Report in The New Scientist Describes "Blog" Revolution in China
By Xiao Qiang 24 November 04 A special report by Xiao Qiang appearing in the New Scientist
describes how the "blog" revolution is "shaking up the power
balance between the people and the government of the world's most populous
nation." The article states "In August 2002, Isaac Mao, who worked at the
Shanghai office of the chip maker Intel, was one of only a handful of people in
China who had heard the word 'blog'. A regular web surfer, he was fascinated by
the freedom these online journals gave to ordinary people to publish both their
own and their readers' views online. "Surfing the US website blogger.com, Mao was thrilled to find Zheng
Yunsheng, a teacher at a technical school in Fujian province. He left a message
on Zheng's blog, and two weeks later Mao and Zheng started CNBlog.org, China's
first online discussion forum about blogging technology and culture. "They soon gathered a small but devoted group of participants, many of
whom went on to develop the technology that makes blogging possible for China's
half-a-million bloggers." But soon, according to the author, the Chinese government began arresting
people for expressing their views: "Ever since the Communist party took power in 1949, the Chinese media
has been tightly controlled by the government. Online publishing is a real
threat to that control, and the government is clearly worried. A crackdown in
2003 closed websites and internet cafes and saw the arrest of dozens of online
commentators. "Yet this is not proving enough to stifle the pluck and ingenuity of
China's bloggers. The rise of the blog phenomenon was made possible by blog-hosting
services. Just as companies like Yahoo host email accounts, sites like
blogger.com, based in the United States, host blogs. "Blogs usually allow room for readers' comments, and because they often
contain numerous links to other blogs and websites, they each act as a unit in a
dynamic community. Together they form an interconnected whole - the "blogosphere". "When Mao and Zheng started CNBlog.org, China had 67 million internet
users. Today, it has more than 90 million, and most are hungry for information.
The official China Internet Network Information Center in Beijing says 62% of
internet users go online primarily to read news. Internet cafes are spreading
rapidly throughout China, even in rural areas, largely thanks to official
efforts to promote technology and improve the country's economic
competitiveness. The article goes on to say that the government feared the uncontrolled
spreading of information online could cause the regime to collapse. Since 2000,
the police have established internet departments in more than 700 cities, and
have built "the Great Firewall in order monitor internet users and control
information. Mr. Xiao continues, "Since 2002, all internet service providers have had to sign a
self-censorship pledge before they can operate. "Perhaps the most effective component of government control is the
"Great Firewall", which protects the nine gateways connecting China to
the global internet. Its main function is to prevent surfers in China from
accessing "undesirable" web content. "Research at the Berkman Center at Harvard University has found that
blocked sites include overseas Chinese-language news websites, such as BBC
Chinese, and most news sites originating in Taiwan and Hong Kong; and religious
and human-rights websites such as Falun Gong and Amnesty International USA. "But things were starting to change when Mao began his grass-roots
publishing effort. Technology writer Fang Xingdong in Beijing, who made his name
with a book criticizing Microsoft's business in China, started a news and
commentary website, BlogChina.com, which covers the development of China's IT
industry. "Fang coined the Chinese term bo ke to mean blogger. He
encouraged his readers to try blogging by registering on blogger.com. "Blogging
is a true revolution," he wrote. "One needs zero technology training,
zero institution and zero cost to become a blogger." "By January 2003, China had about 2000 bloggers when, without warning,
the Chinese government blocked all access to blogspot.com, the server that hosts
all blogs registered on blogger.com. "The net police do not make the reasons for such actions public, but
Chinese bloggers point out that DynaWeb, an anti-censorship service run by
overseas Chinese, had been using a blog on blogspot.com to publish proxy server
addresses that allowed users to get around the Great Firewall. The authorities'
blanket blockade affected all China's bloggers, leaving them suddenly unable to
reach their journals. "The censors probably did not anticipate the bloggers' response. For
many, blogging had become an addictive activity. With nowhere else to go, many
followed Mao's lead and started to look for solutions inside China. "Three small start-ups offered them a refuge; Blogcn.com, Blogdriver.com
and Blogbus.com. All were blog-hosting services started just a couple of months
earlier by people who had first gathered on Mao's website. All were based inside
China, and inside the Great Firewall. Commenting on the nature of political censorship in China, the author states
that in addition to sensitive topics such as "human rights, democracy, and
Falun Gong, the word "truth" is among the words banned in online
forums. "At first, the new companies attracted little attention from the
government. In early 2003, most Chinese who wanted to comment online were using
