http://www.economist.com/node/17361444?story_id=17361444

Blogging in China

Breaching the great firewall

Home-grown microblogs are succeeding where Twitter failed

Oct 28th 2010 | Beijing

CHINA’S military mouthpiece, the Liberation Army Daily, is not a fan of microblogging. On October 19th it said Twitter had caused chaos during Iran’s political turmoil last year, and gave warning that such instant information-sharing tools posed “hidden dangers” to national security. Having blocked access to Twitter, however, China is encouraging home-grown versions. Both the government and its critics have become avid users.

Bloody ethnic riots in the far-western region of Xinjiang in July last year sealed the fate of Twitter and its domestic clones. The government, observing their growing popularity, feared that troublemakers in Xinjiang could use them to foment unrest. Since then Twitter has been available in China only to those with the skills to penetrate the Chinese internet’s “great firewall”. But the authorities quickly gave approval to new China-based microblogging services, or weibo, which employ armies of censors. In February even the Communist Party’s own mouthpiece, the People’s Daily, opened one.

The party’s all-powerful Publicity Department tells operators to filter postings for sensitive words. Their detection means automatic deletion. But dissidents are undeterred. News on October 8th that an imprisoned activist, Liu Xiaobo, had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize spread quickly through domestic microblogs despite the authorities’ best efforts to block it. Users wrote homonyms for Mr Liu’s name, or abbreviations in Latin characters.

Since last year, weibo use has grown rapidly. Before it was closed last July, the most popular domestic provider, Fanfou, had acquired nearly a million subscribers in two years of operation. The new leading service, Sina Weibo, says it has gained more than 20m registered users since it was launched in August 2009. Last August China Youth News, a newspaper run by the ruling party’s Communist Youth League, reported that in a nationwide survey more than 45% of people under 40 said they were frequent weibo users. More than 94% said that weibo had changed their lives.

Hu Yong of Peking University estimates that more than 10m people are weibo regulars. In an article published abroad earlier this month, he claimed that the Chinese were world leaders in microblogging, using it for everything from “social resistance” to “mailing postcards to prisoners of conscience”. Mr Hu argued that this was promoting subtle social progress rather than lighting the fuse of a “Twivolution”, but he reckoned the phenomenon was nonetheless opening up “new possibilities for reshaping China’s authoritarian regime”.

Many of the government’s most prominent critics have accounts on the blocked Twitter service as well as on weibo. One of them, Wen Yunchao (who has more than 32,000 Twitter followers), says he prefers to use weibo if he wants information to be picked up by domestic media. Some of China’s more aggressive journalists are also keen users. In September several tweeted live on the plight of two women who were hiding in an airport lavatory in Jiangxi province. Officials were trying to prevent them flying to Beijing to issue complaints to the central authorities.

But the government clearly believes that weibo can be useful, too. Security officials can use it to monitor what dissidents are up to. This week a Twitter user in the south-western city of Chongqing was said to have been detained briefly after tweeting that she was preparing to raise a banner in support of Mr Liu, the Nobel prizewinner, during an anti-Japanese demonstration. Mid-ranking officials in Beijing are being trained at the city’s Communist Party school in the art of communicating with the public through weibo.

Rebecca MacKinnon, an internet analyst, says anyone wanting to organise something “truly subversive” would not use microblogs anyway, since the government might be able to trace them. And if weibo become more threatening to the party, they can be shut down. In July China’s microblogging services relabelled themselves as “beta” versions, a possible hint that this was all just an experiment.

Asia

http://www.joyceyland.com/2010/10/journalism-made-up-quotes-and-censoring.html

Joyceyland

A Hong Kong blog

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Made-up quotes and censoring the premier?

Arnulf Kolstad, a Norwegian professor, issued a statement saying that a Xinhua story about him was “pure fabrication,” according the newswire of the China Media Project.

Xinhua, China’s state news agency, had “quoted” Prof. Kolstad as saying that Liu Xiaobo’s Nobel Peace Prize was “a big mistake,” according to the CMP at the University of Hong Kong.

Kolstad says he never said anything of the sort. (The above link is in English. Here is the Chinese version).

Then again, an Anonymous reader below says that Kolstad did make such comments, in a story here. (My Norwegian isn’t quite up to snuff, but Google Translate seems to tell me so).

I’m glad Anonymous wrote in. (Note to readers: This post has been rewritten from a previous version).

The Chinese propaganda department twist and turn so many stories, and block so much information, that most people, like myself, have no faith in them. They’ve forever blocked news of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, even the peaceful Hong Kong memorials of it. The list of banned subjects is as long as my arm. So when we read yet another article saying that they’re done something awful, we believe it.

Maybe I was too quick to jump the gun to say that quotes were made up. Maybe they really searched Norway for the guy who would back up their claims about how horrible it is that they won the Nobel Peace Prize.

I’ll let you good readers decide.

Regardless, the domestic coverage of Liu Xiaobo, a moderate pro-democracy campaigner and writer (and now Nobel Laureate) is really skewed. Lots of international coverage has been blocked. There was little news at all till China came back spitting with venom about how the Nobel was just a horrible conspiracy against Beijing.

