Beijing resets relations with the Internet

By Iain Mills

BEIJING – With the world’s media currently engrossed by the ongoing Google drama, the relationship between the Chinese government and the Internet is once again the subject of international scrutiny.

With nearly 400 million users in China – a figure expected to increase to 500 million by 2012 – the Internet has become an increasingly prominent social force in China. In the absence of a traditional public sphere, the relative freedom afforded by the net has offered Chinese citizens a totally new and increasingly dynamic platform on which to voice to their grievances and exchange information.

In recent years, a succession of stories of corruption, incompetence or unethical behavior among government officials have come to light via the Internet and filtered into the wider public consciousness. These include the now infamous diary of Han Feng, a cadre whose days were filled with idling, sexual encounters, collecting bribes and, very occasionally, some actual work. The Internet has also helped coordinate more serious campaigns, such as attempts to collate names and information relating to the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. All of these cases have presented the authorities with unprecedented challenges to their ability to mediate public access to information.

Beijing’s attempts to regulate and control the content and language of the Internet have ranged from the draconian to the absurd. However, as it struggles to maintain its own propaganda line in an ever more information-rich society, so an increasingly contradictory position is emerging in terms of how the Internet is depicted by officials and the domestic media.

In the past, the Internet was generally reported as a harmful social phenomenon. Barely a day went past without the Chinese media carrying a story about an Internet addict who starved himself to death during an online gaming binge, or an A-grade student whose performance at school deteriorated once his parents installed the web at home. Averting these outcomes was used as a justification for policies such as censorship and requiring mainland Internet cafes to keep records of who uses their machines at all times.

However, at this year’s annual session of the National People’s Congress (NPC) in Beijing in the first two weeks of March, a new deployment of the Internet was observed. Initiatives such as a former migrant worker turned cadre micro-blogging from inside the Great Hall of the People, as well as Premier Wen Jiabao’s most extensive “web-chat” to date, were reported by the media as evidence of a new, transparent Chinese government. Cadres made solemn pronouncements on web-related benefits such as accessibility and transparency and some ordinary Chinese even became “feverishly engaged” in the online political debate.

This change of tack marks the most significant shift in the government’s Internet-related strategy since the transition from censoring old to new media in 2007/8. On the face of it, it could prove to be a good move on Beijing’s part. Civil unrest has increased significantly in recent years (by 20% per annum according to some estimates) as the Chinese population has become more aware of the corruption and inequality which threaten to derail the county’s development. In the absence of genuine political reform, the illusion of democracy offered by new technologies could, in the short term at least, help to appease public opinion and take the heat off Beijing’s strategists.

However, if this shift is evidence of a new strategy – an attempt to embrace rather than marginalize the Internet as a vehicle for the government’s message – then it leaves the propagandists with something of a quandary: how to reconcile the “web as socially harmful” line with the new “web as a democratizing force” message?

One apparent strategy seems to be developing an “Internet with Chinese characteristics”. This involves blocking sites such as YouTube and Facebook, while allowing access to domesticequivalents such as Youku and Kaixinwang. In this way, Chinese “netizens” have access to the same products and services as other users, but the content is far easier to control.

However, incidents such as the Green Dam debacle suggest Beijing remains surprisingly inept in terms of how it designs and executes its Internet strategy. Beijing last year tried to make Green Dam, a piece of Chinese-made Internet filtering software, compulsory on all imported and domestically produced computers – the plan was scrapped after a domestic and international outcry.
What is more, although Google’s decision to shut down its mainland site – it redirected its Google.cn service to its uncensored Hong Kong website – has had little effect on individual users, the controversy at least seems to have increased awareness among Chinese that their Internet is significantly different to everybody else’s. The controversy began in January when Google threatened to pull out of the country over censorship of its search results and a cyber-attack on the firm’s e-mail service.

Whether China can succeed in designing a domestic Internet in which it successfully controls and represses information is hard to say. On the one hand, these principles are totally opposed to the unrestricted, viral movements of data and ideas which have underpinned the net’s rapid expansion. On the other, China has successfully created a generation of young professionals for whom engaging in raw capitalism is compatible with carrying out what former president Zhang Zemin called “this grand and arduous undertaking of building socialism with Chinese characteristics”. Indeed, it is a possibility than cannot be entirely ruled out.

Nevertheless, it seems unlikely that these increasingly educated and aspirant younger Chinese will remain content with the current levels of restriction and obfuscation to their online experience. As the prominent blogger Michael Anti points out, Chinese people are not second-class citizens and therefore do not deserve a second-class Internet. What is more, as the proportion of the Chinese population which is online grows, so domestic pressure to allow freedom of movement on the Internet can only increase.

Clearly, technology itself is neither inherently “good” or “bad”. Rather, its function and meaning are determined by those who use it. New media are as susceptible to distortion or manipulation as their traditional counterparts, and the act of putting information online does not make it any more or less reliable. However, in its attempts to assign value to the Internet – be it as a social peril or a political savior – the Chinese government may increasingly find itself falling between two stools.

By locating the Internet as a serious political tool in public discourses, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is legitimizing that which it previously sought to undermine. However, years of propaganda aimed at making its population distrust the web may come back to haunt the government, with skeptical Chinese dismissing new initiatives as nothing more than publicity stunts. For example, the NPC micro-blogger, Hu Xiaoyun, had only 248 followers – hardly a testament to widespread political change.

If China is ever to become fully integrated in global socio-cultural and economic systems, clearly an open flow of information across all media will be necessary. Beijing’s latest policy direction is designed to delay this outcome by co-opting new technologies into the government’s propaganda armory, and may have some short-term effects in achieving its objective.

However, the more fundamental question will remain: what, if anything, will precipitate significant change in the government’s approach to openness and freedom of information in the public sphere? Perhaps change will occur organically over time, or be accelerated by the new party leadership in 2012. It may even be triggered by exogenous events such as Google’s recent withdrawal. Whatever the outcome we can be certain that, for all the international scrutiny, those who will be most glued to their screens as events unfold will be Beijing’s own strategists.

Iain Mills is a Beijing-based freelance writer specializing in the Chinese political economy, who can be reached atsigmills@hotmail.com.

(Copyright 2010 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd