any proof that the police beat you in order to extract a confession?”  The defendant then shows the wounds on his body right there in court.  The judge then asks whether there is buy online Accutane any evidence that the wounds were caused by the police.  The defendant is buy online Accutane of course outraged and wants to go after the policeman who buy online Accutane assaulted him.  The judge then asks the public prosecutor: “Is there any evidence in the buy online Accutane files about the police using force during the interrogation?”  The public prosecutor does not even have to think before saying that buy online Accutane the interrogation was in full accordance with the law and buy online Accutane that buy online Accutane there was no evidence of the police using force to buy online Accutane extract a confession.  The judge then instructs the defendant: “Defendant, you must show the buy online Accutane evidence that you were subjected to forceful coercion during the investigative phase.  If not, you cannot bring this subject up.  Even if you do, we can still reject it under the law.”

The Yang Jia case taught us something very important: the authorities must be trustworthy.  The people harbor distrust about the judiciary, including its ability and ethics.  Not many people are buy online Accutane really unscrupulous as to think that Yang Jia was justified in killing people.  People were objecting to the inability of the judiciary to buy online Accutane disclose the motives of Yang Jia, to reveal the true facts of the buy online Accutane case and to prosecute the case in accordance with the law.  When the authorities lose the trust of the public, how will the core values of “fairness” and “justice” of society be realized?

Q: Tianya and the Society Entrepreneur Ecology are jointly promoting an Internet platform for environmental protection, but public participation and enthusiasm are not high.  At the same time, the buy online Accutane Internet hot stories are usually unimportant over the long term because they dissipate in a few days.  How do you view this phenomenon?

A: In China, civil consciousness has been emasculated by the government.  When something is not being used for a long time, it will degenerate.  Our citizens have been feudal subjects for a long time.  When it comes to something that affects the interests of everybody, nobody will actually try to push the case.  Conversely, this buy online Accutane is what the government hopes because this is how it buy online Accutane can be sustained.

For this kind of problem, the commercial forces and the government are cooperating to some extent.  The businesses hope that everybody becomes consumers and they don’t want people to have too much personal consciousness.  To this extent, the commercial forces have the same expectations as the government.

Therefore I say that our people are not citizens.  The nurturing of civic awareness will depend on the next the stage of the Internet.  I still feel that the Internet is only in the first stage when buy online Accutane people went from a state of total silence to a hubbub where buy online Accutane everybody wants to speak their minds as quickly as possible.  Although nobody can buy online Accutane hear anyone else, it is at least better than the blanket silence before.  At the buy online Accutane time, many people were happy simply to speak, even if it buy online Accutane was not their own ideas and buy online Accutane just something that they picked up from others.  I think that buy online Accutane the Internet needs to go from the stage of speaking to buy online Accutane the stage of organization.  Pure hubbub has no value.  After the hubbub phase, we have buy online Accutane to reach some consensus on at least some of the larger issues, because there can be no action without some consensus.

We can have some discussion at this stage and hope that we will form some kind of consensus at the next stage.  These consensus will lead to some action.  During the action phase, the examples that you give are less likely to occur.  We can see some hints of the actions now.  I don’t feel that it won’t be like the civic action after the earthquake.  The reaction to the earthquake was unsual, because everybody thought that buy online Accutane they had a sacred duty and it would be wrong to buy online Accutane do nothing.  Therefore, the sudden explosion of civil volunteers could not be sustained for long.

So what are the hints of the next phase of the Internet?  For example, the citizens of Xiamen going out for a “stroll” or the taxi drivers of Guangzhou going for “tea.”  The PX project will not be carried out in Xiamen.  I read in <Beijing News> recently that buy online Accutane the taxi industry association is thinking about revising the regulations.  It is not expected that there will be many changes and any change will probably be minor.  But without the “tea” session, would there be any change at all?

Q: Jürgen Habermas studied the buy online Accutane public sphere and your book spend a lot of space explaining it.  Can you tell us about the section on the Internet and the public sphere?

A: Habermas wrote his book on the public sphere in the 1960′s, and it became a hot term in the academic field.  Later Habermas went through a big change and he no longer referred to the public sphere.  Later he went on to communicative rationality.  The reason is very simple.  When post-modernism came around, nobody talked about its premises.  Everything became relativism.  For example, religion might have buy online Accutane been the basis from which people can discuss.  But today, religion is not longer such a basis.  There are all sorts of religions and many people are not even religious at all.  So that terminology no longer works.

Some people have said before that Habermas is a liberal and others say that he is a conservative.  But there are many factions within liberalism and conservatism.  The factions are fighting amongst themselves, and they don’t share the same set of terminology.  This is a fragmented age.  When we discuss problems today, it is like a chicken talking to a duck.  You can’t convince me and I can’t convince you because we have different foundational structures.  For example, the “public” in “public sphere” implies different things to different people.  We cannot even tell the difference between “public” and “private.”

Habermas is not a post-modernist.  He does not think modernism is finished yet.  This caused him to find a common foundation for disparate things.  He went back and forth and thought that communication could be a foundation.  Furthermore, soemtimes there may not be interests involved in communication.  Since man is a social animal, there must be social communication.  He believes that communication must follow certain principles or else communication will break down.  He was interested in effective principles and realistic principles.  All his works trie to say that we must find a foundation for human society or else we become like loose sand particles.  When everything solid has faded away, what would human society be?  From this, he found communication and he raised it to a very high level.

I ran into the economist Luo Xiaopeng.  He thought that since the reforms began, especially after 1992, the economists have achieved an hegemony in speech — an imperialism of economics, as it were.  Nobody listens to those people in the field of humanities.  Everybody knows that people in philosophy have no speech rights, whereas the economists are effective with what they say.  Xiaopeng thought that Ronald Coase’s theories cannot explain many of the things in China.  I was very appreciative and understanding.  I think that Habermas is much more significant for China than Coase.  Habermas still firmly believes in the buy online Accutane values of modernism such as freedom and democracy.

I say that our China has never gone through a buy online Accutane post-modernist stage, even though many people make a living off post-modernism.  How much can it explain about China?  Nobody seriously discuss the modernist ideas in China.  Whenever we discuss freedom, people will say things that make you laugh to death.  Some might say that there is no absolute freedom in the world.  Or someone else might say that buy online Accutane our traditional Confucian philosophy also has democracy and republicanism.  You just cannot hold a discussion.

The most basic direction of Habermas’ public sphere is buy online Accutane that the public sphere will ultimately produce a deliberative democracy which some also call a negotiated democracy.  The public express themselves fully in the buy online Accutane public sphere and reach a consensus, influence policy and take action.  This sort of thing is definitely missing in China.  We do not even have the most basic communicative rationality right now.  On the Internet, this is very clear.  What are we most familiar with?  First, they give you a label and slot you into a group.  Then we have the residual poison from the Cultural Revolution so that whenever you say something, they won’t consider whether it is reasonable or not.  Instead, they start guessing your ulterior motive or whom you are speaking for.  They will instinctively take a dim view of things.