It seems important to Beijing that they seem to have Western friends who will jump out of nowhere and sound exactly like the Chinese Foreign Ministry. (When you have to resort to tactics like this, you’re basically waving the white flag that your argument is not good. My colleague summed up China’s recent PR debacle as: “Beijing Angry. Hulk Smash.”)

The full text in English is here. I left a comment on the China Daily site saying that the professor denied the story. It’s being “moderated”. Let’s see if it goes through.

The mentality is so weird. On one hand, China criticizes the foreign news media — endlessly. On the other hand, it desperately craves a thumbs up from the West, particularly from the news media. I remember reading how a Chinese source “translated” a New York Times article. They totally changed it so that it read like Chinese propaganda.

Why would it do that? If you’re going to do all the hard work of writing something, why not just take credit for it? It was because it was important that the message (seemingly) came from The New York Times. Someone just wanted the Western stamp of approval, never mind the accuracy.

Who do you believe — Xinhua or the Norwegian dude? Why would a professor suddenly come out against the Nobel Prizes and then immediately deny it?

In other Chinese media news via CMP, a Peking University professor and new media expert Hu Yong (胡泳) Tweets: “Many people in our country don’t realize that their premier can also be harmonized [or censored]. Censorship of Wen Jiabao’s remarks on political reform at the very least makes one thing clear: facing the Great Firewall we are all equal.”

He is referring to the fact that the Chinese prime minister has had bits and pieces of his speeches censored by the Chinese media, particularly when he speaks of political reform.

This story from The Telegraph in England reports that Wen’s comments have been blocked by his own country “at least four times in recent months.”

The CMP reports in later posts that some of Wen’s remarks finally filtered through some select media.

I’m glad I’m on this side of the Great Firewall. It be must an exhausting cat and mouse game to have to chase down what may or may not be the real news.
***
Note to Joyceyland readers: I’m sorry if you’re sick of reading Liu posts. I’m getting a little sick of writing them, frankly. I vow to stop, then China does yet another silly thing that warrants airing.
Obviously it doesn’t understand the PR concept that the more you fuss over a negative news item, the worse and more prolonged the coverage will be.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/xinhua/2010-10-13/content_1000948.html

Interview: Big mistake to award Nobel Peace Prize to noncontributor to peace: Norwegian professor

Xinhua
Updated: 2010-10-13 15:50:00

OSLO, October 13 (Xinhua) — It is a big mistake to grant this year’s Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo as the Chinese receiver made no contribution to peace or conflict reduction, a Norwegian professor said Tuesday.

“Liu Xiaobo has, as far as I know, never contributed in any conflict-reducing activity or take part in peace-related activities,” Professor Arnulf Kolstad of Norwegian University of Science and Technology told Xinhua.

“I therefore cannot see that the peace prize winner fulfills the most important criteria in Nobel’s testament. Therefore it is a mistake,” added the professor of social psychology and China expert.

His idea reflected criticism of the Nobel Committee’s decision, as Liu is a convicted criminal of agitation aimed at subverting the government who was sentenced to 11 years in jail in late 2009.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry on Tuesday blasted the awarding as showing “no respect for China’s judicial system,” saying that Beijing questions the “true intention” behind the selection.

The Nobel Committee “wants to promote Western values all over the world even if the way it is done is not very relevant and even contradictory to the purpose,” said Kolstad.

The professor explicitly rejected the Norwegian body’s argument that Liu’s struggle for human rights, especially the freedom of speech, and a Western parliamentary democratic system in China is a prerequisite to world peace.

Many countries that have long followed the Western political system, such as the United States, Britain and Norway, have been among the most aggressive military powers in the last 50 years, occupying and starting wars in others countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, he noted.

Ironically, Kolstad said, many in the West still believe that their system is the best in the world and has to be exported to all other countries, “in some countries by force and wars, and in other countries by supporting those who are believed to represent these values and ideas.”

“To state that parliamentary democracy and freedom of speech is a guarantee for peace and end of armed aggression is a mistake,” he said.

Commenting on the Nobel Committee’s claim that it is independent of political influence, the professor said: “There is definitely relationship to the official political system in Norway.” He noted that the committee leader is also a former Norwegian prime minister and president of the parliament.

China has made remarkable progress in human rights, such as plugging starvation, curbing crimes and promoting food safety, which are “important not only for a developing and still poor country like China, but for developed countries as well,” Kolstad said.

“In this way, the Western world can learn human rights from China,” he added.

Meanwhile, China carries a “relational” culture where people seek relationships and harmony and are less inclined to stay out as independent and autonomous human beings than those in Western societies, Kolstad said.

It is also simply unfair to label China as an undemocratic country, he stressed, explaining that China adopts “another kind of relationship between those in power and the people.”

“The parliamentary system with more parties is not the only way to give people influence on political decisions and the future of their country. We have to accept that other countries choose other political and democratic solutions, based on their culture and level of development,” he said.

“I do not know if it is more democratic to have a system where presidential candidates have to be extremely rich to run for presidency,” he added.

Lurking underneath the West’s uneasiness and faultfinding with China, Kolstad pointed out, is that many in the West do not like to see a big and in many way successful country like China having another political system, based on other cultural values than is accepted in the West.

“I look at China as a peaceful, not aggressive country compared with most developed countries in the world. China does not take part in wars, it tries to solve international problems with dialogue,” he said.

