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Continuum

ISSN: 1030-4312 (Print) 1469-3666 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ccon20

The management of China's blogosphere boke(blog)

Kay Hearn

To cite this article: Kay Hearn (2009) The management of China's blogosphere boke (blog),Continuum, 23:6, 887-901

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10304310903294770

Published online: 09 Dec 2009.

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The management of China’s blogosphere boke (blog)

Kay Hearn*

School of Communications and Art, Edith Cowan University, Perth, Australia

When you open the window, some flies may come in.( ) Deng Xiaoping on the Open Door Policy.

Blogs or weblogs are online journals that are regularly updated, and cover thousands oftopics. In a way blogs represent the free speech philosophy of the early days of theInternet in that they allow users to distribute opinion on an enormous variety of topics,and in some countries relatively uncensored opinion, though potentially they can bemonitored everywhere. The blogosphere creates a new space in which public discoursecan be expanded and viewed. Indeed, my research for this paper relied heavily on anexcellent blog called EastSouthNorthWest, where a variety of articles from China’smedia are translated and posted, with some comment and analysis. During the Burmaprotests in September 2007 blogs were one of the few sources of information about theunrest not directly controlled by the Junta. Reporters without Borders claim on theirwebsite that ‘Bloggers are often the only real journalists in countries where themainstream media is censored or under pressure’ (‘Handbook for bloggers and cyber-dissidents’). However, in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) the emergence of blogsand the development of the Internet in general have been used to reinforce the centralauthority of the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Authoritarian regimes are often cast by the Western media as under threat from the

Internet and more recently blogs have been hailed as the final nail in the coffin of the CCP,

though so far this has not happened. This paper will look at the regulations and the

promotion of self-censorship to manage China’s blogosphere. The strategies used to

maintain the blogosphere are the same as those employed to manage the flow of

information and the circulation of ideas on the Internet, and that is through the

development of content, regulation and the code and architecture itself as means of

filtering and censoring information. Laurence Lessig (2006) argues that ‘code is law’.

By this Lessig means that the code used to build the architecture of the Internet is used to

regulate behaviour. A simple example of this is the use of passwords to access email

accounts and log onto networks. In the case of China, increasingly, censorship and self-

censorship are built into the Internet itself. This paper also looks at the way in which

centre–margin relations have been played out in relation to the development and

management of blogs and how the strategies of content development, legislation and code

are used to maintain the CCP’s influence over the management of temporal and spatial

relationships.

ISSN 1030-4312 print/ISSN 1469-3666 online

q 2009 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/10304310903294770

http://www.informaworld.com

*Email: kayhearn@iprimus.com

Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies

Vol. 23, No. 6, December 2009, 887–901

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The theoretical framework used here for thinking about centre–margin relationships is

medium theory and in particular the work of Harold Innis. Innis (1951, 1952, 1972) was

interested in the interaction between temporal and spatial relationships and the way in

which these were maintained via different modes of communication. The use of this

theoretical framework allows for an analysis of the negotiation of centre–margin

relationships that are played out to some extent via the media and avoids the deterministic

view – namely that the Internet will deliver democracy to China – that has permeated the

debate on the impact of the technology by politicians and pundits. The development of the

Internet has impacted on the relationship between Beijing and the provinces. The policy

implementation environment in the PRC is subject to the negotiation of centre–margin

relationships. David S. Goodman (Goodman and Segal 1994, 13) points out that ‘The

centre lays down the broad outline of a policy, with the provinces adopting specific local

measures for implementation.’ This has given rise to a political culture that is increasingly

marked by regionalism. The development of the Internet has to some extent challenged

this emergence of regionalism and has reinforced the position of the central government in

Beijing as the centre. The Internet has served to some extent as a window on the activities

of provincial governments at the margins and blogs have played a role in this. In addition,

the Internet is increasingly viewed as a window on public opinion and blogs form part of

this view. The opening of this window on public opinion has allowed the articulation and

visualization of other groups and interests that occupy marginal spaces in relation to the

government and the CCP at the centre. However, it should be noted that most of the views

expressed on the Chinese Internet are there because the regime has allowed it. For

example, during the unrest in Tibet in 2008 and the unrest in Xinjiang in 2009 any views

that supported Tibetans or Uyghurs were quickly deleted.

The state of the blogosphere

At the end of 2006, Xinhua reported that there were 20.8 million bloggers in China and of

those, 3.15 million were said to be ‘active authors’ (‘China has 20.8 million bloggers’

2007). The July 2007 China Internet Network Information Centre (CNNIC) report said

that of ‘the 137 million Internet users across China 19.1% of those had blogs’. The most

popular are those written by celebrities (‘Chinese bloggers to reach 100 million in 2007’

2006). Most are based on individuals and very few are based on news. At the end of 2007,

CNNIC released the findings of a survey on bloggers, which estimated 72.82 million.

In January 2009 CNNIC (2009) claimed that there were 167 million bloggers in China.