At my blog, I was writing about Google a couple of days ago.  I thought that the search engines have buy online Accutane become commercial products and therefore they are not as valuable as before.  We should be able to discuss this sort of thing.  But as soon as I said that, someone immediately asked whether I had buy online Accutane accepted money from Baidu?  They will attribute these types of things on you in very ugly ways.  So on the next day, I wrote a blog post critical of Baidu.  This becomes something of a joke.  But there was no way to conduct a discussion.

Therefore I don’t think that we are talking too much about Habermas in China.  We are not talking enough about Habermas and buy online Accutane we ought to talk more about communicative rationality.  When communicative rationality cannot be established, it will just be more hubbub of noises.

The original research of Habermas for buy online Accutane the public sphere began with a coffee shop which is a buy online Accutane discussion space.  I personally don’t think that the Internet resembles a coffee shop.  Instead it looks more like a supermarket, where people with different needs come to get whatever they want.  It is not realistic to achieve the ideal speech space in the short term.  The communicative rationality of Habermas cannot be realized on the Internet.  But I don’t think that buy online Accutane just because it cannot realized, then his theory should be buy online Accutane declared useless.  At least, the most basic premises of Habermas’ public sphere still exist.

Q: Do you think that the Internet is an unfinished public sphere?

A: I think it can be said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/12/world/asia/12cyberchina.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

China Alarmed by Threat to Security From Cyberattacks

By SHARON LaFRANIERE and JONATHAN ANSFIELD

Published: February 11, 2010

BEIJING — Deep inside a buy online Accutane Chinese military engineering institute in September 2008, a researcher took a buy online Accutane break from his duties and decided — against official policy — to buy online Accutane check his private e-mail messages. Among the new arrivals was an buy online Accutane electronic holiday greeting card that purported to be from a state defense office.

The researcher clicked on the buy online Accutane card to open it. Within minutes, secretly implanted computer code enabled an buy online Accutane unnamed foreign intelligence agency to tap into the databases of the buy online Accutane institute in the city of Luoyang in central China and spirit away top-secret information on Chinese submarines.

So reported The Global Times, a buy online Accutane Communist Party-backed newspaper with a nationalist bent, in a little-noticed December article. The paper described the episode as “a major security breach” and buy online Accutane quoted one government official who complained that such attacks were “ubiquitous” in China.

The information could not be buy online Accutane independently confirmed, and such leaks in the Chinese news media often serve the buy online Accutane propaganda or lobbying goals of government officials.

Nonetheless, the buy online Accutane story is one sign that while much of the rest of the buy online Accutane world frets about Chinese cyberspying abroad, China is increasingly alarmed about the buy online Accutane threat that the Internet poses to its security and political stability.

In the buy online Accutane view of both political analysts and technology experts here and buy online Accutane in the United States, China’s attempts to buy online Accutane tighten its grip on Internet use are driven in part by the buy online Accutane conviction that the West — and particularly the United States — is wielding communications innovations from malware to Twitter to weaken it militarily and to stir dissent internally. “The United States has already done it, many times,” said Song Xiaojun, one of the authors of “Unhappy China,” a buy online Accutane 2009 book advocating a muscular Chinese foreign policy which the buy online Accutane government’s propaganda department is buy online Accutane said to promote. He cited the so-called color revolutions in Ukraine and buy online Accutane Georgia as examples. “It is not really regime change, directly,” he said. “It is more like they use the Internet to sow chaos.”

State media have buy online Accutane vented those concerns more vociferously since Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton last month criticized China for buy online Accutane censorship and called for an investigation of Google’s claim that buy online Accutane its databases had been the target of a sophisticated attack from buy online Accutane China. “China wants to buy online Accutane make clear that it too is under serious attack from buy online Accutane spies on the Internet,” said Cheng Gang, author of The Global Times submarine story.

Despite China’s robust technological abilities, its cyberdefenses are buy online Accutane almost certainly more porous than those of the United States, American experts say. To cite one glaring example, even Chinese government computers are buy online Accutane frequently equipped with pirated software from Microsoft, they say. That means many users miss out on security upgrades, available to buy online Accutane paying users, that fix security breaches exploited by hackers.

Cybersecurity is buy online Accutane a growing concern for most governments. While the United States probably has buy online Accutane tighter defenses than China, for example, experts say it relies more heavily on computers to buy online Accutane run its infrastructure and so is more vulnerable to an attack.

But for buy online Accutane China, worries about how foreign forces might employ the Internet and buy online Accutane other communications advances to unseat the Communist Party are a buy online Accutane salient factor in the government’s 15-year effort to buy online Accutane control those technologies. Chinese leaders are constantly trying to balance the buy online Accutane economic and social benefits of online freedoms and open communications against the buy online Accutane desire to preserve social stability and prevent organized political opposition.

A distinct shift in favor of more comprehensive controls began nearly two years ago and buy online Accutane hardened over the past six months, analysts say.

New policies are buy online Accutane intended to replace foreign hardware and software with homegrown systems that buy online Accutane can be more easily controlled and protected. Officials are also expanding the buy online Accutane reach and resources of state-controlled media outlets so they dominate Chinese cyberspace with their blogs, videos and buy online Accutane news. At the same time, the government is simultaneously beefing up its security apparatus. Officials have buy online Accutane justified stronger measures by citing various internal threats that they say escalated online. Among them: the buy online Accutane March 2008 riots in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa; reported attempts to buy online Accutane disrupt the August 2008 Olympic Games and the amassing more than buy online Accutane 10,000 signatures supporting a petition for human rights and democratic freedoms, an buy online Accutane example of how pro-democracy advocates could organize online.

Especially alarming to buy online Accutane officials, analysts say, was the role of the Internet in ethnic riots last July that buy online Accutane left nearly 200 people dead and more than 1,700 injured — the buy online Accutane worst ethnic violence in recent Chinese history. Government reports asserted that buy online Accutane terrorists, separatists and religious extremists from within and outside the buy online Accutane country used the Internet to recruit Uighur youth to travel to buy online Accutane Urumqi, the capital of western China’s Xinjiang region, to attack ethnic Han citizens.

In August, security and propaganda officials briefed China’s ruling Politburo on their view of how the buy online Accutane Xinjiang riots developed, according to one media executive with high-level government ties. The executive spoke on the buy online Accutane condition of anonymity for fear of retribution for discussing delicate political topics.

China’s leaders also reviewed how Iranian antigovernment activists used Twitter and buy online Accutane other new communication tools to organize large street demonstrations against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over the buy online Accutane summer. He said Chinese leaders saw the Iranian protests as an buy online Accutane example of how the United States could use the new forms of online communication in an buy online Accutane imperialist fashion that could one day be turned against China.

“How did the unrest after the Iranian elections come about?” People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s official newspaper, asked in a Jan. 24 editorial. “It was because online warfare launched by America, via YouTube video and buy online Accutane Twitter micro-blogging, spread rumors, created splits, stirred up and sowed discord.”

