* Hu Yong, Associate Professor, Peking University
* Li Yong-gang, Assistant Director, Universities Service Centre for China Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
* Song Zheng, Editor-in-chief, Tianya
* Zhang Dong-sheng, Editor-in-chief (Editorial Department), QQ.com
* Zhai Minglei, Editor-in-chief, 1 Bao

(NOTE: THIS IS A SUMMARY, NOT VERBATIM TRANSLATION)

Qian Gang opens the session:
June 12 was the 1-month anniversary of the Wenchuan earthquake. He opens with a question about how Chinese news media and internet have responded to the earthquake.

Song Zheng: In ’76, during the Tangshan Earthquake he and his family were affected by the earthquake and didn’t know what was going on, living in shelter and didn’t have much information. Now with the internet we can find out what’s going on much more quickly.

Li Yonggang: Weve been talking a lot about changes. We often talk about China as a slow moving dragon. The Internet is provoking that dragon to react more quickly. In the first half of the year, the government had to deal with the snowstorm, Tibet, and the torch relay protests, making it feel defeated, the earthquake was a way to boost the government’s confidence.

Zhang Dong-sheng: The earthquake reaffirmed the ability of the Chinese press to act like real journalists, but there were still a lot of restrictions.

Zhai Minglei: Showed how the Chinese people can take initiative and action.

Hu Yong: The earthquake: people started watching TV instead of the internet initially after the quake, but then a group of civilian reporters emerged. Like the “tent incident”

Bandurski then asks a question: to what extent can citizen media act as social watchdogs and to what extent does that role continue to rest with traditional media? Also what are the latest measures by govt to control the internet?

Song Zheng: Tianya is more of a platform than a media. Tianya has “wumaodang” and “fenqing,” it is also a place where people have exposed the nailhouse, the brick kiln incident, etc. It’s used by all kinds of people We wish we didn’t have to delete anything but of course there are times when we have no choice. A lot of reporters use Tianya as a place to find news tips. Then they’ll go and follow up with reporting and investigation, then the netizens will pick up on the reports, then they will advance the story, and it goes back and forth. Some reporters also post the reports their editors won’t publish on the Internet. It’s impossible to say who is going to replace whom. It’s a mutually-reinforcing symbiotic relationship.

Li Yonggang: What is the logic of Chinese government controls? China is a big body of water. The control system is like a water management system. They have 2 rols: one is to manage water flow. The other is to prevent droughts or floods which will threaten the government power. So the government is better and better at managing the water system. They know they can’t manage too tightly and they will allow maximum and minimum levels which change according to the general environmental circumstances. Though of course their ability is not as great as they would like. This is a huge resource-heavy enterprise, requiring a lot of people and money to manage this system. However it doesn’t want to privatize this entire system. At the same time this system is comprised of many parts and shouldn’t be viewed as a monolith either.

Zhang Dongsheng: The whole management system has a certain amount of effectiveness. But online media isn’t just the portals, renminwang, xinhuawang. Also blogs and QQ groups. It’s impossible to manage all of these latter things effectively.

Zhai Minglei: The GFW is not a wall between two ideologies, especially since China isn’t actually a socialist society anymore. Fear is what holds the GFW together. We should work to reduce the number of people who use threats to manage us, and encourage the increase of those who use trust and information. There are a lot of issues that mainstream media can’t report, but which citizen media can successfully report. But the best strategy for citizen media is to act in a non-threatening manner so that more people in the government will realize that information is not a threat.

Hu Yong: Earthquake – coverage went through several stages: emergency response, then adjustment in which the media got organized, mourning period, then the assertion of control. Most chinese people got their information about the earthquake from broadcast mainstream media. But Internet information spreads and flows around flexibly.

Another question from Bandurski: how much space is there for online discussion?

Song: Most grassroots netizens aren’t equipped to act as professional reporters. But the internet is a great platform where people can exchange information and opinions. It’s very important that the internet has become a place where people speak their minds. Chinese people for centuries have been used to receiving the truth from above, not contributing to it.