“I therefore think it is unfair to give a Peace Prize to the opposition and dissidents in China instead of giving it to the president, as in the U.S.”

http://news.creaders.net/headline/newsViewer.php?nid=447957&id=1015118&dcid=2

挪威人也看不过眼了 开腔恶批诺奖委员会

新华网    2010-10-14 08:37:16

挪威科技大学教授阿努尔夫·科尔斯塔10月12日接受新华社记者采访时，严厉批评挪威诺贝尔委员会把今年的和平奖授予刘晓波，说“这是大错特错”，“诺委会这么做居心不良”，其目的是想在中国推行西方价值观和政治制度。

科尔斯塔说：“把2010年诺贝尔和平奖授予刘晓波是大错特错。人民期望诺贝尔和平奖促进内部和平，特别是减少国与国之间的武装冲突。刘晓波，就我所知，从来没有在减少冲突方面做出过什么贡献，也没有参加过与和平有关的活动。我看不出这位和平奖得主符合诺贝尔遗嘱中最重要的标准。因此，这是一个错误。”

诺委会把和平奖授予刘晓波时所称的理由是“他在中国进行争取人权特别是言论自由的斗争”，以及“西方议会民主制度是世界和平的前提”。对此，科尔斯塔说：“这也是一个错误。如果我们看看全世界，美国和英国等具有悠久议会制民主的国家，过去50年来一直属于最具进攻性的军事强权之列，占领别国或在别国(如伊拉克和阿富汗)发动战争。”

关于诺委会为何作出这个决定，科尔斯塔说：“我认为，诺委会对中国所知甚少。诺委会也想独立于外部压力，表现出勇敢的一面。即使与实际相违，甚至与目的相悖，诺委会也要在全球推行西方价值。”

他说，诺委会选择刘晓波的主要理由是，他被认为支持西方在人权和政治制度方面的价值理念。“在西方，许多人认为这个制度是世界上最好的，必须输送到所有其他国家去。要么直接通过武力和战争(如伊拉克和阿富汗)，要么通过支持那些被认为代表这些价值和理念的人。我认为，诺委会想要中国成为一个更像西方世界的国家。诺贝尔奖就被用于此目的”。

关于诺委会自称它独立于挪威政府和议会的说法，科尔斯塔认为，诺委会形式上是独立的，但是在议会中有席位的所有挪威政党以及挪威首相和外交大臣都对诺委会的决定表示支持。诺委会主席亚格兰也是一位前首相和议长。因此，诺委会与挪威官方政治体系存在联系是确定无疑的。

他说，诺委会给中国贴上“不民主国家”的标签是不公平的。多党制不是使人民对政策制定和国家未来发挥影响力的唯一途径。每个国家都可以基于自己的文化和发展程度，选择自己的政治和民主解决方案。

科尔斯塔认为，西方许多人不想看到中国这样一个强国且在许多方面非常成功的国家拥有不同于西方的政治制度。他们想输出自己的制度和思维方式，“这将是一种攻击中国价值、文化和政治制度的过程，因此也是对在自己国家坚守中国文化价值的中国人的攻击”。

科尔斯塔最后说：“和平奖近年来从来没有授予代表和平以及为裁军而斗争的人们。我认为中国是一个爱好和平、没有侵略性的国家，它努力通过对话解决国际问题。因此，我认为把诺贝尔和平奖授予中国的异见人士是不公平的。”

http://www.chinese.rfi.fr/node/38093

2010年 10月 15日

挪威教授揭露新华网造谣

作者 法广

中国官媒周四报道称挪威科技大学教授科尔斯塔在接受新华社采访时，严厉谴责把今年度诺贝尔和平奖授予刘晓波。新华网并且说这位教授抨击“诺委会这么做居心不良”。然而，科尔斯塔教授得知新华社的报道后，立即发表声明说相关报道“纯粹是造谣”。

据博讯引述纽约新闻评论员的报道：中国官媒新华网周四发表文章，题为《挪威人也看不过眼了，开腔恶批诺奖委员会》。报道说，“挪威科技大学教授阿努尔夫•科尔斯塔10月12日接受新华社记者采访时，严厉批评挪威诺贝尔委员会把今年的和平奖授予刘晓波，说‘这是大错特错’，‘诺委会这么做居心不良’，其目的是想在中国推行西方价值观和政治制度。”等等。

然而，科尔斯塔教授得知新华网的报道后，立刻在挪威首都发表声明指出：这纯粹是造谣，是戈培尔的故伎重演。他说，有人企图假借挪威人的名义损害挪威诺贝尔奖的名声，其卑鄙目的永远不会得逞。科尔斯塔教授表示，完全赞成诺委会把今年的和平奖授予中国民运人士刘晓波，同时祝愿中国人民早日获得自由。

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/10/exclusive-biz-stone-on-twitter-and-activism/64772/

Exclusive: Biz Stone on Twitter and Activism

Oct 19 2010, 8:19 AM ET 34

Biz Stone – Biz Stone is a co-founder and Creative Director of Twitter Inc. and also helped to create and launch Xanga, Blogger, Odeo and Obvious. He has published two books about blogging.