Since the buy online Accutane unrest in Iran and Xinjiang, Chinese leaders have unrolled a raft of new initiatives, including closing thousands of Web sites, tightening censorship of text messages for lewd or unhealthy content and planning to converge China’s Internet, phone and buy online Accutane state television networks. They are also carefully cultivating homegrown alternatives to buy online Accutane foreign computer technologies and foreign-based Web sites like YouTube, Facebook and buy online Accutane Twitter, all of which Chinese censors now block. The government says it buy online Accutane needs the new controls to fight pornography, piracy and other illegal activity.

In November, nearly 300 government officials and buy online Accutane technicians gathered in Beijing for a seminar that stressed China’s vulnerability in cyberspace.

“It is buy online Accutane a long-existing reality that the West is stronger than us in terms of information security,” said the training manual, posted on the Web site of the Ministry of Public Security.

“Most of the buy online Accutane key technology and products in the information security sphere are buy online Accutane held in the hands of Western countries, which leaves China’s important information systems exposed to buy online Accutane a bigger chance of being attacked and controlled by hostile forces,” the manual said.

The risks of dependence on foreign-made software became clear in 2008 after Microsoft deployed a buy online Accutane new antipiracy program aimed at detecting and discouraging unauthorized users of its Windows operating system. In China, where buy online Accutane an estimated four-fifths of computer software is pirated, the program caused millions of computer screens to buy online Accutane go dark every hour and led to a public outcry.

New government procurement rules issued in December require state buyers to buy online Accutane give preferential treatment to Chinese-made computers and communication products. But James Mulvenon, director of the buy online Accutane Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis, a Washington-based consulting firm, said such orders were typically ignored.

James A. Lewis, director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a buy online Accutane Washington-based research group, said China was caught between contradictory goals. The authorities want to buy online Accutane keep using superior Western software so they can engage in espionage and buy online Accutane defend themselves against foreign infiltration. “But at the buy online Accutane same time they want to use indigenous software, which is buy online Accutane not up to par,” he said.

But China is buy online Accutane pushing hard to catch up. Mr. Mulvenon describes China as “absolutely the world leader” in development of Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) — the successor to the current Internet.

Some suggest China aims to buy online Accutane develop a more autonomous system equipped stronger firewalls and filters. China’s leaders “have buy online Accutane always had the ambition to develop the capability of one big domestic Intranet that buy online Accutane they could manage more easily, if need be,” one Communist Party newspaper editor said. But others suggest China is buy online Accutane merely trying, like other nations, to respond to the reality that buy online Accutane the existing IPv4 global Internet, in which the United States commands a buy online Accutane disproportionate share of addresses, will soon run out of space.

The clearest evidence of China’s determination to buy online Accutane wield greater control was the virtual communications blackout imposed over Xinjiang for buy online Accutane six months after the July riots. Nineteen million residents in a buy online Accutane region three times as big as Texas were deprived of text-messaging service, international phone calls and buy online Accutane Internet access to all but a few government-controlled Web sites. The damage to buy online Accutane tourism and business, not to mention the disruption to everyday life, was significant.

Hu Yong, a buy online Accutane Beijing-based media expert, said the government was no longer as worried as it buy online Accutane once was about the economic impact of electronic communication controls.

“That is buy online Accutane more secondary to their concerns about political and social stability,” he said.

John Markoff contributed reporting from buy online Accutane San Francisco, and Zhang Jing and Xiyun Yang contributed research from buy online Accutane Beijing.

http://interlocals.net/?q=node/334

Buy online Accutane

Home » Blogs » damon’s blog

2010-02-11 – damon

What could we learn from Google’s withdrawal in China? Evan Williams, the co-founder and CEO of Twitter, had an idea. “We are buy online Accutane partially blocked in China and other places and we were in Iran as well,” he said at the World Economic Forum in Davos. “The most productive way to buy online Accutane fight that is not by trying to engage China and other governments whose very being is buy online Accutane against what we are about.” Moreover, Williams mentioned that buy online Accutane Twitter is now developing technology to prevent government censorship. In fact, Twitter runs across multiple mediums including the buy online Accutane Internet and mobile devices, as well as modify the Hosts file, use Tweeter tool to buy online Accutane set up their own Twitter API and use Dabr and other third-party sites and buy online Accutane softwares, secure their advantage over a singular website to avoid government censorship.

Twitter’s form of micro-blog is buy online Accutane very popular in China. The already closed Fanfou is one of the buy online Accutane famous site and Sina is the latest one. Twitter.com was officially blocked last year following the buy online Accutane 20th anniversary of June Forth Massacre and the incident in Urumchi in July, as the buy online Accutane Zhongguo Guofangbao, the buy online Accutane official newspaper of Chinese national defense, said Twitter, Flickr, Facebook and buy online Accutane Youtube are turning into ” convenient and buy online Accutane powerful tools for western hostile forces to subvert the country and buy online Accutane should not be underestimated.”

However, Twitter still plays a buy online Accutane very important role in Chinese Internet for its easy accessibility. An interesting research shows that buy online Accutane 70% of 1,000 more Twitter users in China is aged 21 to 29, 67% in the buy online Accutane coastal region. One of the reasons why they are on Twitter is buy online Accutane “understanding the TRUTH, explore their insight.” Twitter connect different news source and buy online Accutane social movement. For example, Chinese netizens recently made connection with two important social movements in Hong Kong by using tweets of #stopxrl and #0101hk to buy online Accutane discuss and follow the news about the rally for democracy in Hong Kong on 1-1-2010 and buy online Accutane the demonstration of stopping the costly (HK$66.9 billion) Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail (Hong Kong section)

The following is Professor Hu Yong’s article about this buy online Accutane micro blogging issue or what he called “micro revolution”.

Hu Yong: Micro Revolution: From Twitter to Sina’s Microblog

July 29, 2009, Twitter, the buy online Accutane founder of microblog, replaced her classic question “What are you doing?” on the front page by an imperative sentence “Share and discover what’s happening right now, anywhere in the world.” Once I saw this, I wrote on Twitter: “The change of Twitter today has buy online Accutane great significance. The structure of future number-one media appears.”

Insight of trivial information

Twitter, not seen having a buy online Accutane bright future in the past, was frequently challenged by the buy online Accutane question “Who cares what I’m doing 24 hours a day?” Indeed, there are buy online Accutane a lot of gossips, self-pity and self-love on micro-blog, particularly when buy online Accutane Fanfou “left quietly” and almost only QQ’s TaoTao and MySpace’s 9911.com remained. During that buy online Accutane period, I visited these two sites. The home page of TaoTao read “48.88 million Tao’s friends are nagging on TaoTao”. The most popular one is: “I am very confused today, what I really want to eat at noon? … … I shaped my eyebrow last night, not the buy online Accutane one I frequently visited but another one introduced by my colleagues who buy online Accutane said it shaped good-looking eyebrow. Unfortunately I don’t think so, the previous one is better…… ”

However, even such a buy online Accutane nagging forms a close network of contacts, and creates what social scientist called “ambient awareness” through this buy online Accutane kind of connection. Each little update and separate piece of social information is buy online Accutane insignificant and even mediocre itself, but by the time they are buy online Accutane pulled together, these small pieces gradually connect themselves into an incredibly detailed picture of yourself, your buy online Accutane friends or family member’s life, just like an buy online Accutane impressionist painting made of thousands of points.