Li: People who’ve been acting as citizen reporters for a long time, they’ve gained credibility over time. Many citizen reporters are also actors in events as well as being reporters. Many times the control of internet platforms like Tianya are not due to a central order, but rather due to the initiative of an individual official. So you can’t look at the whole situation as a monolith.

Zhang: So far China still doesn’t have a citizen media platform like OhMyNews that combines citizen contributors with professional editors. There are a lot of hurdles in terms of law, etc. before this can be possible.

Zhai: A real citizen reporter is an ordinary person who is observing the events happening to themselves and the people around them. So he doesnt think that 1 bao qualifies really because he’s a solo ex-reporter. His experience with 1Bao has been cat and mouse with the authorities.

Hu: Citizen reporters will have a surge on an issue, then get beaten down via censorship/removal of blog posts. To analyze what’s going on you need to look at 4 moving parts, the Internet, mainstream media, citizen media, and the propaganda dept.

This study tries to answer the question–what kinds of blogs are being read most and its content and implication—by means of analysis of Chinese-language content from China. The top 100 weblogs would give us an overview of China blogosphere. Additionally, there are substantial differences from English-language blogs under the dissimilar social, economic, and political system, which shapes the blogosphere. It is necessary to see if the political implications influence blogs and how it works on the blogs, especially the most popular ones. Furthermore, the influences of economic booms in China are worthwhile examining. How do they work on blogs? The blog topics will be examined by two data mining methods. First, on each topic category, we will extract noun phrases indicating topics that are discussed. Second, the social network analysis will be conducted to identify the salient topics or themes in reflected in blogosphere of China.

Starting from Roland Soong’s presentation yesterday, Hsu Chiung-wen is looking to understand the diversity and nature of Chinese bloggers. Research on Chinese language blogs is rare, and most of it focuses on censorship and democratization. Her key assumptions are that the Internet to some extent reflects the environment. Given the typical Internet user in China is male, white collar with a high income or a student, this defines the environment reflected in blogs to a large degree. Bloggers, as pointed out yesterday, enjoy Western fast food and have a lower level of agreement with traditional customs and beliefs. Hsu points out the single child policy also may have some significant bearing on attitudes and the environment shaping the China blogosphere by creating a child centered culture.

In the US, the most blogger inlinks are in urban areas like Manhattan and Los Angeles. So Hsu hypothesizes something similar will happen in the Chinese blogosphere. The authors of this study sampled the top 100 weblogs from BlogLook. Using datamining, the text of the blog posts are collected and the 199 most used words are ranked. They generate a node graph of the relationship of these keywords across the blog sample. Hsu then shows us the top 70 nouns, which include blogger, individual, space, network, page, love, university, plug-in, etc. The most frequent co-occurrence of nouns with the combination “feel/freedom” are individual, thinking, home information, shoot, chouce, activity, post, China, world, hope and feeling. Based on her findings, Hsu finds that Chinese blogs are self expression and social interaction tools, especially among urban elites. Some brand names showed up, such iPhone and IBM.

Peter Marolt asks the question “how can you believe what you see/read online?” One way to do this is to zoom in on the “Internet of thoughts and ideas” and look at those bloggers that have them. He quotes one blogger describing a blog as “a personal space for expression/speech” and a medium for an individual to express his/her own ideas”. Another said the joy of free writing that motivates them, as well as reader recognition and a convenient form of publishing. He shows various quotes from the bloggers he interviewed, one of whom comments that the administrators of blogging platforms are more “down to earth” than the Central Propaganda Bureau. Another blogger feels that they are powerless to influence anyone except their close friends and relatives, and says they feel like an oddball or alien in Chinese society. Another quote states that the Xiamen PX incident was triggered by bloggers, as an example of the potential they see, though it may be rare.