The New Yorker recently published a thoughtfully written article by Malcolm Gladwell titled, “Small Change: Why The Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted.” Citing research done by Stanford sociologist Doug McAdam, Mr. Gladwell compares what he sees happening today among people connected by modern social media to the African-American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Real social change, Gladwell argues, is a phenomenon driven by something described as “strong ties” in the field of mathematical sociology.

People who lived through this time repeatedly referred to feeling a “fever” to participate. Gladwell says this fever is better described as “a military campaign,” adding that “Martin Luther King, Jr., was the unquestioned authority.” Gladwell tells us that, “the center of the movement was the black church,” and makes a strong argument that the status quo can only be truly challenged and changed by a hierarchical, militarily-like organization. Gladwell is wrong. Big change can come in small packages too.

On Christmas Day 2009, Liu Xiaobo, a fifty-four year old Chinese writer, was sentenced to eleven years imprisonment for co-authoring a manifesto of human rights calling for political reform in the People’s Republic of China. Two weeks ago, this prisoner was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his enduring, non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China. The Chinese government censored this news because discussion about it could lead to real impact and greater freedom in China.

Following the twentieth anniversary of Tiananmen square and ensuing riots in Xinjiang that summer, Twitter is blocked in China. Nevertheless, clever citizens have devised ways around this block and continue to use Twitter. Professor of Internet Studies at Peking University, Hu Yong recently noted that, “Twitter is the only place where people can talk freely about Liu’s Nobel prize.” Yong further explains that, “Twitter has become a powerful tool for Chinese citizens as they increasingly play a role in reporting local news.”

Twitter is a global information network made powerful by what the American sociologist Mark Granovetter from Stanford University first theorized as “The Strength of Weak Ties.” Granovetter’s paper was later popularized by the international bestselling book, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by the esteemed Malcolm Gladwell. In his book, Gladwell teaches us how Paul Revere and this “weak-tie” phenomenon contributed to the success of The American Revolution.

Paul Revere had a broad network, a fast horse, and a catchy phrase far less than one hundred and forty characters: “The British are coming!” In “Small Change,” Mr. Gladwell admits that social media activism is “a wonderful thing” empowering citizens with “marvelous efficiency.” The American Revolution and Civil Rights Movement were not tweeted, but to suggest that emerging tools like Twitter have no part to play in the future of meaningful change is absurd. Little things can make a big difference.

In a recent article titled, “The Revolt of China’s Twittering Classes,” Professor Yong suggests that Twitter “invites new possibilities for reshaping China’s authoritarian regime,” by chipping away with a process he calls “micro-politics.” According to Yong, “Recent years have seen an explosion of activities indicating that Twitter has become the coordinating platform for many campaigns asserting citizens’ rights.” Bit-by-bit, the open exchange of information provided by Twitter “can push forward real change.” Yes, Mr. Gladwell, we are a long way from the lunch counters of Greensboro.

On December 27, 2007, incumbent Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki won re-election. Due to alleged electoral manipulation, Kibaki’s swearing-in set off a wildfire of controversy which escalated into devastating ethnic violence — more than thirty unarmed citizens were murdered in a church on New Year’s Day.

A constitutional referendum was held in Kenya this summer in an effort to prevent future politically motivated violence. Polling stations opened early on the morning of August 4th, 2010. On this important morning however, something was amiss. Agents of the local legislator, traveling in a government vehicle, were harassing the long line of eager voters and urging them to say no to the new constitution. Because balloting had already started, this was an illegal activity. Thanks to a custom version of a social media program called Ushahidi (“Testimony” in Swahili) which gives ordinary people a voice via SMS, Twitter, or e-mail, a perceptive Kenyan was able to alert electoral officials with a simple text message.

The Kenyan constitutional referendum passed peacefully with more than six million votes for yes and less than three million votes for no. In a country known more to us in the West for its numerous wildlife reserves containing thousands of animal species, there are over fifteen million active mobile phone users and growing. The number of people who are engaging in social media activity over mobile phones is flourishing in The Republic of Kenya and it is giving rise to a newly empowered citizenry.

Twitter users played their roles in Moldovan revolts and the political unrest in Iran but Mr. Gladwell is keen to downplay their efforts — and the fact that former national-security adviser Mark Pfeifle called for Twitter to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize seems only to have ruffled his feathers. Mr. Gladwell ends his piece by highlighting a story about a lost mobile phone suggesting Twitter is only good for helping “Wall Streeters get phones back from teen-age girls,” and closes smugly with, “Viva la revolución.”

“Small Change” dismisses leaderless, self-organizing systems as viable agents of change. A flock of birds flying around an object in flight has no leader yet this beautiful, seemingly choreographed movement is the very embodiment of change. Rudimentary communication among individuals in real time allows many to move together as one–suddenly uniting everyone in a common goal. Lowering the barrier to activism doesn’t weaken humanity, it brings us together and it makes us stronger.

