RConversation

Xinjiang Info-War

The screenshot above comes from the Anti-cnn.com website as it appeared on Saturday. The item is titled "Rebiya Fakes It! Using a fake photo to twist the truth in the Urumqi incident"

Click on the image to view an image of the full web page. I happen to have saved the page (a research habit I've developed) before Anti-CNN.com went completely offline, sometime on Sunday. For the time being at least there is a Google's cache of the front page from July 9.

Exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer mistakenly made prominent use in interviews of a photo that turned out to be from riots in Shishou, Hubei province, in late June. Al Jazeera has an account here.

Roland Soong at ESWN has a full account of how the photo came to be misconstrued and misused (scroll down to find the relavant material in his long compilation of news about the Xinjiang riots).

Apparently, the source of the error was Reuters, who had sourced the photo from Twitter and put it out on the wire before recalling it. Roland somehow got ahold of Reuters' recall notice (click to enlarge):

The Chinese media and netizens naturally went to town on the whole thing.

The unfortunate - but it appears genuinely honest - mistake by Rebiya Kadeer sparked a fury of comments on anti-cnn, many of which denounced the Western media for emphasizing Uighur casualties while making light of Han Chinese casualties. Some comments on that page and on other threads on the anti-cnn (which unfortunately I did not save) described the July 5th race riot as an act of terrorism, accused the Uighurs of being terrorists, and accused Western governments and the Western media of supporting anti-Chinese terrorism.

Such views were egged on by commentaries in the Chinese state-controlled media, some of which even appeared in English. One, which by Sunday had been removed (but which can still be found in the Google cache) began this way:

By whatever calculations, the blood-thirsty maiming and slaughtering of civilians, as young as six years old, in Urumqi, northwestern China's Xinjiang on July 5, is heinous homicide, barbarity against humanity, and terrorist act on China.

A look into the aftermath of the bloodbath found it bore the hallmark of secret and well choreography aiming at innocent human lives, identical to Al Qaeda's killing of thousands of office workers at the World Trade Center twin towers on September 11, 2001. The terrorists this time did not use flying petrol bombs to detonate tall buildings, they brandished steel rods and wielded knives to end lives.

It continues:

The barbarity has astonished China and the world. Thanks to the authorities' revised policy of free on-spot reportage, in sharp contrast to previous media controls, more people on the globe have got to know the senseless killing. Some said that even during New Stone ages, our ancestors, though barely dressed, did not do this to each other while chasing nuts and edibles in the woods.

..and so on.

This kind of language has raged all over the Chinese Internet between July 5 and Saturday or so.

With Xinjiang we've seen substantial evolution of the Chinese government's media strategy in times of unrest, aimed to make the best of a bad situation. The government has come to recognize that media blackouts don't work in the Internet age. Assuming your goal is to maintain the central government's power and the Communist Party's overall legitimacy (rather than total social control which they gave up on a long time ago) when localized unrest flares up it is more effective a multi-pronged strategy, as follows:

1. Cut off the Internet and mobile messaging in the immediate area where the violence took place.
2. Censor blogs, chatrooms, search engines and social networking sites heavily to prevent people from spreading unofficial information or using social networks to organize. Increase blocks on overseas sites. Shut some domestic ones down if needed.
3. Get Xinhua, the People's Daily, CCTV and other officially sanctioned news outlets on the scene as soon as possible. Fill the airwaves, news pages, and domestic websites with the government-approved version of what happened. (This new approach first emerged as a riot-information-management strategy with last year's Weng'an riots.)
4. Grant access to foreign media - the lesson of last year's Tibet unrest is that if you keep them out they're not going to believe a thing you say. This time, foreign reporters have directly reported about Han victims of Uighur violence as well as Uighur victims of Han violence. Which is probably one reason why the foreign media has not directly challenged the government's official death toll reflecting many more Han dead than Uighur dead, though they've quoted the Uighur exile groups who say the Uighur toll is actually much higher. Coverage instead emphasizes how hard it is to figure out what's going on, which is a much better storyline for the Chinese government than "they won't let us in, what are they hiding?"
5. Be helpful: facilitate the foreign media coverage with press conferences, a dedicated news center, and a discounted hotel in the area you want them to stay in. Allow the police to kick them out of places you'd rather they didn't go to, act coy when reporters complain.
6. Wait for the inevitable mistakes to be made in the Western media - mis-captioned photo here, mistakenly used video there, a grossly oversimplified turn of phrase comparing a race riot to the 1989 democracy movement, plus some downright factual errors here and there. Let the nationalistic blogosphere and Chinese media outlets like Global Times rip into these things as proof of the West's anti-China bias and deliberate obfuscation of the truth.
7. Take advantage of the failure by Western commentators, exiled activists, and human rights groups to consider how their statements and actions may sound and look to ordinary Chinese people, even those who are open to critiques of their government. Last year we saw a pro-Tibet protestor accosting a wheelchair-bound Chinese athlete. In the Xinjiang case, many Western commentators and human rights groups have condemned methods used in the crackdown, expressed legitimate concerns about an impending witchunt against Uighurs, and rightly critiqued the Chinese government's bad policies that led to the ethnic tensions, but then in many cases failed to deplore the killing of innocent Han. This has given many Chinese the impression that the West condones Uighur violence as excusable because they're an oppressed minority. For example, this statement by Human Rights Watch is unlikely to play well with Chinese audiences because it expresses no concern for the loss of innocent Han lives and stops short of condemning all killers regardless of ethnic background. The Chinese government can afford to dismiss it without domestic political cost.