In 2007 the website 163.com, and its search engine youdao.com, looked at data from

millions of blog entries and concluded that the most popular topics on blogs in the first half

of the year was Mother’s day, followed by the television program Super Boys. Other topics

in the top 10 list included April Fool’s Day, the Qing Ming Festival, the Dragon Boat

Festival and Father’s Day (‘Hottest Topics in Chinese Blogs 2007’ 2007). CNNIC’s 2007

report said that ‘In terms of major content the blogs covered, 47% of the blogs are written

about the inner monologues or record of emotions of the writers. Next are the narration of

daily life, personal interests and hobbies. Most of the blogs are for the writers to record

their own life status and conduct self demonstration, with the blogs having a more and

more obvious tendency of self-media attributes’ (CNNIC 2007). Though these figures are

not accurate, because bloggers come and go, it still gives a rough idea of the magnitude of

the Chinese blogosphere.

The attempts to manage blogs are the same as with other areas of the Internet, that is

through legislation the management of the code used in the creation of the architecture of

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the Internet and the development of content in order to promote self-censorship through

these mechanisms. The difference with blogs and other forms of content is that there has

been less direct investment in blogs by the government to develop content, as is the case in

the news and games sector of the internet. Instead, blogs have also been used as a forum for

public feedback.

Promotion tinged with fear

Blogging has not been embraced by the government in the same way that other sectors of

the Internet have been. The use of blogs by party members to promote CCP-sanctioned

views has been encouraged, but there has not been a high level of investment in blogs, nor

has there has been a high level of official content development by the CCP. This lies in

stark contrast to other sectors of the Internet such as news and the gaming sector where

there has been a high level of investment of government sponsorship. It is difficult to find

information at this stage that might shed some light on the number of CCP member blogs

as there are no official figures on this. Blogs are seen as another avenue in which

government and party officials can communicate with citizens, however the CCP prefers

the use of websites to promote government policy. There were reports on the use of blogs

by delegates and journalists at the National People’s Congress in March 2006, and even

the suggestion that Premier Wen Jiabao should set up a blog (Qing 2006, n.p.). There are

also reports of government-sponsored Internet commentators whose job it is to promote

the government’s views in blogs.

According to the China Daily ‘in Suqian, a mid-sized city in East China’s Jiangsu

Province, 81 middle and high-ranking officials in the municipal government have opened

blogs on the government website (http://blog.suqian.gov.cn/)’ (Wang 2007, n.p.). The

China Daily said the highest-ranking official to write a blog is Zhao Qizheng, former

director of the State Council Information Office, who at the time of writing was the

President of the Journalism School of Renmin University in Beijing. In August 2007 he

launched his blog ‘Zhao Qizheng and his books’ where he has uploaded several chapters of

his latest work ‘In the One World – 101’ (sic) Tips on How to Communicate with

Foreigners’ (Wang 2007, n.p.).

The reports in the government press on blogs and stories that are linked to blogs are

often used to promote a party line or policy such as the story ‘Govt bloggers followers only

a clique away’ in the China Daily in August 2007. The story outlines some of the uses to

which government officials have put their blogs and promotes these blogs as a way for

officials to get in touch with the public, a forum for public feedback. This practice is

viewed as a form of democracy by the CCP. The article quotes Xie Chuntao, professor at

the Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in Beijing as

saying that ‘it is a good thing that officials opened blogs and strengthen their

communication with the ordinary citizens’ (Wang 2007, n.p.). The China Daily article

featured contrasting stories of public feedback on official blogs, one that sees feedback in a

traditional form – a form in which citizens publicly pledge subordination. In another the

blog was used to promote an issue and gather feedback. At the same time the report

finished with the idea that blogs should be secondary to the use of websites as a means of

getting in touch with the people.

Within the report was a story on the pledges of subordination that occurred in response

to the blog of Jiangsu Communist Party secretary Zhang Xinshi, who was said to have

written on a variety of topics including climate change and education. The report said that

‘Zhang hopes that those who are in charge at the different government organs can also

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have blogs so that they can express their ideas, attract people’s discussions and build an

efficient channel of communication between officials and ordinary citizens’ (Wang 2007,

n.p.). Most of the blogs that I have looked at have a feature for readers to post comments.

The example of feedback that the article gave on the pledge of subordination involved a

posting by Zhang on ‘civilized behaviour’. This posting prompted the local Suqian Daily

to run a column about the topic, and this was followed up by more than 100,000 pupils and

high school students distributing pamphlets on civilized behaviour in the streets (n.p.). The

China Daily lamented that ‘almost each of Zhang’s online articles was read more than 400

times, but there have been few posted responses from the public. When a comment was

made, it often turned out to be a pledge of a subordinate to implement the Party secretary’s

ideas, not public feedback’ (n.p.).

In contrast to public participation based on subordination was a story that featured

more meaningful feedback. This was feedback generated by the blog of Liao Xinbo,

deputy director of the provincial health bureau of South China’s Guangdong Province. The

report said that Liao’s is the most popular blog run by an official (Wang 2007, n.p.). Liao

launched his blog in April 2007 and it is the sixth most popular blog in Guangdong

Province (n.p.). The story hailed Liao’s blog, and the way in which he has used it to bolster

and garner public opinion is hailed as an example of democracy in action. The China Daily

report says ‘Liao’s blog, with its inspiring discussions, provides a prime example of a form

of ‘direct democracy’ (n.p.).

