China in Weibo/Episode 1: The Iconoclast of Lei Feng (Watch Video)

A famous reporter in China once told me: China is a country where truth is in short supply. Well, until weibo came along.

Weibo is the Chinese name for mircoblog. The most popular microblog service in China right now is the one provided by sina.com, or Sina Weibo. Weibo is a concept borrowed from Twitter, which is not accessible in China. Adopting Twitter’s standard, posts on weibo cannot exceed 140 Chinese characters, which actually account for more words than do English letters of the same amount. With 140 Chinese characters, roughly 70 words, a weibo post can express a lot.

The China unveiled on weibo is very different from the one presented in any traditional media outlet in the country. Weibo carries facts and opinions one can never see in traditional media, because weibo, which is open to everybody who can get online, is not so tightly controlled by China’s propaganda authorities. Despite rumors that the authorities may shut it down completely someday, so far, weibo is alive and well.

Weibo thus has become the platform for whistleblowers to reveal official corruption, for people to criticize the government or simply express opinions that might otherwise be silenced. As such, weibo also has become a window through which one can see China from a very different perspective.

Starting this week, I will choose on a rather regular basis interesting stories, debates and phenomena that I spot on Sina Weibo and present the information through multimedia.

This first episode is about Lei Feng, a national icon died 50 years ago, and how people use weibo to articulate different meanings of this icon than those presented in state media.

The New York Times published an article on March 5 on the same topic.

Related articles:

The real story behind Lei Feng’s photos  (in Chinese)

More on Lei Feng (Xinhua resource; in Chinese)

Google to Resume Search Service in China: A Win-Win Solution?

The Chinese government renewed Google's Internet service license recently, the Associated Press reported today.

The catch? Google ought to stop automatically directing mainland users to its Hong Kong-based search site, which is not cencored by the Chinese government. Meanwhile, to continue to operate within China, Google is very likely to filter information as required  by the government.

This seems to be a win-win solution for both Google and the Chinese authorities.

Google got what it wanted: the chance to expand business and exploit profit potentials in China's growing Internet industry. The Chinese government, on the other hand, eased its tension with Google and perhaps other Western businesses, while at the same time managed to remain its control over information flow.

But what about Chinese web users? While a top American Internet company celebrating its commercial gains and the Chinese authorities chuckling at their political victory, millions of Chinese people hunger for more information are set to be the loser.

Even when Chinese netizens were directed to Google's Hong Kong site, certain information was still blocked to them, according to NPR. Baidu, China's biggest Internet search service, is never interested in challenging the authorities. Now with Google resuming its China-based, i.e. filtered, service, everything is simply same old, same old.

As is Chinese web users' effort to surpass the Great Firewall.  Fortunately for many, access to more information is only a software away.

Related stories:

AP report

NPR blog

Propaganda or Collective Memory? Citizens Invited to Help Build National Day Websites

The red banners on the homepage of sohu, sina and xinhua

The celebration of the 60th birthday of the People’s Republic of China has become a phenomenon on the web. Major web portals in China: sina.com.cn, sohu.com, 163.com, and major news websites such as xinhuanet.com, and chinanews.com.cn, all have a banner at the very top of their homepage, which links to a separate website dedicated exclusively to the celebration of the anniversary.

All the banners use red as the background color, and all carry the title: “Celebrating the 60th Anniversary of the People’s Republic of China.” Sohu adds a subtitle of its own: “Seeking a Modern China,” and Sina’s subtitle reads: “Nation/Home.” Not only that these banners are in pretty much the same design, located at exactly the same spot on each website (except 163.com), even the width of the banner is also uniformed: about one centimeter. This is not coincidence, but very likely the result of some administrative orders from the top power.

One can sure call it propaganda, but propaganda of a very fine kind, propaganda with a revolution: invitation of contribution from citizens. In other words, these websites are not entirely just a venue of official messages, but a platform for common folks to share their life experiences and memories.

On these websites are state media reports, official documents, as well as memoirs, videos, and photos produced by common netizens. The content is so comprehensive that they record a tremendous amount of experiences of the nation in the past 60 years: from major historical events to individual memories, from red guards to someone’s childhood jelly shoes.