The result is that while they've got much unpleasantness to deal with, their legitimacy in the minds of the majority of Chinese is sufficiently maintained. While many people may have a lot of serious issues with their government, enough people end up concluding that the foreigners and the exiles may not have the Chinese peoples' interests at heart either - so might as well stick with the current crop of bums and work things out with them gradually.

This weekend, however, the censors seem to have decided that the patriotism may have gone too far. Hence the deletion of certain articles, the shutting down of Xinjiang-related discussions in nationalist-leaning fora like the Global Times, and the outage of anti-cnn.com.

One reason for dialing things back may be the reactions coming from the Islamic world. Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan has condemned China's crackdown in Xinjiang as genocide. Global Voices' Iran editor dug up this Persian-language blog comparing the Chinese in Xinjiang to the Israelis in Palestine. I get the impression that there is a lot more of that kind of sentiment out there. China has spent the last few decades cultivating strong relationships with the Islamic world, including Iran. China badly needs their oil, among other things. Chinese companies, engineering crews, and construction workers are all over the Middle East and Africa. Suppress the Tibetans however you like and your external economic relationships won't suffer that much. Treat China's restive Muslim minority in an insensitive, ham-fisted manner, and there could be all kinds of hell to pay. Time to start figuring out how to govern a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural country in a sustainable, enlightened way.

What's also interesting, I find, is that this year in the wake of the Xinjiang riots I've been seeing a lot of discussion and critique on Chinese-language websites about the Chinese government's ethnic policies. Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong but there seems to be a more detailed and nuanced policy discussion going on this year than in the wake of last year's Tibet unrest. A number of postings by Han Chinese people who've lived in Xinjiang, and who think that the government's minority policies have been a failure, have been translated by China Digital Times, Global Voices, Fools Mountain, and ESWN among others. I've come across several Chinese blog posts and articles analyzing the policies on ethnicity and race practiced in Europe and North America. There seems to be a pretty strong consensus among nationalists as well as liberals that - whatever the solution may be - the status quo policies are not working. Combine this with pressure from the Islamic world to do a better job, will things change?

The problem, however, is this: does the Chinese government have the ability to conduct credible policy reform? If good policy happened to be formulated, does the center have enough control over the localities to actually implement it effectively?

If the answer to those two questions continues to be "no," the Chinese government's new and improved information management strategies may help them keep the country together in the short and maybe even medium term, but in the long run even the cleverest and most thorough strategy of censorship and information management will be hard pressed to prop up failed policy and bad governance.

China blocks Twitter, Flickr, Bing, Hotmail, Windows Live, etc. ahead of Tiananmen 20th anniversary

This cartoon was created today by Chinese Twitter user "junde" to protest China's censorship of Twitter: The bird bound and gagged represents Twitter. The crab catching the bird is a well-established symbol for censorship used by Chinese netizens. (For the full history of how the "river crab" 河蟹 came to represent censorship click here.)

On Herdict, the global crowd-sourcing censorship-tracking website, people are reporting censorship of Twitter on networks all over China... with some people adding frustrated commentary, often including the f-word. You can also see blockage reports for Hotmail, Windows Live, Bing, Flickr, YouTube, Blogspot, etc.

Twitter users are expressing their anger by using the #fuckgfw hashtag on Twitter (gfw = "great firewall"), though the good folks at Twitter appear to be keeping this hashtag off their "trending" page - I assume due to the use of of obscenity. Perhaps people will switch to plain old #gfw, or something. (Update, people are now using both #caogfw - the Chinese translation of the f-word - and #gfw)

Isaac Mao has issued an appeal to Twitter management, asking them to fully enable "https" so that people in China can access it in encrypted form. Google enables https encryption on many of its services.

Many Twitter users also hope that the company will speak out publicly against the blockage.

Active Beijing-based Twitter user David Feng sent the following email to me and some other friends. I reproduce it here with his permission:

I am not one to use Twitter for what I call "obvious political means", as in most of the content I post is tech, mass transit or city-related and concerns the events of Tian'anmen much less. However, my Twitterstream has been picking up with tweets such as "Twitter is more than a website". This in itself is "the truth", so to speak. Quite a number of us don't even text message each other. We DM or tweet each other instead. It's for real even in "far far away" China, so to speak.

So here you have the typical apolitical twitter-er who is far less interested in reactionary propaganda so-called and far more interested in conveying stuff that is "much closer to life". This GFW thing is a major inconvenience and I am sure it is by no means your fault. It lies with the censors far closer to home (thankfully not "your" home States-side!) and I think that while this recent blocking is not unexpected, it was a real pain in the back when it finally struck.

I'm hoping that this most recent block goes away quickly after a few days, when the whole anniversary is done with. I cannot exclude, however, the possibility of a block extending through right after National Day, which is October 1 in China. The public security authorities have already launched a never-before-seen scale campaign to clean just about every last thing in Beijing up -- we're not just talking about "officially published acts", such as the taking away of illegal weapons and stuff like that.

In the meantime, let me echo the latest hashtag of the Chinese Twitter community floating around: #F***GFW. This is pretty much a good sentiment of how people feel about this most recent of dumb acts done by no-one else than the censors themselves.

A selection of blog posts and news reports about the blockage:

Danwei: Twitter and other sites blocked in China as of today

Toronto Star: China shuts Twitter ahead of anniversary

Shanghaiist: Blocked in China list now includes...

Guardian: China blocks Twitter, Flickr and Hotmail ahead of Tiananmen anniversary

Reuters: China blocks Twitter service ahead of anniversary

WSJ Blog: Twitter Goes Down in China

Lost Laowai: Twitter & Flickr blocked ahead of Tiananmen’s 20th

Cyber-tarianism, #cfp09, Twitter

China calls for an end to the Internet Governance Forum

There's been a global argument going on for some time now over how the Internet should be governed. Many governments, including China but also many others, are not happy that the "root" of the Internet is controlled by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which ultimately answers to the U.S. Department of Commerce. In 2005, there were proposals from various countries to move Internet governance from ICANN to a United Nations body of some kind, or something that would give more representation and power to a variety of governments. But there was no consensus. Human rights groups were rightly concerned that giving governments like China and Iran greater say in Internet governance would lead to more censorship and the elimination of privacy and anonymity. At the 2005 World Summit on the Information Society in Tunisia, local dissidents got roughed up, a workshop on free expression nearly got shut down by the host government, and governments agreed to stick with the ICANN-led status quo for lack of any reasonable consensus. The Internet Governance Forum was formed as a platform to continue consultation and feedback from governments and a range of "civil society" groups, including coalitions calling for the protection of human rights and free speech.

At an IGF preparatory meeting in Geneva on Wednesday, China called for a disbandment of the IGF, on the grounds that it's useless. The full transcript of the proceeding his here. An archive of the webcast is here. Below are China's two statements in full. I've bolded some of the key parts. Note the discussion of Internet censorship at the end:

CHINA: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. On behalf of the delegation of China, I would like to present the position of the government of China on the fourth session of the IGF.

First of all, on the title -- the global title of the meeting, the delegation of China prefers the proposal put forward by Egypt, "Internet, an opportunity for all." We think that this topic is very closely linked to the international financial crisis we're going through at the moment. And in addition, it proves that the United Nations continue to work in order to promote the Internet. As we have said in February, the rights and principles for Internet is not an appropriate theme because the words "rights and principles" don't have an appropriate definition. As a meeting of the United Nations, it is not appropriate to adopt a theme which is not properly defined.

And on this matter, we suggest that we discuss the definition of "rights and principles" first of all, the workshop level.

Honorable Chairman, secondly, on the management of critical resources, the delegation of China feels that, first of all, the title of this theme should be "managing the critical Internet resources."

We feel that this title has been defined last year, after extensive discussions. And we think that this is a fairly neutral title. At the same time, it is a very sensitive theme, and we would suggest that we continue using this title this year.

Also, we would like to stress the fact that under the theme of "critical Internet resource management," we think that JPA is a very important theme and that it's not because we're going to reexamine JPA in September that we can't discuss it at the fourth session of the IGF. On the opposite, it's because we're going to do this in September that we should do it in IGF, too.

Thirdly, now, as to security, the delegation of China feels that this is a very important question. At the present time, security in the Internet, on the Internet and cybercrime is something that has become a worldwide enemy. And here we need to talk about regrouping the energies and resources of all parties concerned and to strengthen the international mechanism in order to promote security and stability for the Internet at the worldwide level.

We also think that there are some vital matters that have not been incorporated on this theme, for instance, how do we promote open source or intellectual property or traditional library resources. These are all very important questions in order to promote dissemination of knowledge.

We also think that this is a theme which should be discussed in the opening title.

We have also noted that some have talked about the URL blocking. On the URL blocking, this is a very sensitive matter.

In order to guarantee the security of states and to guarantee the interests of citizens to fight against terrorism and other crimes, all countries have the right to filter the contents of certain Internet sites. And I think that this is something that all countries are in the process of doing.

IGF as a meeting hosted, under the auspices of the United Nations, talks about URL blocking. Now, will this give an impression to the outside world that the United Nations are against content blocking? Are the U.N. against the practice of certain states filtering some Internet sites so that when we talk about "blocking," should the theme of blocking be incorporated in our IGF meeting? We have to be very careful about that.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

A second statement came in the afternoon session:

This afternoon, we are talking about the value of the IGF. And that's a very important question. The delegation of China has followed very carefully the previous statements made.

And now the delegation would like to make the following points. Firstly, we very much appreciate the secretariat for their excellent work. We agree in principle with what has been said by previous speakers on the specific aims of the IGF. We feel that the IGF has contributed a great deal in light of its historic mandate. But we have also noted the -- that the essence of IGF's work is establishing dialogue, exchanging points of view. But this is not enough to solve the problems. The real problem is that in the field of the Internet, there is a monopoly that exists. And we need to solve that problem. It's not by talking about principles merely that we can solve this problem.

We can also see this kind of discussion taking place. But it's not enough for developing countries who don't have enough resources and don't have the capacities to participate in this kind of dialogue without further commitments being made, which is why the points of view of developing countries, especially when it comes to Internet governance, their points of view are not sufficiently reflected in our discussions, which is why we don't agree that the IGF should continue its mandate after the five years are up.

So we repeat that the delegation of China does not agree with extending the mission of the IGF beyond the five years. We feel that after the five years are up, we would need to look at the results that have been achieved. And we need, then, to launch into an intergovernmental discussion.

I think that this should be a positive result of IGF's work.

The work of its next phase should be based on the results achieved in the previous years. We need to launch an intergovernmental discussion in order to solve the real problems that exist in this field of Internet governance.