Analyzing individual agency is, in Marolt’s view, critical to understanding how collective action is realized. Instead of starting from theoretical concepts and moving to operationalization and fieldwork, he seeks to discover his conceptual underpinnings during his fieldwork. He defines “blog” as a catalyst for change, a work of art, and conscious attempt to affect everyday life, and blogging demonstrating not what to do but how to be. He then produces a quite interesting handwritten graph of the relationships between the virtual, physical, private, public and individual creation.

He describes a process of social learning, from free thinking -> free expression -> shared imagination -> shared meaning -> intentional organization -> collective action -> societal change and then eventually, perhaps, back again to free thinking. He’s continuing to work on defining this process, and expects to be doing so for the next few years. He points out we need more empirical work on urban China’s constant evolution.

Go here for Marolt’s Slideshare presentation “China’s Blogosphere in the eyes of Western Researchers, and Why They Are Wrong”. Also blogged here. Unfortunately, pressed for time, he was only able to go into some impressions and not his findings in depth.

Xiao Qiang is looking at the South Tiger Photos incident and Yilishen incident. Looking at the Chinese internet from the perspective of Habermas’ “public sphere”. But, China’s internet space is heavily censored, controlled. With respect to ‘sudden-breaking events’ and politically sensitive topics, there is only censorship.

The defining atmosphere on the CHinese internet is one of political ideology. Not to the degree of the Mao era. This is the capitalist information age. The problem, though, is that everything that you do see on the Chinese internet is ideologically correct.

The structure of the internet, however, allows vulnerable groups to spread information. And it is the structure of the internet that allows these groups to get around internet controls. Those facing the biggest threat from the internet at present are officials at all levels.

Ashley Esraey, Assistant Professor, Middlebury College. “Political Discourse in Chinese Blogs”

His approach to analyzing blogs is quite different from Xiao Qiang’s. Not looking exactly at what they say, but the significance of what is being said in a more quantitative way.

Questions he asks:

Do blogs threaten the state’s ability to control access to political information in China?
How different is political discourse in blogs compared to that of official media?
To what extent does propaganda exist in the blogosphere?
How popular are political bloggers? How interlinked are popular bloggers?

Looking at his methodoligcal approach to analysis of these questions. He uses Google Blogsearch, for the year of 2006, sampling 6,000 blogs. Later the took a smaller number of these blogs, eliminitating those that focus on hard news, politics, environment politics, and those not written by Chinese or about China. Today he’s looking at linking this research with earlier research he’s done looking at Chinese newspapers since the 80s, American and Vietnamese print media as well.

Huge jumps in pluralism and criticism on blogs, he’s found, than on newspapers. Criticism of Mao Zedong, even! At the same time, you do find national propaganda, but barely, on blogs, compared to newspapers. Local propaganda, is not to be found on blogs.

Compared to Vietnam, Chinese blogs have a disproportionately high level of criticism. Breaking that pluralism down,he finds 39% of it is not critical per se of the government. Highly critical of corporations, however.

Principal findings?

Political discourse and debate much more frequent online, and propaganda not that apparent. Frequent criticism of corporations. Often grip about national affairs. Occasional criticism of top leaders. Much criticism is cautious, and provide government sources “righful resistance”. Lots of information dissemination. Moderately- to highly-read bloggers comprise 25% of bloggers (250 hits or more per posting). Many blogs have far higher hit rates, but this is still relevant.

Small numbers of bloggers are highly interlinked via blogrolls. Five percent of blogs linked to 100 other blogs.

Once information is sent out, it’s hard for that information to be erased, because it gets passed on.

Will the revolution be blogged?

Where there is great repression, there is also great resistance. What’s happening on the blogsphere, people are taking their “hidden transcripts” and pushing those out into the public spheres in new ways.

