RConversation

Is Web2.0 a wash for free speech in China?

This is a picture of Zhai Minglei's computer after his hard drive was removed and confiscated on Thursday.

Blogger and publisher of the recently-shut-down grassroots newspaper "Minjian,"  Zhai posted the photo on Friday along with an account of the questioning he had undergone that afternoon. See John Kennedy's translation of Zhai's Thursday blog post describing how his home was raided. Friday's post is a long account, which hopefully somebody will translate in full. His hard drive was returned to him, with "Minjian"-related material removed.

Zhai (pictured here sporting a "Minjian" t-shirt at dinner after the recent Chinese Blogger Con) thinks that the search of his home, confiscation of all back issues of "Minjian" and confiscation of his hard drive were a reaction to an open letter he recently wrote to his readers about the closure of "Minjian." The China Media Project translated much of it here.  One quote: "China’s hosting of the 2008 Olympic Games might demonstrate that Chinese people are physically stronger and sturdier, but the death of Minjian reminds us that the mental horizons of the Chinese people are limited to the child’s playground. While the market is glutted with mediocre, materialistic consumer fare, public affairs news materials are repeatedly pressured and bled out." 

Zhai insists that his newspaper violated no laws, that its closure was a violation of the Chinese constitution, and that Thursday's search of his home was not legal.  His post after Friday's questioning session concludes: "Because we've been living for so long in this mentally stunted environment, we've become used to validating this system of backward government administrative thinking. Thus we're like the frog in cold water that gets slowly boiled, slowly getting used to it, unaware of our impending death.... One phrase: Break out of the net!"

In other bad news, the people involved with Me Media, a Chinese-language meta-blog rounding up the hottest blog buzz in China, report that the website's IP address has been blocked by Chinese internet service providers. In other words, to use correct Chinese netizen lingo, they've been "harmonized" by the "great firewall."  Contributors say they believe the site was blocked because their latest post included discussion of the recent Shenyang ant farmer protests (yes, ant farmers - read the link for details). As John Kennedy documents over at Global Voices, people trying to post information about the protests online are engaging in an intense whack-a-mole battle with censors: the name of the company involved "Yilishen" has gone onto the blacklist that causes web pages with those words to be blocked by search engines, filtered by ISP's, and flagged for take-down by blog service providers, video-hosting sites, and chatroom monitors. As the comments on John's post demonstrate, people are forced to post information and videos related to the protests on overseas websites, even though many of those sites can't be seen without use of proxy servers, because when posted on domestic sites they are removed completely. 

In yet more bad news, Radio Free Asia points out in a long analysis piece that a longstanding online forum for sufferers of Hepatitis B was recently shut down. The RFA blog quotes a forum moderator: "This Web site has been running for six years now without running into any problems. If there were any additional formalities required, they should have notified us ahead of time. But we haven’t been allowed any leeway at all. They just shut it down immediately. This is an illegal act.”

Finally, Roland Soong has translated a couple posts from Ruan Yifeng's blog: in the first post , Ruan comments on a recent James Fallows blog post about his delight in purchasing a VPN service to circumvent censorship. In the second blog post, Ruan complains that someone has reported him to the "China Internet Illegal and Harmful Information Reporting Center" for writing about circumvention methods.  Ruan concludes: "People like you are like the cold and indifferent politicians and the accomplices of the government that Lu Xun wrote about.  It is the existence of people like you that makes people despair about this country." [link added]

Amidst all this, Zhao Jing, aka Michael Anti - blogger, New York Times researcher and currently a Nieman Fellow at Harvard - has given a presentation at Harvard arguing that the "golden age" for blogging in China is over.

On Tuesday he gave a provocative talk to my former colleagues at the Berkman Center, in which he argued that free speech has become less and less possible in the Chinese blogosphere since late 2005, when his MSN Spaces blog was censored.   (You can watch the video of his entire talk here or read excellent summaries by Ethan Zuckerman and David Weinberger.)  Anti argues that since 2005, the increasingly sophisticated systems for blocking external websites, plus the co-option of private enterprises in censoring user-generated content, has rendered Web2.0 in China largely ineffectual as a vehicle for social or political change.  He believes that the serious conversations, at least amongst China's urban elites, are retreating back Web1.0 tools - e-mail list-servs and chatrooms. 

Anti also said he believes the Internet is helping China to become more like Singapore - not more like the U.S. or other Western democracies. Chinese people, he argued, have so much more cultural and social freedom than they had before, that "at least 95% of people don't care about censorship" - and what's more, those who care are considered "wierd."

Which brings us back to Ruan's angry blog post about being reported to the authorities by his fellow countryman. Contrary to misperceptions by many outsiders, the situation in China today is not "the people vs. the government."  Chinese people themselves - not only regulatory authorities or people who manage internet and telecoms businesses but also many others - are helping the government to police each other because they somehow believe that doing so is in their own interests.

Back when Michael Anti's blog got censored by Microsoft, an essay started making the rounds in the Chinese blogosphere whose point was, essentially, that Chinese people themselves are ultimately responsible for allowing their fellow countrymen to be censored - and that the ultimate solution is going to have to be initiated by the Chinese themselves. The writer concludes:

Once there was a [Chinese] countryman who had emigrated to Australia. He had gotten an Australian passport primarily not because it was convenient for him to travel, but because he couldn't stand the feeling he got when, going through Chinese customs with a Chinese passport, the Chinese customs officials would eye him so coldly. I realized, the Chinese people are a rung lower than everybody else not because the foreigners look down on us. It's because Chinese people devalue other Chinese people; Chinese people don't treat their own people like humans."

Reacting to the proposed Global Online Freedom Act, a law proposed by members of the U.S. Congress which would constrain U.S. companies from complying with Chinese government censorship and surveillance demands, Michael Anti wrote that such legislation can not change China because the root of the problem lies with Chinese people themselves.

...the US Congressional representatives...even treat the freedom of the Chinese netizens as a maid that they can dress us as they wish.  This proves once again: the freedom and rights of the Chinese people can only be won by the Chinese people themselves.

The only true way of solving the Internet blockage in China is this: every Chinese youth with conscience must practice and expand their freedom, and oppose any blockage and suppression every day. 

As long as China's urban elites continue to live well and enjoy their lives, will more than a few freethinkers and courageous souls like Zhai Minglei be bothered to challenge the status quo? Are employees at Web2.0 companies willing to stand up for the rights of ant farmers? If I was a betting kind of person, my money would be on "no."

Lately I've given a few talks around town titled "Will the Chinese Communist Party Survive the Internet?"  My answer - for the short and medium term at least - is "yes." 

Western media pundits and many policymakers have a tendency to assume that the Internet will ultimately bring democracy to China. As for the long run, I think China will change. But I doubt China's political evolution will follow the same pattern as the West. I am not convinced that, if China eventually becomes more pluralistic, it will necessarily involve the same political structures as Western democracies. Lately I've been wondering whether the Internet and mobile technologies could be major contributing factors to why China will evolve differently. I hope to explore these questions a lot more in coming year or so. Suggestions and reactions welcome.

People ≠ money!

For those readers of my blog who don't yet read Chinese, the character in this graphic means "person."

After attending the 3rd Annual Chinese Blogger Conference which is one of the most egalitarian conferences on the planet, you get spoiled.

Then you go to a more corporate-oriented Web2.0 conference where executives and business school professors talk about Web 2.0 as the latest way to deliver products and advertising to customers and viewers, and you get highly annoyed.

As a user, I don't consider a business to be truly 2.0 unless it has transformed its relationship with its customers and users from a one-way relationship to a give-and-take among equals. 

Treating human beings like a "market" to be "exploited" is 1.0 thinking.   2.0 means replacing the word "market" with "community."  If you really want to be a 2.0 business, you need to become a respectful, participating member of your community. Otherwise, you're still a 1.0 business trying to use 2.0 tools in a 1.0 way.   

Chinese Blogger Conference: Nurturing "grassroots" in a tough climate

(Photo by Josh Chin)

The thing I love most about the annual Chinese blogger conferences is the chance to make friends and have candid conversations with many people - offline, and offstage. 

The best conferences naturally have interesting speakers and panels, but they also serve as catalyst and focal point for community － people you enjoy talking to for hours after the meeting ends over beers and sunflower seeds (a classic Beijing combination). As you can see from these pictures taken late on Saturday night, CNbloggercon is definitely that kind of conference.

Now in its third year, CNBloggercon has evolved into a community platform - an exciting community of independent online  writers, digital artists, media techies, entrepreneurs, educators, intellectuals, etc. Tangos at China Web2.0 Review describes it as the "biggest annual grassroot party of China’s web 2.0 startups."

Even if you don't speak Chinese, you can see the energy of this community through things like the CNBloggercon Flickr tag.  You can also read John Kennedy's heroic live-blogging here.

Coming on the heels of the 17th Party Congress, called "shi qi da" ("the 17th big meeting") in Chinese, people jokingly called this "san da" (the "third big meeting"). People even referred tongue-in-cheek to one of the conference organizers, Issac Mao, as "Chairman Mao."

I was especially thrilled to have finally met "Laohumiao" (the guy smoking in the picture at right) whose pen name means "tiger temple". He is a Beijing-based blogger who I first linked to in 2004 when he blogged about a murder that he eye-witnessed on the street in Beijing. "Laohumiao" has just returned from a 5-province blogging trip, on which he documented the lives of the ordinary people he encountered along the way. He was also one of five people on a panel I moderated, titled "Grassroots Media and Professional Media," which ended up being the most controversial panel of Day 1.

(Photo by Josh Chin) 
 

They're all pictured here, from left to right: Zhai Minglei, former Southern Weekend reporter and founder of grassroots publication, Minjian; outspoken blogger "Guo Daxia;" Laohumiao, described above; BeiFeng of the recently banned Bullog (click here for more background on Bullog's launch last year, courtesy of John K. at Globalvoices); and last but not least Zhou Shuguang, aka Zola, the blogger who shot to fame for covering the Chongqing nailhouse story earlier this year. John live-blogged the session here, and you can read his transcript for the gritty details.  "Rose" Luqiu Luwei, blogger and journalist at Phoenix TV (a Mandarin-language TV station based in Hong Kong) was originally scheduled to be on the panel, but due to work conflicts she was not able to attend. She is founder of an interesting "pro-am" experiment (combining work of professionals and amateurs) called My 1510. I've spoken to her in the past about the relationship between amateur and professional media and it would have been very interesting to have her perpective on the panel. Last winter she wrote a very thoughtful article titled "Blogging News in China" for Nieman Reports. Maybe she'll come next year, if her bosses let her... given that a couple of my panelists this year required no provoking on my part to start discussing questions of free speech that made some people in the audience uncomfortable.

"Daxia" got people squirming when he complained about how his blogs have been shut down multiple times, and reminded us that Article 35 of the Chinese Constitution is supposed to guarantee freedom of speech for the Chinese people. (More of his views on the illegal behavior of government and party in Chinese here.)

Here's how David Feng at Blognation described the panel:

Rebecca MacKinnon next moderated a panel on citizen journalism, which also saw Beifeng, Zuola Zhou, Zhai Mingfei and Laohumiao take part. IN particular, the man behind Yibao (literally “one person’s newspaper) went onstage and gave his views on grassroots media. 

The panel started touching some very sensitive aspects of citizen journalism, namely whether or not the Chinese Constitution protected their rights to freedom of speech, publication and press. The talk got very emotion, with panelists declaring out loud that “you can lock someone in jail, but you will never lock a spirit in jail”.