Texts, photos, videos, slide shows, forums, blogs, etc., these sites have them all. The range of information is also very broad: history, current events, politics, economics, culture, arts, literature, music, sports, life style, feelings, opinions, and so on.

The sheer content of these websites may simply be too much for one to absorb. Nevertheless, they very well demonstrate the capability and power of the Internet in the massive media campaign for celebrating the anniversary. And this time, citizens are involved in contributing the content, turning a traditionally state propagandist endeavor into a fabulous show of collective memory.

Special National Day websites by major web portals and news organizations:
Sina: http://news.sina.com.cn/z/guoqing60/index.shtml
Sohu: http://news.sohu.com/s2009/guoqing60/
163: http://news.163.com/special/guoqing60/
Xinhua: http://www.xinhuanet.com/politics/60zn/
China News: http://www.chinanews.com.cn/special/60years/news.shtml

Update: some of the sites changed its outlook on the actual National Day, Oct. 1.

Chinese Netizens "Tomb Digging" to Comment on Urumqi Riot

Not surprisingly, online comments regarding Sunday's violence in Urumqi, Xinjiang, have been closely watched by China's Internet censors.  As a result, no open public discussion is currently seen on China-based websites. Baidu.com, China's No.1 online search provider, has closed down its BBS, or "bar," for Xinjiang and Urumqi. "We're very sorry, based on relevant laws and regulations, this bar is temporarily closed," a note on baidu.com reads. 

But Chinese netizens have their way of going around the censorship. Numerous posts could still be found in other "bars" on baidu.com. On other popular public discussion websites such as tianya.com, netizens are using a practise called "tomb digging," in which they dig up posts about Xinjiang or Urumqi originally posted in the past--back to as far as 2006--and add comments about the July 5 incident. 

On tianya.com, for instance, there are several posts regarding Xinjiang, but their headlines shown on the main list contain no words relating to the latest violence. If one bothers to click on those posts and view the last page of comments, however, one could see newly added comments about the incident on Sunday. These "tomb digging" posts are changing rapidly, as online censors keep deleting them while netizens keep digging up new ones. 

Nonetheless, those who seek truth about the incident might be disappointed by the posts, since most of them, as of the time of this blog post, are comments from outsiders instead of first-hand accounts of what has happened. These comments express concerns, anger and sadness regarding the violence, as well as condemn Internet censorship. 

Some of the comments (in Chinese) could be found at: 

baidu tieba 1

baidu tieba 2

Cat898

tianya BBS 1

tianya BBS 2

Xinhua News Agency's version of the story

CNN's version of the story

Chinese Bloggers on Obama Victory: Admiring American Dream, Concerned about Sino-US Relations

One Chinese blogger blogs about Obama's election win







Obama’s victory in yesterday’s presidential election taught a great lesson about American dream and democracy to many Chinese bloggers, whose enthusiasm in blogging about this historical moment is manifest in the thousands of blogs appearing in the past less than 24 hours.

They recognized the power of American dream and ideas, America’s achievement in overcoming racial conflicts, and the value of democracy. Some bloggers expressed admiration for these American values, exclaiming “dreams will come true!” and calling such a success story an example of a “positive culture.” Obama's victory even inspired one blogger to imagine the possibility of a Chinese American president of the US.

Blogger Yao Xiaoyuan writes that because of this election, Chinese people will like the United States more and more, out of their admiration for the “universal human values represented by the United States.” However, not many bloggers used Obama’s case to advocate applying American values to China. The American dream stays American.

To some Chinese bloggers, the outcome was a surprise. Yang Hengjun, for instance, thought it was more possible to have a white woman than an African-American man as American president.

Meanwhile, many bloggers discussed the implication of Obama’s presidency to China’s interests. In this regard, the picture is not as rosy at all.

“Once the [American] economy turns better, I believe the Democratic Party will talk with us about trade protection,” one blogger writes. Another blogger concurs, concluding that China will face more pressure in energy security and decline in export due to Obama’s energy and economic policies.

These bloggers, however, failed to notice Obama's close tie with Hawaii, a state heavily populated by ethnic Chinese, which may influence the new president's approach to China.

Chinese Netizen not Big Fans of Obama

Comments left on Baidu.com chat room, one of the most popular BBS in China, offer both good and bad words about the two American presidential candidates, who are battling their final days of the election campaign. But it is clear that, for many Chinese people, Barack Obama is not the ideal new president of the United States. Here are some of reasons that Chinese netizen say why they don’t favor Obama.

