Global Voices Online » Frank Dai

China: A Giant Power or Not?

Frank Dai — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 05:25:42 +0000

China used to be one of the mightiest empires and oldest civilizations in the world in human history, but its modern history, starting from the middle of 19th century, was full of disgrace, disorder and chaos as perceived by Chinese people, who has aspired to revive its historical glory in decades of efforts. Only with economical boom during recent years, which was built upon a huge yet cheap labor market, did China manage to become an influential force in international playing ground. However does it mean that it is the Renaissance of Chinese Culture, consequently as a result of economical growth? Given the prevailing attitude of overheating nationalism and outspoken patriotism among Chinese people, is the resurgence of powerful Middle Kingdom a down-to-earth course we should take, or only a daydreaming public illusion?

Obviously the answer would be blowing in the wind since the changing of China is so rapidly that even the most genuine effort to foresee its future seems to be like fortune telling. Each interest group gave their version of prediction, only making the matter more confusing. Indeed no one dare to say what China is going to be exactly in next 20 or 30 years. All that we can be sure is that, this generation of Chinese, grown up in market-oriented value without threat from hunger and war, truly wished their country to be more powerful, peaceful and influential.

Recently a documentary series was aired by China Central Television, the official TV network in China, named “The Rise of Giant Power“(”大国崛起”), which has been a key subject for discussion on the Internet and traditional media alike. The 12-episode documentary started its narration from the 15th century when the Age of Discovery brought prosperity to Spain and ended with the rising of latest modern empire: United States. With up-to-date techniques like interviews, reconstruction of historical scene and computer-generated special effect, it tried to teach China and its people, a rising nation-state, on how to learn from the experiences of has-been giants on the world. (See excerpt video here)

For those liberal-minded people, who stick to the principle that the government should take the benefits of its citizens as top priority, the true and wholehearted wishes for Great China should not be manipulated by the government as an excuse to ignore basic and fundamental rights of its people. Lianyue, one of the most popular bloggers in China, wrote a post titled “It Should be the Rising of Giant Citizen Instead“:

无论大国小国，国民的幸福感受是第一位的，把国民压到最小，把国家放到最大，这种斯巴达式帝国，早就证明了是泥足巨人，行之不远。大国与小国并不重要，重要是要有大国民：他们的幸福是放在第一位的；他们不幸福了，就有资格抱怨、不满、用选举把做不好的人换下来。也正是因为这点，最大多数人的最大多数幸福，才是一个政府及一个国家的最终追求。不幸福的人多了，你连存在的合法性都会受到质疑。

The happiness of its citizens is the top priority of the government, whether it is a big or small country. It should be a Sparta country that reduce its citizen's happiness to minimal and amplify the interest of state to maximum, which has already be proved to be fragile and would not develop further. It doesn't matter for being a Giant Nation; Instead it is important to have Giant Citizens, whose happiness should be considered first. If they are unhappy and unsatisfied, they are entitled to complain, resent and substitute those who are no longer fitting in position with their votes. The happiness of vast majority of people is the ultimate goal the government should pursue. Your legitimacy would be even questioned when there are too many unhappy people.

让国民觉得幸福，有长远的诚实方法，让他们吃得饱、穿得暖、读书看病不至于破产、有房子住、财产与生命不受威胁、思想得到尊重、观点得以表达，那么容易满足的国民一般就会觉得幸福——至少我认为中国人会觉得满足。短视一点的做法是让人相信从吃饱穿暖到思想观点都不重要，没有这些一样可以很幸福，不过没有被逼急的人一般不会采取这种下下之策。

There are some long-term and upright means to make people feel happy and satisfied: they would have enough food and cloth; they would not go bankruptcy in order to offer family education and health care; they would have a secure place to live, without threat to their possessions and lives; their independent thinking and needs for free expression would be respected. Thus the citizens would feel happy and satisfied, at least for Chinese people, I can guarantee. The short-sighted means is to make people believe that they can be well off without enough food, cloth and right of expression. But generally nobody would adopt this method except for those who are driven into extreme circumstances.

中国很大，这二三十年也迅速积累了财富，这提供了足够的多面性，150万户家庭占据了中国百分之七十的财富，按每个家庭辐射20人来统计，这三千万人多数是幸福满溢的，只看到他们的话，当然觉得中国是大国。如果想到其他十多亿人只有的那百分之三十，又觉得我们离最大多数人的最大多数幸福还差得远，在数量庞大的贫困人口（数字从三千万到一亿，各种版本都有，不太确定）与远远超过贫富差距警戒线的基尼指数之下，谈单个国民的重要性，谈国民的崛起（如果一定要用这个词汇的话）可能才是当务之急，不然”大国”谈得多了，云里雾里的，就会觉得拖了国家后腿的穷人们不懂事、不争气，在自觉不自觉当中就会忽略他们以成就大国梦想，那样的大国，要来做什么

China is a vast land, with wealth accumulating for past few decades, which has provided enough diversity to our probe. 1.5 million families have possessed 70% of national wealth, i.e. there are about 30 million people who are fully satisfied with their living if we count 20 persons for each family. China would be a giant if we only focus on these people. But when taking the rest of national wealth and more than one billion people into consideration, we are much far away from aim of “utmost happiness for vast majority of people”. Faced with the huge population of the impoverished (the number varied from 30 to 100 million) and Gini Coefficient much higher than average, the most urgent task would be talking about the importance of individual citizen and rising of citizenship. Otherwise we would be enthralled by ourselves talking too much about the Giant Power. Subsequently we would think these lagging-behind poor men to be unapprehensive and unaspiring, then consciously or unconsciously dropping these people out of consideration to fulfill our dream of Giant Power. Why should we need such a Giant Power?