• Jiang Min, Assistant Professor, Department of Communication Studies, UNC-Charlotte. “Authoritarian Deliberation: Public Deliberation in China”
• Xiao Qiang, Adjunct Professor, University of California at Berkeley. “The Rise of Online Public Opinion and Its Political Impact”
• Ashley Esraey, Assistant Professor, Middlebury College. “Political Discourse in Chinese Blogs”

Where the threat of censorship is very real, how do we start talking about authoritarian deliberation? There are windows for positive changes. Looking at a poll in Zeguo township, allowing residents to voice their opinions in a deliverative poll. The outcome from that showed strong concern for environmental problems.

Do countries have to be democratized first in order to achieve public deliberation?
->How can experiences elssewhere, the West,be applied to China?

Defining the Western approach to deliberation as: when people examine a problem and arrive at a well-reaseoned solution after a period of inclusive, respectiful consideration of diverse points of view.

Critics respond with ‘lower’ interests, such as the right to speak in the first place.

What are the possibilities to make positive changes?

In government, this can take the form of juries, decision-making process, elections, multilateral deliberation. In civil society, from informal political discussions, communities, media and public opinion as well as multilateral deliberation. Multilateral deliberation overlaps with those two interests and Media & Business as well. The divisions between the three can be blurred.

Looking at definitions of Authoritarian Deliberation. The type of deliberation in China could be different. What types of public deliberation are there in China? On the screen now are 华夏知情Net and 西词胡同Net were informal conversations happen, wherepeople gather and talk about issues important to them.

Then there are things like 强国论坛 where the discussions occure but with more assumption of controlled discussion and 湖南红网 where many discussions are of people defending theirlegal and consumer rights from corporations, and lawyers working through that community.

豆瓣九点: the opposite of CCTV. CCTV has CCTV1-? Douban has channels 1-9, counteracts CCTV/mainstream media. Antiwave, two podcasters (see Danwei.org for English-language interview) who are declaredly anti-mainstream media, an attitude of parody of MSM. 不许联想, aka Wang Xiaofeng (see Danwei and ESWN).

‘Govenrment decision-making also happens on blogs, members of the NPC and CPPCC, from politicians to real estate developers, who express their ideas, and allow for some insight into the decisio-making process, for decisions made for us, not by us.’

Wrapping up the series of slides which compare deliberative platform websites in the US with highly-related Chinese counterparts, we see that America has AMerica Speaks, and China has Beijing Legislative Bill Comments page on Sina.com, which invites comments from general public before bills are passed.

There are many online and offline deliberative platforms which need to be better understood.

Isaac starts off with some background, his alternate angle to studying the Chinese internet over the past 4-5 years that might help explain his presentation. Look at this conference, there is good turnout. However, what we cannot see is how the people here are connected. The invisible things: how well-connected the people are to each other.

Looking at the Chinese internet, we cannot see how things develop. Many Chinese internet users are switching their online habits from readers to reader-writers. All of the cases in the past year, from SexyPhotoGate to the torch relay to Sharon Stone, illustrate big changes on the Chinese internet. These are problems moving beyond the box that are becoming more and more complex.

So, how will the Social Brain evolve in China?

At this point Isaac puts a map up on the overhead, an outline of China with flame graphics scattered all across the map, suggesting fires have broken out all across CHina. He will share this on Slideshare.

Taking teacher “Runner Fan” Meizhong, who was criticized widely online and off- for having run out from his class at the instant the earthquake struck. Then there’s “Jumper Guo” the former soldier who criticized Runner Fan on his blog, and then was invited by Phoenix TV to “PK” (battle). In this PK, Runner Fan showed up and explained his side, stuck to his points that he is whohe is, a human being with his own faults. “Jumper Guo” jumped up (earning himself the nickname) and stormed out of the TV studio at that point (and got a lot of flack for that).

Isaac shows the video, link here.

Following the exchange on the tv show, which has been WIDELY discussed online, and people had a chance to consider Fan’s side, combined with Jumper Guo’s response, opinions began to change. Isaac says: if you take the time to consider the story, you’ll see that it’s not all crazed e-nationalists out to kill people, but that there is balanced discussion. This kind of discussion is happening everywhere on the internet today. If you could remove some of the noises in those discussions, you would see a lot of things going on in this country that just a few years ago, you would not have been able to. Instead of people being ruined, or displays of nationalism, you can see people’s views and opinions being revealed.’ In contrast, officials tried to downplay the incident of the ‘Tiger Zhou’ and his South China Tiger photographs. But in reality (online), people are working together, putting their heads together, to think about problems, thinking online, and coming to conclusions.

Propaganda departments in China can effectively control traditional media, but they cannot control the emerging/evolving social media in which the user is the creator. Isaac emphasises that this happens in particular where bloggers use their realID, which comes with credibility. He also mentions the WIDESPREAD trend for Chinese journalists opening up their own blogs, collecting information from their Twitter friends, their Facebook friends, and this becomes a social fabric. This kind of fabric cannot be controlled.

Ten years ago, we would only be able to get earthquake information from CCTV/Xinhua/foreign media etc. Yet in this earthquake, for the first five minutes after the Sichuan earthquake, the story was on Twitter. “Beijing is shaking. Shanghai is shaking.” From this you can see how this is different from the traditional media space.

What we’re seeing now is the image of Amateur Journalism shaking hands with Professional Journalism. Amateur Journalism is people using their mobile phones, their Twitter, their SMS messages, and sharing that information with mainstream media.

Following the earthquake, Isaac mentions 1kg.org, which received information through these amateur journalism channels, and responded by sending what was needed: food, tents, trauma counsellors.

The most important thing in China is: how can we help people, facing the Great Firewall, achieve free space?

What is Evolving Social Brain?
-worries about cybernationalists/”fenqing”
-society evolving in a way beyond that which the government either likes or dislikes
-beyond ways that individuals like or dislike
-the changes are complex, but we’ll see the formula one day.

The ‘Social Brain’ will be the key in the future of this country. Society is changing. It’s a macro phenomenon, so nobody can control it. You can only participate in it.

Isaac at this point brings up Minesweep the PC game, using an image of the game on Large setting to illustrate the growing complexity of the Chinese internet, pointing out that there are now more than 210 million internet users in China.

isaac.mao@gmail.com

[You have to check out Isaac's SlideShare]
Questions:
Is this too much technological determinism?
Isaac: I didn’t say that technology can save the world. It can however create more intelligence. The best way is to help more people collaborate in a flat way, and define their positions in society, create more than just noise. It’s the future of human beings, but we cannot tell that this is determined already.

Q: What you’re describing is the emergence of a public space, which is determined by technology. Reality is, though, that authoritiescan invade this space. So is this really a free space, free markets, or can authorities control it?
Isaac: I agree that the government always has the strong power and always wants to control. A good balance, however would be from the people. If they are not legitimate, tehy will try and go beyond what it’s in their rights. Ian Young is a good model, but we are not following that in China. There are always rules in society, and that can be considered as governance, but people can always work around those.

Q: DO you foresee an end to censorship in China as we know it in China?

Roland: I don’t foreseee an end. This goes back to Deborah Fallows’ research, where there are not so good things happening on the internet. An earthquake happens, and and people tell jokes to gain the limelight. Or others say they predicted it and the government allowed those 70,000 people to die. People in some sense shouldn’t be allowed to say that.
Isaac: I think the government should have some control over the internet, over those malicious content, for our children. Hong Kong is free on the access part, but not on the free thinking part.

In China there are two parts to censorship: Censorship 2.0: people who were educated under censorship and censor themselves, and business who comply with ‘hidden rules’. Even if the GFW were removed, people would retain that thinking. That’s one. People can break censorship, and make it completely useless. At present, there are 5% of internet users who know who to use tools like Tor and get information through their friends. The internet is connected for them, and they can get what they want.

So even if the government puts more money into research into how to censor the internet, they cannot effect it.