At this point, views were sharply split between the Western point of view — a guarantee of freedom of speech for everyone — and a more local point of view — feeding the farmers (the vox populi in the audience went along the lines of “China has 800-900 million farmers; do they care more about freedom of speech or that they don’t go hungry?”). Meanwhile, the IM feed, seeing the panel little short of taking those who feed the population with the 7 o’clock news to task, declared that “this conference is full of ideologists or people who believe in a perfect society”, and that with the “20% active, 80% powerless” audience, the talk dealt with matters that cannot be solved at this time. In fact, the chatter at one point said that people got more mileage buying toilets in Beijing than discussing freedom of speech!

Blogger "lonson" points out (in Chinese) that the panel's real issues - once you went beyond the larger free speech problems many people in the room found too headache-making to confront - were about journalistic ethics and the financial bottom line. The relationship between professional media  and amateur or "grassroots" media is plenty contentious even when you're not in an authoritarian country - but the politics here make efforts to shape a new, socially beneficial relationship between grassroots and professional media all the more difficult.

Beijing-based freelance journalist Josh Chin whose blog is called "Ch-Infamous" has another take:

Of the events I’ve actually managed to concentrate on, so far the most noteworthy panel (for foreigners at least) has been a debate, moderated by Rebecca MacKinnon, on the relationship between blogging and traditional media. An old topic, yes. But still relevant in China, where blogs count as virtually the only independent source of news. Talk quickly turned from whether bloggers are journalists to blogs as guardians of free speech arrayed against a soul-snuffing government, whereupon the Jiwai.de message board lit up: “Why get talk about such sensitive things?” “Chaos on the stage!” “Is bloggers’ responsibility really so grand?” Most interesting bit came when someone in the audience questioned whether bloggers, who use pen names, don’t manage to evade responsibility for what they write. The answer came from Bei Feng (北风 ) , a former TV journalist from Guangzhou: “Actually, a regular journalist makes a mistake, his newspaper or TV station usually takes most of the heat, or makes the problem disappear. A blogger takes the heat himself. The law makes it possible to hold people responsible for what they write online. For that reason, you’re even more careful about what you publish, you’re standards are even higher. Bloggers have more of a sense of responsibility than regular journalists.”

A bit simplified as arguments go, but not without its merits. It’s common knowledge the Chinese news industry is nearly as corrupt as the government officials it purports to cover. Paid articles and hong bao bribes (explained away as “transportation fees”) are standard salary supplements for regular journalists. Chinese bloggers, at least at this point, don’t seem to be in it for the money.

One issue we did not get enough time to explore in our five-person panel in 40 minutes was the controversy surrounding Zhou Shuguang, aka "Zola," the blogger who played an instrumental role in publicizing the Chongqing "nailhouse" story - the the dramatic story of ordinary citizens fighting real estate developers, on which online citizen media beat mainstream media hands down. Since catapulting to fame with his coverage of one hot story, Zola has taken a great deal of flak for his behavior - in particular, taking payments from other interviewees in exchange for writing about them. He seemed tired and emotionally worn down by all the criticism and by trying to defend his behavior, arguing that he's not a journalist and wasn't ever trying to be. He says he now plans to return to his home in Hunan and go back to his vegetable selling business that he abruptly abandoned when inspired to go and cover the story that changed his life. Zola's problem is a common one for bloggers who shoot to fame after covering a particular issue they happen to be passionate about or an event that they happen to have witnessed: in all his subsequent work, as he searched for interesting things to write about and to live up to inflated expectations, a lot of his readers were disappointed by his lack of professionalism.

Both Zhai Minglei and Laohumiao talked about the importance of grassroots media as a personal action that is different from professional media because it represents the unadulterated voices of individuals. People can now use online publishing tools to document what they see and encounter- as well as their personal perspective on it. The result will inevitably be something different than what comes out of news organizations. Quite often "personal media," which collectively adds up to become "grassroots media," will bring to light events and problems that traditional media simply isn't going to mention - and has a different kind of perspective than that of professionals. The panelists all seemed to agree that if you stifle these voices in the name of professionalism (which Josh points out is rather dubious in much of the Chinese mainstream media anyway), nobody is left to speak out for the interests of ordinary people.

I should emphasize,  however, that politics and journalism-related topics were the exception not the rule at CNBloggercon.  The focus, as it has always been, was on people's accomplishments in using the web to build commnities in education, charity, free software, commercial collaboration, social marketing, gaming, and many other things. Thomas Crampton, who attended portions of the event blogged some impressions here.  Ben at the 8Asians blog writes:

What’s interesting about this event is that it’s much more than about blogging itself. Blogging is great, but in China where speech is censored and there are people that are trying to speak out on this, that, or another thing, this event is really about how the technology has empowered regular people the ability to move forward. Just take a look at the technology in itself. This event even showcases the talent behind China’s equivalents to our Internet fads.

The only other "risky" panel was the final session on day two: Telecommunications Services and Internet Law, which included the blogger "Yetaai" who is suing China Telecom for blocking his website, and Liu Xiaoyuan, the Beijing-based lawyer who tried to sue the blog hosting company Sohu for breach of contract after it censored several of his blog posts. Both of them were given a chance to describe their cases, and Yetaai called for a mass class-action lawsuit of users against the ISP's blocking sites which cannot be shown to be violating any law. Then the moderator quickly moved the discussion on to other topics such as intellectual property and libel. Still, it was gutsy for organizers to give these two men a public platform here in Beijing to make their cases better known - especially since domestic Chinese media has not reported a thing about these lawsuits and very few Chinese Internet users know about them.

China's Censorship 2.0

On a recent trip to Beijing I visited Liu Xiaoyuan, a lawyer who is suing the Chinese web portal and blog-hosting service, Sohu, for censoring several of his blog posts. He wrote about our conversation here. The International Herald Tribune has an Associated Press article about him this week here. Liu argues that Sohu violated its own user contract by censoring his posts - since his posts discussing various legal issues did not violate any law, and did not fit the description of type of content that Sohu's user agreement says must not be published. Liu's case was thrown out by the Haidian district court in Beijing, but he is appealing to the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate Court. The odds on his appeal getting much of anywhere are considered rather long.