China is also a complex which are quite difficult to penetrate single-handedly. The foreign correspondents and businessmen who are flying over Beijing and Shanghai, like Thomas Friedman, will never truly understand this country for its diversified and even conflicting moral, ethical and cultural agenda. How about the natives? Can Chinese themselves understand its homeland without barrier and prejudice? A post titled “Rising of Giant Power, Blind Men and Elephant”

不错，中国的经济数据很漂亮，而且越来越漂亮，但大家不能不看到，中国是一个奇怪的复合两面体：既是奢侈品消费力最高的国度之一，又是少有的内需市场十年几无起色的经济快速增长国家；既是近年来法律法规出炉最多的国家，又是公认的法制建设亟待完善的国家；既是最大的高度中央集权单一制国家，又是地方保护主义猖獗、土政策土法规多如牛毛的国家。在这个国家里，某些地区和另一些地区的发达程度差异，并不比美国与苏丹间的差异小多少；在这个国家里，社会保障和医疗保障体系之苍白让绝大多数国民惴惴不安，城市和乡村间的户籍鸿沟至今毫无缩小的迹象；在这个国家里，一纸赞住证如老兵般不死，一个”油改税”的改革近 20年寸步不前……中国是个大国，从来都是；但一个存在如此多问题和隐患的大国，也是前所未有。

Statistically, Chinese economy is very fascinating, and becoming more and more fascinating. But we should acknowledge that China is a weird double-edged compound: The robustest buying power on luxuries while a fast growing economy without strong domestic demand; a country establishing laws and regulations frequently while its legal system badly needed to be improved; the biggest nation with highly centralized political power while local protection and rules are still rampant. The distinction between different places in this country would be no less than that between USA and Sudan. In this country the social security and health care system has put majority of its people into unsecured life. The huge gap between city and rural residence is still unsettled. In this country the certificate of temporary residence was hovering like phoenix. The fuel added tax has been reforming for almost 20 years without any progress…….China is a giant power;yes, it used to be and will be, but it is also a giant power with most problems and unease we ever knew.

外国观察者目光所及，通常只是这头大象的体形、外表，无法探知肌理脏腑，他们望闻问切，发表着对这头巨象得各种观感心得，但这些或铿锵、或悠扬的大哉之言，却只能是盲人摸象得来的体会罢了

What foreign observers get from their angles are usually the shape and appearance of this elephant, not knowing its inner structure and organs. They can look, touch, feel and smell it and uttered their opinions. But such big words were only blindfolded.

As for the segment of Chinese people who has been synchronized with globalized lifestyle and enjoying their social status quo, what did they think about their homeland? Is it already giant power as our Chinese banks are breaking IPO records or Beijing will hold Olympics in 2008? Economically, yes; culturally, probably not. Wang Xiaofeng, another opinion leader in Chinese blogosphere:

现在不是大国崛起这个话题时髦么，大国乃至超级大国的标志是什么？首先你经济实力要强，国民生产总值至少要占全世界的一半。不好说美国现在是否占到一半，但他们在最强大的时候确实超过了一半，所以对全世界经济有”控股权”，所以就有话语权，所以他们就有制定游戏规则的权利，所以他们说宋祖英是世界音乐她就是世界音乐，说宋祖英是说唱你也得听着。这就叫霸权逻辑。

Now it is a fad to talk about rising of giant power. What is symbol of being a giant power or super power? First of all you should be economically powerful. You GDP must be half of the whole world combined at least. Though it's not sure that whether America has shared half of the world's wealth nowadays, but it did do before. It is the major stockholder of world's economy, thus they deserved the right of game-ruling: Song Zuying is of world music genre if they prescribed it in this way. You have nothing to do even if they call her an rapper. That's the logic of hegemony.

我觉得，美国那边有点什么风吹草动，我们这边都心神不宁，一个破奥斯卡，逼着张艺谋拍了一堆烂大片。一个破格莱美，也整天让我们念念不忘。现在的中国吧，一个貌似大国却与一帮穷光蛋为伍，正卡在嫌贫爱富的裤裆上，什么判断都别别扭扭的。中国在世界上似乎有制定游戏规则的投票权，但却又没有最终裁判权，所以我们老产生幻觉，看云的时候很近，看你的时候很远。就这样被弄得乎乎悠悠的，干什么都不那么理直气壮.

I always felt that whenever there are anything happening in USA, trivial or not, we would react sensitively and nervously. The Academy Award has impulsed Zhang Yimou to direct a bunch of B-movies. Now the Grammy Award makes us concerned. Today's China seems to be a giant teamed up with a gang of busted losers, who is stuck into the way while despises the poor and favors the rich, with its judgment distorted. China has the vote power on world's game but without ruling power. So illusion were always lingering on our minds and rendering us a hasty view of what is in front of us. We are fooled. We can't do anything assuredly.

China: Press, In Contrast

Frank Dai — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 15:00:18 +0000

In the recently high-profiled case of First Financial Daily vs Foxconn, over the former's controversial news report on the latter's alleged Apple Ipod's sweatshop. The dramatical end to the case, in which the two issued a joint statement focussing on mutual understanding and “building harmonious society,” was generally considered as an example of how the press in China, theoretically independent and outspoken, was intimidated and compromised in the face of powerful corporation.

Is our press, including websites, newspapers and TV networks, only a timid coward, waiting for instruction and orders from the government on what and how to report? When national sensation s, celebrities gossip and overheated patriotism mix together, stirring up the “journalist's instinct”, that's another story. The press will never hesitate a minute to follow up such a story without any authorization from the authorities. The reasons? The press simply wants to make money and the readers want that story.