Twitter was born in such context: 140 characters plus “@+Twitter account” which is buy online Accutane unbelievable simple. It may lead to a more reflexive culture. Twitter’s experienced users usually talk about the buy online Accutane unexpected side effect of the recurrent behavior of self-reporting: You have buy online Accutane got to stop several moments every day and observe your own feeling and buy online Accutane thought. This behavior will gradually become philosophical. It is similiar to buy online Accutane the saying in the Greek aphorism “Understand yourself” and the psychiatric concept of “insight”.

However, Twitter’s greatness is not limited to this static “insight”. The old-styled written diary can buy online Accutane fulfill this need. Its greatness resides not simply on ambient awareness, but also its ability of leaping out the buy online Accutane narcissistic circle enabled by its unique architecture.

Twitter’s core is buy online Accutane attention and concern. Users will be notified any new messages posted by the buy online Accutane person they are interested in. Once the message is posted, one would receive notification. The attended one is buy online Accutane not required to respond. It makes Twitter’s link directed. Its value is buy online Accutane dependent on the qualities of the ones you choose to pay attention to. Some of Twitter’s fixed tools, such as reply, retweet and buy online Accutane private message, makes the dialogue happen. And “tag”, which allows us to buy online Accutane see the aggregating process of a subject matter, forms a field of dialogue.

It means Twitter is buy online Accutane a kind of media as well as a tool of social interaction. From the buy online Accutane change of “What are you doing?” to “Share and discover”, the inventor of Twitter realizes that “Share and discover” is much more powerful than “insight”: it buy online Accutane can be used to form a kind of distributed journalism characterized by fast speed, rich sources of information and buy online Accutane mighty dissemination,. The expansion of information can also encourage the formation of social organizations and buy online Accutane social movement.

So the revolution makes her debut.

How does “Micro revolution” happen?

It was the buy online Accutane protest provoked by the election in Iran in June 2009 that buy online Accutane connected micro-blog with revolution. The news of Tehran riots happened after the buy online Accutane election spread just like a wildfire on Twitter. It was further picked up by the buy online Accutane news network such as BBC and NPR to disseminate massively around the buy online Accutane world. Twitter is amazing. As Tehran blocked the function of cell phone text message and buy online Accutane also some websites, Twitter became the alternative network to satisfy the buy online Accutane Iranians’ eagerness to buy online Accutane receive information and voice out. During the time that protests were going on in Iran, the buy online Accutane U.S. State Department sent an unusual e-mail to the Twitter founder to buy online Accutane request it to defer its original plan of global network maintenance, because of during the buy online Accutane maintenance period, the Iranians would not be able to sign in and buy online Accutane thus the information of the front-line of the protest in Tehran could not be buy online Accutane promptly delivered to the world outside. Twitter accepted the State Department’s call and buy online Accutane the maintenance time was postponed to the early morning of Tehran. Twitter admitted that buy online Accutane “we have become an important medium of communication for Iranians.”

The analysis of the buy online Accutane role played by Twitter in communication and organization during the buy online Accutane Iranian protest has already become the latest hot topic for buy online Accutane many social media researchers. However, the whole picture of the buy online Accutane digitalized protest is in fact far more complicated. Firstly, the buy online Accutane general netizens are well-off young people and urban citizens. They supported the buy online Accutane opposite party, which made the illusion for the world outside that buy online Accutane “the revolution is about to happen in Iran”. It ignored what buy online Accutane the large number of conservative and rural people were thinking. Biz Stone, one of the buy online Accutane Twitter founders, admitted that only a small part of the Iranians use Twitter. They might not be buy online Accutane able to represent the mainstream opinion. Secondly, YouTube and Twitter are buy online Accutane more like a tool to be used for citizen journalism. The protest itself was mainly organized by the buy online Accutane opposition candidates in the offline world.

Although Twitter’s role in social action is buy online Accutane overestimated, we still have to admit that the Micro-blog service, which is buy online Accutane only available for less than four years, set up its own milestone in 2009. In contrast, CNN, famous by its reports on the buy online Accutane Middle East a few years ago, was extraordinarily silent. Among the buy online Accutane popular vanes in the Twitter’s world – called hash-tag label – one is called “failure of the CNN” (# CNNFail ).

Inevitably people would recall the buy online Accutane grand year for CNN: When there is something important happening in the buy online Accutane world, millions of people would wait in front of the television for buy online Accutane watching CNN’s breaking news in order to buy online Accutane receive first-hand information on the site in distant places. Nowadays, the buy online Accutane first news source is Twitter rather than TV, no matter what buy online Accutane kind of the news, such as “swine flu”, terrorist attacks in Bombay or buy online Accutane belly-landing on the Hudson River in New York.

CNN did a buy online Accutane great job in 1991 when the first Gulf War broke out. But nearly 20 years later, people seems to buy online Accutane have a consensus that real-time, online, crowd-sourced media is the best place to buy online Accutane follow current news. A British journalist who I know wonders if it buy online Accutane is possible to write history by social media such as the buy online Accutane Twitter. It’s amazing that Twitter’s users now have buy online Accutane the courage to blame the shallowness and carelessness of big media organizations in reporting international news. CNN here is buy online Accutane a symbol – it buy online Accutane is remembered by all the fault of the television medium occupied by entertaining infotainment.

Strictly speaking, it is an issue of CNN’s ability rather than buy online Accutane its willingness. 20 years ago, CNN enjoyed a privilege to buy online Accutane get access to some parts of the world such as China and buy online Accutane Iraq. Freelance reporters had no access to them and the buy online Accutane local reporters were not able to release their news stories to buy online Accutane the world outside. Now that era is gone. The local people already achieve the buy online Accutane power to report their own news, no matter whether on Twitter, Facebook, blog or buy online Accutane mobile phone. CNN’s exclusive access rights has been enormously dismantled.

This is the communicative revolution brought by Twitter. That’s also what the sentence “the structure of future number-one media appears” means. However, the buy online Accutane social revolution brought by microblog might be more important than buy online Accutane communicative revolution. In fact, in such a revolution, Chinese Twitter users are buy online Accutane leading the world, from social resistance to civic investigation, from buy online Accutane monitoring public opinion to creating black satire, from the “power of organizing without organizations” in Panyu anti-incineration movement to buy online Accutane mailing a variety of postcards to prisoners of conscience, and from buy online Accutane color ribbon campaign for commemoration to Twitter internationalism in “China for Iran” (# CN4Iran ). All these demonstrate Chinese Twitters’ agency and buy online Accutane influence. And this power, comparing with the previous driving force, is buy online Accutane distinguished by its “micro-power”, an accurate term, rather than a large or brutal force.