Perhaps the most important reason is that to some Chinese people, Obama is good at shouting slogans and talking empty but lack of real competence. As put by one comment: “History tells us Chinese not to trust an eloquent but inexperienced man with anything important.”

Another concern among the netizen, oddly enough, is that Obama seems to be anti-democracy and is likely to promote socialism. In order to distribute wealth around, some netizen say, “he has to have absolute power” and “control people’s ideas,” which will lead to “potential dictatorship.”

Some people think that the overwhelming support of Obama and harsh attitude toward McCain, as well as the scrutiny of Joe the plumber in American media is the work of the Obama campaign and thus reason that Obama is very intolerant and repressive. There are also people resenting him because he is “ugly,” or he is charming, but lack of ability.

On the other hand, quite a few posts in the chat room shout “go Obama!” One post claims that over 70 percent of Chinese support Obama. Some say that Obama will become the greatest African American in history, that his success is a great example of living the American dream.

These comments are only a fraction of tons of online comments regarding the candidates and should not be taken as representative of Chinese public opinion. There are also a lot of misunderstanding or simply ignorance of the politics of American presidential election in those comments. What is presented here is at best a glimpse of Chinese people’s opinion on Obama.

View online comments on baidu.com:
http://tieba.baidu.com/f?z=0&ct=318767104&lm=11&sc=0&rn=50&tn=baiduKeywordSearch&rs3=0&rs4=0&word=%B0%C2%B0%CD%C2%ED&pn=50
http://tieba.baidu.com/f?kz=494618014
http://tieba.baidu.com/f?kz=492258997
http://tieba.baidu.com/f?kz=353166523
http://tieba.baidu.com/f?kz=468990950

Chinese People Rally via the Internet to Help the Earthquake Relief

On its website, the National Development and Reform Commission asks for citizen's opinion on rebuilding earthquake affected areas

Many Chinese people from all round the country are posting messages on BBS, blogs or chatrooms calling for fellow citizens to join relief work and rebuilding efforts for the earthquake struck area in south west China.

On baidu.com, China’s NO.1 search engine, for example, a chat room has been set up exclusively for posting relief and rebuilding related messages. Some people said they were willing to organize citizen groups on their own and travel to the disaster area to help, or become volunteers.

People are also expressing support and hope for the rebuilding effort, as well as their concerns and suggestions. Several messages warned about official corruption such as embezzlement of relief funding. Some suggested that instead of trying to send relief to the most affected areas, the government should move people out and send them to other cities to be taken care of. After their homes are rebuilt, they can go back.

One college student suggested nearly one hundred colleges in Sichuan to take summer break early and let the campuses accommodate homeless people from the earthquake regions. These colleges could provide not only thousands of dorm rooms, but also shower and dinning facilities.

One notion stands out from people’s online comments, and that is the call for attention to mental care for earthquake victims, especially orphans. Anhui Normal University announced that its psychology department has opened counseling hot lines and posted on baidu.com the cell phone numbers of several psychological professors, promising that these cell phones will be on 24 hours a day.

The central government has set up a national office to guide the rebuilding efforts and opened a website where citizens can submit their advices and comments on the matter. However, as of June 4, there were only five entries on this site while there were hundreds posted on baidu.com,.


Earthquake relief chatroom on baidu.com
http://tieba.baidu.com/f?kz=388241857

http://tieba.baidu.com/f?ct=&tn=&rn=&pn=&lm=&sc=&kw=%D4%D6%BA%F3%D6%D8%BD%A8&rs2=0&myselectvalue=1&word=%D4%D6%BA%F3%D6%D8%BD%A8&submit=%B0%D9%B6%C8%D2%BB%CF%C2&tb=on

http://tieba.baidu.com/f?kz=378729246

http://tieba.baidu.com/f?kz=384654859

Paparazzi and Celebrity Blogs Most Popular

One of Wei Jiaqing's blog articles has been viewed for nearly 1 million times

The most popular blog entries--the ones that have the most visits--so far this year on Sina blog (http://blog.sina.com.cn/) are about celebrities.