not blogs, but online forums like bulletin boards and chat rooms. These allowed
people to express themselves anonymously and therefore safely, and were already
beginning to have a social impact. "But there is a catch. Whether in China or elsewhere, such sites are
usually moderated by editors who keep them relevant and readable. In China, the
moderators also keep their sites' content acceptable to the censor, so when
users try to post a "forbidden" comment they receive a warning message
such as "your post contains sensitive and indecent contents". "Posts on politically sensitive topics, such as Falun Gong, human
rights, democracy, and Taiwan independence, are routinely filtered by this
means. A list recently obtained by the China Internet Project in Berkeley found
that over 1000 words, including "dictatorship", "truth", and
"riot police" are automatically banned in China's online forums. "This type of censorship is part of the wider internet crackdown that
intensified in 2003. Dozens of people who published politically provocative
articles online were arrested. "The net police closed almost half of the country's 200,000 internet
cafes, and installed surveillance software in the rest. In Liaoning province,
where 40% of the people who go online do so in internet cafes, software was
installed in 7000 cafes to track web users' online movements and keep records of
their names, addresses and ID numbers. The article continues: "Blog services are now sprouting all over China.
By the end of October 2004, China had more than 45 large blog-hosting services.
A Google search for bo ke will return more than two million results, from
blogs for football fans to blogs for Christians. "And while the larger hosting companies have become subject to
censorship regulations, smaller companies and individuals do not face the same
pressures. Any tech-savvy user can download and install blogging software
themselves, bypassing the controls. "Blogs play an important role in republishing and spreading information
as quickly as it is banned from official websites. One example of this played
out in September when China's most influential bulletin board, Yitahutu, was
closed down by the net police. Unlike other online forums, Yitahutu was
moderated by its users, who voted to decide which post should appear on the
front page. "Without a moderator to blame for comments they did not like, the
censors reacted by closing down the entire site. By that time the site had more
than 300,000 registered users and 700 discussion forums, including many on
politically sensitive topics such as Taiwan, anti-corruption, legal reform and
human rights. "After the closure, all the major university bulletin boards were
instructed to delete any discussion of the event. Even the name of the site was
censored from Chinese search engines. "But the net police found it much harder to purge discussion of
Yitahutu's closure in the blogosphere. Bloggers are quick to find euphemisms so
that they can continue conversation despite keyword filtering. And most blogs
have so many entries that it is easy for an individual to post an occasional
provocative comment without being detected. "Two days after Yitahutu's closure, He Weifang, a prominent law
professor at Peking University, where the forum was founded, wrote an open
letter to the university's president, urging him to defend the site on the basis
of freedom of expression. "His letter was removed from the major online forums after one day, but
in that short time it had spread through the blogosphere. There are simply too
many blogs for authorities to block them all. "The potential of blogs to act as news sources is relished by some
Chinese bloggers. One site, Chinanewsman.net, founded by journalist and
programmer Li Zhaohui, is a haven for news that is banned from the official
media. Within its first five months of operation, Chinanewsman was closed
repeatedly, forcing Li to switch internet service provider six times. "But it survived, and now hosts around 5000 blogs kept by journalists.
Some of the information is available only to registered users who join by
invitation. This mechanism has protected the site, probably because the censors
are, in general, more tolerant of these semi-private spaces. "Meanwhile blogging seems set to grow as a national hobby for the
younger generation. Providers of China's 300 million mobile phones are beginning
to provide "moblogging" services, with which users can send text and
photos directly from their phones to their blogs. For now, most blogs are
personal, but their potential for building networks of people and disseminating
news cannot be underestimated. "As for Mao, he now enjoys a large following among Chinese bloggers. He
has become a successful high-tech investor and uses his blog to gather donated
books for rural schools. While others see blogs as a tool to promote social
change in China, Mao does not associate his love of blogging with a political
agenda. "Asked whether he has a strategy to expand blogging under China's
censorship regime, his response is Taoist: "What is our strategy? We do not
have a strategy. But the information flow in the blogosphere has its own Way.
The Way is our strategy: personal, fast, connected and networked." Xiao Qiang is the director of the China Internet Project at the University of
California at Berkeley. He runs China Digital News blog at chinadn.org.
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