Thank you.

The IGF Watch blog points out that China isn't alone in its frustration with the IGF and with ICANN. The EU's Viviane Reding proposed a new model of Internet governance last week in which ICANN would be reformed and overseen by a new "G12 for Internet Governance." But IGF Watch's Jeremy Malcolm thinks the debate may help to steer things in a more realistic direction:

True, it's just a shame that China had to be the stakeholder to make this bold point, since its motivations are transparently undemocratic - it was, for example, the only stakeholder at yesterday's meeting to openly oppose the inclusion of Internet rights and principles as theme for an IGF main session.

But from whichever source the realisation comes, given that the WSIS dream of a new consensual model of multi-stakeholder engagement in policy development has failed, it may be that we have to bite that bullet and fall back on the ugly alternative of agnonism - the recognition that the engagement of governments and civil society in global politics is inherently dialectical and conflictual, and that they will never truly deliberate as equals.

This might not even be such a bad thing. It need not in fact spell the death of the IGF, but rather its rebirth; as it would free the institution to make a clean break from its stifling Secretariat and the United Nations system generally. It could instead reconstitute itself as an independent private international institution much like ICANN itself, that would seek to participate on an equal footing in whatever institutions hold real power in Internet governance in the future, perhaps including Reding's new G-12 (or IG20, as Wolfgang Kleinwaechter had presaged it).

It's going to be an interesting year for Internet governance, and we are certain to hear a lot more from China. As it so happens, I'll be attending the next ICANN meeting in Sydney as well as the IGF meeting in Egypt as part of my research for my book.

Cyber-tarianism, IGF, ICANN

China and the Global Internet: my talk at Harvard

On Tuesday I was back at my old stomping grounds, the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, where I gave a lunch talk. Ethan Zuckerman and David Weinberger both blogged it.

Click on the image below to access the video posted on Berkman's website:

Here are my slides:

The Tao of the Web: China and the future of the Internet

View more presentations from rmackinnon.

From Red Guards to Cyber-vigilantism to where next?

This is a 1976 Cultural Revolution poster from chineseposters.net. It celebrates Chairman Mao's 1966 call to arms: "bombard the headquarters." He egged on the Red Guards to go after corrupt and venal officials who:

"...have stood facts on their head and juggled black and white, encircled and suppressed revolutionaries, stifled opinions differing from their own, imposed a white terror, and felt very pleased with themselves."

One might be inclined to use similar words to describe the officials whose holiday video from a taxpayer-financed African junket recently got uploaded onto the internet. Click here for the full video.

When I watch China's human flesh search engines in action I often think of the Cultural Revolution and the Red Guards. Unlike the Red Guards they're not really being manipulated by one charismatic leader (yet); they're just acting on their own. Like the Red Guards, the intent of today's cyber-vigilantes is idealistic; they believe in their absolute moral righteousness. Sometimes they expose corrupt and venal officials who deserve to go to jail. Other times they conduct moral witch hunts against people whose behavior may not be very admirable but what crime did they commit exactly and who is to be the judge?

It is very exciting that the Internet is making it increasingly difficult for Chinese government officials to behave irresponsibly, abuse taxpayer funds, or commit crimes without being exposed. The question is, where is this all headed?

 Mao was frustrated that he could not adequately control the Communist Party bureaucracy, who he believed had grown too fat and happy and "bourgeois;" so he unleashed the Red Guards on them. Today many Chinese complain that the central government has lost control over provincial officials to some extent, and county officials to a great extent. The central government is fairly well regarded by the public while local governments are widely hated. How will this loss of control by the center over the localities be handled? Via real reform of political institutions and mechanisms of justice so that government at all levels can be held accountable by the governed in a fair and systematic manner? Or through an updated form of cyber-populism (cyber-bonapartism?) in which people are empowered to speak out and to act against injustice in many cases when such actions don't hurt the power of the top leadership - but without the institutions or rule of law or real reforms that would underly a commitment to build truly accountable, transparent, and representative political institutions?

In the 1990's, some hopeful officials in the Ministry of Civil affairs advocated direct, competitive, secret ballot elections as the solution to social unrest and corruption. Programs to institute such elections at the village level were celebrated in the West as a sign that China might eventually be capable of democratizing. Studies at the time indicated that villages with fair and competitive elections had less unrest than those that didn't. But the efforts to bring free, fair and competitive elections to all villages throughout China were abandoned by the early 00's as China's top leadership transitioned from Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao. Dreams that such elections might be possible at the county level or in the cities were also abandoned. Talk to officials today who were involved with village democracy efforts at the time and they'll tell you they see no hope of the local election efforts being revived under the current leadership.

Will the Chinese people rise above cyber-vigilantism and use the Internet to build a just and fair society governed by accountable leaders? Or will the majority be be happy to wield their new-found powers of online speech in random fashion? That's really up to them. People like Liu Xiaoyuan and Yang Hengjun and a number of others have been raising such questions. It's hard to know whether people beyond the elite intelligentsia will pay attention to such concerns.

This is why the suppression and censorship of Cultural Revolution history in China is so dangerous. If people could freely write and debate about what happened under Mao, history would have less chance of repeating itself.

The last two images in this post are part of a fabulous collection of Cultural Revolution posters belonging to this blogger.