The champion, with over 980,000 hits, is a short entry written by 25-year-old model and singer, Ms. Wei Jiaqing, who gained her national recognition after participating in the 2006 Super Girl singing competition. In the entry, she told her fans that she already ended a contract with the company that managed the Super Girl.

Among the eight blog articles that have been viewed for more than 500,000 times, six fall into the paparazzi and celebrity journal categories, written by celebrities themselves or by bloggers specializing in star tales. Sina hosts perhaps the largest number of celebrity blogs in China.

In one of the popular articles, which is from a paparazzi site, the blogger recounted the love story between famous Taiwanese actress Lin Qingxia (Brigitte Lin) and her three lovers. The entry is full of detailed anecdotes and old pictures, demonstrating the blogger’s rich knowledge about the super star.

The two non-paparazzi entries that reached the 500,000-hit mark concern nothing serious, either. One of them is about China National Geography magazine’s project of searching for people with peculiar family names in China.

In comparison, the most popular entries on http://www.bullog.cn/, a blog site carrying more serious discussions about politics, culture and economy, only generated five-digit hit.

As much as the Internet has become an important political forum for Chinese public, it is an even more powerful entertainment medium. This is partly due to Chinese authority’s control over political discourse on the Internet, which results into abundant revealing beauty pictures but much less out-spoken expressions on Chinese websites.

A large number of Internet users in their teens and twenties, who are ardent followers of the celebrity culture, also helped to drive the popularity of celebrity blogs. Meanwhile, celebrity blogs have become an important part of pop culture in today’s China.

Some popular Sina blog entries in 2007:
http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4a6a57e901000c98.html (Wei Jiaqing)
http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_48caa4d901000bt4.html (Rivalry between two female stars)
http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_48bb0d010100076i.html (Peculiar Chinese family names)
http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4894b6f901000c3a.html (Old picture of stars)
http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_53a020d501000c9u.html (Brigitte Lin)

List of most popular articles in 2007 on Sina blog

http://blog.sina.com.cn/lm/wenku2007.html

New Internet Publication Regulation to be Drafted

Xu Jinglei's online magazine

Drafting a new licensing rule for online magazines is on the agenda of China’s administration of press and publication, which will require online magazines to obtain license from the government before publishing, China Business News reported.

Online magazine has gained fast popularity in China in recent years, and it is estimated that there are a few hundred such digital magazines, run by companies or individuals, with viewers of nearly 40 million. A noticeable latest release of online magazine was that of popular movie star Ms. Xu Jinglei. The first issue of the bi-weekly online magazine, expected to make millions in advertisement income, was published earlier this month. Ms. Xu recruited a group of star writers to write for the magazine.

Most of China’s current online magazines did not have to obtain publication permits from authorities before making the content available online. But things will change after the new regulation is set up in the near future. No specific implement time, however, was indicated by officials from the press and publishing administration, and there was no word about whether the new stipulation will affect other online publications such as blogs.

http://tech.sina.com.cn/i/2007-04-24/02491479329.shtml

Ms. Xu's online magazine overview
http://ent.sina.com.cn/f/laoxudzzz/index.shtml

Students Hope to be Away from Internet Porn

Bad Internet content harms students


Students around China have voiced welcome to a nationwide crack down on Internet pornography, a campaign launched by the Chinese government this month.

They knew they are an easily tempted group and some of them have already suffered from viewing too much unhealthy content from the Internet.

A secondary school student in Anhui was addicted to Internet porn and his grades suffered significantly. To pay for the fees he owed to an Internet cafe where he viewed those sites, he went so far as to steal machine parts from a factory.

Eighteen-year-old Beijing boy Liu Wei once had similar experience, and told Xinhua that he now hates those “dirty stuff” on the Internet.

Traditional media in China, including print and broadcast, are relatively clean of sexutal content because of tight control of the government, and no porn publication store is allowed in China.

In contrast, the Internet has become perhaps the freest media in China, both in terms of expressing people’s opinions as well as publishing conventionally deemed inappropriate or provocative contents such as exposing pictures.

Even on popular websites like sohu.com, yahoo.com.cn and sina.com, which are accessible to just about any Internet user, there are always a few sexually explicit video clips or photos on the home page, in entertainment section or blogs. Students can view such content easily, and if going to an Internet cafe, they can further log on to some porn sites without much effort and almost free of surveillance.

