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| Is China just blocking the good bits? |
With some 450 million internet users China has massive number of people to monitor. It would be impossible to track every single person across the World Wide Web. Beijing focuses on blocking content to the internet within China. It’s getting more and more difficult to do so.
As sites such as Twitter become unavailable Chinese internet service providers design home grown substitutes. Micro-blogging has become very popular. With millions of users on any particular service it is almost impossible to find and remove any material deemed objectionable immediately. Posts containing predefined keywords are blocked from being entered. Keyword searches can give results that are spotty or sometimes bring messages such as “by law results cannot be given.” Still, ideas do get through the censorship net.
Yet, at the same time the news media in China, including the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) own People’s Daily are now reporting more and more stories about government corruption. Police taking bribes, officials getting expensive cars, people detained without just cause, they are being reported openly now without dire consequences. This does not seem to fit into the image of an authoritarian state.
The call by the CPC to improve government functioning started a few months ago, culminating with a mass media appeal from Premier Wen to improve the bureaucratic response to citizen complaints. Beijing wants the bureaucracy to more efficiently and honestly handle public grievances. The stories of corruption circulating in CPC newspapers are part of this campaign.
The CPC wants politicians and bureaucrats to take responsibility for their own actions. That almost sounds democratic. What happened to Big Brother and the perfect China concept that provoked so much censorship in the past?
China is a divided nation. It is divided by ethnicity, language, race, religion, region, and income levels. The CPC has a five year plan to try to remedy the latter, the others are still unresolved. It is a nation which could crumble, or tear itself apart, from these divisions.
To keep China unified the CPC has adopted a new strategy. Instead of hiding administrative problems and corruption it is bringing them to the public’s attention. In the past if an individual did this then chances were that they would be arrested. However, realizing that they cannot totally control the internet and thus prevent such negative information from spreading the CPC has decided on a new strategy.
By actively reporting abuse of power and mistakes of judgement by various levels of government the CPC is separating itself from the issues. It is not the CPC which is corrupt after all, it is individuals within the party or the bureaucracy who are the problem. Over time the CPC will seem to be perfect as the failings of bureaucrats and individual politicians are revealed. It is politically clever. It raises the expected standards of behaviour within government while the CPC becomes the guiding light of ethics.
Beijing is actively promoting citizen complaints. Premier Wen has attempted to shame the State Bureau for Letters and Calls to fulfil its mandate properly. The bureau is responsible for resolving public complaints and grievances. It has never done a good job. The CPC wants that to change. If the State Bureau for Letters and Calls learns how to handle complaints and bring resolution to most problems then Beijing would be very grateful. If the public has a place and means to get justice then it won’t be posting embarrassing stories on the internet. Remember, it is impossible to block all “anti-government” messages from the net. Again, a clever idea if it works.
The censorship of the internet will continue no matter how successful the CPC’s new plan turns out. Searches for Tiananmen Square will bring results to encourage tourism and not historic accounts of the pro-democracy demonstration of the 1980s. Recently, queries regarding “Egypt” were blocked in China. Egypt has lately been plagued by anti-government protests. Egyptians protesting against their authoritarian government is not something Beijing wants the Chinese public to see or read about. With a divided populace the CPC does not want citizens getting the idea that public protests are a suitable methodology for combatting bureaucratic inefficiency and corruption. Those who post ultimatums regarding democracy or separatism will still be arrested.
The CPC knows full well that should China be subjected to the angry whims of the general public they could not remain in control. There are not enough soldiers or police to maintain order in such a large country with its huge population. Separatism would flourish and demands for economic equality, language rights, and religious freedom would abound.
Such demands may be reasonable, but for a nation which has never known democracy it could prove to be dangerous to have too much freedom just yet. The evolution of China to a socialist democracy will be slow if it is to be safe and the country to remain united. Right or wrong, many freedoms will have to wait. A China being torn apart by riots, civil disobedience, and work stoppages would disrupt the world economy. The worst case scenario would be civil war. Imagine if that were to happen and Beijing recalls its foreign investments for needed emergency funding. The U.S. and European economies would have debt payment deficiencies which would be devastating.
The CPC is fully cognizant of China’s problems and it realizes that the public needs a much larger voice. It is concerned about China’s future. Weaning a nation from strict authoritarian rule to a more open society is something that must be done cautiously. A simple switch to democracy as the Soviet Union endured left Russia in a mess from which it has not yet emerged. A similar change in China would be even messier with “casualties” as the Pentagon likes to say.
The positive point is that the internet has made a difference in China. People are speaking out, and Beijing cannot stop them. It will try to channel their voices “appropriately.” It will censor, to the best of its ability, the concept of protest. But, in the long term the CPC will respond to public demands within the constraints of its “unified China” philosophy. Think of it as China’s “Quiet Revolution.”
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