Liao, or as he calls himself Doctor Brother Bozi, writes on health issues and has

promoted the idea of contracts for doctors. He reminds readers that doctors are meant to

‘serve the people’. The China Daily report said that ‘Liao also argued in his blog that

health services were not a commodity that should be “bought” by patients, a key point that

health providers need to serve the public, instead of trying to rake in money’ (Wang 2007,

n.p.). The posting that kicked off this rather staged debate occurred when Liao ‘posted an

article by an anonymous doctor which blamed China’s apparent failure on medical reform

over the last 30 years on the lack of fair pay for doctors’ (n.p.).

Liao sought feedback on his blog. He said ‘I have never studied laws and cannot give

any comments. I wish my friends who are interested to give their ideas’ (n.p.). People who

agreed with Liao urged him to lobby his allies at the Provincial People’s Congress – the

legislative body – to draft a law especially for medical contracts. There was even a

drafting, by a netizen, for a medical contract law posted on the blog. The China Daily said

that ‘whether or not the fact the netizens’ law proposals were right or wrong, their

interaction with this sort of blogging demonstrates how ordinary people can debate the

merits of such proposals’ (n.p.).

The final part of the article seems to advocate the use of official websites as a platform

for the dissemination of information and public feedback, and features comment from Mao

Shoulong, a political scientist from Renmin University. In 2006 Mao said in a commentary

in the People’s Daily that ‘by further exploring the communication possibilities of blogs,

officials may better win the citizens’ trust if there is successful communication between

the two sides’ (Wang 2007, n.p.). The quote was reprinted in the China Daily in August

2007 in an article extolling the virtues of blogs. The report went on to quote Mao Shoulong

as saying

actually, if we want the government to get nearer to the ordinary citizens, we can make moreefforts on improving our democratic system instead of using the highly personalized blogs.At the current stage, we can improve the government websites that widely exist, and makethem work better in publicizing policies and communicating with netizens. This is a moreconstructive choice. (n.p.)

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What the article reveals in a limited way is the debate about the role that blogs should play

in the government’s overall e-governance construction of the Internet, and gives a glimpse

of what the CCP notion of democracy could and should look like. The article is also

illustrative of the centre–margin relationship on the development of policy in this area as

they are played out in the media. The leadership of the CCP is the centre of these

relationships, and local and provincial party members are placed in the margins. In these

examples it is possible to view via the reporting of the examples and the sources of the

articles an interaction between the centre and the margins. Activity in the margins has

often been used for experimentation of policy initiatives and the Liao case may serve as an

example of the role official blogs may have in serving future government policy formation

and dissemination.1

Regulations

The main feature of the regulations that relate to blogging is the promotion of self-

censorship. Thus ultimate responsibility for what is posted lies with blog service providers

(BSPs). Bloggers are subject to the existing laws governing the Internet, as well as being

subject to attempts to further tighten management through the introduction of a ‘code of

conduct for bloggers’. The code and the pledge are vague in detail; for example, item 5

says ‘blog service should obey Chinese laws and regulations, protect the legal rights of

blog users and the public’ (MacKinnon 2007a, n.p.). Item 10 says that ‘if a blogger doesn’t

adhere to the terms, the service provider has a right to delete any illegal or bad

information, or terminate the blogger’s service’ (n.p.). Making BSPs responsible for what

is posted is the simplest way to block undesirable content.

In August 2007 the ‘self-discipline code for blog services’ was drawn up by the

Internet Society of China (ISC) (‘China’s main blog service providers subscribe to self-

discipline code’ 2007). The code had input from bloggers, blog providers and lawyers, and

encouraged the use of real-name registration. When the pledge was originally announced

there was a call for the compulsory registration of real names of users, but this was met

with fierce opposition. The People’s Daily online said that ‘real-name registration is only

to be “encouraged” instead of being made compulsory, originally the intention of the

government until it met with fierce opposition. Blog service providers are required to

ensure security and confidentiality of information that bloggers prefer to keep secret,

according to the code’ (‘China’s main blog service providers subscribe to self-discipline

code’ 2007). Ten major blog providers have signed the code, including MSN China,

Yahoo! China, Sina, Sohu and cn.MSN.com, Tianya and the People’s Daily. Huang

Chengqing, secretary general of the ISC said ‘conditions are not yet mature for

implementing real-name registration as we lack reliable technology for privacy protection

and identity verification’ (‘China’s main blog service providers subscribe to self-discipline

code’ 2007).

All of this suggests that there appeared to be some level of debate over real-name

registration of bloggers. The level of debate, the open reporting of the debate and what

appears to be a win for bloggers with the watered-down registration program is suggestive

of the emergence of a wider level of public discourse and a relaxing of political authority,

rather than the emergence of blogs themselves. What the government has allowed in the

way of debate has been incorporated and absorbed into the existing management strategies

for public opinion.