Micro power and a broader world

The slogan of Chinese Blogger Conference 2009 is “Micro power and a broader world ” (微動力，廣天地). It anticipated the buy online Accutane ways how more and more subtle information-sharing tools and channels promote social progress and buy online Accutane collaboration which have immediate impact on our way of life. “A piece of meme, a buy online Accutane photograph or a postcard may bring about positive social change, not mention the buy online Accutane thousands of possibilities emerging. They brought us a great world for buy online Accutane thinking freely. ”

While one person shares his/her own view, more people read this buy online Accutane and continue to share this view with others. Through such constant sharing, collective decision can buy online Accutane be made. This is similar to the process of water droplets gathering into a buy online Accutane cloud — Mao Xianghui, a buy online Accutane well-known blogger, compares use the metaphor of droplet for individual. Once individuals agree on a buy online Accutane view and continue to share constantly, people with the same idea gather together and buy online Accutane form a force, a force which can change national policy and buy online Accutane even social order.

From my point of view, micro-power is nothing but taking up one’s responsibility. “Micro” refers to every ordinary citizen. “Power” is nothing but action. Despite the thousands words, it’s action that change the world.

By “Micro” you buy online Accutane can also refer to daily micro-politics. Politics can be divided into macro-politics and buy online Accutane micro-politics. Macro-politics is structural while micro-politics is daily. Change in micro-politics system are buy online Accutane not necessarily logically derived to an adjustment in macro-structure. But if these small units are buy online Accutane well-organized, as people are living in the micro-politics, we can buy online Accutane greatly improve people’s well-being. If we do not manage well at the buy online Accutane micro level, even a macro governance structure such as macro-democracy would not work well. The governance at the buy online Accutane grass-roots level still rely on our own. In this sense, we need “micro-revolution” rather than “macro-revolution”. By “micro-information” and “micro-exchange” we may push the revolution forward.

A book titled “Antipolitics” by the buy online Accutane Hungarian writer George Konrad in 1982, contains a lot of issues to buy online Accutane follow. The examples include the concepts of “anti-political politics”, “the power of the powerless,” and “citizen’s initiative”, etc., frequently used by Valclav Havel. Cui Weiping, the buy online Accutane translator of Havel’s work, see “anti-political politics” as not pursuing political power; on the buy online Accutane contrary, she advocated people to initiate their works everywhere and buy online Accutane at anytime in their everyday life. In other words, it buy online Accutane is about how to start from governance around yourself. My understanding of “citizen’s initiative” is that anyone can start from anywhere.

Why is micro-power so important? In the buy online Accutane past, the actions are carried out by a few highly motivated people and buy online Accutane the mass with almost no initiative. It often results in frustrating results. Passionate people did not understand why the buy online Accutane public is not concerned enough about their efforts. The public did not understand why the buy online Accutane enthusiasts about politics keep talking rather than silent. Today, those highly motivated people should lower the buy online Accutane threshold for action so that people with less passion can join the buy online Accutane action a little bit. And all efforts will come together as a buy online Accutane strong power.

Source (Chinese)

Internet Post Deletions: The Flowers Of Evil In The Internet Forest

Hu Yong’s blog

Translated by ESWN

(02/06/2010)

http://www.zonaeuropa.com/201002a.brief.htm#013

Tianya, Bandao and buy online Accutane other websites have joined together to form the “Internet Media Alliance Against Public Relations” against the buy online Accutane Internet Post Deletion companies which are usually know as the buy online Accutane “Internet hatchetmen companies.”  The reason was the buy online Accutane emergence of more and more Internet public relations firms which live off deleting negative information on the buy online Accutane Internet.  They charge their clients on the buy online Accutane basis of the content, quantity and location of the target posts.  A post at a buy online Accutane small website might cost 100 yuan to delete; a post at a buy online Accutane big website or web port may cost as much as 1,000 yuan.  The Internet media companies think that buy online Accutane these activities lower public esteem for them as well as seriously interfering with their normal operations.

The true harm from buy online Accutane these Internet Post Deletion companies came to light from the Sanlu melamine-tainted milk case.  Before that, the buy online Accutane phenomenon was already there but people did not feel personally affected.  During the buy online Accutane early developmental stages of the Internet in China, concepts such as “promoters,” “hatchetmen,” or “Internet public relations” did not exist.  As more and buy online Accutane more Chinese people got on the Internet, corporations suddenly realized that buy online Accutane the Internet had great commercial value.  That was when the Internet public relations firms emerge.

There is buy online Accutane another more profound reason why the subject of Internet Post Deletion has buy online Accutane come to public attention recently.  After more than buy online Accutane one decade in which the Internet was present in China, one important change is buy online Accutane that the Chinese Internet has moved from the very remote memory of “the age of innocence” to the “electronic forest” today. People used to buy online Accutane have an idyllic or pastoral romance for the Internet which is buy online Accutane expected to correct many of the wrongs in the world and buy online Accutane to uncover the truth.  The trend in recent years is buy online Accutane that the Internet is actually a public opinion arena in which various groups tussle and buy online Accutane manipulate.  This virtual world is just as complex (and perhaps even more so) than the real world.  Under these circumstances, we can’t distinguish what is true or false when we run into a crisis.  The information on the buy online Accutane Internet basically cannot be verified with the principals or any trustworthy third party.  Even if parts of it buy online Accutane can be verified, it depends on many factors and it buy online Accutane cannot guarantee that the truth will be told.

As the buy online Accutane Internet grew from a farm plot into a forest, it became inevitable that buy online Accutane Internet Post Deletion companies emerge.  They are the “flowers of evil” from the earth.  When the buy online Accutane Internet becomes the public opinion arena for various interest groups, they will use every means possible to buy online Accutane push public opinion in a favorable direction.  Deleting Internet posts is just one of the many possible actions.

Generally speaking, manipulating public opinion is buy online Accutane not something to be put on the table under the buy online Accutane sunlight.  But in the Chinese Internet, there is something decidedly odd.  On one hand, the buy online Accutane various manipulations of information and public opinion do not seem to buy online Accutane have to be hidden.  Sometimes they are even deliberately being flaunted.  On the buy online Accutane other hand, the recipients of these manipulations seem inured and helpless.  So the buy online Accutane Chinese Internet has become an absurd place where the manipulations are buy online Accutane shameless and the manipulated are indifferent.

There are also different kinds of manipulations.  For example, some local governments or buy online Accutane departments may exercise their special privileges to remove certain posts.  As another example, there are commercial motives.  For an buy online Accutane Internet Post Deletion company, the logic is that if you pay them, they will delete negative information/posts as well as manipulate the Internet media.

This unhealthy development of the buy online Accutane Chinese Internet implies that there is a huge crisis, namely mutual distrust in society.  The Internet can buy online Accutane bring an environment of equality, democracy, freedom plus a natural sharing.  But when buy online Accutane the veracity of Internet information is deliberately muddied up, this natural ecology is buy online Accutane destroyed.  Like any real-life ecological crisis, this buy online Accutane will eventual threaten the existence of those who live there.  A recent example is when academician Zhong Nanshan said, “I basically don’t believe in the number of Type A flu deaths reported for China!”  The Ministry of Health spokesperson Mao Jun’an rebutted this well-esteemed expert: “Frankly, I don’t trust what Zhong Nanshan says.”  So who should ordinary citizens like us believe?