Q1: What are some of the important pieces/components of the system that is shaping the future? In terms of internet research, what role is the internet playing shaping that future?
Isaac: one of the experiments [Isaac brings up memedia.cn, Strawberry + grassroots media, collaboration work online media, so nobody needs to do everything on one particular week. Groups continuously contributing from week to week, and at the end of the week, MeMedia journal comes out. It may not be the Truth, but it is what’s happening on the Chinese blogsphere. We need to create new models, new ways of communicating and thinking.

Q: We see a lot of changes that allow individual usersto control and creat information. What does that mean for the role of the journalist (in newsmaking)?
Roland: the biggest change that I would like to see is require journalists be bloggers too. You see situations, the most insightful stuff, say a major natural disaster somewhere. The journalist goes, wirtes his article. Order comes down, can’t be printed. So he puts it on his blog. Then he follows it up. Adds in his notes. “I have all this stuff, here it is.”

That defeats censorship on two levels: from above, and self-censorship. Items he kept out of the original report out of habit, now go on the blog and stay there.
Isaac: I’m not a journalist, but journalists should be trained to use new technologies: blogs, microblogs, things that can help them collect mroe information. New technologies can help improve that part. It’s a handshake.

The Hong Kong police cracked down on the photos. If you posted the photos, they would force the ISPs and forums to reveal your IP and they arrest you. Even if you post from overseas they will find you. In one example they tracked someone through a Cyprus IP. This was clearly selective law enforcement as there are millions of other obscene/pornographic photos that are not dealt with in such a rigorous manner. So many posters were diverted to Mainland forums. This is where a great deal of ESWN traffic was coming from. The Mainlanders were back-translating ESWN’s English translations to Chinese and hotlinking the photos on his site. This was the first time ever China proved less oppressive than Hong Kong.

Next, March 14th, Tibet. James Miles was the sole foreign correspondent, Kadfly the one foreign blogger. For the first time, Chinese people took extreme interest in Western coverage. Soong shows us the famous AFP/CNN cropped photo that prompted the beginnings of “anti-CNN” and “You cannot be too CNN”, which was once applied to CCTV. Anti-CNN.com expanded to cover various examples of perceived Western bias and clear errors such as photos involving Nepalese police. A minority of Western media made these mistakes, but were put under disproportionate scrutiny. On April 3, Chang Ping wrote his Southern Metropolis Daily essay “Where does the truth about Lhasa come from?” where he criticized as the biggest danger people who abandon objectivity and take refuge in narrow nationalism, which was heavily criticized and was well illustrated by an editorial cartoon displaying China.com patriot/nationalists and those who agree with Chang Ping.

Next was the Olympic Torch relay. In London, where Lord Coe claimed he was pushed by “thug” Chinese security guards, and the Jin Jing incident in Paris. In China by contrast was unprecedented relay for the torch relay, and the I (L) China red heart campaign on MSN. The corollary to supporting your country is to attack your enemies, and Carrefour was identified as one. LVMH, the parent company, could not be easily boycotted for its upscale brands, but its stake in Carrefour was an “incomprehensible” rationalization for the call to action. The protests appear to have been spontaneously organized. Jin Jing opposed the Carrefour protests and was branded by some a traitor, no longer a hero.

With the Wenchuan earthquake, everything was taken off the table.

On Civilian Journalists and Mainstream Media: Soong argues civilian journalists are local sources great at providing tips from the ground, but cannot follow through on verification. Most cases require the resources (skills, money, tools) of mainstream media to do this. Both need each other – it is a symbiotic relationship.

Back to the earthquake. Fuxin #2 Primary School collapsed killing 129 children during the earthquake. The parents took photos of the rubble and posted them on the Internet, and appeared in other photos with framed pictures of their children, as well as posing with a large poster making an appeal. The New York Times followed through with the story of local party boss Jiang Guohua, who dropped to his knees before the parents who continued to shout and march despite his pleas. The Mianzhu party secretary explained why he knelt. Mianzhu has suffered over 11,000 deaths, 37,000 injuries, 100,000 damaged buildings, 500,000 homeless. He has enormous issues to deal with, and promised the parents an investigation but argues he needs time. Soong argues that there is some credence to this.

