RConversation

Tough times for Chinese bloggers

Tongue-in-cheek "patriotic" banners like this one created by "Xiucai" have been cropping up around the Chinese blogosphere. It reads: "Joyfully welcome the 17th Party Congress, building a harmonious society together. Xiucai is a good comrade. This site has temporarily shut down comments and forum features."

Xiucai's creation is just one of many dozens of examples of the latest official crackdown against blogs in the run-up to China's 17th Communist Party Congress - and the defiant response by many Chinese bloggers to the crackdown.  John Kennedy's epic post on Global Voices today has the full story. He writes:

...if war were to be declared on bloggers, is the state of today's China's blogsphere what it would look like? Starting this month we've seen blog posts being deleted in places where they almost never used to, comment sections being closed out of fear...

John describes, translates, and links to further information and discussion (from both Chinese and English sources) about the following:

• The latest self-discipline pledge for blog service providers and reactions to it.
• How the plugs have been pulled on Internet Data Centers (IDC's) all across China and how bloggers are reacting.
• Reports that more than 18,000 websites have been shut down in the past few months, with less than half of them for porn.
• Via memedia, one blogger describes the shut down of "three whole floors of fully-certified IDCs in one building in Shanghai."
• How a blogger who wrote critically of the Olympics had his blog shut down and was visited by police.
• How one social networking site yo2.cn has become a "ghost town."
• How four Chinese journalists who blog have been facing heavy censorship, and how one abandoned his blog and the other shut down his blog to protest constant deletion of their posts.
• The posting by one blogger of "the full list of requirements passed to their company by the Public Security Bureau, namely an order for the real-name registration and immediate closure of all non-compliant blogs, BBSes, message boards and any other interactive spaces they host which remains effective until the Seventeenth National Congress wraps up in late October." Read John's translation of the key sections of that order.

John also points to various legal and consumer actions that internet users have begun resorting to this year. In addition to anti-censorship lawsuits filed by bloggers in Shanghai and Beijing, a consumer complaints website in Guangzhou is demanding a public hearing over its impending closure. And Yeetai, the blogger suing China Telecom in Shanghai, has made a call on Twitter to let a thousand class-action lawsuits bloom.

Will any of those lawsuits ever get anywhere? Not long ago I wrote about the Beijing-based lawyer and blogger Liu Xiaoyuan who sued the blog-hosting service, Sohu.com, for censoring some of his blog posts. This past week he reported that his lawsuit was rejected by the Haidian district court in Beijing. He is appealing because he believes that the reasons for rejecting his suit are not legally valid. His efforts to get the local Chinese media to cover his case got nowhere. Suprise suprise. But so far, I haven't seen any Western media coverage of his case either...

links for 2007-09-14

• Report: Cory Doctorow of Boingboing Speaks in Beijing
  "Cory made it very clear that he believes that the current copyright laws are formulated to favor current copyright owners, at the expense of consumers."
  (tags: copyright creativecommons IP opensource china internet freespeech innovation)
• Just treat us like adults - The Standard - China's Business Newspaper
  Michael Degolyer writes in a commentary: "Maybe the government believes that Hong Kong Islanders are too stupid to handle one vote for a district councillor and one vote for a by-elected Legco member at the same time. "
  (tags: hongkong politics elections districtcouncil legco jmschku)

links for 2007-09-13

• Internet & ICTs for Social Justice and Development News - APC
  "APCNews interview with David Souter, author of ‘Whose Summit? Whose Information Society? Developing countries and civil society at the World Summit on the Information Society’"
  (tags: wsis netgovernance)
• The graying of the Web | CNET News.com
  "a wave of new investment into boomer and older-oriented social networking sites that offer like-minded (and like-aged) individuals discussion and dating forums, photo-sharing, news and commentary, and chatter about diet, fitness and health care."
  (tags: socialnetworking demograpics business web2.0)