The debate about real-name registration is also evidence of centre–margin

negotiations of power, with the authorities’ demands for real-name registration at the

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centre and opposing bloggers at the margins. In this sense the creation of China’s

blogosphere is also the creation of a new space in which centre–margin relationships can

be viewed and played out. Despite the introduction of real-name registration there is still

the potential for those who are determined to remain anonymous to do so, provided they

have the technological skills; Bullitin Board System (BBS), however, are a much more

viable option for remaining unidentified (MacKinnon 2007b, n.p.).

A nail house in Chongqing and the birth of citizen journalism

The examination of centre–margin relationships highlights the tensions and the shifts that

occur as these relationships are played out. Centre–margin relationships are constantly

negotiated, and examining them reveals how things change over time. Centre–margin

relationships are constantly in a state of flux, and blogging has facilitated the emergence of

new margins to appear, but only because the government has allowed this. It is therefore

worth looking at the ways in which blogs have been used by marginal groups and how

centre–margin relationships are negotiated within the Chinese blogosphere.

There have been incidents that suggest that bloggers are able to challenge the

government in some ways. Ultimately, though, these challenges happen because the

government has allowed it, or more pointedly because it suits the government to allow it.

The case study presented here about a nail house in Chongqing and the reporting of

the story by bloggers was an incident that was to some extent stage managed by the

government. This particular story is one of the earliest examples of the emergence of the

use of blogs as a form of citizens’ journalism. The reporting of the incident spilled from

citizens’ blogs to the mainstream media. Blogging on the subject of the nail house and the

ensuing media coverage only occurred because the government allowed it, as the issue was

used to serve a broader political agenda.

A nail house ( ) is a privately owned home where the owner has refused to sell

out to property developers. Stories about nail houses spread across cyberspace in March

and April 2007. The most famous of these was in Chongqing in Sichuan Province where

the owners of a house refused to move and their home became an island in a 10 metre pit as

the development went on around them. The story of ‘The most awesome nail house in

Chongqing’ as it became known first broke on a blog and this sparked a wave of blog

coverage of this form of protest. This led to a number of citizens heading to the site of the

nail house and using mobile phones to capture images of its final demise, and they became

known as citizen reporters or journalists. Part of what sparked interest in the nail house

was the introduction of property laws that had been passed in mid-March 2007 during the

session of the National People’s Congress, laws that would not come into effect until

October of that year.

Images of the scene littered the Internet as the debate about the house and what should

be done became more intense. On the Tianya forum was a photo (see Figure 1) with the

following comment attached to it:

At the beginning of March, a photo called ‘the coolest nail house in history’ stirred up a lot ofdebate. Within the space of a few days, this photo was widely circulated and posted all overthe Internet, and a lot of media as well as the general populace were interested in the affair.This happened at the same time as the Property Law [was being discussed at the NPC], sopeople were even more curious about it. The final fate of ‘the coolest nail house in history’will be a famous monument to the progress of the Property Law. (Goldkorn 2007, n.p.)

The Danwei website said that ‘Tianya post has hundreds of comments representing many

different points of view about the Property Law, the evils of state- and privately-owned

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real estate development, and the rights of tenants’ (Goldkorn 2007, n.p.). The China Daily

said that ‘on China’s portal websites like Sina, 85 percent of those polled showed support

for the couple. China passed its landmark property law last month, highlighting the

protection of private property’ (‘“Nail house” in Chongqing demolished’ 2007).

On 28 March a young blogger from Hunan arrived in Chongqing to cover the story and

because of his efforts he became known as the first citizen reporter in China. Zhou

Shuguang ( ), who blogs under the name of Zuola, also became a story when he was

profiled in the Southern Metropolis Daily. John Kennedy has translated Zuola’s blog entry

on his initial report from ‘ground zero’, the site of the nail house. Zuola writes that:

As everyone knows, some reports of news like this which involves the government will surelynever be reported, and [online] stories will be deleted at the request of unknown ‘relevantdepartments’. There had been a Sina blog reporting 24 hours a day on the situation, but thatblog later disappeared. That’s why I realised this is a one-time chance, and so from far, faraway I came to Chongqing to conduct a thorough investigation, in an attempt to understand avariety of viewpoints . . . (Kennedy 2007b, n.p.)

The mainstream media picked up the incident after a local court ordered the house to be

demolished at midnight on 23 March. According to a post on EastSouthWestNorth, the

local and national media could not update the story as quickly as the bloggers (Chen 2007,

n.p.). There was live coverage on several forums and websites through blogs including

MOP, NetEase.com, KDnet, Tianya, MOP and Sina. Things heated up on the Internet and a

blogger who goes by the name of Naked Running Dog ( ) began broadcasting

directly through his mobile phone and sent video to an administrator at MOP (n.p.). On the

night of the demolition MOPHodpodge ran to live broadcast posts, and had received 7,000

or 8,000 comments (n.p.). Du Peiyuan, the leader of MOP Hodgepodge, said: ‘the

significance is about the future because this is where the trend is heading’ (n.p.) in

response to ‘the simultaneous appearance of so many large-scale live reports at the various

forums can be considered a milestone in the history of the development of the Internet in

China’ (n.p.).