Setting up porn websites and publishing pornography on the Internet is illegal in China, but in recent years, there were several serious incidents where porn sites targeting viewers in China were registered on overseas servers, but those who ran the sites, for making money, were Chinese citizens, sometimes teenagers. Among about a million registers of these sites, most were Chinese youth, according to state media.

Statistics show that by June 2006, there were over 80 million adolescent web users in China, out of the total of 123 million, and about 30 million were elementary and secondary school students who are extremely vulnerable to Internet porn.

In addition, some young people got involved in the so-called “nude chat” on the Internet, using cameras. Lately, technology development allowed new channels for filthy content to reach students, such as porn video games downloaded to cell phones.

The government, schools and parents, including students themselves, have grown very concerned about the problem, but not enough has been done to cope with it.

In this crack-down campaign, which will last for six months, the authorities will “clean up” videos, photos or fictions on the Internet that contain pornographic content. Meanwhile, the authorities will also target online information that “disturbs social order,” as well as online forums, chat rooms and blogs that are deemed having grey area in “management responsibility.”


About the crack-down campaign
http://news.xinhuanet.com/edu/2007-04/19/content_5995268.htm
http://edu.people.com.cn/GB/1054/5637785.html
http://news.tom.com/2007-04-13/OI27/34990413.html

Other stories about Internet porn problem in China
http://news.xinhuanet.com/edu/2006-09/01/content_5033303.htm
http://www.yn.xinhuanet.com/newscenter/2006-09/11/content_8007062.htm
http://www.people.com.cn/GB/jiaoyu/1054/3098263.html

China Set up Citizen Identification Information System

Chinese ID card




China has established what is seen as the largest citizen identification information database in the world, the Ministry of Public Security announced this month.

The database contains the name and citizen identification card number of nearly 1.3 billion people in mainland China, as well as other personal information such as gender and date of birth. It took five years to establish this data system, which was accomplished at the end of last year.

The system, under the supervision of China’s Ministry of Public Security, will allow individuals and businesses to verify certain person’s identity, by submitting this person’s name and ID card number to the National Citizen Identity Information Center, which will compare the submitted information with that in its database and send results back to the service user, even with a picture of the person being checked. People can use the service on the Internet or by text messaging on cellphone.

Every Chinese citizen aged 16 or older is required by law to register with local public security authorities to get an identification card, with their name, gender, date of birth, ethnic group and residence printed on it. People need to provide their ID card when openning bank accounts or becoming cellphone users. Meanwhile, fake ID has been widely used in criminal activities like defrauding, which results in hundreds of millions yuan of loss every year, Xinhua reported.

Although haled as an effective way of preventing identity fraud, the database also brough about concerns for personal information privacy. In state media reports, the authorities have pledged to guard the privacy.

----by Josie Liu

http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/2007-02/08/content_5715838.htm

Bloggers in China May be Requested to Reveal Real ID

Young bloggers at a blogger conference in 2005





The Chinese government has asked Internet Society of China, a non-governmental orgnization, to discuss the possibility and related issues of a new regulation requiring bloggers to use their real names and ID information to register for blogs, an official from the society said on Thursday.

The society held a meeting earlier this month, where experts from internet industry, law and government discussed issues like what kind of ID information should be requested, how to make sure the information are accurate and the timeline for the new regulation to take effect, according to a report on the organization’s website. No details of the discussion were revealed.

People who support such a regulation said it could prevent bloggers from publishing vicious comments, such as defamation and insult toward other people, which has occurred in the world of Chinese blog. Other people, especially those from the internet industry, voiced their concerns that the regulation could discourage people to blog and was against the open and free nature of the internet.

Other issues, such as protection of personal information and information verification, could also nullify the initiative, experts said.

Weblog started to gain popularity among Chinese people in 2002, and so far, there have been more than 33 million blogs registered in China, with more than 17 million bloggers, according to a report by China Internet Network Information Center. Like in most places around the world, Chinese bloggers have been blogging without revealing their real identity, and that is also one opportunity for some dissent voices to be heard.

http://www.isc.org.cn/20020417/ca377516.htm
http://www.cnnic.cn/html/Dir/2006/09/25/4176.htm
http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2006-10-20/145310285373s.shtml

----by Josie Liu