Tweets and Transition in China

I was pleasantly surprised how well the topic of our presentation on Google China went along with this week’s reading, especially the chapter by Hanson. With the second largest number of internet users in the world, Google would be foolish to leave the market entirely. Google’s history of both following China’s censorship regulations, and the more recent choice to allow unfiltered results, is as much a business decision as it is a discussion of information control, either by the company or the government. Yet, one of the most interesting points brought up in class regarding this topic, is the question of how much of the censorship is due to cultural values, and how much is due to the resistance of the Communist party to give up this control. However, this power is slowly starting to shift from the Party to the people, in part due to the ICTs that have been introduced in the past decade. Hanson states, “Even if the Internet is not precipitating political ferment or prompting a mass democratic movement, it is bringing about profound political change that could lead in several directions, one of which is a transition to a more democratic political system” (189). The Party is slow to give up control, i part because of the greater accountability, due to increased transparency "Once a government connects to the Internet, its actions become more visible to the rest of the world, however stringent the restrictions" (Hanson 212). Obviously this is not anything that will happen overnight, nor do I foresee a huge uprising just because there is greater online freedom.

I tried to find some public opinion about this whole ordeal, and while I wasn’t expecting anyone to flat out ran into this very interesting article on microblogging in China. (Read it here on the Economist). While Twitter is blocked to all but the most tech savvy, bloggers do have the option to use Fanfou, a weibo service currently in beta and under the eye of the government censors. But that is not keeping people from letting their thoughts be known. In fact, “Last August China Youth News, a newspaper run by the ruling party’s Communist Youth League, reported that in a nationwide survey more than 45% of people under 40 said they were frequent weibo users. More than 94% said that weibo had changed their lives.” However, the government also uses the program for its own promotions, and all other writers are still cautious about what they post. But there is certainly the slow shift which challenges the state, and for both political and economic reasons, this is not a change to be ignored.