EastSouthWestNorth said that in

Du Peiyan’s view, the ‘most awesome nail house’ was able to give birth to ‘citizenjournalism’ because it contained several major factors: the ‘Property Rights Law’ itself

Figure 1. The ‘nail house’, Chongqing.

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(which was brought out during the recently concluded National People’s Congress); thecoincidence between this ‘most awesome nail house in history’ and the ‘Property RightsLaw’; and the highly symbolic deadline (March 23 midnight) for the forced demolition alldrew heavy attention within the same period of time. (Chen 2007, n.p.)

On 29 March the China Youth Daily ran an editorial criticizing the nail house and the

bloggers who supported them (see Figure 2). The editorial, written by Lu Gaofeng

( ) (‘China Youth Daily editorial calls for greater professionalism in Chongqing

“nail house” reports’ 2007), said ‘some media have used (or abused) coverage of the “nail

house” in Chongqing to manufacture public sympathy for the “weak” in the pursuit of

bigger audiences’. In the editorial, Lu argues that while officials must face media scrutiny

‘pure-heartedly’, the media need to hold up their bargain, namely to ‘preserve impartiality

and cool-headedness, not gallery, not misleading the public’, and that ‘rational analysis’

has been insufficient in coverage of the ‘nail house’ story (‘China Youth Daily editorial

calls for greater professionalism in Chongqing “nail house” reports’ 2007).

A settlement was finally reached between the owner and the developer and the house

was demolished on 2 April, when the owners were given an apartment of a similar size.

The China Daily said that ‘experts believe that the outcry reflects a growing dissatisfaction

among common people about the way sites are commandeered and buildings demolished’

(‘“Nail house” in Chongqing demolished’ 2007).

The incident itself and the coverage of the story on blogs and BBSs illustrate a level of

debate about issues that government seems comfortable with. Dan Southerland of China

Brief said at the time that ‘the lenient treatment of Wu Ping may have helped the

government to make a propaganda point, namely that the government respects private

property, at least in certain cases. Yet, the ‘nail house’ case may also reveal that

downtrodden individuals in China are becoming more willing to challenge the system

Figure 2. Screen capture from China Youth Daily.

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through unconventional means (Southerland 2007, n.p.). However, the incident reveals

once again the ability to censor and delete postings that are deemed inappropriate and

means that the government is still able to silence debate if it has the will to do so.

On 24 March the Information Office of the State Council released a notice that said

there was to be ‘no more reporting and commenting on the “nail house” event. All news

related to this event must be pushed to the backend. All special feature pages are deleted.

All comments function on this news are closed’ (‘Chinese government forbids media

reporting of the “nailhouse” story’ 2007). Some Internet portals such as Sina, Sohu,

Netease and QQ had deleted all their special reports 15 minutes after the notice went out.

Blogs were not completely exempt. There are some reports that some blogs had been

deleted, though those established on Sina on 22 March had remained. The blog had

attracted 156,393 visitors, and 16,534 comments had been posted, though by 24 March the

comments page was locked and the comments could not be read (‘Chinese Government

Forbids Media Reporting of The “Nailhouse” Story’ 2007).

Zuola’s success in his coverage of the nail house made him something of a celebrity in

the Chinese blogosphere and fans urged him to cover other stories. Zuola is not without his

detractors and has been criticized for taking money to finance his travels to cover other

stories. He had also changed blog hosts to one outside of China because his Chinese blog

host was subject to censorship. In March he went to Xiamen and reported on an anti-

chemical-plant demonstration and in July he covered a pro-democracy rally in Hong

Kong.

In November 2007, at the Chinese Blogger Conference, Zuola announced his intention

to bring an end to his blogging and return to selling vegetables. His retirement was short

lived when a story about the plight of ant farmers in Shenyang in Liaoning Province hit the

headlines in November. The ant farmers took to the streets in protest when the Yilishen

Tainxi Group, makers of traditional herbal medicines, went bankrupt and failed to pay

dividends to thousands of people who had lost their life savings after investing in the

company or buying ant farming kits to produce ants for herbal medicines and aphrodisiacs.

The story of the ant farmers followed a familiar pattern. The story was broken and was

everywhere in the media and on the Internet; it was then deemed politically sensitive and

was heavily censored and the story then disappeared from the media. The state-owned

media subsequently released the official version, claiming that the riots or the protests

were caused by a few malcontents. In the ant farm scandal the state media laid the blame

for the protests on the company chairman, Wang Fengyou. Xinhua said that ‘thousands of

ant farmers had gathered at the company offices to demand their money, but Wang

allegedly paid 46 employees 1.03 million yuan (139,000 U.S. dollars) and company

executives 160,000 yuan and 30,000 U.S. dollars to organize protests outside government

buildings instead’ (‘Company chairman arrested for instigating social unrest’ 2007).