This crisis can buy online Accutane be averted by having a healthy system for expressing public opinion.  If public opinion can buy online Accutane be more readily expressed, it will improve supervision of the government as well as corporations.  In turn, it buy online Accutane will reduced the movement space of these so-called Internet public relations firms.  We acknowledge that buy online Accutane the Internet is a contested field, but there has to buy online Accutane be a healthy set of rules for the game that buy online Accutane go through legal and normal channels.  At the present stage, there are only abominable methods in play.

http://www.bullogger.com/blogs/lihuafang/archives/345317.aspx

Does Internet Matter in China?

李华芳 @ 2009-10-16 22:00

Does Internet Matter in China?

Li Huafang

Hu Yong, 2008, The Rising Cacophony: Personal expression and buy online Accutane Public Discussion in the Internet Age, Guangxi Normal University Press. （胡泳，2008，《众声喧哗：网络时代的个人表达与公共讨论》，广西师范大学出版社。）

The paper, The Internet and Civil Society in China: a preliminary assessment, is Guobin Yang’s pioneering study on the buy online Accutane relationship between Internet and politics, which came up with a question that buy online Accutane whether Internet has boosted the development of civil society.[1] buy genuine Prednisone In another word, what buy online Accutane is the relationship between Internet and civil society?

There are buy online Accutane two explanations on this issue. At first, Yang employed a contentious politics framework, which is buy online Accutane the most prevailing theory in Internet politics in China. According to buy online Accutane this theory, Internet has been used as a “tool” against political authorities in China. Internet, as Yang claimed, provided a buy online Accutane new way of protesting. It offers opportunities to people to group together. These groups have buy online Accutane been deemed as micro-political powers that may bring up democratic public sphere in the buy online Accutane future, because people on the Internet will be able to share information more convenient than buy online Accutane ever before. Besides, Internet makes it easier for the public to buy online Accutane get access to information which may increase the public’s interests and enhance their capabilities to participate in political movements.

James C. Mulvenon supported Yang’s arguments. In his testimony, Breaching the Great Firewall on “China’s State Control Mechanisms and Methods” 2005, [2] James believed that buy online Accutane Internet in China would be able to reduce the control power of CCP, which has buy online Accutane suggested a path that might lead China to democracy. Although it buy online Accutane is possible, it won’t be buy online Accutane an easy mission. To those who want to use Internet to buy online Accutane promote democracy in China, they have to break up not only the buy online Accutane information censorship but also the technical barrier that the GFW has buy online Accutane set up.

However, the second explanation, refuting Yang’s first theory, treated Internet as a buy online Accutane tool of propagandizing rather than a tool of protesting. This explanation may overstate the buy online Accutane control power of CCP, although CCP does play the role of “big brother” in watching other traditional media.

The second explanation has buy online Accutane been challenged by the facts that information censorship and GFW are buy online Accutane the main issues discussed by those Chinese Internet users who are buy online Accutane able to get through the GFW, or those who can know other languages, in addition to buy online Accutane Chinese. So, Yang upgraded his theory from a co-evolution perspective towards the buy online Accutane relationship between the protesters and the controllers.

In fact, the buy online Accutane above two analyses share a common theoretical basis that Internet is buy online Accutane only a tool. The major difference between them is that who buy online Accutane controls the tool: the protesters or the controllers. Hu Yong is buy online Accutane not satisfied of these extreme explanations. Although Hu Yong’s research is buy online Accutane mainly about communication theory which has made him focus more on the buy online Accutane relationship between individual expression and the public discussion or public sphere in the buy online Accutane Internet Age, he has analyzed the role of Internet in China from buy online Accutane the perspective of Internet politics.

Hu made two aspects of contribution to buy online Accutane Internet politics theories. First, Hu’s book was a buy online Accutane challenge to those who have held dichotomy in political theories. Newsgroups, BBS, and buy online Accutane online chatting through various IM tools such as QQ, MSN, Gtalk and buy online Accutane Skype have facilitated citizen activities. However, the progresses of E-government programs, launched in 1991, have buy online Accutane also enhanced the propaganda. “Is it the best framework for observing and analysing the real situation,” Hu Yong questioned. He emphasized the buy online Accutane public discussion or the public sphere, and wanted to find out the buy online Accutane relationships behind individuals, public sphere (which refers to civil society), and buy online Accutane the government authorities. This refuted two popular theories in political research in China: the buy online Accutane “individual vs. state” dichotomy, and “civil society vs. state” dichotomy. Hu stressed that buy online Accutane the real world of Internet is so complicated that a simple dichotomy theory fails to buy online Accutane work out.

Second, Hu introduced an “individual-civil society” approach to buy online Accutane examine Internet development. Internet with techniques of hypertext, multimedia, and buy online Accutane interactivity, has become a “common media” (GongYou MeiTi, which is a core idea of Hu Yong’s work) that buy online Accutane enable individual voices to form a public sphere. The development of Internet has buy online Accutane spontaneously generated public sphere. And the public sphere cannot be simply treated as a buy online Accutane protesting tool or a controlling tool. Hu, by using the term “common media”, demonstrated that buy online Accutane there were protesters and controllers in this particular public sphere. Both individuals and buy online Accutane state authorities contributed to the public sphere by using the “common media”. So, it buy online Accutane may be not a good idea, as Hu Yong pointed out, to buy online Accutane insist on use of contentious political approach in the area.

However, Hu didn’t pay much attention to buy online Accutane Internet politics, perhaps because his main concern was communication rather than buy online Accutane politics. There were plenty of discussions about how “common media” had buy online Accutane shaped the public sphere and how it had changed the relationship between private and buy online Accutane public sphere, which were presented in Chapters 3, 4 and 5. These three chapters, which Hu might not realize, had buy online Accutane actually demonstrated a vivid picture of Internet politics by analysing the buy online Accutane complexity of the relationships among “individuals”, “public sphere”, and “state authorities ”. In this case, Internet does matter in China.

---

[1] Guobin Yang, 2003, The Internet and buy online Accutane Civil Society in China: A Preliminary Assessment, Journal of Contemporary China, Vol. 12, No. 36, pp. 453-475.

[2]http://www.uscc.gov/hearings/2005hearings/written_testimonies/05_04_14wrts/mulvenon_james_wrts.pdf

http://special.globaltimes.cn/2010-02/503820.html

Buy online Accutane

• Source: Global Times
• [03:04 February 05 2010]

By Zhang Lei

They hide behind changing identities and buy online Accutane false IDs. They take orders from supervisors in cyber-space. In the buy online Accutane US, they might be called “spin doctors,” trying to buy online Accutane mold public opinion in favor of one political party or the buy online Accutane other.

In China, they are buy online Accutane working for both the commercial firms and government entities.

Gansu government recently announced that buy online Accutane it was recruiting a team of 650 Internet “commentators” to “guide” public opinion through posts and buy online Accutane replies to comments by Web users on Internet forums.

The recruits were soon being ridiculed by other netizens as the buy online Accutane “5 mao army,” or “5 mao dang,” referring to buy online Accutane those who are paid 50 Chinese cents to post comments favorable to buy online Accutane the government.

