China and the Internet

[Rob_Hugo@PortNW]

Well I have to admit I was tempted to try to lure you in to this thread with something like “Sex and the Internet” somehow I feared “China and the Digital Age” was not going to get many readers to this post.

However that was the title of a surprisingly interesting two day conference at UC Berkeley. It was a gorgeous weekend so I only went one day but I discovered that not only had they had brought experts from all over the US but even a few from China…..

I have to admit the conference did start a little slow with talk about wireless standards, acronyms and codes that only a techie could love/understand. I snuck out for caffeine and boy things had picked up by the time I came back. “…...in Guangzhou a woman has an online journal recounting her sex exploits…” This was not what I had expected to hear about a country who was famous for putting great walls around anything controversial. I quickly forgot about how sunny it was outside and settled in for an interesting series of panels.

The conference schedule and panel list can be found at : http://journalism.berkeley.edu/events/details.php?ID=93

My “report” is right here:

One of the most telling comments came from a veteran foreign correspondent who recounted how bribes, tons of paperwork and weeks waiting finally got him a bad web connection several years ago while last year he had a WiFi connection set up in his Shanghai apartment in two days. But while some things are changing some things are staying the same. One Chinese journalist became so fed up with the censorship of his stories that he quit his job and started chinanewsman.com which once blocked by the government became chinanewsman.net which twice blocked has become chinanewsman.org. See if you can pull up this uncensored news from China before it is blocked again.

If I got the stats right there are 80 million regular online users in China however only 40 million PCs This year is the 10 year anniversary of the internet in China and the background question of this conference seemed to be where is it going from here.

One panel Public Opinion in Chinese Cyberspace centered around the Sun Zhiang Case. This case basically was a Chinese grad student in 1993 being picked up by police for not having his residency papers and then dying in police custody. Apparently this is not unusual and might actually be typical of the treatment of some migrant workers. The case is illustrative however of the potential power of the net in China. After minor reporting in the traditional news media the outrage of people was captured and then stoked by net reporting and the government responded to this outcry by a full investigation and changing the residency permit laws. Thousands of angry responses by Chinese left on news websites left the central government no choice but to take some action. However cases like this and the SARS outbreak are still rare as only 15% of the population are using the net regularly and the rest are relying on the heavily censored traditional news media. In fact Chinese net news sites like Sina.com and Sohu.com are only allowed to post excerpts from the Chinese papers and cannot have their own independent journalists.

Another panel Social Impact of the Internet had a distinguished list of academics on it but the highlight was Bu Wei, a professor from China who had researched the digital divide in China. She promised to email me her report but the report or my card or maybe my English must have gotten lost in translation, so here’s what I remember: In the biggest cities (Beijing/Shanghai) the net is in 50% of the schools and it tapers down from there to 30% in medium sized cities. Cybercafes are picking up the slack in these areas and it is something of a status symbol to have a net connection at home. She noted huge growth in the past two years in net access and polled kids free-time preferences and found 32% chose TV while 68% chose the Internet. I wonder how that would break down here in the US?

Well you know how it is when you look at the computer screen too long….the last panel was Challenges of the New Media in China and it’s a little fuzzy but I do remember BLOGS and WIKIs . Apparently these are the next email and ebays. Everyone will be blogging and writing or reading wikis so check out sinblog.org or wikipedia and see if you can figure out where China and the internet are going from here!

GA

Just one more link: livinginchina.org WHICH coincidentally has articles on Blogging and Beer right now!
[Edit by="adlersensei on May 10, 6:16:34 PM"][/Edit]

[clay dube]

Thanks, Greg, for such a thoughtful report about the internet conference. I'd heard about it, but hadn't read any details. The net is definitely changing China. Take a look at these articles about chat rooms:

BMW driver gets off with light sentence after killing one and injuring twelve
http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=6006

Miyun Lantern Festival stampede
http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=7393
http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=7392

Foreign Minister chats via the net
http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=5783

Two Harvard profs have a site to permit you to test Chinese access to specific websites.

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/filtering/china/test/

Here's a link to official stats on internet use in China:
http://www.cnnic.cn/en/index/0O/index.htm[Edit by="Clay Dube on May 14, 6:02:25 AM"][/Edit]

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