UPDATE: Bill a.k.a. "niubi" was quick to point out on Twitter that he doesn't think the situation today could "go anywhere comparable" to where it went in the Cultural Revolution. I do agree. I apologize if I gave the impression that I think we're going to see an exact repeat of history. That's not the point I meant to make. The point I'm trying to make is that just because people have an expanded ability to speak truth to power thanks to new technology, that doesn't automatically lead to a more just society in the long run unless you have institutional change. I wonder whether people will be so distracted and excited about the ability to use the Internet to speak truth to power that they'll have less interest in such institutional change. Whether the latter scenario results in a desirable state or not is up to the Chinese people to decide, of course. If that's what a majority of Chinese truly believe works best for them - if there's a way of determining what the majority of Chinese people really want - well I guess that's their business. Like Yang Hengjun said today, if the Chinese people really want human rights, at the end of the day only they can give it to themselves...

FURTHER UPDATE: Before I wrote this post I hadn't seen Joel Martinsen's excellent post over at Danwei, Harnessing Human Flesh Search Engines for Government Use. That adds yet another layer of issues.

"Eluding the Cat" - Bloggers investigate Yunnan prison death

My friend and colleague Ethan Zuckerman gave a fabulous talk last year at O'Reilly E-tech titled The Cute Cat Theory of Digital Activism. The essence of his argument:

The Web was invented so physicists could share research papers. Web 2.0 was invented so we could share cute pictures of our cats. The tools of Web 2.0, while designed for mundane uses, can be extremely powerful in the hands of digital activists, especially those in environments where free speech is limited.

On the Chinese Internet this week we have the ultimate marriage of cute cat blogging and political activism - with some official spin-mastering and government p.r. thrown on top. It's known widely as the "elude the cat" incident.

See Global Voices, the Guardian, ESWN, and ChinaDigitalTimes for lots of English-language details and translations, but here is the situation in a nutshell:

A man named Li Qiaoming died in a detention center in Yunnan province. The official explanation was that he had been killed in a rough-horsing accident while playing a game of "elude the cat" (a form of hide-and-seek) with fellow inmates. The reaction in local internet forums was skeptical to say the least, with netizens and even journalists in newspapers and political cartoonists chiming in that the whole thing seemed a bit too incredible. People began to post comments in blogs and chatrooms suggesting that the police were engaged in a cover-up. "Elude the cat" with its rich humor potential quickly became a buzzword all around the Chinese Internet.

Local Yunnan officials were worried about things getting out of control - as things did last summer in Weng'an when an angry mob trashed the police station, suspecting a murder cover-up after a young woman turned up dead in the river. So the Yunnan publicity department came up with an idea: they would invite journalists and bloggers to participate in an investigative team. A publicity notice was posted on Yunnan government and local media websites inviting bloggers to sign up. Here's the notice as translated by Roland Soong:

The injury and subsequent death of the Yuxi city Hongta district Beicheng town young man Li Qiaoming in a detention center has received broad media attention, especially on the Internet. The term 'eluding the cat' has become a hot Internet term in a very short time. In order to satisfy the public's right to know, the Yunnan provincial publicity departhment will form an investigative committee with other relevant departments and proceed to Kunming city Puning town on the morning of February 20 to find out the truth about the incident. We are presently looking for four netizens and other representatives from society to serve as members of the committee. You can register between now and 8:00pm on the evening of February 19, 2009." The notice also included a QQ account number and a telephone phone number.

So an "investigative committee" was formed. According to a Southern Metropolis Daily report translated by Roland:

...more than 1,000 netizens applied though QQ and telephone.

Eventually, the investigative committee consisted of 15 persons. There were four representatives from the province political and legal committee, the province procuratorate and the Kunming city public security bureau; three media representatives including the Yunnan Information Times; eight persons from the Internet and other social sectors. It is noted that five of the eight are local Yunnan media workers or have media industry background.

And so they went on February 20th to the jail. QQ has a whole special coverage page devoted to the investigation. Here are some pictures that Netease re-posted from Yunnan TV:

Local media was clearly all over the event which was touted as evidence of government openness and transparency, and willingness to submit to "public supervision." As Oiwan Lam reports in Global Voices, there was much debate online about the impartiality and independence of the bloggers who had been selected. Team members were subject to "human flesh search engine" treatment, with netizens crowd-sourcing and analyzing their backgrounds and identities online, and several of them felt compelled to defend themselves online.

However while some of the inspection team members apparently asked to see the surveillance video tape of the scene, detention center officials refused to allow viewing of surveillance tapes or allow interviews with key witnesses. Liberal bloggers like Yang Hengjun and Liu Xiaoyuan have written critically about the process and outcome, questioning whether the investigation team and the media coverage surrounding it was little more than a dog-and-pony show aimed at defusing public anger building up online. As Oiwan comments: "My opinion (via inmediahk.net) is that the propaganda department is trying to prevent a public opinion bomb from being exploding but it in turn challenges the credibility of police and justice department."

It seems that the authorities have succeeded to some extent, and that enough of China's netizens were impressed by the government's decision to invite bloggers into the investigation. Oiwan translates a BBC Chinese story:

According to Sina's online poll, up till midnight of 20, 87.1% netizens found the explanation of “eluding the cat” incredible, and believed that it must be a lie; 8.2% found the explanation incredible but believed that it might be the truth; only 1.3% believe d the explanation should be the truth.

As for the invitation of Yunnan Netizen to participate in the investigation, 49.7% netizens believed that it is probably a show and it is yet to see the effect of the participation. 45.5% said that the arrangement is creative and can further develop democracy, it shows the investigation is open and transparent.