The latest victim of such press war is Meng Guangmei, a TV host and former model. The strange point is that the press, stained with the habits of its American colleagues, have named this incident “Toiletgate“. Meng appeared on a Taiwan TV network talk show and commented on her experience in Mainland China, mentioning some toilets near Tiananmen Square where she saw a hundred pale “asses”. ( video here) Sun Bin has a nice and insightful post about this.

The Chinese Internet is always replete with uproar, perplexing sentiments and hullabaloo, especially on the forums and blogs, given the overwhelming popularity of internet man-hunter effort. Many people feel that the spreading of online self-publishing technologies and its anonymous nature makes such phenomenon possible. But as the esteemed Chinese IT blogger Keso said, the press play an infamous role in inciting overheated nationalism and the social group dubbed as “Angry Youth“, with his latest blog post titled “Angry Youth, Made In China “.

[in translation]

我一直认为，民原本不暴，青原本不愤，但架不住媒体总喜欢耸人听闻，被媒体一忽悠，民就成了”暴民”，青就成了”愤青”。这一点在网络上表现得尤其明显，凡涉及民族主义、道德宣判等主题，往往很容易发展成”网络暴民”事件，而在这些事件背后，总能看到这些媒体的不光彩的影子。他们用肮脏的手，操纵着所谓的 “民意”

I always think that the people are not mobs and the youths are not angry. But as the media weigh in, with their usual exaggeration aimed at deliberately creating a sensation, the people become mobs and the youths became angry. This can be obviously reflected on the Internet, especially when the topic involves nationalism and moral judgement, which can easily become an “Internet mob” incident. The dishonored shadow of the press can be always found behind the curtain. They use their filthy hands to manipulate the so-called “public opinion”

最新事件的主角是孟广美，一名来自台湾的普通的电视节目主持人，几乎成为这种”民意”的又一个牺牲品。先是一家地方小报的”首席记者”，在一番断章取义、添油加醋之后，借所谓的”嘲笑内地人”这个民愤极大的话题，制造仇恨，煽动民意，发出第一份民族主义”追杀令”。然后经由门户网站别有用心的引导，地方小报立刻就拥有了全国影响力，追杀行为迅速演变成一场流氓和暴徒的狂欢

The latest episode is about Meng Guangmei, an ordinary Taiwan TV host, who almost would be the victim of such “public opinion”. First, there is one leading report of a local tabloid, with garbled and inflaming stories seeking to take advantage of the controversial topic of ” sneering at the Mandarin people” to incite hatred and resentment. It also issued a national fatwa, which was maliciously directed by some major websites and thus turned into the carnival of mobs and vagabonds, while the tabloid has gained national influence overnight.

媒体们不敢去监督政府，也不敢去监督企业，所以在这些祖宗面前，他们一会儿当儿子，一会儿装孙子，可一旦他们遇到类似赵薇、孟广美这样的弱女子，就立刻觉得自个儿成了老子。他们一而再再而三地在一些弱势的个体身上，施展他们无处施展的淫威，展示他们自以为是的道德和情操。而他们手中最好的武器，就是民族主义。民族主义常常成为这些媒体豢养的家犬，召之即来，挥之即去，屡试不爽。

The press dare not to be the watchdog against the government and companies. They sometimes act as timid sons and well-behaved grandsons of these “ancestors”. When encountering weak women like Meng Guangmei and Zhao Wei, they instantly feel that they are the fathers. They exert their primitive evil influence on these weak groups time and again, and their best weapon i s nationalism. It's a vicious dog fed by the press, waiting for the master's order.

China:”I am not interested in politics; I am only interested in making money”

Frank Dai — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 01:35:09 +0000

Have you ever heard of the term “Great Firewall” or “GFW” for short? Whom to blame when you have encountered the annoying message “Page Not Found” frequently seen when browsing the Internet in China? An email has been circulating the web recently, calling Chinese netizens to boycott Google, which, the email author claims, censors and blocks sensitive information about “Diaoyutai Island”, or Senkaku Islands, a piece of disputed territory between China and Japan. ESWN has a nice story about this with full English translation of the email.

Many veteran Internet surfers in China, acquainted with Internet blocking scheme, would probably in the first instant identify this message as false accusation and rebuke against Google, or even malicious promotional strategy used by Google's competitors, given the fierce competition in China's search engine market, because it's not Google but the the Great Firewallbuilt by the government that scans, monitors and resets the Internet connection when particular inquiries trigger off its alert.

A heated discussion is running on IdeasFactoryChina(reg required), a mailist maintained by SocialBrain Foundation(disclosure: the author is one member of the non-profit organization and it also hosts GVO Chinese Translation Project), concerning how to “promote” the GFW term and made it popular, which can be seen as the pre-condition in order to defeat it. The initial email by the ID “Aether”(reg required):

各位，被封闭的是我们，我们被一个叫做GreatFirewall的电子长城档在我们面前，这就是真相….
不需要吼叫，不需要鲜血，不需要杀戮，所需要的，只是我们冷静而沉着地说出自己的声音…
Google不能搜索，是的，因为有一个金盾工程掐着它的脖子，
我们所有的声音都会被它掩盖，只能听到它想要我们听到的声音…

Folks, it is us who has been sealed off the world. We are blocked by a digital Greatwall called Great Firewall. That is the truth….

No need for outcry. No need for blood. No need for killing. All we need to do is to utter our voices calmly and placidly……

Google cannot be searched. Yes, that's because a project called Golden Shield pinched Google's neck. It covers all our voices and lets through only what it wants to hear…..