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/hu2/Chinese

China Stands Up

中国推特阶层的反叛

Hu Yong

2010-10-14

北京——

上周，由于长期以非暴力的方式在中国争取基本人权，刘晓波被授予2010年诺贝尔和平奖。如今中国政治正处于一个关键时期，这个奖项的颁发很可能会成为中国长期追求更多自由的一个跳板。

然而鲜有大陆媒体谈论刘晓波的诺贝尔和平奖。政府的宣传部通过严格的审查制度，阻止了主流媒体把这一消息传播给人民大众。事实上，中央电视台（CCTV）收视率很高的晚间7点全国新闻联播也在刘获奖当天对此事件只字未提。

在刘晓波被宣布为和平奖得主后，尽管新闻受到封锁，中国的博客界和微博却炸开了锅。例如在新浪的微博网站上，博客们使用照片、委婉语、英文或繁体字，来避免审查。

推特式微博在中国极为流行。继去年天安门镇压事件20周年以及同年夏天新疆暴乱后，Twitter.com在去年被正式封锁了。此后不久，中国最著名的仿推特网站Fanfou.com也被关闭了，这使得100多万的注册用户无处登陆。尽管人们在中国只能通过代理服务器进入推特网，但是推特仍然对中国的互联网生活发挥着重要的作用，因为它能连接不同的新闻来源和社会活动家。

事实上，推特是人们能自由谈论刘晓波诺贝尔奖的唯一地方。在推特输入“#Liuxiaobo”的话题后，每分钟相关的信息会跳出数百次。

更笼统地说，在中国公民越来越多地报道当地社区新闻的背景下，推特成为了他们手上一个强大的工具。但是微博带来的社会变革可能比通信革命更为重要。实际上，就推特的使用来说，中国的推特用户引领着世界。他们把推特用于一切目的，从社会抵抗到公民调查，从监测民意到创作黑色讽刺作品，包括在广东“自发组织的”反焚化运动、为政治犯寄送明信片等等。

2009年6月伊朗总统大选被舞弊获胜后，伊朗人民利用推特来交换信息，并告知外部世界伊朗人民在举行大规模抗议活动。打那以后，人们就纷纷讨论数字网络活动在诸如中国的威权国家中所扮演的角色。Web 2.0技术意味着中国民主转型会在将来发生“推特革命”式的变革吗？

中国的推特政治活动正挑战着一个被广泛接受的简单假设，那就是如果活动积极分子掌握了社会媒体，那么会迅速出现大规模动员和社会变革。恰恰相反，这些信息共享的工具和途径推动了更为微妙的社会进步。

这种微妙反映了宏观政治与微观政治之间的差异。宏观政治是结构性的，而微观政治是涉及日常生活的。微观政治体系的改变不一定会导致宏观结构的调整，尤其是在被高度控制的政治体系中，如中国的政治体系。但是如果微观政治的点滴变化能被有效地组织起来，那么它们可以大幅提高整个社会的福祉。“微信息”和“微交流”能推动真正的变化。

为什么微动力如此重要呢？在过去，只有少数十分积极的人参与政治行动中，人民大众基本上没有主动权。这些热情激昂的人并不明白为什么公众似乎对他们的努力无动于衷。今天，十分积极的人可以降低活动参与的门槛，这样热情稍低的人也能加入到他们奋斗的行列中去。

目前，中国的推特界有着3个突出的特征。第一，在中国领导层加强审查的背景下，推特变得高度政治化。其次，推特使意见领袖集中围绕在一个虚拟的桌面，吸引了许多“新公共知识分子”、“权利拥护者”以及公民权利运动的资深人员和流亡的异见分子。正是这种这种人员聚集，推特才会对中国网络世界以及传统媒体产生影响。

最后一点，推特在中国可以作为一种动员工具。近几年激增的活动表明，推特已变成了许多维护公民权利运动的协调平台。随着中国有着越来越多的仿推特网站（所有的主流门户网都提供微博服务），中国的社会运动在长期中得到了促进。

因此在中国，推特已变成一种推动抗争政治的主要工具。它能有效地连接演说与行动，带来广泛的运动，使权利活动家、公共知识分子以及各种各样的推特用户达成共识。实际上，自2009年下半年来出现的一系列抗议活动和事件表明，推特和现实的抗争性政治间存在密切联系，因此为重塑中国的威权政制提供了新的可能性。

(对翻译不准确的地方有修订)

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2010.

www.project-syndicate.org

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/hu2/English

China Stands Up

The Revolt of China’s Twittering Classes

Hu Yong

2010-10-14

BEIJING – Last week, Liu Xiaobo was awarded the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China. That award comes at a crucial moment in Chinese politics, as it may well become a stepping stone on China’s long march toward greater freedom.

Yet few voices in mainland Chinese media are discussing Liu’s Nobel Prize. The government’s propaganda department has ordered major media to keep the news from spreading to the general public by imposing strict censorship. In fact, on CCTV’s widely viewed 7 p.m. national newscast, not a word on Liu was mentioned on the day he received the prize.

Despite this news blackout, China’s blogosphere and microblogs exploded after Liu was announced as the winner. For example, on Sina’s microblog site, bloggers used pictures, euphemisms, and English or traditional Chinese characters to avoid censorship.

Twitter-style microblogging is extremely popular in China. Twitter.com was officially blocked last year, following the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown and the riots in Xinjiang that summer. Soon afterwards, its most famous Chinese clone, Fanfou.com, also was closed down, leaving one million registered users homeless. Nevertheless, although Twitter can be accessed in China only via proxy servers, it still plays a vital role in Chinese Internet life because of its ability to connect different news sources and social activists.

