RConversation: Roland Soong: Bringing China to the West

I'm in Singapore at the Fourth Annual Chinese Internet Research Conference, where I finally had a chance to meet Roland Soong, the Hong Kong-based blogger whose blog EastSouthWestNorth has become an indispensable resource to anybody who follows contemporary China.

In his presentation, Individual Blogging for Social Transformation, Roland says: "My goal in running the blog is for neither fame nor fortune, but it is a personal attempt to bring about a social transformation."

He points out that Western coverage of China - even at its best - is spotty and driven by the interests and attention spans of far-away editors. Thanks to an un-demanding job which leaves him with a decent income and plenty of free time, Roland has dedicated himself to serving a very important cause: helping the English-speaking world understand the Chinese world better by filling in the gaping information gaps not filled by professional media organizations. Every day Roland translates huge amounts of material from Chinese-language news websites, BBS chatrooms, blogs, and other sources. He works hard to document and track information about breaking news events in more detail than any mainstream news organization has time or space to do. Last year I wrote a post detailing Roland's important role in tirelessly documenting the Taishi Village conflict between peasant farmers and local authorities in Southern China - while English-language media coverage was fickle and fleeting. Also see this news article about him.

Roland's presentation (which you should read in full) links to a long list of stories about which his EastSouthWestNorth blog provided the only comprehensive English-language coverage. I know for a fact that ESWN has become required reading for journalists covering China, and quite a lot of people have done stories based on information that they first found on Roland's blog. Will this indeed bring about social transformation as Roland hopes? He concludes:

Let us review the limited goals that had been set up previously. The first goal was to make a difference in specific cases. It is possible to list a number of cases in which the blog has informed and influenced opinion.

The second goal was to create the awareness that things may be more complex than it seems. The blogger should think that the regular blog visitors would agree that this is offering a more complex picture of China . This blog cannot replace mainstream media, but it can supplement them. It has even created the awareness that blogs can outperform mainstream media in covering certain types of stories.

As for the larger goal of re-dressing the overall imbalance between Chinese-language and English-language news on China , it is beyond the capability of a single citizen. However, this blog seemed to have raised the awareness for this particular model. If there are dozens or even hundreds similar blogs run by individual citizens like this one, there will be a social transformation, both in transnational understanding and media culture.

Roland was one of the people who inspired Global Voices Online, the edited aggregator of blogs outside North America and Western Europe which Ethan Zuckerman and I co-founded, and which is now run by an amazing team of international bloggers. Concerned citizens around the world are discovering that it is possible to use blogs fill in the gaps left uncovered - or badly covered - by the Western English-langugage media. We link to Roland and bloggers like him in the Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe & Russia, East, Southeast, South, and Central Asia. I hope that his well-documented success in influencing the media will inspire even more people to wield the power of online citizens media.