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: some censor much more heavily than others, some have their staff members review his posts before they appear publicly, some notify him that his content has been deleted and send it back to him, some just mask from public view it or delete it without explanation. The articles he is suing Sohu for blocking, he was able to post on Sina with no problem. When he logs into the administrative area of his blog, he can see the content of his post, marked by a message warning him that the post has been locked and unpublished. Here is a photo I took when he showed me the screen (click to enlarge):

It says: "Dear Blogger-friend, Hello! We are very sorry to inform you that due to certain reasons this blog post is not suitable to be publicly shown and has been locked down. You can see the original text and photos through this page. Thank you for your understanding and support of Sohu. [Then it gives the number of a 24 hour service hotline and service e-mail.]

Liu's experience is very consistent with the system of internal censorship carried out by Chinese blog-hosting companies as described by Reporters Without Borders' latest report, "Journey to the heart of Internet censorship."  The report describes how Chinese Internet companies, especially blog-hosting companies and others dealing with user generated content, are required to police and censor their users in order to keep their business licenses. It describes how all web companies have a section or department for monitoring and censoring user content, how executives of all Beijing-based web companies are required to attend weekly meetings with the Internet Information Administrative Bureau. It also describes - which is consistent with what I've heard - that the first line of control over web content is directed to a great extent by the city-level Internet authorities, which results in wide variation over the extent and methods of censorship by companies based in different cities and provinces. 

Chinese internet censorship has two parts, external and internal: a filtering system blocks external websites from being seen by people inside China unless they use circumvention technology like proxy servers; the internal system controls content published on websites hosted on computer servers inside China. That first part is what people call the "great firewall of China," (which researchers point out is not a real firewall) that controls access to external websites by people inside China. This filtering system is well documented by the Open Net Initiative and others. The system Liu experiences every day, whose internal workings Reporters Without Borders describes in its report, is part of the internal censorship system. This system of internal, company-level controls which began to take shape in 2005 is more thorough and irreversible than the externally-directed "great firewall" system. Content posted on websites hosted on servers overseas can't be taken down by Chinese authorities (unless they successfully pressure foreign companies to take it down), so generally if an Internet user knows how to use a proxy server, they can still access the content. Under the internal control system, authorities pressure web companies and service providers to keep certain kinds of content off the web altogether - to the greatest extent possible. The reason why thousands of Internet Data Centers (IDC's) were shut down beginning last month in the run-up for the politically sensitive 17th Party Congress was that the websites hosted on them were not adequately able to control their user generated content in the way that Sohu, Sina, and the other big Web2.0 companies do, under the "guidance" of various government and Party departments as the RWB report describes.

Just as China's filtering system of external websites is unparalleled in the world in terms of its success and complexity, so is China's internal web censorship system. In effect, the Chinese government co-opts the private sector into doing its censorship work. It is a model which I am sure many governments around the world will be eager to emulate if they aren't already doing so.

Eating "River Crab" at the Harmonious Forum － 吃河蟹开和谐会

Over the weekend I posted this photo titled "eating river crab that wears three watches" to my Flickr account. People who don't read Chinese blogs are - understandably - asking why. Let me explain.   

At the World Economic Forum in Dalian last week Issac Mao and I were there in person when Premier Wen Jiabao broke major news with the announcement that he intends to build a harmonious society in China. Forum founder Klaus Schwab echoed Wen in his welcoming speech, calling for a "a new harmonious relationship among business, governments, society, and the environment."  While technology pundits attending the conference swooned over Chinese internet companies, the government launched a new purge of internet data centers, shutting down thousands of websites - a story which most business and tech reporters covering the conference appear to have been too busy swooning to check out. Meanwhile see this article from the New York Times about how American financiers are helping beef up the Chinese government's surveillance capabilities.

In celebration of so much harmoniousness, Isaac and I led some Young Global Leaders, Tech Pioneers, New Champions and other esteemed foreign guests out of their conference-center-and-hotel cocoon to a local seafood place. We drank some local beer and Dalian fire-water and got to talking about the Chinese blogosphere. We thought it would be funny to create a real-life version of a mashup-pun about internet censorship that has been cropping up all over the Chinese blogosphere lately.

In China these days, if your website gets blocked, your blog-hosting service takes down a politically edgy post you wrote, or your ISP deletes your site completely, you say: "I've been harmonized."   The word for harmony, harmonized, or harmonious (all the same word in Chinese) is pronounced "he xie" in Chinese and is written like this: 和谐.    For those without Chinese fonts on their browser:

However, there's a slight problem, which is that since this phrase is so often used sarcastically on Chinese blogs and forums, it has been flagged as a sensitive keyword by many of the blog and forum hosting platforms, increasing the chances that a post using this phrase could itself get "harmonized." So bloggers and chatroom denizens have switched the characters to another phrase, 河蟹, also pronounced "he xie" (with slightly different tonation)  which means "river crab:"

Thus, when bloggers seem to be writing nonsensically about "river crab," they're actually talking about censorship. 

Then somebody somewhere started this photoshop-meme:

A crab wearing three watches. 河蟹带三个表。  What? Because the Chinese blogger Wang Xiaofeng writes under the pen name 带三个表 （"dai sange biao) which means "wears three watches" ... which is a pun on 三个代表 ("sange daibiao") which means "Three Represents," a political slogan coined by former President Jiang Zemin.  Some blogger thought it would be funny to do a visual mashup combining "river crab" and "wears three watches." Now, if you do a Google search on the Chinese phrase 河蟹带三个表,  you'll see people giggling about this mashup-meme all over the Chinese Internet.

In a blog post about how WEF delegates got a first-hand taste of Chinese Internet censorship last week, Isaac explained another catchphrase in the Chinese blogosphere these days. The "Great Firewall" is usually refered to as GFW. But Chinese bloggers now call it 功夫网 "gong fu wang" (also GFW) - which literally translates as "kung fu web." So sometimes when you see bloggers talking about kung fu, they may actually be talking about censorship.