Reports on the Global Voices website suggested that bloggers were scrambling to save

video of the protests (Kennedy 2007a, n.p.). Rebecca MacKinnon tested several blogs and

blogsites following the crackdown on the story, including Tianya, and Sohu, and found

that she was unable to post information on the protests, and the word Yilishen was being

blocked on search engines (MacKinnon 2007c, n.p.). Zuola went to report on an ant farm

protest in Shenyang where he was detained and said to have been beaten and made to make

detailed reports on all the people that he met since his arrival in the city. Later he was put

on a plane and sent back to Changsha at his own cost and was instructed not to go too far

(n.p.).2

Zuola went on to report on a number of incidents in 2008, including the unrest in Tibet,

the Sichuan earthquake and riots in Guizhuo following the death of a young girl. He was

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picked up by police in August 2008 and managed to ‘tweet’, via a mobile phone, about his

incarceration.3 Zuola announced his intention to blog on the Beijing Olympics in June

2008 and was prevented from going to the capital, but once the games were over he was

able to travel to Beijing and resume blogging. In November 2008 Zuola was prevented

from travelling to Berlin where he was to take part in the judging of the Duetshe Welle

International Weblog Awards. At the time Zuola was labelled a ‘potential threat to state

security’ (MacKinnon 2008, n.p.). It appears that Zuola’s activities are tolerated when they

serve the interests of the government, as was the case in the nail house case.

In another incident in January 2008 Wei Wenhua, the general manager of a

construction firm, was hailed a brave ‘citizen reporter’ and a martyr by bloggers after he

was beaten to death by officials for trying to use his mobile phone to film a protest over the

dumping of rubbish (Barboza 2008, n.p.). The mainstream media also covered the story

and an investigation was launched into Wei’s death. The incident was seized upon by

Beijing to promote the rule of law and to clarify the limits to officials’ (chengguan )

power. Following the incident a meeting of 100 officials from across the country gathered

in the capital to condemn the individuals involved and to declare that they had ‘trampled

the law and violated human rights’ (‘Para-police officials condemn beating death of man in

Hubei,’ 2008). The chengguan, short for Chinese City Management Administration and

Implementation of Law ( ), are quasi-law-enforcement officials with a

wide range of responsibilities that focus mainly on keeping illegal vendors and sellers of

pirated goods off the streets, deterring beggars and turning away distributors of

commercial leaflets. The chengguan are not popular and in 2006/2007 there were a number

of reports across the nation suggesting that many were using standover tactics in order to

force vendors into paying protection money. Radio Free Asia suggested that there have

been other incidents involving violence perpetrated by chengguan in Hunan and Sichuan

(‘China: Who are the chengguan?’). Beijing used the incident to reassert their authority

over the margins, in this case the chengguan and those directly responsible for them, local

governments. The delegation of chengguan officials in Beijing was a staged event and a

visualization of the negotiation of centre–margin relationships, and in this instance the

subordination of the margins to the centre.

Regulating code

The blocking and banning of words and websites is the most common way that code is used

to manage the content of the Internet and this is also the case with the blogosphere.

According to Global Voices, a number of blog hosts have been blocked over the years.

In June 2005 it was reported by Rebecca MacKinnon and Asiapundit that all Typepad blogs

were being blocked, including access to MacKinnon’s blog. In March 2007 Livejournal,

Xanga, Blogsome and Technocrati were also blocked (‘Access denied map: Mapping Web

2.0 censorship’ 2007). The examples above also illustrate the ease with which code is used

to delete and block what is deemed undesirable in the Chinese blogosphere.

Blog hosts play an important role in the government’s strategy to manage

informational flows as this is the easiest point in the architecture to filter for words that are

deemed dangerous. Blog hosts, like all content providers, are co-opted into censoring on

behalf of the government through regulation, as discussed above. Rebecca MacKinnon

calls this the outsourcing of censorship (MacKinnon 2007b, n.p.). There are lists of banned

words that are used to monitor and filter what is posted online, and these lists are

maintained by private companies. Tennecent QQ was among the BSPs to sign the code of

conduct. In 2004 an inventory of banned words was discovered by Chinese hackers who

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located the list in a document in the installation package of QQ instant messaging

software. QQ is owned by Tenecent and the instant messaging software is the most popular

in China, with millions of users each day. According to the China Digital Times (CDT) it is

more difficult to filter words at the server end because of the high volume of traffic. It is for

this reason that Tenecent put the filtering program into the installation package. When the

software is installed on a computer, a program file called COMToolKit.ddl is

automatically included, and this is the file that contains the list of words that can be

automatically blocked (Qiang 2004, n.p.).