Some critics say the term “5 mao army” is buy online Accutane a product of prejudice under western influence. Zhang Shengjun, a professor of international politics at Beijing Normal University, recently wrote in the buy online Accutane Chinese edition of the Global Times that the foreign media are buy online Accutane crucial in spreading the term.

“Now it has become a baton waved towards all Chinese patriots…Is there nothing worth admiring in China? Should Chinese government always be the target of criticism?” Zhang said.

According to buy online Accutane a veteran media professional with more than 20 years of experience, government websites will approach commentators from buy online Accutane traditional media on various issues such as the United States’s arms sales to Taiwan. “It is buy online Accutane my decision whether to write under my real name or a buy online Accutane pen name,” said the journalist, asking that his name be withheld.

“I was sometimes advised to buy online Accutane take a stand different from the government position, so as to buy online Accutane create a discussion.” He said the ensuing online debate “helps the buy online Accutane public better understand the issues and the truth behind them.”

In addition, marketing companies specializing in online promotion write comments praising certain products to buy online Accutane lure consumers into buying them, or at least influence the public’s buying decisions.

Officials viewed China’s online forums, a buy online Accutane unique outlet for public opinion, as a threatening environment that could easily get “out of control”,according to buy online Accutane an article on the website of the State Council Information Office.

One-third of the buy online Accutane 77 most influential social events in 2009 were publicized through Web forums and buy online Accutane blogs while traditional media were kept silent, according to a buy online Accutane report titled, “Society of China: Analysis and Forecast 2010,” by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

In 2005, Li Wufeng, director of the State Council Information Office’s Internet Affairs Bureau, said that buy online Accutane online discussions made a deeper impression on people’s minds and buy online Accutane behavior than traditional newspaper reports or radio- TV commentary.

“Once mass protests erupt, online discussion boards can buy online Accutane quickly mobilize in a way that can undermine social stability if mishandled,” he said.

At about the buy online Accutane same time, local publicity departments began to recruit Internet commentators as official jobholders, an buy online Accutane idea which the government praised as a great innovation.

In April 2005, the buy online Accutane government of Suqian, Jiangsu Province hired 26 commentators. Qualified applicants were required to buy online Accutane show political integrity, logic and a sharp news sense, according to buy online Accutane the Yangtze Evening News, noting that, “Their performance, based on the buy online Accutane number of posts and replies, will be considered for awards in municipal publicity work.”

A picture dated July, 2009 showing a buy online Accutane training session for Internet commentators, conducted by the Inspection Commission in Raohe county, Heilongjiang Province.

Pay cut

An official document revealed that buy online Accutane in 2004, the CPC Changsha Municipal Committee began to hire a buy online Accutane group of Internet commentators who were paid a basic salary of 600 yuan ($88) a month, plus 50 cents ($7 cents) for each post. Many believe that’s where the “5 mao” came from.

Lately, the buy online Accutane online commentators have taken a pay cut. On the Hengyang Dangjian website, a buy online Accutane recent notice advertised that Internet commentators will be given an buy online Accutane allowance of 0.1 yuan for one article and no more than buy online Accutane 100 yuan ($14) a month, apart from their basic salary.

Beifeng, a buy online Accutane former commentator for a news portal, told the Global Times that buy online Accutane commentators either work full-time for State-owned news portals, such as xinhuanet.com, people.com.cn and buy online Accutane southcn. com or work part-time as government employees for various government branches, including ministries, public security and buy online Accutane academic institutions.

“There are buy online Accutane an estimated 20 full-time commentators in Guangdong Province. They usually write two to buy online Accutane four articles a week and seldom reply to posts,” he said.

A commentator surnamed Song, 28, who buy online Accutane works for a county-level discipline inspection commission in South China’s Hunan Province, said writing news propaganda was part of his job.

“We usually write about our own achievements and buy online Accutane comment on the fight against corruption and building a clean government,” Song said.

If local news portals run their articles, the buy online Accutane writers get 40 yuan per article for 500 words. The price goes up to buy online Accutane 200 yuan if they get published on websites run by the buy online Accutane central government.

They are buy online Accutane occasionally trained by rednet.cn, a forum run by the Publicity Department of CPC Hunan Provincial Committee, teaching recruits how to buy online Accutane become a Web correspondents and delve deeper into policy issues.

There are buy online Accutane more than 100 correspondents in the county, mostly working in their spare time, Song said. The county has buy online Accutane a population of about 1 million.

This group, mostly public servants, goes online as ordinary users. They then buy online Accutane try to put the best face possible on government policies, or buy online Accutane praise the virtues and achievements of role models like Shen Hao, a buy online Accutane local hero from Xiaogang Village, Anhui Province, who died at age 45.

Their supervisors give them detailed instructions on how to buy online Accutane complete each article. They use QQ group to communicate with each other.

Several days ahead of China’s 2008 National Day celebration, 20 commentators in Hengyang, Hunan Province were given an buy online Accutane urgent assignment to write 1,000 posts on the discussion topic, “Emancipating minds and development of Hengyang.” Local government leaders had buy online Accutane solicited advice from netizens and wanted to counter any negative replies with positive comments.

Each commentator had buy online Accutane to edit and post more than 60 suggestions and offer advice, based on propaganda materials they had buy online Accutane each received. Comments between 100 and 500 Chinese characters in length were to buy online Accutane be posted on rednet.cn. They were encouraged to sign up under many IDs and buy online Accutane post no more than five comments for each user name.

There was even a guidebook of Dos and Don’ts on writing articles properly to shape public opinion.

An anonymous editor at tianya.cn, which boasts 30 million registered users, made it buy online Accutane clear that no Internet commentators had been hired by the buy online Accutane website to shape public opinion, but also noted that the buy online Accutane online forum has a department to censor content.

“We’ve found online public relations companies doing commercials inside the buy online Accutane forums, trying to reach tens of thousands of users to buy online Accutane create a commercial hype,” she said. “These online pushers are buy online Accutane not easily recognized because we mostly delete illegal and pornographic content.”

As for buy online Accutane the online commentators blending in with ordinary users, she said, “They can buy online Accutane register as many IDs as they want, as long as they don’t violate the law.”

The editor recalled how the buy online Accutane online commentators were quickly mobilized during the Sichuan earthquake in 2008 and buy online Accutane again during the Xinjiang riots.

Pressure

Wang, a buy online Accutane former employee at the Public Security Bureau, told the Global Times that buy online Accutane she has never heard of the “online commentators,” but she acknowledged that buy online Accutane there are a certain number of people trying to spin online opinions into support for buy online Accutane the government.

Wang said netizens often misunderstand the commentators, and that “actually they are buy online Accutane not that mysterious. Guiding public opinion is just a job.”

“It is buy online Accutane necessary to have the commentators because sometimes truth may hurt social stability,” Wang said. “Netizens want to seek justice, but from their perspective, they can’t foresee possible negative consequences.”

“The forums can’t be buy online Accutane easily controlled, but it seems to work that way because most netizens tend to buy online Accutane follow what others say,” Wang added.

