RConversation

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.

Thomas Friedman gets the middle finger in the Middle Kingdom

It's not every day that you get to sit and watch a senior Chinese diplomat rip Thomas Friedman "a new one" (as we say in American colloquial parlance) as all the Chinese members of the audience cheer him on. But on Friday morning in a panel discussion titled  "China's Soft Power" that's what happened.

The panel was about how China's rising economic power in the world has brought it growing geopolitical influence - but is its low-key diplomatic stance incongruous and inappropriate for a country with so much influence throughout Asia, the Middle East and Africa?

Friedman accused China of being a "free loader" in the post-cold war world, while the U.S. has shouldered the role of global "guardian." He said that China needs to pull its weight by doing things like joining the U.S. in calling for sanctions to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons. He said China needs to do more to stop genocide in Sudan. China's U.N. Undersecretary-General Sha Zukang cleverly avoided commenting directly on the Iran situation, but on Sudan he said: "There is the impression that China is there for oil only -  that is the biggest lie I’ve ever heard."

Friedman also argued that it's in China's interest to work more directly with the U.S. on geopolitical issues because if the U.S. fails, then China will have to pick up the pieces. "If there is too little American power China will be forced to respond to that," he said.

Sha rejected the whole idea of "soft power," calling it a "condescending approach" and "notion created by Western developed countries." When it comes to world leadership, he said the world's leaders should not be "self-proclaimed" - he said they should be elected. China, he said, would not self-proclaim itself a world leader, because China's policy is always to treat other countries as "equals."

It's interesting that China's diplomatic strategy is to score points with other countries who chafe at American superpowerdom by advocating geopolitical democracy. No wonder Chinese leaders see U.S. support for internal democracy in China as an effort to score points against them.

At one point  Li Ruogu, Chairman of the Export-Import Bank of China, took a jab at U.S. interventionism in Iraq. "When you want to force others to accept an idea, you are doomed to fail," he said. The net effect of U.S. intervention in Iraq has been less peace, he rightly pointed out. Many in the audience - Western and Chinese - were nodding their heads. [Thanks to Ross for the correction on Li's title.]

Moderator Clay Chandler of Fortune magazine kicked off the hour on a provocative note with a critique of Premier Wen Jiabao's speech on Thursday night. He said it had sounded to him like every other speech by a Chinese leader that he had ever heard, and asked the panelists why Chinese leaders don't give more inspiring, interesting, or original speeches. He suggested that Wen had missed an opportunity to connect on a more direct and human level with the global business community, international media, and media pundits such as Mr. Friedman.

Sha retorted that Chinese leadership speeches are policy statements, and that trying to make each one original and entertaining is too risky: "If China changed the policy every day, you can imagine how people would react!" Delighted laughter arose from the Chinese half of the audience.

Another reason Chinese leaders give boring speeches because they can. Giving interesting speeches - by the standards of Western speechmaking at any rate - has little upside and much potential downside: people might quote them out of context or misinterpret them, or the leader might mis-speak in an effort at extemporaneous rhetorical flourish, with various consequences that might be used against him in internal political power struggles. Also, rousing, inspirational speeches just don't fit with the Chinese style of political leadership.  In Chinese culture, if you're already powerful, you don't want to act like there is a need to win anybody over. If you act like you care what people think of your speeches, you're admitting weakness. You leave it to loyal henchmen like Sha to say provocative things on your behalf, but avoid stooping to verbal sparring yourself. It also runs directly against Chinese culture for a powerful person to admit to being powerful or talk about being powerful. It's what you do, not what you say that counts.

A couple years ago a Chinese academic who advises the Chinese government on foreign policy issues told me that the best way for China to build global power, good will, and international credibility over the long run is to mind its own business, avoid criticizing the U.S. whenever possible, sit back and let the U.S. destroy its own power and credibility by itself. This is a classic Art of War strategy. Whether or not that actually is the official strategy, it seems to be working. At any rate it's the kind of strategy that probably only works when you deny using it. If I was in the Chinese leadership, I would likely not find it in China's interest to follow Friedman's suggestions - which are quite similar to the Bush administration's.