Soong concludes that Chinese netizens are heterogeneous and constantly evolving. Size matters as 0.01% of them is 21,000 people. External events are change agents, especially this year which has been full of once-in-a-lifetime events.

The cyberspace has been likened by many to be the “wild wild West,” unruly to be tamed. Yet the great firewall of the Chinese Government has pinned down and filtered many freewheeling minds and spirits. When we are confronted with the Orwellian nightmare of the Big Brother overseeing us, many may have overlooked that Little Brothers are everywhere. With the rise of blogs, discussion boards, and Youtube, we may become targets of false allegations or our movements and gestures may have been captured by modern technology at any moment to be broadcast on the Internet for a public trial of millions to watch and to criticize. The use of the Internet to achieve social shaming, monitoring and ostracism seem to be prevalent in Chinese society. The year 2007 had been marked by several Internet scandals in China touching on defamation and privacy. These included a Peking University female gradate who allegedly had gone naked to raise fund while she was studying in North America. A stepmother was alleged to torture her stepdaughter to hospitalization. Both turned out to be blatant lies. On the other hand, in another category of cases, the greater the truth, the greater the libel. Witch hunting had been going on to target and expose details of a woman engaging in extra marital affairs, and against a nurse deriving pleasure from torturing a kitten. All the individuals concerned have little legal recourse to protect their reputation and privacy facing unwilling exposure or even cyber bullying on the Internet. Though the Internet may have given “the ultimate in free speech by giving voice to millions,” many have fallen into victims of false speech and privacy violations. Thus, the proposed paper will look at the current legal position in China, and its inadequacy in the area of defamation and privacy violations. It argues for a system of notice and take down on internet service providers in the above two areas.

Anne Cheung is arguing that a form of liability must be enforced regarding cyberbullying, libel and fraud online according to Article 38 of the PRC Constitution. ISPs have a duty to remove unlawful materials, inform authorities and keep records of violators – does this happen? Regarding defamation, PRC law is quite similar to common law. Gao Xiaosong vs. Yahoo! (2005), Chen Tangfa vs. Hangzhou Blogcn (2005) and Zhang Keke vs. Tianya (2008) are key precedents. Gao was a music producer who had mistreated his manager, who revealed information about Gao on Yahoo!. Professor Chen was libeled by a student on Blogcn. Zhang Keke is a popular teenage singer who was slandered on Tianya, which refused to reveal information on those who wrote the defamatory statements. The last case was the only one where the court ruled that Keke did not have a right to the information. In 2007, a Chinese student in Canada went naked to raise money. She demanded ISPs remove the photos of her nudity, but they said they could not prevent it from being reposted.

On privacy: egao is defined as “a malicious and reckless attack through visual, audio, video, textual forms”, such as Little Fatty and Shanghai Lovers. Little Fatty was photoshopped into Brokeback Mountain and Da Vinci Code movie posters and other satire. The Shanghai Lovers were photographed kissing in the subway, and also mocked online. Another phenomenon concerning privacy is the “human flesh search engine”. In one example, a woman who was seen online torturing a kitten was identified, harassed and eventually lost her job as a result. In another, a man was accused of being an unfaithful husband. His house was graffiti’ed and he also lost his job.

A third type of privacy violations involves students. The first example is the “very yellow, very violent” incident. A student on CCTV used this phrase to describe the Internet, and was soon a hot topic of ridicule. The other case is Grace Wang, who was caught in the middle of the Tibet protests at Duke University.

She ended by pointing to the various attempts governments around the world have made to deal with these sorts of issues, such as the Communications Decency Act in the U.S.