Despite the Chinese government's fear of its netizens, and despite the fact that the WEF failed to address how unfortunate it is that the conference's host government fears its citizens in this way, Isaac still believes it's good that such events are being held in China. He writes:

Anyway, it's very interesting topic that GFW meets WEF. Its the real world of how China meets the world. How totalitarian meets open society. And how reality meets future. The interaction of China and world may face more and more such mindset conflictions in the coming decade, but we can believe the universal value of humanity can eventually win the future.

Chinese bloggers thumb their noses at "self discipline"

As I was digging myself out of the vacation e-mail backlog, I found a pile of alarmed messages. They contained various versions of this story on the Chinese self-discipline pledge that a number of blog hosting services including MSN and Yahoo! signed last week.

Before doing anything I checked in with some Chinese bloggers. I found people doing the literary equivalent of thumbing their noses with tongues sticking out and making loud "pppllhhhh" noises. They seem to view the pledge as a bunch of bureaucrats making yet another meaningless pledge to justify their existence. Keso points to a long list of other self-discipline pledges made over the past few years which, he says "other than giving us joke material, they've pretty much not amounted anything." Meanwhile "xucx" thinks the pledge amounts to "loud thunder with light rain." Memedia is dismissive too, although it also points out that this kind of thing will just drive more Chinese bloggers to solutions like the Digital Nomads Project, which aims to help Chinese bloggers set up their own independent blogs so that they don't have to rely on these blog hosting companies. 

Memedia also points to another, very encouraging development showing that Chinese bloggers are less and less inclined to take censorship lying down. Beijing-based blogger Liu Xiaoyuan is suing Sohu for censoring several of his blog posts. He says he fails to see what law or regulation the censored blog posts were violating. He says there was nothing in them that violated Sohu's terms of service. This is now the second blogger who is going to court over censorship. The more these companies institute terms of service, and the more their censorship can't be explained by those terms of service, I predict we will see evan more lawsuits.

All of the Western press coverage of the pledge that I have found online is based on this statement from Reporters Without Borders. Interesting none of the stories I found even quote any Chinese bloggers. Nor have I seen any stories quoting directly from translations of the original Chinese-language pledge document.  Reporters Without Borders have done some important work in calling attention to global affronts to freedom of speech and abuses by governments around the world (including the U.S. government) against people who say things those governments don't like. However, the last time I blogged about a story that came from a RWB statement without separately checking the original Chinese documents, Roland Soong made me look really dumb. Not wanting that to happen again, I decided I had better read through the original Chinese document before commenting.  The meat of the pledge is in items 5-14. Below are my notes roughly summarizing them - perhaps somebody may feel inspired to do a more accurate and careful translation.

5. blog service should obey chinese laws and regulations, protect the legal rights of blog users and the public
6. a good blog service needs:
(1) comprehensive management
(2) sufficient technical and content management staff
(3) sufficient data security measures, including user data privacy, blog content security etc
(4) obey all other existing laws
7. provide good creative environment for blog usersguide them to create excellent cultural works
8. blog service provider should have user agreement with user, and blog host has a right not to give service to those who refuse to agree to terms of service
9. terms of service should include:
(1) blogger agrees to abide by china's laws, regulations, etc, will use the web in a civilized manner, not disseminate pornography, rumors, or illegal information
(2) blogger agrees not to denigrate and insult other ethnicities and religions
(3) blogger agrees not to disseminate rumors and false information, or information that harms others or violates the legal rights of others
(4) blogger agrees not to disseminate information that violates the copyrigths of others
(5) blogger agrees to monitor and manage postings, and to delete postings that are illegal or bad
(6) blogger wont use blog to disseminate viruses or other things that would harm other people's computers
10. if blogger doesnt adhere to the terms, the service provider has a right to delete any illegal or bad information, or terminate the blogger's service
11. encourage blogger to use real name, and register real full name, contact address, phone number etc.
12. blog service will use proper security to manage the information of bloggers who use their real names, protect the user private data, and not give it to third parties or publicize it without the blogger's permission except under circumstances when law requires.
13. blog service should reserve the right to manage the bloggers postings, and the blogger should manage their postings and delete illegal or inappropriate information.
14. blog service should establish online customer service window, and set up a hotline, to accept public comments and complaints about the blog service and content, and resolve things in a timely manner

The RWB statement says:

“The Chinese government has yet again forced Internet sector companies to cooperate on sensitive issues - in this case, blogger registration and blog content,” the press freedom organisation said. “As they already did with website hosting services, the authorities have given themselves the means to identify those posting ‘subversive’ content by imposing a self-discipline pact.”

Reporters Without Borders added: “This decision will have grave consequences for the Chinese blogosphere and marks the end of anonymous blogging. A new wave of censorship and repression seems imminent, above all in the run-up to the Communist Party of China’s next congress.”

This pledge is not by any means a great thing for freedom of speech, and I would point out that quite a number of well-established and Silicon Valley-funded Chinese blog-hosting services and Web2.0 companies are not on the list of signatories. Good for them. Too bad Yahoo! China and MSN China with their big international brands did not have the cojones to stand with them. Having gone through the pledge, however,  I am struck by several things: First, the blog hosting companies pledge they'll encourage bloggers to use their real names but are not going to "force" them to do so, nor are the blog hosting companies "forced" to require bloggers (or even ask them very strongly) to use their real names. Second, the censorship which the blog hosting companies are pledging to do here is nothing more, I'm afraid, than what all major blog-hosting companies have already been doing for quite some time now. The pledge merely makes existing practices much more public, and what's more it institutionalizes the process by which companies will warn new users that their content will be censored. In a twisted way, this could even be helpful if it enables companies to be more transparent and honest with users about how censorship is being done, and also being more clear to users in advance about what will get them into trouble (and which has already been getting people into trouble for some time - without forewarning of any kind, usually). The insistence on privacy protection except in legitimate law enforcement situations could potentially help prevent names being leaked to powerful officials business people who want to use their influence to get friends working in blog hosting companies to tell them who is exposing their corruption - so that's potentially not all bad. The public security bureau has always had access to everything it wants, including via Yahoo as we know all too well. The pledge also requires proper customer service - in part to receive complaints about bad content but in theory this could also be used as a way for bloggers to appeal censorship decisions. Whether or not the pledge gets used in these more positive ways really depends on the companies themselves and how they choose to proceed - and whether their users push them in that direction. But it does seem that one could use the pledge  as an excuse to be more honest and transparent with users if one wanted to take things in that direction. That is of course a big "if". At any rate, it is not quite the disaster that it is painted to be. The part about suggesting people use their real names is mainly throwing a bone to all the officials who lost major face when their attempts to require real name registration by law suffered miserable defeat earlier this year. Blog hosting companies lobbied hard against making real name registration mandatory, don't forget.