Such a letter of appeal and calling is not so unusual in China’s blogosphere, a hot spot for gossip and hullabaloo. But the comments followed are really interesting, which can probably stand for the opinion of the majority of mass netizens toward censorship issue:

Comments by Yuk Hui (reg required) :

在國外有許多機構都在關注中國的互聯網政策，但是在國內，大部分人都無動於衷，有些是不知道，有些是無所謂，他們對我說「沒有甚麼了不起，這是中國自己的事，我們都見慣了」…. 許多中國網民(何止是網民？)都有狂熱的「愛國精神」或「民族主義」，不知道知識的自由，甚至自由本身的價值，這常常使我難過

Many oversea institutions are paying attention to Internet policy in China. But domestically most people are indifferent toward it. Some of them are ignorant of it and some just don't care about it. They said to me:”It doesn't matter. It's China's own business. We've gotten used to it”….Many netizens(not limited to netizens?) have a fever for patriotism and nationalism, without knowing the freedom for acquiring knowledge and even the value for freedom itself. It upsets me.

Comments by Zola(reg required):

我困惑的是：GFW里的被屏蔽关键词的选择是否只是个人意志的选择？还是系统性的意识形态的导向？我们知道，在加密措施花样百出和巨大的信息流量的互联网上，GFW对国家安全毫无帮助，唯一有帮助的是，禁止大多数普通网民了解某些事的假相或真相.

I was bewildered: Are the censored key words in GFW the choice of personal will or systematical tendency of ideology? We have known that traffic on the Internet is so huge and there are so many ways to encrypt information, GFW has nothing useful to do with national security. The only benefit of it is to prevent majority of average netizens knowing the true or false images of some stories.

Comments by CWHung(reg required):

别忘了，GCD不是多米诺，有很多事情，不是普通百姓可以看到的。另外，我对政治不感兴趣，我只对赚钱有兴趣，所以客观的提醒一句，即便是所谓有益的“努力”也可能参杂着“别有用心“，好自为之

Don't forget, the Communist Party of China isn't made of Domino tiles. Many things can not be seen by ordinary people. In addition, I am not interested in politics; I am only interested in making money. So just a reminder: even the so-called goodwill effort might be mixed with “evil intentions”. Take care.

我选的是商业的路，或许以后你们其中有一些能成为中国富强的英雄，但是到目前为止，你们还是一点能力都没有，不是么？做好自己可以做到的事，可以一起来讨论经验以及从实际出发去做未来的规划，而不是空摆着理想主义来纸上谈兵。如果不理解我所说的话，那就请你有时间的话，回答我一些很简单的问题，你目前工作是什么？替别人做过些什么有益的事情？对于互联网目前的状况，你有过些什么努力？对于你不满意的社会现状，你尽过些什么责任？

I've chosen the way of doing business. Maybe one of yours can be the heroes of prosperous China in the future, but until now you have no abilities, right? Do something that you are able to do, then you can come to discuss some experiences and practical blueprint for the future, instead of empty talks of idealism. If you fail to understand what I've said, please answer me a few questions if you have time: What's your job now? Have you done anything useful for others？Have you made any efforts concerned with current situation on the Internet? Have you performed your responsibilities for the unsatisfactory society?

我不关心政治，并不代表我不闻不问，只是我知道以我个人能力和活动的范围，并不能去改变什么，所以我能做的，仅仅是做好自己的事情，在国际的商业往来中努力给中国人塑造尊严，给国内不少怀才不遇的人才创造更好的事业环境，用赚来的钱投入国内的慈善事业。我选的是这条路，你呢？朋友。

The fact that I am not interested in politics doesn't mean that I am indifferent toward it. I just know that for my personal capabilities and scope of my activities I can't change much. All I can do is just to take care of my own things and try to build esteem of Chinese in business and create a better environment for the talented persons to do business. Then I will invest my money in charity. That 's the way I choose, what about you, my friends?

China: Crazy Football Commentator

Frank Dai — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 13:17:28 +0000

Huang Jianxiang , one of the most popular football commentators of China Central Television, or CCTV, has been in the center of a controversy recently seen in both the mainstream media and the blogosphere, for his overexcited comments during a World Cup playoff game, in which Italy won a 1-0 margin victory against Australia with a penalty kick in the last minute.

In the overtime of the match, when the presiding referee pointed to the pitch for the penalty kick, Huang's voice and tone suddenly became excited. His comments showed preference to Italy over Australia and used strong and emotional phrases like “Long Live Italy” and “Let Them (Australia) Get Lost.” Translation of his comments can be found here, the video here and audio recording here [zh].

Huang began his professional career as a football commentator in 1996, when he gained his reputation for passionate, sentimental and even poetic remarks during matches. His predecessors have all been of more standard, boring and indifferent types, a characteristic found in almost all Chinese state media personnel, especially news anchorpersons . He was suspended from duty for almost half a year in 2001, after he criticized Bora Milutinović, coach of China’s national team at the time, who went on to lead China into the World Cup finals in Japan and South Korea for the first time ever in 2002.

Huang's sudden outburst can be accounted for by two factors: first he is long-time reporter and commentator for Series A game in CCTV and thus a loyal fan to Italian football. At the same time he loathes the Australia team for their inability to play a first-class football game.

In an open letter to CCTV spectators and football fans, read by his colleague and producer during the next day's World Cup-related program, Huang apologized for his mistake, namely “the injustice and prejudice of his comments, which caused discomfort and hurt to some of the audience”. The Chinese text can be found on his own blog:

在昨晚世界杯足球赛意大利队同澳大利亚队的比赛的最后几分钟，我的现场解说评论夹带了过多的个人情绪。今早一觉醒来，又重新看了录像带，再次感受到解说中确有失当和偏颇之处，给大家造成了不适和伤害，在此我向观众郑重道歉！

In the last few minutes of the Italy versus Australia game last night, I attached too much personal emotion to my comments. After waking up this morning, I re-watched the game video, realizing the injustice and prejudice of my comments, which caused discomfort and hurt to some of the audience. I apologize to all the audience.

