In the past, several days, I heard people talking about China. And also I talked to friends about China and Chinese Internet. Something is very challenging to me. I want to make my friends understand that China is complicated. I always want to tell the story like one hand it is that, the other hand is that. You can't just tell one side story. I’ll give you an example, China is a BRIC country. BRIC country means Brazil, Russia, India and China. This emergent economy really is helping revival of the global economy but at the same time on the other hand, China is a SICK country. The terminology coined by Facebook IPO papers. Fine. He said, the SICK country means Syria. Iran, China and North Korea. The four countries have no access to Facebook. So basically, China is a SICK BRIC country.
Another project was built up to watch China and Chinese Internet but now today I want to tell you my personal observation in the past several years from that wall. So if you are a fan of the Game of Thrones, you definitely know how important a big wall is for Old Kingdom it prevents weird things from the north. Same was true for China. In the north there was a Great Wall, Chang Cheng. It protect China from invaders for 2000 years, but China also have a great firewall. That's the biggest digital boundary in the whole world. Not only to defend Chinese regime from the oversea from the universal value, but also prevent Chinese own citizens to access the global frame Internet. And even separating themselves into blocks not united. So basically Internet has two internets. One is the Internet, the other is the China net. But if you think the China net is something like a dead land, waste land, I think it’s wrong. But we also use very simple metaphor the cat and mouse game to describe, in the past 15 years, the continuing fight between Chinese censorship, government censorship, the cat and the Chinese Internet users that mean us, the mouse.
But sometimes this kind of a metaphor is too simple, so today I want to upgrade it to 2.0 version. In China we have 500 million internet users. That’s the biggest population of net users in the whole world. So even though Chinese is a totally censored Internet but still Chinese Internet Society is really booming. How to make it? Simple. You have Google. We have Baidu. You have Twitter, we have Weibo. You have Facebook. We have RenRen. You have YouTube. We have Youku and Tudou.
Chinese government blocked every single international web 2.0 services. And we Chinese copycat everyone. So that's kind of like the thing I call smart censorship. So that's not only to censor you sometimes, that's Chinese national Internet policy is very simple, block and clone. On the one hand we want to satisfy people's need of social network, which is very important and people really love social networking. The only other hand, they want to keep the server in Beijing so they can access the data anytime they want. That's also the reason Google was pulled out from China, because we can't accept the fact Chinese government want to keep the server.
Sometimes the Arab dictators didn't understand these two hands. For example Mubarak, he shut down the Internet he want to prevent netizens from criticising him. But once netizens can’t go online, they go in the street. And now the result is very simple, we all know Mubarak is technically dead. But also Ben Ali, Tunisia President didn't follow the second rule, that means keep the server in your hands. He allowed Facebook, a US based service to continue to stay inside of Tunisia so he can't prevent it. His own citizens to pose critical video against his corruption. Is the same thing happened. He was the first to topple during the Arab Spring. But those two very smart national censorship policy didn't prevent Chinese social media become a really public, a pathway of public opinion and the nightmare of Chinese officials. Because we have 300 million micro bloggers in China - its the entire population of United States. So when these 300 million people, micro bloggers, even they block the tweet in our censored platform. But the Chinanet itself can create very powerful energy which had never happened in the Chinese history.
2011 in July 2 trains crashed in Wenzhou, a Southern city. Right after the train crash authorities literally want to cover up the train, bury the train. So it angered Chinese netizens. The first five days after train crash, there were 10 million criticism of the posting on social media, which never happened in Chinese history and later this year the rail minister was sacked and sentence to gaol for 10 years. And also the very recently very funny debate between the Beijing Environment Ministry and American Embassy in Beijing because the ministry blamed America Embassy for intervening in Chinese internal politics by disclosing the air quality data of Beijing. So the app is the embassy data, the PM 2.5. They showed 148 The show is dangerous for sensitive groups, so suggestion is not good to go outside. But the data is the Ministry's data. It shows 50, he said. It's good. It's good to go outside. But 99% of Chinese micro bloggers stand firmly on the embassy side. I live in Beijing everyday. I just watch the American embassy’s data to decide whether I should open my window.
Why is Chinese, social networking, even within the censorship is so booming? Part of the reason is Chinese languages. You know Twitter and Twitter clones have a kind of a limitation, 140 characters, but in English its 20 words or sentence with a short link. Maybe in Germany a German language, maybe just "Aha”. But in the Chinese language its really about 140 characters, means a paragraph, a story. You can almost have all the journalistic elements there. For example, this is the Hamlet of Shakespeare. Is same content one you can see exactly one Chinese Tweet is equal to 3.5 English treats. Chinese always cheating, right? So because of this, Chinese really regarded this micro blogging as a media, not only headline to media and also the clone Sina company is the guy who cloned the Twitter it even has its own name with Weibo. Weibo is Chinese translation for Micro blog. It has owned the innovation as the commenting area makes the Chinese Weibo more like Facebook rather than original Twitter. So these innovations and the clones as the Weibo and micro blogging when it come to China in 2009, they immediately become the media platform itself. It become a media platform of 300 million readers. That become the media. It was anything not mentioned in Weibo it does not appear to exist for Chinese public.