Below is a Youtube video of the session. although Chandler's opening gambit about boring Chinese leaders' speeches was edited out, along with some other parts of the session. The order of various exchanges has been moved around, and there is no translation of the Chinese-language speakers. The video was apparently shot and put online by a Chinese organization, runsky.com. The World Economic forum video page does not acknowledge that this video or any of the other session videos are edited. UPDATE (9/14): The WEF has now taken down the mysterioiusly cut/remixed version and posted the full uncut version.

(Photos courtesy of the World Economic Forum.)

"Great Firewall" surrounds "Summer Davos" in Dalian

Done with my teaching duties for the week, I'm heading up to Dalian from Hong Kong this afternoon to catch the rest of the World Economic Forum's "Summer Davos" in China's north-eastern city of Dalian. My friends Kaiser and Thomas have already been blogging from there.

Apparently wireless internet connection is working in the conference hall, though it is subject to China's usual "Great Firewall" (GFW) censorship.  Thomas complains that his own blog is victim of the block, forcing him to resort to special technical measures in order to post.

I've got my usual toolset ready: Tor installed in my Firefox browser, enables me to get around the GFW at a somewhat slower speed.

I notice that the World Economic Forum does not have anybody blogging from China. Their blog hasn't been updated since May. Hmm.

Meanwhile, as CNet blogger Rick Martin points out, China is "in the midst of the most vicious censorship onslaughts ever put forth by the Chinese Internet Police."   I wonder if this issue will be discussed at all in Dalian?

Radio Free Asia reported yesterday: "in an unprecedented move, the authorities have begun switching off entire Internet data centers (IDCs), which are home to thousands of servers." 

Apparently this is a special measure to prevent any possible wave of dissent in advance of the 17th Communist Party Congress planned for October 15th. Shanghai blogger Wang Jianshuo, who usually stays away from politically sensitive subjects, is so frustrated he had to say something. Read his whole post but here is how he concludes:

That is just the beginning. The recent order from the "top guy" requires all Internet Data Center to mandatory close all "interactive sites". These sites include any kind of blogging, any kinds of BBS, or online forum, any kinds of comment features available on blog or content site. They really mean it this time. Many of my friends have closed the comment feature of their personal blog - many not be themselves, but by the hosting company.

It seems the pressure from top really makes people take it seriously. These days, all kinds of people are busy.

    * Telecom companies are busy unplugging Internet cable for data centers one by one.
    * Hosting companies that were already shutdown are either busy find out solutions for the closed sites, or handle waves of customer complains, or both.
    * Those hosting company or sites which were lucky enough not have been shutdown are busy shutdown "interactive sites" themselves, to avoid the whole data center run into bigger problem.
    * Bigger websites are preparing contingency plans about what they will do when they were shutdown.
    * All kinds of small site webmasters, or independent bloggers are busy signing up hosting package from abroad (I would be interested to know how many more orders bluehost, dreamhost, or ipowerweb got from China these days)
    * Bloggers hosting their blog on BSP can only keep their finger across and pray for their little blog.

If you ask me how I feel, as a blogger in China, I would say I am very very very frustrated about it.

Tangos Chan at China Web2.0 Review writes that "the situation is getting worse:"

IDCs in China are required to take self-discipline actions to close all BBSs, forums, Blogs, message boards or any kinds of interactive features in their hosted servers or virtual spaces, otherwise the whole IDCs may be closed completely. So if you want to start blogging, you may have to switch to a blogging service provider who has signed self-discipline pact, or to use a hosting service from abroad, such as Digital Nomads Project.

About one year ago, when I was asked how web 2.0 will affect the Internet regulations in China, I was still optimistic about it. But maybe I was wrong, now I’m very disappointed for all these happened.

More in Chinese here and here. The folks at Memedia have some strong words here. (No time to translate, must jump on a plane.)

Want to join the anti-GFW community? Here is the Facebook group.