我对意大利足球相对比较熟悉，内心里比较希望意大利队出线，使后面的比赛更加精彩，但解说中我不恰当地把个人对球队的热爱和自己的岗位角色相混淆了。昨天，我在最后几分钟内的解说不是一个体育评论员应该有的立场，所说的话引起了观众的不满、意见和批评，我再次真诚地表示歉意！

I am relatively more familiar with Italian football, hoping for Italy's victory in the World Cup. But during my comments I mixed my personal devotion for an individual team and role of being neutral as a commentator. Yesterday my performance in the last few minutes was not from a professional angle, which triggered off many dissatisfaction, opinion and criticism. I apologize again from the bottom of my heart.

今后，在工作中我将总结经验，时刻提醒自己把握好自己的岗位角色，处理好情感和理智之间的平衡。我们转播的时候总希望裁判公平公正，作为评论员，我也一定会做到公平公正，做好CCTV体育评论员工作。

最后祝各位球迷看球愉快！

In the future of my job I would sum up my experiences and remind myself of setting my viewpoint and reach a balance between sense and emotion. We always expect fair play of the referee, as well as the commentators. I will try my best to be fair and impartial to perform my duty as a football commentator.

Wish all fans great enjoyment of the games.

Rumor has been around on the Internet that an Associated Press story reported that about 30 Australian football fans have protested outside the Australian Embassy in Beijing, demanding the ambassador to ask the Foreign Ministry of China to punish Huang, whose comments have been regarded as insults to the national dignity of Australia. However the story is not confirmed by AP and might not be true. (via Danwei)

In an online poll of the incident, a overwhelmingly popular topic yesterday in the Chinese blogosphere, more than 70% of netizens surveyed supported that Huang should resume his duty in the remaining 10 matches in the World Cup. Despite extreme criticism and advocacy, one viewpoint prevailed among the discussion of blogosphere, as expressed by LaoBai, a former sports journalist on his blog: On one hand resentment over Huang's comments and on the other hand fear for CCTV's potential freezing of Huang's career.

虽然我不喜欢黄健翔最后的表现，但我誓死捍卫他这种歇斯底里的表演。从某种程度而言，比黄健翔的表现更让人窒息的是XX对电视媒体的控制和表达欲望的遏制……

Though I don't like Huang Jianxiang’s performance in the last few minutes, I will defend his hysterical show. To some degree, the government's desire to control the TV media and oppress the free expression of emotion is more suffocating than Huang Jianxiang's performance….

我相信所有人都不希望回到那个年代，当球场上发生了什么，转播镜头立马切到了看台；如果看台上发生了什么，转播镜头立马切到了月亮

I believe that nobody would like to go back to the age when something happens on the field, the camera switches over to the bleachers; when something happens on the bleachers, the camera switches over to the moon.

Reowned Chinese blogger Wang Xiaofeng, a.k.a Milk Massage, analyzed the would-be psychological reasons for Huang's outburst. He thought the main weakness of CCTV's program host is that all their lack of personality. He also points out that Huang used the word like “Viva Forever” in his comments to reach the effect of free expression of his feelings and emotions, detached from its original denotative meaning of personal worship.

China: Google's China Problem

Frank Dai — Sat, 10 Jun 2006 13:54:02 +0000

Google, the largest searching engine service in the world, has become under fire for its incompetence for providing unstable services to Chinese customers, due to the intensified online censorship, or Great Firewall of China, around the 17th anniversary of Tiananmen Massacre.

Today, as Julien Pain, Chief of Reporters Without Borders, or RSF Internet Freedom desk pointed out that Google,after two weeks of accessing difficulty, has been back to normal. However it's inaccurate to call it a blockade, since Internet users in China retrieving Google's US-Hosted Chinese version will get different results at different time and area. Rather it can be called as “disrupted connection“, as Financial Times called.

Google has offered its censored version at Google.cn, a China-hosted service registered at the Chinese government, which received much criticism from human right groups and blogosphere when launched in January. At the same time it provides option of uncensored version, to which it would redirect when typing url “www.google.com” in China. Google.cn has been available for past two weeks. However, it was estimated that only 1% of users in China applied Google.cn as their searching choice for Google service.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin said that they might compromise their principle, the famous “Don't Be Evil” slogan, for entering the Chinese market. Google has been evaluating whether their arrangement is identical with its company's policy and principles, while considering the possibility of retreating from China. However Reuters has reported that Google is staying in China.

On June 8th, spokesman for Foreign Ministry of China Liu Jianchao said on a routine press conference:”Chinese government welcomes companies like Google who want to operate in China's information area, but all trade and business should be conducted in comply with laws and regulations. We hope that these companies would obey Chinese law when developing business in China”. Keso, one of leading Chinese IT evangelist blogger said on his blog:

[In translation]
Indeed Liu Jianchao admitted that “it was us(Chinese government) who block Google because they did not obey the law”. But the spokesman will never told the foreigners that which law that Google has violated and which law the blockade is performed according to. The foreigners want explicit clauses in the law for them to do business, but here in China, many things are unspeakable like Zen.

Andrew Lih explained Google's position from his view. He also notices some incoherent media reports explainning Sergey Brin's position. He thought that the reason that Google's much criticized because they hold high moral standard for their business conduct.

Some Chinese blogger even resort to virtual voodoo, for they fail to access Google. keepwalking have made such one (tipped by Rebecca). Herock Xia blamed that Google Chinese official blog's failure to discuss this topic.