But also Chinese social media is really changing Chinese mindset and Chinese life for example, they give the voices of people a channel to make your voice heard. We have a petition system is a remedy outside the judicial system because Chinese central government want to keep a myth the emperor is good and that all the local officials are thugs so that's why the petitioner, the victims, the peasants went to take a train to Beijing to petition to central government. They wanted the emperor to settle the problem. But when more and more people go to Beijing, they also cause the risk of revolution. So they send them back in recent years and even some other of them were put into black jails. But now we have the Weibo, so I call it the Weibo petition. People just use the cell phone to Tweet your sad stories. By some chance your story will be picked up by reporters, professors or celebrities. One of them is Yao Chen - she is most popular micro blogger in China where has about 21 million followers. They almost like a national TV station, if your sad story will pick up by her. So this Weibo social media even in the censorship still give Chinese a real chance for 300 million people every day chatting together, talking together, just like a big TED, right? But also it is like the first time of public sphere happening in China. Chinese people start to learn how to negotiate and talk to people. But also the cat, the censorship is not sleeping. It's so hard to post some sensitive words on the Chinese Weibo, for example, you can't post the name of the president – Hu Jintao. Also you can't post the city of Chongqing, the name and until recently you can't search the surname of top leaders. So the Chinese are very good at these puns, alternative wording on even memes. They even themselves, you know use the name of this world changing battle between the Grass Mud Horse and River Crab. Grass mud horse is caonima – its the phonogram for motherfucker. The netizens call themselves. River crap is hexie is the phonogram for censorship. So that's kind of caonima versus the hexie. That's very good. But so that's when some very particular exciting moment happens. You can see on Weibo, still, a lot of very weird stories happened. Weird phrases and words even you have a PhD of the Chinese language you can't understand. But can you expand more? No. Because Chinese Sina Weibo, when it was founded, is exactly one month after the official blocking of Twitter.com. That means from the very beginning, the Weibo has already convinced Chinese government, that we will not become the stage for any kind of a threat to the regime. For example anything you want to post like get together or meet up or walk, it is automatically recorded and data mined and reported to a pool for further political analyzing. Even you want to have some gathering before you go there, the place is already waiting for you. Why? Because we have the data, they have everything in their hat so that they can use the 1984 scenario data mining of the dissident.
So the crackdown is very serious. But I want you to notice very funny thing during the process of the cat and mouse. The cat is the censorship, but Chinese is not only one cat. They have local cats, central cats and local cats. You know the server is in the local cats hands, so when the netizens criticise local government, local government has not any access to the data in Beijing. Without bribing the central cats he can do nothing, only apologise. So in the past three years, social movements about micro blogging really changed local governments, become more, become more and more transparent because they can't access the data, the server is in Beijing. The story about train crash, maybe the country is not about why 10 million criticism in five days, but why Chinese central government allow the five days of freedom speech online. It never happened before. Answer is very simple because even the top leaders was fed up with this guy, this independent kingdom, so they want an excuse. So public opinion is very good excuse to punish him. But also the Bo Xilai case recently very big news, he's princeling but from the February to the April in this year Weibo really become a marketplace of rumours. You can almost joke everything about this princelings. Everything is almost you are living in the United States but if you dare to retweet or mention any fake coop about Beijing, in Beijing, you definitely will be arrested. So this kind of freedom is targeted and precise window. So Chinese in China censorship is normal something you find this freedom is weird something will happen behind it. Because he was very popular leftist leader so central government want to purge him. He was very cute, he convinced all the Chinese people why is so bad? So the Weibo 300 million public sphere become very good convenient tool for political fight.
But this technology is very new but technically is very old, is made famous by Chairman Mao, because he mobilised millions of Chinese people in the Cultural Revolution to destroy every local government. Its very simple because Chinese central government don't need even to lead the public opinion, they just give them a target window, not censoring people. Not censoring in China become a political tool.
So that’s the update about this game cat and mouse. Social media changed Chinese mindset. More and more Chinese intend to embrace freedom of speech and human rights as their birth right, not some imported American privilege. But also it gives Chinese national public sphere for people to, its like a training of their citizenship, preparing for the future democracy. But it didn't change Chinese political system and also Chinese central government utilise this centralised server structure to strengthen his power to come through the local government and the different factions.
So what's the future? But after all, we are the mouse. Whatever the future is, we should fight against the mouse. There is not only in China but also in the United States, some very small, cute but bad cats. SOPA PIPA ACTA TPP and ITU. And also like Facebook and Google, they claimed they are friends of the mouse, but sometimes we see them dating with the cats. So my conclusion is very simple. We Chinese fight for our freedom. You just watch your bad cats. Don't let them to hook up with the Chinese cats. Only in this way, in the future we will achieve the dreams of the mouse that we can tweet anytime, anywhere, without fear.
Michael Anti: Behind the Great Firewall of China video
Back to China’s great firewall