Meanwhile, both MSN and Yahoo! have issued explanations for why they signed the pledge. MSN sent this to the Register:

    On August 21, MSN China, a joint venture between Microsoft and Shanghai Alliance Investment, Ltd., did sign - along with the other major Internet Service Providers in China - a self-regulatory code of conduct regarding blog services, sponsored by the Internet Society of China. Such self-regulatory codes are an effective means of helping to protect our customers from cybercrimes and other threats to online security and privacy, and to promoting a safe, friendly environment in which to enjoy our services.

    The principles expressed by the ISC document are broadly in line with what other countries and industry groups have adopted in such self-regulatory codes, including commitments to promote online safety and to prevent misuse of services. While the self-regulatory code does make some recommendations that Microsoft does not support, it should be emphasized that these are indeed recommendations only, and we retain discretion to determine how to best achieve the overarching goals of the agreement. In particular, we do not plan to implement real-name registration for blogging in our Windows Live Spaces service in China.

    Microsoft believes the Internet should be fostered and protected as a worldwide vehicle for reliable information and communications, personal expression, innovation and economic development. We therefore believe that, around the world, government actions taken to address security, safety, or other concerns, and which impact free expression and privacy, should be taken with deliberation and restraint.

    Microsoft also supports international dialogue and bilateral consultations to promote the consistency of national actions and to maximize the openness, security and reliability of the Internet platform, including the development of a clear set of principles that should guide global Internet companies providing services around the world. To this end, Microsoft has joined with a diverse group of companies, academics, investors, technology leaders and human rights organizations to seek solutions to the free expression and privacy challenges faced by technology and communications companies doing business internationally. This effort aims to produce guiding principles, methods for governance and accountability, and to create a forum for collective action and shared learning on free expression and privacy matters.

The following paragraph has been sent around by Yahoo! to human rights groups and others. Naturally, it's Alibaba's fault!

Yahoo! China, which is managed and controlled by Alibaba, signed a self-disciplinary pledge that recommends Chinese internet companies encourage real-name blog registration.  While the pledge supports certain generally recognized online safety measures, we believe the real-name registration aspect of the pledge presents potential risks to free expression and privacy.  When we became aware of the possibility of the pledge, we expressed our strong concerns to Yahoo! China.  Alibaba, which has day-to-day decision-making authority over Yahoo! China, chose to have Yahoo! China sign the pledge, although we understand they do not currently plan to implement real-name registration for bloggers.  Yahoo! Inc. is deeply committed to freedom of expression and privacy.  We are actively engaged with the U.S. Department of State on these issues, and we are also working closely with other technology companies, human rights groups and academics to develop a framework to address human rights concerns globally.

My most recent blog post about that framework process is here, and an excellent article about it is here.

Blogs and China Correspondence: in which I finally present the paper I wrote in December

I'm at the World Journalism Education Conference this week, where I had my first experience of presenting an academic paper.

To be honest, I am still on the fence as to whether I'm really cut out for academia over the long term.  I just started my three-year contract at Hong Kong U, and I'll certainly stick with that commitment, but beyond that I'm not sure. I may or may not have the patience for it. There are some things about academia - having space and time to think about issues that truly interest and concern me, for instance - which I really value. Other aspects of academia (not specific to any one institution necessarily) are mind-numbing, frustrating, and to put it bluntly hypocritical. But then I guess we can say that about most if not all professions, can't we? I'll write more about my impressions of this conference - and the journalism education profession more generally - in a later post. (Meanwhile read Guy Berger's excellent blogging of many sessions here.) But my main headline is that while nobody here will quite admit it, journalism education is in an even greater crisis of purpose than the journalism profession generally. Why? Because academic institutions are several magnitudes less flexible than news organizations when it comes to change.

Presenting a paper at an academic conference is the polar opposite of blogging - or journalism for that matter. We had to submit our finished papers in early January in order to have them considered for presentation this week. We were required to submit papers that had not been previously published elsewhere - so now that I've presented it perhaps the thing may get published in some academic journal by next year. By which time the entire thing will be completely out of date.

My paper, titled "Blogs and China Correspondence: How Foreign Correspondents Covering China Use Blogs," summarized the results of a survey I conducted last Fall of foreign correspondents who cover China. The responses I got back showed that blogs have become an important part of the media diet for foreign correspondents who cover China. For further details, see this December blog post in which I previewed many of the key results. A PDF of the whole thing can be downloaded here.   (511.0K)

Many people here at the conference found it surprising that blogs are already having such a substantial impact on foreign journalists' China coverage. Another finding that surprised people was that a  lot of working journalists (unlike most people who study or write about journalism) find it useless to ask whether blogs in general are more or less "reliable" or "credible" than some other medium. Journalists evaluate each blog according to its individual merits, depending on what is known about the blogger’s background and track record. This is the same way a journalist evaluates any source - whether it's a person or a local newspaper in the city where they work, or whatever.

At the end of the paper, based on feedback from journalists and the kinds of blogs they claimed to read regularly, I offered some conclusions about what kinds of blogs are of greatest value to China correspondents (and likely all journalists). They tend to be blogs that go beyond personal opinion and essay-writing in reaction to news events reported by mainstream media. They tend to contain at least one of the following:

• original information not readily available elsewhere;
• in-depth perspective based on specialized knowledge;
• information or insight on places and people the journalist cannot easily access;
• links to original documents and resources;
• translated items from the original language on subjects that the international media tends to be interested in – or which they might be convinced to pay attention to if the material is interesting enough.