China: June 4th:Silence, Memorial and Blogger's Saying

Frank Dai — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 13:12:04 +0000

Today it's June 4th, the 17th anniversary of Tiananmen Square Massacre, which marked the end of student democracy movement in Beijing and nationwide lasting from March to June, 1989. The communist party of China still did not recognize this mass incident as peaceful protest of students, who used demonstration and hunger strike to demand democracy and removal of corrupted officials.

Under the party propaganda policies, no commemoration of the movement was allowed in public places and the newspapers and TV networks passed the day wthout any even implied mention of it. Like the popular columnist and blogger Lianyue once has wrote when Google has entered Chinese market:”We(Google) guarantee: The day after Jun3th must be Jun5th”, the state-controlled media have just pretended that the event never happened 17 years ago, identical with the official history book's negligible claim of the movement as “a political incident in the spring and summer of 1989″.

Silence did not only existed in the media outlets but also on Internet. The major websites are mute as much as their mainstream media counterparts. While many foreign media will run their stories of civil right groups, dissidents sayings and request of groups like Tiananmen Mother, who demand compensation and recognition of people who sacrifice their lives in the event, a basic embarrassing fact is that the government will tighten the control of information online and offline, with blocking access to witnesses and elevation of Internet blocking alike.

Even Google, who compromise to offered its Chinese search engine services in censored and uncensored version simultaneously are no exception from the powerful censor. Many areas in mainland China have reported failures to connect to Google in the past few days, while the censored and China-hosted Google.cn is still available. Andrew Lih has blogged a stories about it. Shizhao also warned that people be careful using Google Desktop, since the application robots will crawl sensitive news from websites like BBC, causing the Great Firewall to trigger off.

Fortunately, the decentralized nature of Internet means such content can't be removed and ignored entirely. Andrea of T-Salon remind us that the del.icio.us tag “8964″ is once again active, aggregating reflections and thoughts from the Internet,especially the blogosphere. The scanning copy of Hong Kong newspaper in June 4th 1989 can be found on Flickr and video on YouTube. It's like what XiaoQiang of China Digital Times, a participant of that event told in a recent interview that “Internet Keeps Tiananmen Spirit Alive”

Keepwalking shot photos of Tiananmen Square and post it on his blog titled “Picture without Words: Today, Square”: peaceful and crowded, not with anguish students but the cheerful and curious tourists, who may not even heard about the so-called June 4th Massacre, for many of them were born after the event and the state prohibt public discussion of the incident. Compared with the now famous image of Tank Man, who poised in front a row of armed tanks and block them to advance on the street in 1989, a true repersentatives of the spirits of the protesters, today's square is so quiet as usual as if nobody even remember, not mention to struggle for it.

Zheng, one of the earliest Chinese blogger, wrote today on his blog titled “17 Years”:

[In translation]
After the 17 years, the generation has grown up to adult.
However the ringing cry, warm blood and zealous yearning of them has not grown to be a self-organized and self-adapted environment of democracy, like the tiny seeds growing into green and vast fores
t…..
The thing needed to magnify is the voice, the continuity not the boring and faded mourning and commemoration year after year.
History won't repeat. New questions are ahead in front of us, and it's these news question that make the voice resurrect.

SideKick, a Hong Kong blogger, showed her “8964″ special watch and change her blog's appearance in total black for “indirect memorandum”. In another post she edits a playlist of songs to commorate the anniversary . Every year Hong Kong will hold an unofficial memorial party to pay tribute to those who died on the street 17 years ago and HiRadio has many resources for that party.

China: New political campaign shows sarcasm is alive and well

Frank Dai — Mon, 15 May 2006 21:23:37 +0000

A strange custom of every Communist Party of China leader is for them to come up with their own theory or “ism”. Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping had their own respective variations of Socialist theory. Jiang Zemin has his Three Represents. And what about the current Chinese president Hu Jintao? His, just released earlier this year, is often translated as the Eight Dos and Don'ts, or ‘Eight Honors and Eight Shames,' and emphasizes the moral education of citizens—particularly the young generation—with the basis of conventional moral values like diligence and patriotism. The weirdest part of this theory is that all the Dos and Don'ts are nothing more than common sense and seem unworthy of the overwhelming propaganda in recent days:

以热爱祖国为荣、以危害祖国为耻，
以服务人民为荣、以背离人民为耻，
以崇尚科学为荣、以愚昧无知为耻，
以辛勤劳动为荣、以好逸恶劳为耻，
以团结互助为荣、以损人利己为耻，
以诚实守信为荣、以见利忘义为耻，
以遵纪守法为荣、以违法乱纪为耻，
以艰苦奋斗为荣、以骄奢淫逸为耻。

Love the motherland, do not harm it
Serve, don't disserve the people
Uphold science, don't be ignorant and unenlightened
Work hard, don't be lazy
Be united and help each other, don't benefit at the expense of others
Be honest, not profit-mongering
Be disciplined and law-abiding, not chaotic and lawless
Know plain living and hard struggle, do not wallow in luxuries.

Even an illiterate child, merely by his living experiences, can recognize them as great virtues. So why does the government need to promote them with their utmost exertion? Nowadays you can see almost every government newspaper attaching this slogan at the end of their propaganda articles. Not to mention online news. A search on Google News shows how many news items are using this slogan to ‘elevate' their news report. With such a broad definition of moral value, which is somehow universally acknowledged, it can be applied to the acts of all citizens, with all their behaviors judged by the Eight Dos and Don'ts standard.

It seems all students, police and workers have begun guiding their life and work by these principles overnight. Indeed, as these values shift onto the internet, the patriotic nature of the campaign has become increasingly clear with a growing number of websites being closed, BBS posts being deleted and bloggers self-censoring, all in the name of ‘honor' and from fear of being seen as disobedient of the government.