The central directives from Beijing regulating Internet cafes that have come in the wake of the Internet cafe fire of 2002 are, like many other central government laws in China, inconsistently implemented at the local level. In December 1998, the first regulations on Internet cafes were issued. They were quite strict, demanding Internet cafes must register with local PSB. In April 2001, a second, more comprehensive set of regulations were issued that had more rules on health and safety. The third set of regulations in 2003 were promulgated by the Ministry of Culture, not the Ministry of Information Industries. Before the cafe fire, the legal norms viewed Internet cafes as being potentially dangerous, morally and physically, while social norms felt otherwise and black Internet cafes proliferated. But the fire changed that, as mainstream views became more in line with legal norms as people saw potential danger in the cafes and agreed the cafes must be brought under more oversight and regulation.

• Olivier Arifon, Assistant Professor, Robert Schuman University / CERIME laboratory, Strasbourg France. “Regulation of Internet: technical, normative or cultural conception; a cross comparison between Europe and China.”

Olivier is speaking on regulation of the internet compared with regulation of traditional media, and questions surrounding rule of law. Looking back at the 2005 World Summit of Information Society, there were many debates on internet regulation. Three points: the USA’s “status quo” role as head of ICANN, the EU’s “consensus mode, and views from countries such as Brazil, China, Vietnam and Saudi Arabia, which call for each country to have ability to regulate internet within its own borders.

In contrast to ICANN, looking at the Internet Governance Forum, a multi-stakeholder, democratic and transparent body. It offers space for dialogue, but has no mandate for decisions made. There are also many independent bodies within countries such as France, Uk and USA.

Then there’s the Chinese conecption of internet regulation: has a long history, emphasis on stability and unity for a harmonious society and strong technical control (ie. Golden Shield Project).

WIthin these larger frameworks, invidual web users face more subtle forms of regulation, self-regulation, legal measures and moral arguments.

Lobbying policies focus on technical development, the norms and intellectual policies and key government positions within relevant bodies (ie. USA’s FCC).

‘What does a balanced position look like?’

-Do we believe in the power of a civil society?
-Is the internet on the path to “sinisation” (Chinafication?)

—————————————–

Duncan Clarke:

Online Video in China: WeTube, Not YouTube?

BDA predicts 1 billion mobile and 0.5 billion internet subscriptions in China by 2013. 3G is coming, a huge amount of these users are broadband users, thanks to China’s ‘informatization’ drive.

Despite regulation, venture capital is playing a main role in pulling up Chinese tech dev. Shanghai and Beijing now get more venture capital than Silicon Valley. America has YouTube. China has uusee, pplive, PPs, Ku6, Tudou, Youku, 6.cn, 56.com. Everything seems to be fine from a broadband perspective, venture capital. There is a lot of piracy, obviously. There is Online TV now, which even comes via subscription, and is not coming from the government. Users are driving what is happening there, and that includes piracy.

China’s online video industry has quickly grown to become a mass medium.

Academics love to have empirical data, but it’s impossible in this area. The CN gov fears this might say something they don’t like about modern values. However, these video websites are serving up millions of videos per hour to millions of users. This is attractive to advertisers, but they want the relevant data too.

2007: The Empire Strikes Back

-Dec. 27 2007, SARFT and MII issue announcement that all video sites are to be majority state-owned as of February ’08. There was no clarification as to how this would happen, and backlash came from Chinese domestic media, criticism the inappropriate application of these laws. At that time, the top 8 video sites had USD 190 million in foreign VC cash.

February came and went and all the sites were still up and operation. SARFT/MII had another press conference, appeared to be backtracking, and the industry sighed a collective breath of relief.

However, one main player, 56.com, has been shut down for over a week as of today, for still unknown reasons. Other main players have been shut down for short periods of time in the past. SARFT now holds the sword at the neck of these players, a comfortable vague position.

Chinese TV stations (ie. CCTV) have awful online presence. Now looking, as in other countries, ie. suing YouTube, at working with these websites, buying them. Then the key issue for these video websites is how to make money. How to do PR. How to deal with VC (venture capitalists). “Remember that 40 million you gave us? Yeah, uh, we’re down right now…” (ie. 56.com)

See Danwei.org and Isaac Mao’s blog for ongoing updates.