Finally, I asked: "To what extent can we extrapolate from the relationship between blogs and China correspondence to a more global relationship between blogs and foreign correspondence? Are Israeli and Palestinian bloggers as important to international correspondents covering Israel-Palestine, for example?"  I hope people will start surveying larger groups of correspondents covering different countries and regions so that we can find out.

My own hypothesis is that the relationship between blogs and foreign correspondence varies widely from place to place. Just based on my own observations and conversations with journalists I know, blogs are probably more important to China correspondents than to journalists covering a story such as the Israel-Palestine conflict for several reasons:   

• The China story in the international media is not dominated by military conflict or any one obvious single storyline;
• The China story is not generally a “breaking story,” but rather a “process story” about how this complex and geopolitically important country is changing, and what that change means for the rest of the world;
• There is strong demand for specialist insight, information and analysis on a range of subjects;
• Official controls on professional media and public speech in China are strong;
• Many sources are fearful of consequences of speaking directly with foreign journalists;
• Access to on-the-ground or reliable information outside of major cities is often difficult;
• China’s Internet population is sufficiently large and the material available on the Chinese Internet is sufficiently interesting in comparison with Chinese mainstream media sources.

In a breaking-news, conflict-oriented region where the local media is lively, diverse, relatively free, and non-Internet sources from all sides abound, I would guess that blogs are unlikely to be as important a source for foreign correspondents as they are in China.  But this is just a theory. What we really need is a comparative survey of international correspondents covering a range of countries, so that we can get a more global picture of how blogs fit into the overall ecosystem of international news. 

Of course, another thing that has yet to be done is a thorough study and analysis of the relationship between Chinese blogs and the Chinese news media. Michael Anti talked a bit about that relationship at Hong Kong U in April. That's a much bigger project, but is probably key if we want to understand China's rapidly evolving media ecosystem.

Chinese shooter rumor: Shame on the Chicago Sun-Times

Before the real Virginia Tech Killer was identified, a Chicago Sun-Times columnist named Michael Sneed (female) posted a story on the newspaper's website citing sources claiming:

"authorities were investigating whether the gunman who killed 32 people in a rampage on the Virginia Tech campus was a Chinese national who arrived in the United States last year on a student visa."

This story immediately got picked up by Chinese media and bloggers, and went all over the Chinese Internet, as journalist and blogger Luqiu Luwei describes (original Chinese version of her post is here).  Then the Sun-Times goes and changes the original story multiple times, with various versions documented by Letters from China, China Point, and James Fallows (here and here), among others. They erased the original version of the story, as if it never existed, and it is now (as of this reading at 4:30pm Hong Kong time) replaced with a new version describing identification of South Korean student Cho Seung-Hui - with no mention or trace anywhere of the earlier version. Except that if you Technorati that article's URL you'll see lots of people quoted from it and blogged about it, and the original is also preserved in the Google Cache.

I agree with Fallows' condemnation of the Sun-Times' failure to acknowledge the mistake combined with what appears to be a strategy of pretending they never reported a massive piece of misinformation:

Amending information in real time is a virtue of the web. Covering up one’s tracks is not. Wasn’t this pretty much what Orwell had in mind with the concept of the “memory hole“?

For the Oneline Journalism Hall of Shame record, here is a screengrab of the original article taken from the Google cache (click to enlarge):

Isaac Mao and Michael Anti at Hong Kong U.

The future of media in China - from the grassroots to the professional - has been a big topic at Hong Kong U over the past couple of weeks. My hard-working students videotaped recent talks given here by Isaac Mao and Michael Anti. Scroll down to the bottom of this post to watch the videos on Google Video.

Key points of Isaac's talk: 

• There are blockages to free thinking in China, due to various things: educational system, propaganda, and also "Stockholm syndrome" (in which the prisoner identifies with and sympathizes with the captors).
• He outlines the different "models" of thinking in China: 90% of people are "silent", 7% are "defensive," 1% are "functional" (i.e., self-promotional), 1% "aggressive" and only about 0.5% "free."
• Blogging is a learning tool. "Learning is about sharing." As people keep blogging they become more connected and develop trust between one another - something that has been badly lacking in Chinese society.
• Real trust makes it easier for people to collaborate and work together. Lack of trust has prevented people in China from working together on projects. He points to grassroots charity and NGO networks that have grown up around blogs, focused on things like poverty alleviation. Also networks of educators, professionals, etc., who share information about how to do their work better.
• Trusted networks are also very fast in spreading information because people believe information coming from people they trust. (Unlike government controlled media which is generally not so trusted.) "Messages spread quickly through flat networks."
• Information is able to route around censorship and blockages via trusted social networks. Within 3-5 years there may be a "total system to make the Great Firewall useless."
• Example of how many people trusted Zola the blogger on the nailhouse story more than they did other media sources.
• The priority now is to help people help themselves constructively through technical means, not political means. (Obvious reason: overt political activism is not feasible.)