And are the citizens really listen to such empty talks? Probably not. Mostly they choose to praise it superficially but ignore it practically. A common joke on schoolyards across the nation now is the phrase ‘Hu says eight rules' (胡说八道), a euphemism for saying something silly or not making sense.

Even the government itself can't obey it. An evidence can be illustrated with photos like these taken from the official press and showing a sharp comparison with the original principle ‘know plain living and hard struggle, do not wallow in luxuries.': the most luxurious district government in the world, in Henan province—one of China's poorest—with a magnificent garden of beautiful scenery and an artificial lake.

Supergirl (超级女声), the Chinese version of American Idol, was recently struck out against quite vocally by Liu Zhongde (刘忠德), former head of the central government's Department of Culture. In an interview translated by Joel Martinsen from Chinese media research blog Danwei, Liu refers to the program—which in using viewers' votes to choose a winner led many to see it as a case study for direct elections—as poison and calls for its termination. Although the Superboy version has since been cancelled, auditions for a second round of Supergirl began earlier this month, perhaps an indication that public demand and not political ideology call the shots in Chinese society today.

The Wu Zuolai blogger shares some thoughts:

文化部这么多年来,没干过一样招老百姓喜欢待见的事情，20年来,先有清除精神污染，把邓丽君的歌说成是大毒草，全国禁播，后有反对资产阶级自由化，把穿牛仔裤，留长发也说成是向往资产阶级的生活方式，事实证明，这些做法和最广大的人民群众的想法背道而驰，和世界潮流背道而驰。事实证明：我听过邓丽君，穿过牛仔裤,留过长发，tmd到现在我也没变成资产阶级，连tmd中产阶级也没变成，却先变成了下岗工人。谁也不能否认，我们这一代听过邓丽君，穿过牛仔裤，留过长发的人还没来得及变成资产阶级，就已经成了社会主义建设的中坚力量和下岗对象，事实和历史证明了，文化部某些人的傻逼想法和傻逼做法只是杞人忧天，遗臭万年。

In all these years the Department of Culture hasn't come up with anything pleasing for the general population. Twenty years ago we had cleaning of spiritual pollution, when Teresa Deng's songs became poison and banned throughout the country. Later we had opposition to bourgeois liberalization when wearing blue jeans and having long hair became bourgeois lifestyles. In reality, these actions ran counter to the thoughts of the vast majority of people and counter to world trends at the time. In truth, I wore blue jeans, had long hair and I've yet to turn bourgeois. Even the middle class has yet to change, except for becoming out of work. Nobody can deny, us of that generation which listened to Teresa, wore blue jeans and long hair, we never had time to become bourgeois and just ended up as the central force in the construction of a socialist society: the unemployed. Reality and history show that the people in the Department of Culture with these idiotic ideas and campaigns are half the problem and will go down in history that way.

For the internet community, teasing the powerful seem to be a common source of joy and fun regardless of nationalities and cultures. For Americans it's to make fun of Bush and for Chinese it's to adapt the latest solemn slogan. Many adapted versions of the Eight Dos and Don'ts have popped up recently (zh), some funny, some ironic, some quite mean. There's even a version for bloggers now, from the research team at Bokee, one of the leading BSPs in China:

以传播网络先进文化为荣，以传播网络不良信息为耻，
以维护互联网的秩序为荣，以破坏互联网的秩序为耻，
以网络自由与分享为荣，以抄袭与霸权为耻。
以致力于网络创新为荣，以沉溺于网络为耻。
以文明语言上网交流为荣，以污言秽语网上谩骂为耻，
以诚实守信为荣，以见利忘义为耻，
以遵纪守法文明上网为荣，以违法乱纪网络欺骗为耻，
以做好网民，文明博客为荣，以网络流氓，不良博客为耻。

Spread advanced Internet culture, don't spread harmful information.
Advocate the order of Internet, don't disturb the order.
Freedom and sharing of Internet, not copy and hegemony.
Be creative on Internet, not addictive to it.
Speak right language to communicate, don't abuse language.
Be honest and trustworthy, not selling oneself to benefits.
Surf the net civilized and obey the law, don't cheat and break the law.
Be a good netzien and well-behaved blogger, not a gangster-like netizen and bad blogger.

However, to be a member in the communist party or a government official one can not avoid such thing. The internet not only gives birth to satirical pieces but also serves as a guide for everyone to use ‘The Eight' in their news reports, essays, public speeches and even offers a method to memorize these lengthy slogans in under three minutes (zh). Hence everyone can see how the serious moral education has been playfully turned into a superficial ceremony by the creative netizens.

Shortly after this campaign was announced, Wang Xiaofeng, blogger of the hugely popular entertainment blog Massage Milk without explanation or the least bit of irony stopped writing posts of his own altogether and began pasting articles on raising farm animals and the various properties of natural gasses in Chinese, Russian and German until this short notice towards the end of April:

鉴于本人的博客浏览量很高，
所以本人尝试在这个博客上普及一些农业、科技知识。
尝试了几天，效果不错，
浏览量一点没有减少。
所以打算继续坚持下去。
感兴趣的人可以天天来看看。
没兴趣的人就别来这里耽误时间了。
感谢一直以来关注这个博客的人，
不管我们是不是认识，
不管你看我的博客是舒服还是不舒服，
在这里一并感谢。

Because this blog's readership is quite high, I've tried disseminating basic agricultural and scientific information. I've tried for a few days and the result hasn't been bad, readership hasn't gone down a bit. That's why I intend to keep on going. Those who are interested can come every day to look. Those who aren't can stop wasting their time. I thank those who have been coming all along, whether we know each other or not, whether my blog makes you uncomfortable or not, I thank you all the same.