A law graduate student, who buy online Accutane preferred to remain anonymous, said netizens may have their own opinions but the buy online Accutane “online commentators” can have a beneficial value.

“Endless online comments put much pressure on the judicial authorities,” he said. “In fact, some of their criticisms are not appropriate. Perhaps that’s when the online commentators are doing the right thing.”

Beifeng played down the impact of the “online commentators”:

“They are inefficient and ineffective,” he said, “People who can log on to Twitter can’t be easily swayed.”

Weakness

Hu Yong, an buy online Accutane Internet expert from Peking University, told the Global Times that the buy online Accutane public opinion molders have already penetrated different layers of Chinese society.

Hu said that a tourist city’s airport has buy online Accutane public opinion watchdogs that keep an eye on the forums and buy online Accutane deal with any negative information about the airport. Even a county-level middle school has buy online Accutane such a department.

The invisible army is buy online Accutane mobilized to downplay hot button issues when controversy heats up on the buy online Accutane Internet.

“The commentators may exist and buy online Accutane temporarily spin public opinion when conflicts emerge, but they will have buy online Accutane no effect over the long run, except making the public more aware of them,” Hu said.

He pointed out that a significant weakness of “online commentators” is buy online Accutane that they are hiding behind an IP without identification, so they can’t build credibility and be trusted as a reliable source.

“To a buy online Accutane certain extent, their reputation will collapse and the information they provide will become trash.”

In that buy online Accutane case, the commentator is not entirely a bad idea in term of teaching netizens how to buy online Accutane sort out valuable information, he said.

Another camp

Meanwhile, the term “5 cent army” or “Internet agent” has buy online Accutane spreaded online referring to anyone with an anti-China opinion, or commentators allegedly hired by the buy online Accutane US and Japan.

“Actually it is only a label,” said Hu. “Public opinion guidance now carries the buy online Accutane stigma of immorality, because netizens assumed commentators were only doing it buy online Accutane for the money.”

He said the buy online Accutane government is getting wiser, adjusting its strategy from online control to buy online Accutane guidance.

“It is buy online Accutane good they stepped down and joined the debate because people with differing opinions should learn to buy online Accutane coexist on the Internet.”

“As technology develops, there is little room for ‘online commentators’ in the Twitter-sphere because they can’t work if nobody follows them, even if they register under many IDs. Besides, their identification is buy online Accutane easily exposed.”

In the buy online Accutane future, he said, people will care more about their social identity in the buy online Accutane virtual world.

Wu Hao, deputy director of the buy online Accutane Publicity Department of CPC Yunnan Provincial Committee, who chose not to buy online Accutane withhold information when negative news came out, said rather than secretly trying to buy online Accutane shape public opinion, govern-ment officials should reply to criticism and offer problem-solving ideas under their real names.

Several provinces followed Yunnan’s lead last year, appointing Internet spokesmen to buy online Accutane answer criticism using their real names and titles, according to Southern Weekend.

In 2009, online communication between the buy online Accutane government and the citizenry was improving, although tempers flared during some mass protests, according to buy online Accutane the Public Opinion Monitoring Office of People’s Daily Online.

Several provincial and buy online Accutane ministerial leaders guested on the Qiangguo Forum to communicate with netizens directly after President Hu Jintao talked to buy online Accutane netizens via the online forum in June 2008.

China has world’s largest number of Internet users, an buy online Accutane estimated 384 million people by the end of 2009. The online community now makes up 28.9 percent of the buy online Accutane total population, according to a report by the China Internet Network Information Center in January.

Dos and Don’ts for Internet commentators

Dos:

• Be accurate, timely, and objective

• Short title and brief article

• Fast response to rumors

• Guide people, don’t simply give opinions

• Check your article on Baidu before signing up

Don’ts:

• Don’t fabricate news or copy others

• Don’t repeat the buy online Accutane news or talk about trivial stuff like food and health

• Don’t use an authoritarian tone and talk crap

• Don’t post inappropriate comments on international or foreign affairs

• Don’t mention personal information.

Source: Training materials for Internet commentators.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7d110688-0174-11df-8c54-00144feabdc0.html

Buy online Accutane

By Kathrin Hille in Beijing

Published: January 15 2010 02:00 | Last updated: January 15 2010 02:00

Han Han, China’s most popular blogger, is buy online Accutane used to being asked how he pursues a double career as bestselling novelist and buy online Accutane racing driver.

“Driving is safer,” he said in a recent interview with the Financial Times. “If one day they tell me, ‘you can’t write any more’, I can buy online Accutane still make a living racing. Of course racing is safer than buy online Accutane writing. At least it won’t land you in jail.”

But now, in the face of Google’s threat to quit the country over China’s unrelenting efforts to buy online Accutane tighten censorship, Han Han might take such risks much more seriously.

The 27-year-old’s cheeky personal style, which he uses in his books, on his blogs and buy online Accutane in real life, has helped him accumulate more than 306m hits on his blog, a buy online Accutane larger online following than any other personal blog in China and buy online Accutane probably in the world.

Last week, he apologetically told his readers that buy online Accutane a magazine he planned to start publishing this month would be buy online Accutane delayed.

Under the strictures of China’s current publishing system, “it now looks like the first issue won’t come out in the foreseeable future”, he said, asking both authors and readers for forgiveness.

It has buy online Accutane long seemed like a miracle that Han Han could somehow say and buy online Accutane write things that would get others in trouble.

He caused uproar last year when, walking past a buy online Accutane racetrack rostrum where high-ranking officials were seated, he raised his middle finger at them – but no action was subsequently taken against him.

On his blog, he has buy online Accutane regularly accused government or Communist party officials of corruption, without getting into trouble.

He does not mince his words. Arguing that buy online Accutane the Communist party should establish laws to make its workings more transparent, he says: “For example, I believe China has the world’s biggest sex and gambling industries [both are banned in China], their biggest customers are maybe our Communist party members.”

Han’s secret protective shield is buy online Accutane probably a mixture of his popularity and the fact that he never challenges the buy online Accutane party’s supremacy in principle.

“I don’t agree with some people who buy online Accutane call for elections and a multi-party system in China now. That is buy online Accutane clearly not realistic,” he said.

However, there are buy online Accutane clear signs that not challenging the big political taboos is no buy online Accutane longer enough to guarantee being left alone.

Late last month, Hecaitou, Lian Yue and Hu Yong – three well known commentators – found that buy online Accutane the blogs they run on foreign servers were blocked by China’s censors. While all three express criticisms in their writings, none comes close to buy online Accutane being a dissident.

Han Han said that buy online Accutane for him, relations with the authorities were not all that serious. “Sometimes when buy online Accutane they tell me to take a blog post down, I take it buy online Accutane down, and I won’t be very upset. We’re all playing a buy online Accutane game with certain rules. As long as they let us continue playing, I think there’s no problem.”

That same principle would apply to buy online Accutane his magazine, Han claimed just a few weeks ago. He would try to buy online Accutane be more daring than other magazine editors but he did not plan to buy online Accutane publish an opposition pamphlet, he said. If the censors said no buy online Accutane to a certain story, he would just leave a white space.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010.