On this blog I've written before about the idea of "authoritarian deliberation:" The Internet has enabled vastly more social discourse and deliberation on public affairs in China than anybody could have imagined ten years ago; but at the same time China's political institutions are no more democratic than they were ten years ago. Nor has the legal system grown more independent. I've argued in the past that one can imagine a scenario in which, if the Chinese Communist Party is clever and flexible enough to evolve, they may be able to use the Internet to stay in power longer than would have been possible if the Internet did not exist. They would do this by convincing a critical mass of ordinary Chinese people through publicity stunts like the "eluding the cat" investigation that the people's voices can be heard and that "public supervision" of government is possible without needing democratic multi-party elections. I'm not arguing that this would necessarily be a successful long-term strategy, but in the medium term it could generate enough evidence for nationalists to argue in the government's favor, things for the chattering classes to do, combined with sufficient public argument about who is a government patsy, and who is in cahoots with whom, who is telling the truth etc etc., that criticism becomes too diffuse to mount a meaningful challenge - especially when you combine that tactic with sufficient censorship and astro-turfing to skew the conversation in the CCP's favor, plus the arrest of people like Liu Xiaobo and Hu Jia who might otherwise be capable of bringing together the disparate issues surrounding all these local incidents and becoming leaders of national opposition movements. Whether this scenario actually does prevail, or whether another less cynical scenario prevails, ultimately depends on the Chinese people themselves, as Ai Weiwei put it to me in January:

We will never have a real civil society, a democratic society, unless people take responsibility. ...I believe the desire for justice and equality is something that people must have in their own hearts. This isn't something that one person can give to another. This is a right that must be exercised. If you don't exercise your right society will be in a difficult state.

UPDATE: Over at the China Media Project, David Bandurski's post on the subject, How Control 2.0 found its poster boy in Yunnan, is a must-read. He concludes:

In the government handling of the “eluding the cat” case we can glimpse an eerie phenomenon emerging in China: the rise of virtual political participation as a proxy and foil for real political empowerment. Notice, political rights are not on offer to China’s citizens. But if we believe the hype China’s state media are selling us, China’s “netizens” are in political ascent.

If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you.

Beijing legal crusader gets "dealt with"

This interview with lawyer-blogger Liu Xiaoyuan was shot by Danwei.org in November.

Liu writes today that he is being forced by the Haidian District Justice Bureau to shut down his law firm for six months. This means, he says, that he and all of the lawyers who work at his firm are "unemployed for six months."

As Global Voices Advocacy explains, the official reason for disciplinary action against his Yi Tong Law Firm is that the firm employed a lawyer who does not have a license to practice law. As Liu explains, Li Subin, the employee in question, was working as a legal assistant, not as a full lawyer. Li had his license suspended after accusing the Henan Justice Bureau of charging excessive lawyer registration fees back in 2001.

The real reason for the punishment, Liu believes, is that lawyers in his firm had petitioned last year for direct elections of the leadership of the Beijing Lawyers Association. He says the goal is to drive his lawyers to flee to other firms and cause the Yi Tong law firm to fail. He points out that this is the same tactic used against civil rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng. This is non-trivial, given that Gao went on to be tortured, spoke out about it, and has now disappeared.

I have written about Liu in the past here and here.

Liu is a prolific blogger and defense lawyer who writes passionately about the cases he is involved with and other cases he follows. He has not shied away from controversy in the past couple of years. Perhaps most controversially, he represented family members of Yang Jia, the confessed cop killer, arguing on his blog that while the defendant may have been guilty he was not afforded due process under Chinese law. He called attention to various shenanigans pulled by the prosecution around the time of the trial, such as the illegal detention of Yang Jia's mother in a mental institution. Public sympathy for Yang Jia was widespread - discussion of the case around the Chinese Internet was arguably more widespread than, say, Charter 08 and also potentially much more threatening to the regime in the immediate term.

Here's how I described Liu after meeting him in the Fall of 2007:

Liu's office is a dusty low-rent affair in a rabbit-warren of offices inside a hotel, inside a shopping center across from Beijing's West Train Station. Liu is the classic pulblic-defender type who you can find in many countries: dogged, determined, believing fervently in everybody's right to legal defense and a their day in court. China has a constitution and a legal system and he takes them both seriously - along with the rights that they are supposed to grant China's citizens. He defends people accused of all kinds of crimes who don't have connections or resources to hire fancy lawyers. He says a foreign journalist recently asked him why, as a Communist Party member, he was defending people accused of theft or murder. He says there is no conflict: after all he is serving the people, isn't he?

Liu is obsessed with the law, with justice, with the legal process. He is so obsessed, in fact, that he writes about these topics on over a dozen blog-hosting services - and says he posts to about six of his blogs nearly every day. All of his blogs, he says, have censored his postings at various times. But they all censor his writings differently...

Liu supporters in the blogosphere are pretty darn unhappy about the latest effort to "harmonize" him not just virtually, but in the "real" world. Ai Weiwei writes:

What kind of person is afraid of this kind of man? Only those people who inhabit the dark corners of the legal system, who don't want to see the common folk win, those people who are aided by evil forces, those people who want China to forever belong to a small minority, people to whom you cannot speak reason.

Speaking out for Liu Xiaoyuan is speaking out for everybody. When we have justice we won't need others to speak out for us. We must protect those who seek justice just as our great nation cherishes CCTV, or otherwise there won't be anybody left to speak up for you.