links for 2007-09-12

• Rogue Nodes Turn Tor Anonymizer Into Eavesdropper's Paradise
  "A security researcher intercepted thousands of private e-mail messages sent by foreign embassies and human rights groups around the world by turning portions of the Tor internet anonymity service into his own private listening post."
  (tags: tor anonymity privacy security encryption internet)
• Andrew Lih » Blog Archive » Using Tor: Assume Exit Nodes are Monitored
  "Tor is very good for anonymity, but does nothing for adding any data security. In fact, it’s likely more risky, because you are handing traffic over to a stranger (exit node) in cleartext."
  (tags: tor tools anonymity privacy security circumvention internet freespeech)
• DEranged Security » Blog Archive » Time to reveal…
  "ToR has about 1000 nodes set up to handle exit-traffic (unencrypted). These are the servers all you traffic is going to be sent through. Of course you know everything about them, right?"
  (tags: tor anonymity privacy security internet circumvention freespeech)
• UC Davis News & Information :: China's Eye on the Internet
  "Because it filters ideas rather than specific Web sites, keyword filtering stops people from using proxy servers or "mirror" Web sites to evade censorship. But because it is not completely effective all the time, it probably acts partly by encouraging se
  (tags: china censorship gfw chineseinternetresearch circumvention freespeech)
• Business.view | Davos in the east | Economist.com
  "In general, Dalian offered less food for thought about global issues than Davos usually does. Beyond the occasional out-of-control journalist, most people seemed reluctant to say anything that might upset the hosts."
  (tags: china censorship dalian wef internet google wikipedia freespeech humanrights business)

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.

links for 2007-09-11

• RH 100 Asia Report: VC Trends in Asia at 852signal - Hong Kong Web 2.0
  "The startup environment in this region is hot, and getting hotter by the day. ..."
  (tags: asia business internet startup web2.0 hongkong)
• An opportunity for Wall street in China's surveillance boom - International Herald Tribune
  "Over the last year, American hedge funds have put more than $150 million into Chinese surveillance companies."
  (tags: surveillance internet technology business investment china chineseinternetresearch gfw goldenshield privacy humanrights freespeech)
• Big Brother Is Reading Your Email? - The India Uncut Blog - India Uncut
  "The next time you go to a cyber cafe in Mumbai, be warned: the cops can see whatever you’re up to. The Mumbai police plans to install keystroke loggers in the cyber cafes of Mumbai..." (via EZ)
  (tags: freespeech india privacy surveillance humanrights internet keylogging law)
• 知名记者博客群体被删帖抗议声浪高--景观360
  "最近，北京及其他地方媒体记者的博客被删贴严重，引起了博主的严重抗议，其中北京一位记者出身的博主凌沧洲这样说，"为了抗议这些人的为虎作伥，我宁可选择关闭博客抗议！""
  (tags: censorship internet blogging blogs journalism china chineseinternetresearch freespeech)

links for 2007-09-10

• For China's Censors, Electronic Offenders Are the New Frontier - washingtonpost.com
  "...party censors are now turning to China's booming Internet and cellphone networks with particular vigor. Given the easy access to technologies such as text messaging, censors have found it difficult to keep a grip on information."
  (tags: china internet chineseinternetresearch humanrights freespeech censorship)
• Mutant Palm: The Return of Fu Manchu - Chapter One: Heinous Hackers
  "...sloppy nonsense everywhere, mainly because everyone is tripping over themselves to get the movie plot version out, that no one is being suitably skeptical. Just consider some of the slobbering over the prospect of a new Cold War, beginning with The Gu
  (tags: china internet cyber-warfare journalism hackers)
• How Google Works
  A very useful guide to how google works.
  (tags: google search tools howto education)

links for 2007-09-09

• danah continues the “precious,” er, Facebook conversation… « Scobleizer
  "There is going to be a lot of tension about Facebook until it adds much better privacy controls."
  (tags: facebook privacy socialnetworking internet web2.0)
• apophenia: SNS visibility norms (a response to Scoble)
  "Why did Facebook go from default-to-privacy-protection to default-to-exposure? I guess I know the answer to this... it's all about philosophy. Unfortunately, it's not a philosophy that most of the teens I interviewed or their parents share."
  (tags: privacy transparency humanrights facebook internet identity web2.0 socialnetworking)
• apophenia: controlling your public appearance
  "We've all heard that privacy is dead, but you can still control your public appearance and it's really critical that you start doing so. Don't whimper about how Google is destroying your reputation. Take control!"
  (tags: facebook identity internet privacy search blogging blogs google)
• World Bank's Stiglitz: Knowledge As a Global Plubic Good
  "knowledge is not only a public good, but a global or international public good. ..knowledge is central to successful development. The international community...has a collective responsibility for the creation and dissemination of one global public good -
  (tags: knowledge media journalism education development information creativecommons)

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.)

links for 2007-09-08

• Justice Dept. Opposes Network Neutrality - washingtonpost.com
  "The Justice Department said yesterday that Internet service providers should be allowed to charge extra for priority Web traffic."
  (tags: law netneutraliy freespeech u.s.a.)