CDT ran the story and carried a detailed description of the list. The story noted that

Recently, some Chinese hackers located this file and released it on the Internet. The censoredkey words list is commonly used not just for QQ, but also for all websites, BBS and textmessaging services. One Internet user did a rough breakdown of the list: About 15 percent ofthe words are sex related, the rest are all related to politics. About 20 percent of the words areFalungong related, including ‘ ’ (master) and ‘ ’ (disciple); about 15 percent arenames of current officials and their relatives; about 10 percent are words used in the liberalpolitical discourse such as ‘democracy’, ‘freedom’, and ‘dictatorship’; and about 5 percent arerelated to certain nationalistic issues, such as ‘ ’ (defend Diaoyu Island), ‘ ’(Sino-Russian Border), ‘ ’ (selling out the country) etc. About 15 percent of the forbiddenwords are related to anti-corruption, such as ‘ ’ (smuggling), ‘ ’ (public funds); etc.Other censored words include names of dissidents, writers, and intellectuals, and names ofcertain foreign publications. (Qiang 2004, n.p.)

Microsoft

It seems that as many stories appear suggesting that the Internet in China is becoming

freer, just as many stories appear about crackdowns and the extent to which the Chinese

authorities are trying to ‘control’ the flow of information. In January 2006 it emerged that

Microsoft had blocked Zhao Jing’s (Michael Anti) blog because he criticized the

government for firing editors at a progressive Beijing newspaper (Chen and Fowler 2006,

n.p.). The Wall Street Journal said at the time that ‘efforts to access the site from inside

and outside China trigger a notice that “the space is temporarily unavailable”’ (Chen and

Fowler 2006, n.p.).

Waggener Edstrom, from one of Microsoft’s public relations agencies, said that the

blog ‘has been blocked to help ensure the service complies with local laws in China’ (Kirk

2006, n.p.). This line was again reiterated by Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve

Ballmer when he said: ‘we have an obligation in all the countries where we do business to

abide by the laws and the government decrees in those countries’. Ballmer said: ‘We do

here, what we do in Europe; we also do in places like China. And anybody can choose not

to do business in any country. We all have that option’ (Kirk 2006, n.p.).

Several Internet companies, including Yahoo! and Google, have used the line of

observing local law to justify their decisions, and have received harsh criticism in the West

for doing so. Yahoo! handed over information to the government which led directly to the

arrest and 10-year imprisonment of Shi Tao, a journalist who was ‘convicted for divulging

state secrets to foreigners after passing along an e-mail that contained a warning from the

Chinese government urging its officials to watch out for dissident activity ahead of the

15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre’ (Kirk 2006, n.p.). Google has also

come in for criticism for running a censored version of its search engine which filters out

information that the government does not want its citizens to see.

Microsoft later changed its policy following a public backlash in the United States to

the blocking of blogs in China. A statement made by Microsoft Senior Vice President and

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general counsel Brad Smith said that ‘Microsoft will remove access to content only in the

country issuing the order. When blog content is blocked due to restrictions based on local

laws, the rest of the world will continue to have access’ (‘Microsoft revises policy on

shutting blogs after China backlash’ 2006). Compliance with local laws is often the

justification used by multinational companies when they are criticized for the blocking of

information or, as in the case of Yahoo!, for giving the names of people who post sensitive

information.

The reporting and blocking of Zhao Jing’s blog and the position and subsequent

backdown by Microsoft make visible the negotiation between centres and margins. In this

instance the CCP and the Beijing government acts as a centre of power and authority and

Zhao Jing acts at the margins. There is also a negotiation between Beijing as a centre and

Microsoft at the margins, as well as foreign affairs being played out as centre-margin

relationships between Beijing and Washington. The United States government also held

an inquiry into the behaviour of Microsoft and its dealings with the PRC. The inquiry into

Internet company behaviour in China is like a staged event to highlight opposition to

China’s position on freedom of speech and human rights.

The East–West relationship is further played by Western NGOs that seek to help

political activists in authoritarian countries such as China to circumvent the government’s

system of censorship. Reporters without Borders, for example, has published an online

handbook that offers information to bloggers who want to defend themselves from

recrimination and censors. The guide was partly funded by the French government and

gives people tips on how to set up and publicize a blog, and how to establish credibility.

(‘Blog censorship handbook released’ 2007). However, there is no doubting that the

government’s systems of censorship have been very effective at filtering out discussion of

what they do not want posted for a mass Internet audience. Xiao Qiang, the editor of the

US-based China Digital Times, has said that

censorship’s most direct impact on blogging is that there is a lack of ‘political bloggers’ in theChinese blogosphere. Pure politics is simply too dangerous. The small numbers ofcampaigning bloggers are not dissidents; they do not call for the overthrow of the CommunistParty. But they are at the forefront of debate on specific social issues. (‘China trembles at thepower of the blog’ 2007)

Isaac Mao also argues that explicit political activism is not possible. Mao says: ‘The

priority now is to help people help themselves constructively through technical means, not

political means. (Obvious reason: overt political activism is not feasible)’ (‘I still believe

some day I’ll change the world in my way’ 2007, n.p.). That is, to help individual citizens

find ways around Internet censorship in China and for people to educate themselves and to

learn to communicate freely.

Focusing on East–West conflict, as it is mediated in incidents involving the

circumvention of traditional informational flows, diverts attention from what is going on in

other sectors of China’s blogosphere. Examination of these points of resistance, conflict

and negotiation does, however, reveal the tensions that are inherent in spatial and temporal

relationships and the way in which information is managed in response to these things.

