Chinese bloggers & journalists force Foxconn climbdown!

Congratulations to China's bloggers and journalists!  While certain influential journalists in the U.S. can't seem to shake their tiresome bloggers vs. journalists arguments Chinese bloggers and journalists are working together to defeat enemies of free speech. Way to go!!

A bit of background for those who need it: The Taiwanese-run iPod subcontractor Foxconn sued two Chinese journalists for libel after they reported about abusive conditions at Foxconn's iPod factory in Shenzhen (after the British Mail on Sunday had already broken the story, which then led to an Apple investigation of the factory, the results of which cleared Foxconn of some of the abuses reported in the original story, though it did find some workers working unacceptably long hours). Foxconn got Shenzhen court to freeze all the personal assets of a journalist and editor from the Shanghai-based First Financial Daily and was seeking over $3 million in damages from them as individuals - not against their newspaper. Had the case succeeded, Chinese journalists widely believed that would have been the end of any attempts at muckraking journalism in China because reporters would fear personal destitution.

Fortunately, the chain reaction created by bloggers, journalists and free speech activists seems to have forced a Foxconn climbdown.

Roland Soong of ESWN was the first to report in English that Foxconn has backed down. He points to this short report on Netease.com which he translates:

According to the latest news coming from Shenzhen, the Shenzhen Intermediate Court has unfrozen the assets of Weng Bao and Wang You which had been previously frozen through the application of FoxConn.  Furthermore, FoxCnn has announced that the amount of money asked for in the lawsuit has been reduced from 30 million RMB to 1 RMB.
 

It's now early Wednesday morning in China, and First Finanical Daily editor Weng Bao, one of the targets of the lawsuit, has posted on his Sina.com blog confirming the news, with more details on how it happened. (I'm not going to take the time to translate it now because I want to get this post up, and because Roland will translate it faster and better - very soon I'm sure..)

Also in Chinese, Tom.com has reported something similar, citing "reliable sources."   Chinabyte.com has published the full text of what it says is a statement from Foxconn, obtained from a Taiwanese source, stating that while it will not drop the lawsuit, it intends to unfreeze the frozen assets and seek damages of only one Chinese yuan.

How did Foxconn get shamed into changing tack? Read Oiwan Lam's account on GlobalVoices of how the story traveled from a Chinese chatroom, into other Chinese language websites, into the blogs in English and Chinese.. Roland's tracking of Western media coverage... a major Chinese web portal supporting the reporters by giving them a blog... more Roland on Chinese web reactions... then the Reporters Without Borders' demand that Apple must bring Foxconn in line. Read Imagethief's advice to Foxconn: drop the suit or at least unfreeze the assets and reduce damages to something symbolic. Which is what Foxconn ended up doing.

This victory may well embolden Chinese journalists and bloggers to push further for their rights. Roland concludes:

...for me, this whole affair was not really about FoxConn or the two First Financial Daily reporters.  The most important outcome is that the Chinese media workers learned how they can band together and create an unstoppable tide of public opinion.  And what new causes will come to their attention tomorrow? 

Given that Foxconn was a Taiwanese company, it was probably easier to create a groundswell without serious efforts by the Chinese government to censor or suppress it. But he's absolutely right, bloggers and journalists in China have gotten a taste for what is possible if they stand on principle and fight. 

Comments

[mahathir_fan]

Should we now expect iPod prices to gradually increase or no more free ipod programs for filling out surveys?

[mahathir_fan]

"...for me, this whole affair was not really about FoxConn or the two First Financial Daily reporters. The most important outcome is that the Chinese media workers learned how they can band together and create an unstoppable tide of public opinion. And what new causes will come to their attention tomorrow? "

Tomorrow, they will use the media and band together to get rid of that foreigner who blogged about his sexual exploits in Shanghai.

(I know - pro Nazi supporters are dreaming that the Chinese will use this episode and learn that the reporters and public opinion can band together to bring down the Communist government but that won't happen anytime soon until they drive the Nazis out of their country)

[Rebecca MacKinnon]

mahatir_fan, would you clarify exactly who you are referring to when you talk about "pro Nazi supporters"?

[Tom - Daai Tou Laam]

So are you all suggesting that muckrakers should never be held responsible for majorly botching a story? How much is the iPod manufacturing contract worth to FoxConn?

Furthermore I never heard any serious discussion about the legal rationales behind the freezing of assets in civil suits.

The only thing this situation has proved is that if you are a journalist you have a get out of jail free card for publishing demonstrably false information as long as you play the PR card of David versus Goliath with a pinch or two of "possible damage to press freedom" as opposed to muckraking aginst the government, which will land you in jail for at least 3 to 5 years with a noticeable lack of comment and condemnation from bloggers.

[Rebecca MacKinnon]

Tom, no that's not what is being suggested. The issue here is that they froze the assets of the reporters before the court even made a verdict about whether the reporters were guilty - turning it into a "guilty until proven innocent" kind of situation. Also, they went after the reporters as individuals rather than their news organization - which ought to be ultimately responsible for what gets published. Third, they went after the easy targets in China rather than suing the British newspaper which had done the original story. All of these factors made the Foxconn action vicious and predatory.

[mahathir_fan]

By pro Nazi, I am refering to those people who subscribe to Hitler's teachings. They don't usually show themselves, but their actions manifest them as people who are racist in nature. These are the ones who supported the Tiananmen students in 89 not so much because China needed reforms, but because it was a chance to disintegrate China and overthrow the Communist government.

Overall, I see the FoxConn episode as a success in Socialism with Chinese Characteristics and that Communism is still alive in China. A true Communist nation must have as its backbone democracy. All learnt men know this. From Hitler who said in Mein Kampf:"The Jewish doctrine of Marxism rejects the aristocratic principle of Nature and replaces the eternal privilege of power and strength by the MASS OF NUMBERS and their dead weight." to Dr. Einstein who himself is affiliated with several socialist organizations who said in his article Why socialism "I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy....A planned economy as such may be accompanied by the complete enslavement of the individual. The achievement of socialism requires the solution of some extremely difficult socio-political problems: how is it possible, in view of the far-reaching centralization of political and economic power, to prevent bureaucracy from becoming all-powerful and overweening? How can the rights of the individual be protected and therewith a democratic counterweight to the power of bureaucracy be assured?"

Both men, Hitler and Einstein knew Communism must be democratic to be successful. Many communist nations failed in the past 50 years precisely because they were not democratic.

The reporters in this case had used democracy to fight back against the bullying techniques of the capitalist class.

[Rebecca MacKinnon]

MF, to make sweeping accusations about people who supported the 1989 demonstrators being followers of Hitler is bizarre in the extreme, and makes it impossible to take anything else you say remotely seriously.

It is true that there are people in the West and elsewhere who support regime change in China who do not necessarily have the Chinese people's best interest at heart. I try to stay away from such people. There are a number of them in Washington I'm afraid, and perhaps they are racist, but that's very different from being a Nazi. Hitler supported the active and systematic extermination of whole peoples.

It is true, though, that such people have helped to discredit any non-Chinese who are sincerely concerned that their Chinese friends deserve to have their rights as human beings respected and protected to a much greater degree than is currently the case. Those who really do care about the Chinese people's interests understand that improvements can't be imposed from the outside. But at the same time, when the Chinese government - or other people in China who hold power - do nasty and unjust things to people (like kill demonstrators, or abuse workers, or have somebody locked up because they wrote something critical online), and when it is dangerous for people inside China to speak out about these things, those of us who are in a position to speak about the truth without being physically or economically punished have an obligation to do so.