Indeed, Twitter is the only place where people can talk freely about Liu’s Nobel prize. A search of the hash tag “#Liuxiaobo” shows that relevant messages pop up hundreds of times per minute.

More generally, Twitter has become a powerful tool for Chinese citizens as they increasingly play a role in reporting local news in their communities. But the social revolution brought by microblogging might be even more important than the communication revolution. Indeed, here Chinese Twitter users lead the world, using it for everything from social resistance, civic investigation, and monitoring public opinion, to creating black satire, “organizing without organizations” in the Guangdong anti-incineration movement, and mailing postcards to prisoners of conscience.

Ever since Iranians used Twitter to swap information and inform the outside world about the mushrooming protests against the stolen presidential election of June 2009, there has been much discussion about the role of digital activism in authoritarian countries like China. Does Web 2.0 technology imply an analogous role for “Twivolution” in a Chinese democratic transition one day?

Twitter political activism in China challenges the simplistic yet widespread assumption that social media in the hands of activists can lead swiftly to mass mobilization and social change. Instead, these information-sharing tools and channels promote more subtle social progress.

That subtlety reflects the distinction between macro-politics and micro-politics. Macro-politics is structural, whereas micro-politics is daily. Changes in the micro-political system do not necessarily lead to an adjustment in the macro structure, particularly in hyper-controlled political systems like China’s. But if small units are well organized, they can greatly improve the well-being of society as a whole, bit by bit, by working at the micro level. “Micro-information” and “micro-exchange” can push forward real change.

Why is micro-power so important? In the past, only a few highly motivated people engaged in political activism; the masses took almost no initiative. Passionate people did not understand why the public seemed unconcerned about their efforts. Today, highly motivated people can lower the threshold for action so that people with less passion join their efforts.

Currently, the Chinese Twittersphere has three prominent features: First, as China’s rulers strengthen their censorship efforts, Twitter has become highly politicized. Moreover, Twitters brings opinion leaders together around one virtual table, attracting a lot of “new public intellectuals” and “rights advocates,” as well as veterans of civil rights movements and exiled dissidents. Its influence on Chinese cyberspace and traditional media is the result of this grouping.

Finally, Twitter can be used as a mobilizing tool in China. Recent years have seen an explosion of activities indicating that Twitter has become the coordinating platform for many campaigns asserting citizens’ rights. With the proliferation of Twitter clones in China (all the major portals now offer microblog services), social movements in China are getting a long-term boost.

So Twitter has become a major tool to promote contentious politics in China. It can effectively link discourse and action, generate widespread campaigns, and forge common ground among rights activists, public intellectuals, and all kinds of Twitter users. In fact, a series of protests and events held since the second half of 2009 suggests a close relationship between Twitter and contentious real-life politics, and thus invites new possibilities for reshaping China’s authoritarian regime.

Hu Yong is a media critic in Beijing.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2010.

http://interlocals.net/?q=node/364

Home » Blogs » florence’s blog

The Power and Powerlessness of a Press Card

2010-10-08 – florence

Hu Yong

(Editor note: This article is originally published in a Taiwanese Newspaper, Wangbao, in Chinese. The author, Hu Yong, is an Associate Professor from the School of Journalism and Communication, Peking University, one of China’s first research scholars in the field of network and new media.)

Mainland reporter from “the Economic Observer”, Qiu Ziming, was under order of arrest by the public security system due to his reporting on the inside story of some listed companies. Subsequently, reporter Ah Liang from Qianlong website was under Laiyang police investigation in Shandong province after publishing critical reports on a local private corporation. Leaving aside their act of conduct during the process of investigating the companies, the first trouble they had to encounter before the process was that their identity as reporters was being questioned.

The vice president of one newspaper wrote an article on his blog with a rather shocking title, “The ‘Wanted’ Qiu Ziming has no legal journalist status”. He searched for Qiu Ziming from the General Administration of Press and Publication enquiry system and got the result of “There is no such press registration”.

What is a Press identity then? So important and yet so hard to obtain?

A Press identity of life and death influence

China’s vocational qualification system was introduced in 2003, and the Press and Publication Administration issued the “Measures for the Administration of Press Cards” in January 2005. It was then amended in August 2009, which clearly stated that news reporting activities in mainland China are only for journalists holding a valid press card.

For people working in news organizations, the press card issue is not only about the right to legal protection during news reporting, it is sometimes matter of life and death. On 10th January, 2007, when China Trade News reporter Lan Chengzhang was interviewing in a Coal Mine in Datong, Shanxi Province, he was judged as a fake reporter by the mine owner who accused him of not having a press card issued by the General Administration of Press and Publication. Lan was then beaten to death. Surprisingly, the first thing the local government did after the event was not resolving the case or sending condolences to the deceased’s family, but rather to issue a notice of “Cracking down on fake reporters and false news”. It reads, “Whoever does not hold a valid press card certified by the Press and Publication Administration is a fake journalist. And reporting news by fake journalists is an illegal act.” The above is a formal notice from the local government, condemning all journalists without a press card as fake journalists and their news illegal. What a ridiculous wonder in the history of Chinese journalism!