Spatial relationships in this instance include those between Beijing at the centre and local

and provincial governments at the margins, and Beijing’s relations with the West.

By temporal relationships I mean competing versions of events. It is the charting of centre–

margin relationship within China through the exploration of what can and cannot be said.

It illustrates how the boundaries of debate are often in a state of flux and renegotiation.

Points of resistance are not always overtly political. The nail house in Chongqing and

the actions of the bloggers was provocative and obviously linked to the property law; it was

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not, however, overtly political in the sense that people were looking to overthrow the

government. It is these kinds of incidents and people’s uses of the Internet, blogs and

bulletin boards that reveal the limits to the strategies employed by the CCP for the

management of informational flows and the extent to which those boundaries are resisted.

Thus looking at these kinds of incidents is useful for the charting of centre–margin

relationships. These include those relationships that have traditionally existed such as

those between the CCP and Beijing at the centre and the provinces at the margins. Blogs

also create a new space in which other marginal groups may emerge and interact with the

CCP and Beijing at the centre. The ways in which these kinds of incidents are reported in

the Western press allow a visualization of the relationship between Beijing and the West.

There is evidence of social change and that on many levels China is moving towards a

more open society even though there are many subjects that are still taboo; blogs and the

Internet are facilitating that process of openness to some extent, though major BBS and

online forums may be more influential (‘Chinese bloggers, podcasters and webcasters’

2005). As Rebecca MacKinnon says: ‘if one combines the growing online space for

private civic discourse provided by blogs with a functionally effective system of

censorship and filtering, the result appears to be a recipe for gradual, slow evolution – not

democratic revolution’ (MacKinnon 2007b, n.p.).

MacKinnon also makes the important point that over-focusing on the points of conflict

misses many of the other things that are going on in China’s blogosphere:

outside observers of the Internet and politics in China would do well to focus on the impact of

blogs beyond the narrow scope of overt political protest and obvious political change. Most

Western media attention focuses on those instances where bloggers clash with government

censors or the web hosting companies who act as proxies for government censors. But to look

only at these instances of conflict is to miss a great deal of what is really happening, much

more quietly, under the surface. (MacKinnon 2007b, n.p.)

An example of MacKinnon’s point is when Western reporters were caught out by over-

focusing on censorship issues when two prominent Chinese bloggers staged a hoax that

made it appear that their blogs had been shut down, and the Western reporters assumed it

was the government, as did some Chinese people. The blogs called Massage Milk and

Massage Pig staged the shutdown in order to make fun of Western journalists. Wang

Xiaofeng, the author of Massage Milk, said:

‘I just wanted to make fun of Western journalists? [Content] doesn’t need to be serious on the

Internet. I don’t like it that Western media take a distorted view of China, though China does

have problems,’ Wang told Interfax in an emailed statement, ‘I thought that if I closed my

blog, it would stir their imagination and then they would begin blah blah. It really is as

expected. So let’s they have an April Fool’s day in advance.’ (MacKinnon 2007b, n.p.)

The story also reveals the assumptions made by the Western media in relation to the way in

which the Internet operates in China. Isaac Mao argues that blogs are establishing

networks of trusted information that circumvent traditional media informational flows. He

uses the example of the nail house in Chongqing and how people trusted Zuola the blogger

over traditional media. Mao says that ‘trusted networks are also very fast in spreading

information because people believe information coming from people they trust. (Unlike

government-controlled media which are generally not so trusted)’. Though there are

cracks in the Great Firewall it is still well maintained through legislation, the development

of content and through its architecture.

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Conclusion

The strategies used to manage the Chinese blogosphere are the same as other areas of the

Internet, that is through the development of content, legislation and the code used to

construct the architecture of the Internet. Content in this sense comes via blogs and this has

been hailed as the birth of citizens’ journalism; the Zuola case is interesting for a number

of reasons. Firstly, when he was allowed to report on incidents that were used by the CCP

to promote an issue of there interest. This was the case in relation to the nail house in

Sichuan. However, when he was reporting on stories that the CCP wanted to suppress he

was silenced. It is worth noting once again that Zuola’s coverage of the nail house incident

was used by the central government in Beijing to reinforce its central position over

provincial governments at the margins. Exploration of the management of the Chinese

blogosphere has also enabled me to look at centre–margin relations between the

government at the centre and bloggers at the margins.

Notes

1. For more detail on regional policy experimentation see Goodman and Segal (1994).2. For more detail on Zola’s arrest and her extensive testing of blog censorship following the scandal

see Rebecca Mackinnon’s blog post: http://rconversation.blogs.com/rconversation/2007/12/nailhouse-blogg.html

3. Tweeting is the name given to posting on the microblogging site Twitter.

Notes on contributor

Megan Hicks is undertaking a postgraduate research project at Macquarie University based on herphotographs of pavement inscriptions in urban and rural NSW. Until recently Megan was theCommissioning Producer of permanent galleries at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, after spendinga number of years as the museum’s Curator of Health and Medicine.

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