Key points of Anti's talk (Watch the beginning of the video for an animated oral autobiography.):

• Professionalism, and fact-based "American style" journalism is the best hope for Chinese journalists. Traditional Chinese journalism has been more "European style," which mixes facts, feeling, and opinion. But the latter is more likely to get mixed up with propaganda, or to be perceived as dangerously political if it diverges too much from the line. Reporting that sticks closely to the facts and which is heavily fact checked, with strong devotion to factual accuracy is much easier to defend against censors and party secretaries. There is a great deal of support in the government for fact-based, "objective" journalism. He gives three detailed case studies to prove his point.
• Blogging and journalism: For professional journalists, we're starting to see a division of the medium. They do their fact-based professional work for their news organizations, then put their opinions on their blogs.
• He thinks there is an emerging consensus among Chinese journalists: 1. the propaganda department is bad; 2. legal rights are good, 3. journalists need to be professional, not indignant.
• The result of this consensus is the emergence of a sense of self-identification amongst Chinese journalists, and the potential for the emergence of a real community.
• Media controls have grown tighter in the Hu Jintao era, as compared to the Jiang Zemin era, but you can't say there is less freedom overall, thanks to the internet. Also, the core of people who work in China's media are liberal, despite "1984 style media control."
• Key quote: "The problem is not Chinese journalists, it's the control system." Many are talented and committed to professionalism and just need opportunities to show their talents.
• However: journalism in China is not what will change Chinese politics.
• "Journalists won't be the founders of a New China." That task will be left to politicians and political activists. It's a misconception to think that the improvement of Chinese journalism is the key to Chinese political change.
• Another great quote: "Bloggging didn't change China much, but changed the people much." Same with cell phones.  He also points out that technology is not inherently liberal and people make the mistake of assuming it is.

Here is Part I of Isaac's talk:

And here is Part 2:

The event was also blogged by students Wilson, Jane, Miu,  and Angie.   Austin Ramzy of TIME also blogged it. And AFP has an article about Isaac here. 

Here is Michael Anti:

 

Reuters Africa: breaking new ground

Reuters has taken an important and trend-setting step with Reuters Africa.

It is important in several ways. First, it demonstrates Reuters' commitment to covering Africa not only as a general news story but also as a global business story -  to an extent that I have not seen in other global English-language media.

As Reuters Africa editor John Chiahemen told The Guardian: "We want to show that Africa can be covered as a business story, not just a disaster story. While it is true that African information is available from other sources, there is no single media I know that has the breadth of content Reuters has available."

A press release elaborates further:

Reuters Africa features an interactive map to access local Reuters news across the continent, organized by country. Reuters Africa also provides extensive economic, business and financial news and data, including stock and currency market data and company information, from around the continent. Reflecting the importance of commodities to many African economies, the site features exclusive online content on metals and mining, energy and oil, and agricultural commodities.

This is important. My friend and colleague Ethan Zuckerman has written a great deal about how the global English-language media (and entertainment industry) needs to start treating Africa like a place and an opportunity - not just a crisis. In his work on global media attention, he shows how Africa gets the least amount of media attention than anywhere  else (nobody is too surprised at this), but more interestingly he also argues (original pdf article here) that there is a connection between this lack of global media attention and the inability of businesses and policymakers in Western developed nations to take African countries seriously as destinations for investment and business.

Is China's growing business influence in Africa now an added incentive for Western news organizations to take Africa seriously as a business story? At any rate, Reuters deserves kudos for taking the lead.

Second, Reuters Africa extends the news agency's commitment to build synergies between the work of Reuters reporters and the work of bloggers from around Africa, who paint a much more diverse and vibrant picture of the continent than mainstream news reporting tends to do. Global Voices Managing Editor Rachel Rawlins, who used to work as a correspondent in Africa for the BBC writes:

It’s frequently depressing reading accounts of Africa in the mainstream media. Doubly so, in fact. Firstly because what is defined as worthy of reporting is, well, depressing. And secondly because it so seldom engages with the complex and vibrant reality of the continent in all its massive diversity, preferring instead to deal in simplistic stereotypes.

(Disclosure: Reuters is the main funder for Global Voices which I co-founded so there is a reason I'm paying a great deal of attention to its site and its significance - but I'd like to believe that I'd find it significant even if I wasn't connected to GV, and that many people who aren't will.  If you think I'm completely full of it please hit the comments section and let me know - nobody has ever hesitated in the past!)

As  you'll see from the screenshot that Rachel took from the Uganda page of Reuters Africa, each country page not only includes news headlines but also the Global Voices Uganda feed, pointing to blog posts coming from Uganda, selected by people like our amazing Africa editor Ndesanjo Macha.

   

Mark Glaser at MediaShift has a great post titled Reuters Looks to Africa and a Decentralized Future for Media in which he interviews Reuters president Chris Ahearn on why his company has begun to take blogs seriously. My favorite quote: "last I checked, the business we’re in is to inform people."

Yup, and the bloggers we link to on Global Voices are as serious about doing that as journalists are.

Two more key quotes:

...as we start to arm the quote-unquote mainstream with the same tools as journalists, editors and reporters have, there’s an interesting asymmetry here. I talk to a lot of people who say, ‘How come blogging software seems to be a richer news-telling experience than some of the tools we put into journalists’ hands?’ Interesting dynamic, that.

and:

The cost of newsgathering has plummeted. How do we take that and deploy more resources into newsgathering and news presentation? Why is it that right now, at a time when the world is getting more difficult to understand based on everything that’s happening are news organizations pulling out of so many places around the world? Why?

It's worth reading the whole post to get a further glimpse into Chris' vision of where the industry is going, and why news organizations should recognize that we are entering a "golden age" for journalism - not leaving one.

In the same post Mark also interviewed Ethan, who pointed out there's a lot more potential synergy between Reuters journalism and Global Voices' global community of bloggers that so far has not been explored:

There’s a rising tone of anxiety and despair in the Zimbabwean blogosphere, for instance, but it won’t ‘break’ as a story unless the civil service strike goes off tomorrow and sparks a violent government response,” Zuckerman said via email. “In a perfect world, I think we’d find a way to help our friends at Reuters anticipate stories that might break based on our coverage — that hasn’t happened as much as I’d like.

Perhaps that will be next.  But as Rachel points out in her post on Global Voices, the blogosphere  has a long way to go as well:

This is a great step forward, but there’s still a long way to go. There are large and exciting blogging communities in several countries, such as Nigeria and Kenya but there are other areas where coverage is very sparse and still others, such as Ethiopia and Zimbabwe, where online expression is severely curtailed by the government.

We hope that the involvement of bloggers in projects such as this not only gives a platform to those whose voices have long been left unheard but also encourages others to join the conversation and brings pressure to bear on behalf of those who want to speak but cannot.

Amen sister.