Why is strange news not considered strange in China? One of the reasons is that fake journalists is a serious problem in China. Director of the Press and Publication Administration Liu Binjie even said once, “Whenever and wherever fake reporters or fake publications are found, they should be cracked down upon on the spot immediately.” If what he said is valid, then the Datong Crackdown was justified by the officials. The question is: is it justifiable to gang-beat or order arrest merely because a press card is missing?

The authority controlling all the news media in China has actually attributed to one of the reasons for the rise of fake reporters. All news media needs approval to register and accept party-led guidance. Press cards are issued by the state, reflecting the state’s strict measure to reporters’ eligibility. Thus press cards are scarce resources, adding a certain kind of privilege to the identity of journalists. The authoritative nature of the Chinese media has led to a common belief among the Chinese citizens that journalists have the ability to help solving problems. Moreover, many problems in China are hard to solve in reality, even they do appear to have a channel to be solved under official rhetoric. In desperate situation, people can only resort to the media for help so as to arouse attention from the wider society and higher-ranking officials, hoping that they can help solve the problems. Owing to this, many of the journalists with official press cards are seen to be saviors for the people. No wonder there are so many fake reporters taking advantage of the status.

Suppression of citizen journalists

However, with rapid development of the new media, the practice that reports or commentators should have qualifications becomes less adorned. For example, without a press card, can anyone release information to the web when he/she has witnessed an event? Under China’s special media environment, many people are not full-time reporters but netizens who have a camera and a blog. When traditional media is being silenced, the people become participants of events with significant impact. Until then, what is the use of a piece of paper press card? If China continues to strictly follow the previous system, citizen reporters will always remain illegal in status.

Again, in 2009, after the revision of the “Measures for the Administration of Press Cards,” one official who is in charge of newspapers and magazines from the Press and Publication Administration stressed again when meeting with journalists that, “commercial websites are not news organizations and are not approved the legal right to report and release news. Therefore they cannot interview or investigate in any news event. The so called ‘citizen reporters’ are mostly illegal and are not allowed to report news. Interviewees can refuse to be interviewed and can report them to the officials.” Well then, the local police in Laiyang, Shandong, have every reason to chase after Qianlong website reporter, Ah Liang.

After all, in the mainland, whether you are a journalist is not defined by yourself, nor can your institution prove you one, only the state can.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20101008/tc_afp/chinaitinternetmicrobloggingcensorship

With Twitter blocked, Chinese micro-blogging thrives

by Dan Martin – Fri Oct 8, 3:11 am ET

China’s 420-million web users have seized on micro-blogging as a new avenue for mass expression in a tightly-controlled information landscape.

The real impact of “weibo” could lie in its ability to knit together — through the rapid, mass sharing of links — the countless Chinese blogs, forums and other websites that are the dominant outlet for public expression.

BEIJING (AFP) – When a huge mudslide swamped a Chinese town in August, killing at least 1,500 people, word first reached the world thanks to a digital camera-wielding, 19-year-old micro-blogger who idolises Lady Gaga.

Wang Kai’s reports on a Chinese Twitter-like service from the northwestern town of Zhouqu made him an online celebrity and underlined the potential impact of the fast-growing new medium in the world’s largest online population.

Things looked grim last year when China’s censors added Twitter to their list of blocked foreign services amid government accusations that social media were used to fan deadly ethnic unrest in northwestern China in July 2009.

But several Chinese clones soon sprung up, offering users a platform for sending 140-character messages via provider websites or mobile phones — while exercising heavy self-censorship to keep authorities happy.

China’s 420-million web users have seized on micro-blogging as a new avenue for mass expression in a tightly-controlled information landscape.

From almost nothing last year, there are an estimated tens of millions of micro-blogging, or “weibo”, accounts in China. Active users will hit 65 million by year’s end, the Data Center for the Chinese Internet (DCCI) predicts.

“Weibo’s role is huge,” Wang Kai, now an English student at university, told AFP when asked to explain its appeal.

“It provides you with your own platform for sending out really meaningful microblogs and opinions. I hope it can be used to help people solve problems.”

Users say China’s half-dozen providers offer services that are superior to those of Twitter, such as embedding of videos and photos.

They add that more can be expressed in 140 of the Chinese language’s pictographic characters than in English.

But the real impact of “weibo” could lie in its ability to knit together — through the rapid, mass sharing of links — the countless Chinese blogs, forums and other websites that are the dominant outlet for public expression.

“The density of information they have created, their frequency of dissemination and the degree of connectivity they have enabled for web users far surpass any previous form of Internet use,” Hu Yong, an author of several books on the Chinese Internet, wrote in a recent opinion piece.

The DCCI predicts active user accounts will exceed 400 million within three years as China’s online population grows. Twitter said in early September it had 145 million users.

A recent poll found that about 90 percent of under-40s use a “weibo” service, engaging in lively discussions on entertainment, lifestyle, the job market or flogging a company’s products.

But several cases also have highlighted its potential for rattling the government, which aggressively censors web content it views as a political threat.

In July, an investigative reporter who exposed alleged graft by a listed company in eastern China found himself on a most-wanted list for slander.

Qiu Ziming of the respected Economic Observer financial weekly went on the run, drawing thousands of “followers” with defiant blog posts declaring his innocence and alleging a cover-up.

Police eventually quashed his arrest order after public pressure in an episode that triggered a debate about abuse of official power.

Rumours of a split between President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao were a hot recent topic after Wen made comments seen as urging political reform, and chatter on numerous graft cases and other scandals was widely credited with adding to online pressure that resulted in government action.

Micro-blogging services were briefly cut in July in what analysts said was a message from the government to users to toe the line, but authorities are beginning to use micro-blogging for their own ends as well.

A June government white paper on the Internet singled out micro-blogging as a useful communication tool and praised Internet users for “supervising” the government.

Local-level government agencies nationwide, such as Beijing’s police, have set up accounts in a bid for openness — or at least to guide public sentiment.

“The Chinese government learns very quickly and is very much at the forefront or ahead of the curve of what is on the Internet,” said Bill Bishop, co-founder of the news site MarketWatch.com, who now blogs about the Internet in China.

“They are working very hard to effectively channel and manage public opinion. Weibo offer unprecedented challenges and opportunities for the government PR folks to deal with issues in near-real time.”

Few experts however see microblogs as posing any imminent threat to the Communist government.

Beijing keeps firm control by restricting weibo services to top Chinese Internet firms well-versed at self-censorship, said Jeremy Goldkorn, editor of the China media website Danwei.org.

“(Micro-blogging) adds to the pressure but it’s not enough of a revolution to rewrite the rules of the game. The government can just hire more censors,” he said.

http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2010/10/07/netizens-react-premiers-interview-censored/

October 7, 2010, 12:39 AM HKT

Netizens React: Premier’s Interview Censored

An official news blackout in China surrounding Premier Wen Jiabao’s interview over the weekend with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria hasn’t kept it from becoming one of the hottest topics on the Chinese Internet. If anything, censorship has only made it hotter—possibly giving Wen additional political clout in the process.

“The longer the newspapers refuse to report it, the more need there is for us to discuss it vigorously,” one user on Sina Weibo, Sina.com’s popular Twitter-like micro-blogging service, wrote about the interview.

“Sunlight at last!” wrote another on the website of Phoenix TV, one of the few online sites that published a Chinese summary of the interview.

The exclusive interview, Wen’s first with a Western journalist since he spoke with Zakaria in 2008 on CNN, began spreading through the Chinese Internet almost as soon as it was posted online.

Already a popular figure among the masses at home, Wen has been making waves in and outside of China recently by openly discussing political reform, including on a visit to Shenzhen in August during which he predicted China’s economic reforms would eventually fail without reforms to the country’s political system (in Chinese).

Speaking through a translator to Zakaria, Wen was calm and measured throughout the interview, and clearly came prepared on the topic of reform, sidestepping a challenge from Zakaria on censorship with a nevertheless strong statement in support of greater freedom.

“I believe I and all the Chinese people have such a conviction that China will make continuous progress and the people’s wishes for and needs for democracy and freedom are irresistible,” Wen said. “I hope that you will be able to gradually see the continuous progress of China.”

Later, addressing allegations that he has yet to walk the reform he talks about, he says: “I would like to tell you the following two sentences to reinforce my case on this or my view on this point, that is, I will not fall in spite of a strong wind and harsh rain and I will not yield till the last day of my life.”

There has been skepticism about whether Wen’s comments in recent months really herald a new reform era. But on China’s Internet, an outpouring of support for Wen followed quickly after bilingual Chinese-English transcripts of the interview began appearing.

“If this is real, and if it’s needed, I’ll give my life, too,” wrote “Andrianme” on Sina Weibo.

“The three great men of the last century: Sun Yat-sen, Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping,” read a post that had earned more than 11,000 ‘recommend’ clicks on the Phoenix TV site as of this writing. “If Premier Wen can really push through political reform, he’ll be the first great man of the new century.”

Information about the interview on the Chinese Internet appears to come almost exclusively from Phoenix TV, blogs and micro-blogging services like Sina Weibo. News portals in China are running a commentary on the interview from the official Liberation Daily newspaper that manages not to quote Wen at all, focusing instead on the differences in Zakaria’s questions from 2008 and 2010.

The irony of Wen’s statements on freedom and censorship being censored in official media was not lost on Chinese observers.

“A lot of Chinese people don’t know their premier has been harmonized,” prominent Beijing University Internet researcher Hu Yong wrote on Twitter, using the Chinese euphemism for censorship. “Wen Jiabao’s comments about political reform being censored at least tells us one thing: In front of the big wall, everyone is equal.”

Others, like ‘Idle Notes,’ responded to the news blockage with anger: “The entire world gets to hear our premier speak and our own media doesn’t report it? Whatever you refuse to report, I’ll just post. [Expletive] you propagandists for the Imperial Court!”

While the vast majority of the commentary on Wen’s interview—or what little of it people in China saw—was adulatory, some remained skeptical of the premier’s ability to make good on his rhetoric.

“Let’s not be too naïve here. Who stands to lose the most from political reform?” Sina user ‘Big Uncle 98’ wrote in thinly veiled reference to leaders in Beijing. “Do you think they’ll dig their own graves?… Do you think they’re not afraid they’ll eventually be held to account?”

A post by ‘Own Worst Enemy,’ one of the most popular on Sina Weibo, may have put it best: “It’s not easy being Premier.”

– Josh Chin. Follow him on Twitter@ch_infamous