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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And these events are reported on people’s microblogs?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

为什么反对微博实名制

胡泳

2006年10月26日，我曾写过一篇博文《我为什么反对博客实名制》。2011年12月16日，北京市多个政府部门联合制定了《北京市微博客发展管理若干规定》，现将自己的旧博文一字不易，仅把题目改为《为什么反对微博实名制》，予以刊出。可叹的是，又过了5年，政府管理互联网的路数依然毫无新意

在某种意义上，网上匿名与我们在现实世界中视为理所当然的一些情况是类似的。驾驶汽车、穿越边境、搭乘飞机时，要求公民携带证件，它虽然构成了对我们的自由的一种侵犯，但因为这样做减少了真实存在的风险，我们也就乐于接受这些要求。然而，如果要求每个购物者每次进商店时都出示身份证，原因是这不仅将会减少犯罪，还会使抓获罪犯更为容易，这样的做法显然是行不通的。在网上，有人意欲行恶的风险难道已经突出和严重到了迫使每一个网民都必须公开自己身份的地步了吗？答案无疑是否定的。仅仅因为一些罪犯恰好匿名使用了网络就把匿名定为非法，理由不够实在和充分。

人们有足够实在和充分的理由保持匿名，它应当被视为正常的社会行为的一部分――至少在网上的某些地方是如此（其实在真实生活中也别无二致）。根本上说，我们需要防止匿名的黑暗面而不是将匿名整个定为非法。宽松的网络环境能够给我们以自由，虽然常常得为此付出一定的代价，但我们必须认识到，在这种环境中我们会生活得更好。事实上，在中国，危险常常更多地来自另一方面：监管部门管理过严而使隐私权过于有限。

不妨讲一个“古老”的故事：2004年8月，有媒体报道说，四川宜宾市警方接到省公安厅网监处转发的浙江省杭州市网监支队线索，该市有两个互联网上网账号分别于2004年3月21日和2004年7月11日登录浙江一色情淫秽网站，查阅、浏览色情淫秽图片并在网站上留言。宜宾市警方接报后立即作出部署，网监支队案侦大队多名干警在市电信等单位配合下，排查有关案件线索300多条，8月10日终于查清两个互联网上网账号具体用户的详细资料，并掌握了大量相关证据。警方迅速出击，抓获韩某、钟某两名违法嫌疑人。

没有制作、传播色情网站，只是在自己家里上网浏览的行为违法？这很难不让人联想到当年轰动一时的“夫妻在家看黄碟”被抓事件。对于这种仅属个人道德规范、并无公共危害性的行为，公安机关需要强行介入管理吗？公民的私生活与道德行为同违法犯罪行为的界限在哪里？这是主张网络实名制以消除网络犯罪的人士需要深思的问题。

事情还不仅仅限于此。在社会对公开性和透明度的需要，以及个人对匿名发言的权利和能力的追求之间，存在着非常大的冲突。在公共事务上公开发言的人通常怀着良好的反映民意的愿望，但他们有可能遭到拥有权力并且不公正地行使权力的人的报复。在一个真正公正的社会里，公众批评不一定非得匿名进行，但对那些也许冒着强有力的打击危险的人，匿名仍然是一种有价值的保护手段――在一个不公正的社会里（不论对此如何定义），就更是如此。

然而，一个社会要想整体上保持健康，其成员需要有名有姓。应该找到一种解决办法，能够为个人提供合法的隐私权和匿名权，但这必须限定在一个鼓励公开性和透明度的文化之中。由此看来，匿名实际上关涉着一个社会的宽容度，即这个社会能否容忍多样性和个人变化的可能性。在大量的私人行为经由网络变得高度可见之后，我们的社会是不是能够容忍这一切呢？

尽管匿名会产生一定的害处，然而经由匿名产生的价值还是高于人们不得不付出的代价。政府不应该试图限制匿名（这样做成本很高而收效可能甚微），社区则最好根据自身的特点决定有关匿名的政策。与此同时，网民必须牢记，在网上，不存在完全匿名的保证。

网络一度似乎为人们提供了隐姓埋名的机会，但现在，人们在网上的行动很容易被追踪，网络也因此成为反对匿名的强大工具。最终，大家会认识到，每个人都有权在网上保持匿名，而匿名却并不一定是网络交流的最好办法。

http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/12/rumor-fever/

December 12, 2011, 8:23 AM

Rumor Fever

HONG KONG — China hosts some 300 million microblog accounts (including my own), and officials say that domestic social media put out more than 200 million posts every day. In hopes of getting a handle on this potentially threatening surge of information, the government has started a campaign that aims to quash what it calls “rumors” — statements that it says threaten the public order but that it has not bothered to define. After a series of public opinion disasters this past year, the Communist Party has been pressuring social media providers to weed out allegations it finds threatening, and state media have tried to whip up fear over their malignant social effects.

The party’s fever over rumors began in August, following the July 23 high-speed rail collision in Wenzhou. The government took a public opinion beating over the crash, in large part because social media harnessed anger over the bungled rescue effort, the safety of the high-speed rail network and corruption in the Railways Ministry. Once party leaders wrested back control of the story, they pushed all relevant facts into the darkness, leaving only rumors to sate the public’s appetite for the truth. Likewise, even though both the Guo Meimei affair, which exposed corruption at the government-run Red Cross Society of China, and the well-organized public demonstrations against a chemical project in Dalian were true enough, they were never reported outside the “rumor-mill” of Chinese social media.

And then bowing to government pressure, in August social media companies like Sina Weibo, China’s most popular microblog platform, began sending users notices of posts that they claimed were rumors. One of the first notices to flitter across my computer screen announced that another user’s account had been suspended for a post alleging that a murder suspect in Wuhan had been released on bail thanks to his well-connected father. Sina’s rumor-busting notice told users that the police in Wuhan had “confirmed” that “the suspect was still in custody.” End of discussion. “Is this real or fake?” users posted in response. But the case was closed. And the upshot seemed to be that a rumor is what the government says it is, as a matter of political convenience.

The government’s mania has reached new rhetorical heights. At high-level meetings in October, the party decided to “strengthen the control and use of microblogs and other newly emerging media.” But even as it fears the consequences of more open speech, the government understands that actions to control it are deeply unpopular, especially on social media. And so now it is couching its antirumor policy by sugarcoating censorship as a kind of public health measure.

Stricter controls are the prescription for what China’s top Internet control official, Wang Chen, last week called a “healthy and upright online culture.” Get vaccinated, wash your hands, and don’t climb in bed with strangers. Xinhua warned us again on Nov. 28 that “like all forms of vice and iniquity, Internet rumors are extremely infectious” and are capable of “poisoning the social environment and impacting social order.” Once something has been marked as a social disease, it is simple enough to justify its elimination.

But rumors are not confirmed falsehoods; rather, they are unverified statements. The only way to prove them wrong is to create an environment in which information can be freely reported and debated. In other words, government censorship only feeds China’s rumor mill.

Hu Yong, a professor at Peking University and one of China’s leading experts on new media, argues that state controls on public opinion had “nurtured a rich soil for the transmission of rumor” while undermining the credibility of official information. Or as Cheng Yizhong, the founder of Guangzhou’s Southern Metropolitan Daily newspaper, put it in September — on his microblog account, as he could not elsewhere — censorship is a great evil. “Rumors are the penalty for lies,’’ he wrote. “They are a rebellion of speech by the weak against power, a small ill hoping to overthrow a great evil.”

http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/12/rumor-fever/