In a scathing essay Ruan Yunfei concludes:

Brother Xie Yong has said of the post 1949 regime: "Whoever is right should be ignored." We can imitate his words to say of today's regime: "Whoever doesn't obey is dealt with." That is the picture of the conditions Chinese people are living under today.

A blogger called dafengqixi points to Liu's situation as part of a long list of reasons why the regime is bankrupt, starting his post by saying:

Mark Twain once wrote that some people in the U.S. congress were raised by whores. Well he didn't know that some Chinese officials raise whores, while others are raised by whores...

...and he rolls on from there.. ouch..

Obama's America to Hu Jintao's China on human rights: so far, deafening silence

The two photos below were taken by Sharon Hom of Human Rights in China around 10:30 a.m. last Friday in Geneva. Diplomats from a wide range of countries lined up for hours for a chance to sign up  that afternoon for speaking slots in the U.N. Human Rights Council's review of China which took place on Monday morning. 111 countries signed up. The first 60 countries on the sign-up list got a chance to speak. (Click here to download the full PDF report of Monday's review, including short summaries of what all the speakers said. Click here to download a PDF chart compiled by HRIC listing all the recommendations that China rejected.) Australia and Canada got up early to be at the front of the line, and both expressed concerns about the Chinese government's human rights record. The UK and other European governments expressed concern later on. But voices of praise for the Chinese government's human rights record predominated. Overall, the session was considered a victory for the Chinese government's position that it is on the right track when it comes to respecting the rights of its people. Where was the U.S. delegation in this line?

U.S. diplomats made no attempt to stand in this line. Much to the outrage of human rights groups, the Obama administration chose to merely sit on the sidelines and quietly take notes.

The State department explained afterwards that it couldn't act because the Obama administration is in the midst of a review of its position towards the UN Human Rights Council, which the Bush administration has shunned. The Jurist blog quotes at length from remarks by State Department spokesperson Robert Wood:

[F]or one, we're reviewing our policy and strategy with regard to the Human Rights Council. Certainly, I can understand many people want to see us enunciate our policies very early on. You know, it does take time. We want to make sure that we’ve done a thorough review and that we not rush this. We want to get it right. Let me just be very clear: With this President and this Secretary, human rights is a very, very high priority. We’re very concerned – we’ve been very concerned about the operation of the Human Rights Council, and we want to take a look and see how we may engage with the Human Rights Council. But this is all part of the review, and as soon as we have completed that review, we will certainly make clear what our policies are. ...

The timing could not have been worse, given that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is going to China next week. This week's silence puts all the more political pressure on her not only to speak strongly but to produce results, which gives the Chinese foreign ministry and Hu Jintao's government the upper hand.

Yet Wolf insisted that this does not mean that the Obama administration plans to avoid raising human rights in its dealings with the Hu Jintao administration. "Human rights is going to be an important issue" on this trip, he said. To make sure that it will be, a number of human rights groups have issued a Letter to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. An excerpt:

As much as the Chinese government appears to resist outside pressure to improve its record, experience suggests that it does respond to such pressure. American interventions on behalf of jailed government critic Hu Jia contributed to his being moved to a prison closer to his family; sustained international pressure on the Chinese government to permanently relax rules on foreign journalists in China resulted in success. Ordinary people in China will also appreciate hearing the United States raise human rights issues in ways that echo their own day to day concerns about rule of law and government accountability. And we urge that you be mindful of the converse: that the Chinese government and people take careful note when the US is silent.

Our first indication of Clinton's approach will come on Friday at 1pm New York time, when she gives a speech to the Asia Society . There will be a live webcast here. You can also post questions or comments in advance here.

Live Webcast and Chat Tuesday/Wednesday: The Future of Freedom and Control in the Internet Age

On Tuesday at 6pm EST / 2300 GMT / Wednesday 7am China I will be part of a very interesting conversation in New York. There will be very interesting people in the room who will add their expertise. If you can't be in New York in person I hope you will participate online. The event will be webcast and there will be an online webchat so that people around the world can contribute comments and questions. Global Voices Executive Director Ivan Sigal will make sure that your questions and comments are represented in the room. Here are all the details:

© Greg Wood/AFP/Getty Images

OSI Webcast: The Future of Freedom and Control in the Internet Age

Location: OSI-New York
Event Date(s): February 10, 2009
Event Time: 5:30 - 7:30 p.m.
Speaker(s): Isabel Hilton, Rebecca MacKinnon, Evgeny Morozov

The Open Society Institute and Asia Society will host an event with Open Society Fellows Rebecca MacKinnon and Evgeny Morozov that explores the changing landscape of Internet censorship. Special attention will be given to the techniques employed by governments to co-opt and steer online discussions in ideologically convenient directions. Focusing on the specific cases of Russia and China, the panelists will discuss how the strategies and tools of control, manipulation, and censorship have evolved in both countries.

Isabel Hilton, editor of China Dialogue and an Open Society Fellowship selection committee member, will moderate the discussion.

Light refreshments will be provided at a reception from 5:30 - 6:00 p.m. The discussion will begin at 6:00 p.m.

This event is presented in cooperation with the Asia Society Center on U.S.-China Relations.

Live Webcast

This event will be streamed live online. Click here to view.

Photo above: An Amnesty International member covers her mouth during an event in Sydney on July 30, 2008, as part of a campaign to end Internet censorship in China.

