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To examine this question, Carnegie hosted Rebecca MacKinnon, an assistant professor in Journalism and Media Studies at the University of Hong Kong. The talk was moderated by Carnegie’s Minxin Pei.
China’s Internet
“Cyber-utopians”, those who think the web can quickly open up once closed societies, have been disappointed by the considerable amount of control that the Chinese government exerts over its internet. Censorship in China is composed of two layers: The first layer is dubbed the “great firewall”, and is directly managed by the government, which blocks potentially sensitive overseas websites. This outside content can be monitored and controlled because there are only seven major entrances for internet traffic coming into China. The second layer exists “inside the firewall” and includes government efforts to actively delete information, take down websites, and direct web companies to censor themselves.
But it would be wrong to conclude that Chinese citizens are helplessly trapped behind a wall of cyber-censorship. Young Chinese in the People’s Republic watch more videos online than they do on television. And countless individuals have launched successful careers by showcasing their talents and ideas online. Although the government has lost control over China’s youth culture, it has successfully prevented a political challenge from organized groups.
Netizens
There are 30-50 million bloggers in China, often referred to as China’s “netizens”. If a popular movement to challenge the government will come from anywhere on the web, then it will probably rise from these opinionated citizens. The CCP recognizes that potential, and has taken steps to minimize it. In the summer of 2008, following an incident in Weng’an involving police corruption, the CCP dispatched official news sources to cover the scandal, censoring all unofficial versions of the story and declaring them illegitimate. The Party gained more control over the story, but their actions implicitly recognized the influence netizens wield.
Despite this heavy censorship, China’s bloggers have found innovative ways to express their anger and opinions about sensitive issues. Netizens often use coded language to make political statements. For example, ‘hé xié’, which represents the word ‘harmonious’ from Hu Jintao’s “harmonious society”, has become synonymous with “the act of being censored”. Once the government understood the code, netizens replaced ‘hé xié’ with ‘hé xiè’, which means ‘rivercrab’. That slight difference allows netizens to retain the meaning of “being censored” while not drawing attention from authorities.
Future of the Internet in China
MacKinnon outlined two possible paths for the future of the internet and politics in the People’s Republic. “Cyber-tarianism,” in which the government uses the internet as a forum for citizen concerns so it can more effectively respond to these complaints in order to minimize social unrest. This path provides recourse for the people without resorting to a multi-party political system, thereby helping the Communist Party remain in power.
The second path would lead to a “cyber-ocracy” where netizens use the web for grassroots organizing around specific issues. As Isaac Mao has argued, the online community could also become the primary forum for a discourse on China’s political system. Some bloggers have even called for the internet to be deemed a “special political zone” – like the Special Economic Zones established by Deng Xiaoping – in which regulations on political behavior in the physical world do not apply.
Questions & Answers
After her remarks, MacKinnon took a variety of questions on the trustworthiness of media sources in general, the potential of the Vietnamese government to copy Chinese internet censorship, and steps that the U.S. Congress or the global civil society could take to encourage political freedom on China’s internet. When asked whether democracy and the internet are necessarily linked, MacKinnon admitted that even in the West, the internet has the potential to become less free. In fact, in terms of internet regulation, the West may end up meeting authoritarian regimes somewhere “in the middle”. Ultimately, freedom on the web is really part of an age-old question: What is the proper balance between individual liberty and societal order?