UN Human Rights Council meets on China

The UN Human Rights Council is offering a live webcast of its review of Chinese human rights at 9am Monday morning Geneva time. That's 4pm in Beijing, or 3am on the U.S. East Coast. I probably won't manage to be awake for it, but I look forward to watching the archive, and look forward to seeing the reports and reading the impressions of others who were in better time zones to watch it live. Please feel free let me know your views in the comments section of this post if you have a chance to watch it.

Peter Ford at the Christian Science Monitor has a useful backgrounder. He calls the session "a key test of Beijing's readiness to answer international criticism over its treatment of political opponents."

China's report to the council is here.

Amnesty International called it a whitewash.

Human Rights in China has a detailed position paper here.

The Committee to Protect Journalists has an open letter to the council. Here's the full text:

February 6, 2009

Carl Bildt, Minister for Foreign Affairs Lawrence Cannon, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Canada Per Stig Moeller, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Denmark

Jonas Gahr Stoere, Minister of Foreign Affairs Norway

David Miliband, Secretary of State for Foreign & Commonwealth Affairs, U.K.

By facsimile

Dear sirs,

On Monday, your representatives will participate in the U.N. Human Rights Council's first review of China's human rights record. As part of the review, countries are required to submit their questions in advance, and CPJ welcomes your questioning of China's press freedom record.

As countries with a deep commitment to freedom of expression and human rights, we urge you to ensure that China responds to the specific issues outlined in this letter. We have grave concerns that they will not be adequately emphasized.

Restrictions on journalists

January 2007 regulations that eased restrictions for foreign journalists reporting in China during the Olympics were permanently extended in October 2008. Granting reporters the legal right to do their work is a positive step, as is the investment in media infrastructure which China outlines in its national report to the review working group.

Yet review participants should ask China how the regulations can be implemented throughout China. Colleagues there tell us they are frequently subject to harassment by local authorities and cannot enter the Tibetan Autonomous Region without permission. The working group should also ask China to extend legal protections to local journalists, who self-censor because they lack equivalent freedoms, as well as to sources who agree to interviews with foreign journalists.

Internet censorship

China's laws allow the government to block or hide politically sensitive information on international Web sites, including news outlets such as the BBC and advocacy organizations like CPJ.

Controls on local Web sites appeared to tighten in 2009. A government campaign targeting vulgarity online launched on January 5 has broadened the conception of "unacceptable" content in a way that also threatens free expression. City authorities in Beijing shut down blog-hosting site Bullog on January 12, according to local and international news reports. The site, popular among intellectuals and political commentators, had failed to remove "harmful" information, according to the reports.

China must revise Internet legislation before it is in compliance with international human rights standards.

Imprisonments

CPJ has the following specific recommendations China should adopt to improve its press freedom record:

   * Release journalists imprisoned for their work.

China has consistently jailed more journalists than any other country for the past decade. CPJ research shows that at least 28 journalists and Internet users who publish news and opinion online were incarcerated in China as of December 1, 2008.

   * Define anti-state charges, such as possessing state secrets or inciting subversion, to limit their retributive use against journalists and online critics.

Web site publisher Huang Qi was charged with possessing state secrets on February 2 after disseminating news about earthquake relief efforts in Sichuan on his Web site, according to international news reports. He still suffers from poor health induced by an earlier five-year jail term that he served for publishing allegedly subversive articles on the site.

   * Protect lawyers who defend free expression.

Imprisoned journalist Zheng Yichun has lacked legal counsel since his lawyer, Gao Zhisheng, also came under suspicion for subversion based on online articles. Gao, who has been detained several times and accuses security officials of torturing him while in their custody, was taken by security forces again for two weeks in 2009 before his release on February 3, according to overseas human rights groups. The reason for that detention is not clear.

   * Independently investigate allegations of torture.

Yang Maodong, imprisoned since 2006 for illegally publishing a magazine which reported on a high-profile graft case, has staged hunger strikes to protest physical abuse at the hands of officials in a Guangdong prison, southern China, according to overseas rights groups.

   * Independently investigate violations of criminal procedure.

Prominent writer Liu Xiaobo was detained on December 8. Officials did not inform his wife of his detention within the designated 24-hour period and he is still missing, though charges have not been filed, according to international news reports. His lawyer told CPJ that security officials believe he drafted the unusually frank public call for political and legal reform known as "Charter 08," which was published online on December 9, Liu was one of more than 300 people from a broad sector of society to sign the charter, which has continued to garner support since his detention.

   * Abolish government-issue journalist permits.

Journalist Jiang Weiping wrote about a corruption scandal for a Hong Kong magazine in 2000, but will never work as a journalist in China again. He was arrested and served six years for inciting subversion and state secrets charges prior to his release in 2006 and can no longer get a government-issue ID to work as a journalist. The three-year suspension of his political rights attached to his sentence barred him from leaving the country. He was able to obtain the assistance of the Canadian government early this year and left China for Canada on February 4, according to his wife, Stella Lee, who has lived there since 2004.

As China notes in its national report, press freedom guarantees are included in China's constitution. But the existing legal framework and its application by Chinese officials prevents them from being effectively implemented. The Universal Periodic Review offers a unique opportunity to establish and hold China to specific steps for bringing its press freedom record in line with international norms. The Human Rights Council was created as an alternative to the widely discredited U.N. Commission on Human Rights. The only way for the council to be effective on issues such as press freedom in China is for countries like yours to openly confront China on its record. We are counting on you to do so.

Sincerely,

Joel Simon

Executive Director