Then nothing but more borrowed socialist content straight until earlier this week when Wang wrote a short request asking for all bloggers planning to link to his site to both note clearly sources and authors, and to delete all links to any previous posts, as Wang himself had already taken them down. The facade, although both impressive and hilarious in and of itself, seems to be losing ground to his even funnier natural state as the past few days have seen a series of well-chosen news releases illustrating various governmental hypocrisies and not-so-subtly mocking the new campaign.

Access to MSN Spaces in China

Frank Dai — Tue, 09 May 2006 16:49:42 +0000

Many people have said that their MSN Space blog is inaccessible or experiences diffculties in connection, including Nina Wu, sister of detained blogger and Global Voices colleague Hao Wu, with many MSN bloggers confirming the problem (1,2).

According to this article, the inaccessiblity of MSN Space lies in Live.com. Mircosoft change its .NET Passport login process into Live.com, this required Chinese users to redirect to live.com to sign in their credentials and Live.com is probably blocked in China. So all the MSN related websites have been inaccessible during recent weeks.

This post also provides some other means to login and continue use MSN sites without running a proxy as listed below:

using https protocol: click here and login
using the original .NET Passport service: click here and using Messenger 7.0 version to access Hotmail and MSN Space

Tests show two things: first, after using above techniques to access them, MSN and Hotmail services are returning to normal; second, Live.com is only accessible with a proxy like that of Tor.

Several days before the block stopped for an interval but resumed just within few days. It's still unclear whether this problem is due to outage of servers of Microsoft's China Branch. With the recent visit by President Hu Jintao to Microsoft and Bill Gates the block seem quite unreasonable. No confirmation from Microsoft is available at present.

China: Chinese Blogger Atop Technorati 100

Frank Dai — Thu, 04 May 2006 14:40:49 +0000

Today, as the technorati blog pointed out that in its Top 100, Chinese Blogger Xujinglei became NO1 in the chart. It just followed a newly released report from Technorati which claimed that Chinese is the thrid biggest language in the global blogosphere, with explosion of non English blogs. Here is the screenshot.

plus. Technorati is blocked again in Mainland China after few days of unblocking, according to Danwei.org.

What is self-censorship?

Frank Dai — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 12:07:31 +0000

Many people think that in China the state media is censoring content online and offline vigorously under government order. However it's not always true since many of the censorship works are not done by the government officials but self-censored. Followed is a translation of recent blog post by Zhao Maoyu at the renowned Chinese blog “Mindmeters“, titled “Self-Castration Resulted from Self-Fear“, explaining the self-censorship policy at China Central Television, CCTV, the national and official TV media.

[In Translation]
Now all the people said the programs at Hunan TV (A provincial level TV) is much better than CCTV. The reasons behind it can be found at Wangxiaofeng's Blog. CCTV does not only produce rubbish programs but also attack its competitors with third-rated techniques. When I was home this year, my sister told me that CCTV did not attack other competitors because of fears. She did not want to tell me the real reasons.

I don't know whether anyone still remembers the “Red Horizon” soiree that is not released to the public. I think that anyone who have seen this program, as long as he did not bear extreme prejudice, should recognize that CCTV is not short of good producers and talented performance. I even dissert that the quality of this program exceeds all Hunan TV's programs. But such programs will not have a chance of getting to the public. What we saw on CCTV is only boring, lack of humor and full of philistinism. Indeed CCTV is not an institution of entertainment but of bureaucracy and politics.

All the staff at the Chinese bureaucratical institutions tend to think one thing first before they did anything else: how their bosses will consider? They were always trying to figure out the bottom line of their boss because they worried about exceeding the limit of tolerance. Moreover, the bottom line is often underestimated by these staff. To put more bluntly, they scared themselves. Let's look at an example how the people at CCTV works: If we set the tolerance rate at 10 for President Hu, the rate for the Ministry of Propaganda would be degraded to 9; 8 for the Ministry of Broadcasting and 7 or 6 for the officials at CCTV. When comes to the program producers it would be a miracle if the rate stays at 2 or 3. How can a TV program be excellent with such bottom line principles?

Also take the recently controversial TV series “Shiliang the General” for example. Even the stupids can know that this series is specially prepared for the political situation in Taiwan Strait. Some people post on BBS to vote on the “most disgusting lines” in this series, and the champion goes to this one: “One girl who would be killed by the Qing soldier soon said “”compare with the days of living with separation from the mainland China, I would rather die“.

I believed that even the President Hu and other people from the propaganda machine would not like this line. But why did the screenplay writer think that “the bosses” need such a line? I think it is the result of underestimating the bottom line of the bosses that lead to wrong conclusion. From the up to down, the fear is magnified and the bottom line is degraded to almost ground zero. The bosses just hope to forbid flirting but when it goes down to the average citizens, no options other than castration would be available.

A most recent case of self-castration and self-fear can be well illustrated in the news that the deeds done by the major websites to comply with the “Civilized Internet” policy:

QianLong: 3 suspected forums were closed down with 800 articles, 3174 pictures and 134 posts deleted.

Sina: 15 forums and 8 columns closed, totally of 134015 posts, including 71016 unhealthy posts.

Sohu: 11 pages and forums shut down. In addition it will select 10 or 20 people as Sohu's “Civilized Internet Supervisors”.

Baidu: Delete and block of illegal pictures and texts.

Zhongsou: Initiative to stop BBS searching and forum services to clean content. 20 forums are eliminated with about 10000 posts and 20000 links.

Three Renowned Chinese Blogs Blocked

Frank Dai — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 16:17:19 +0000

UPDATE: At least two of these blogs appear to be back up. See comments section, or this round-up post.

——————————————————
Three renowned Chinese bloggers are blocked by their BSPs, including one of the most popular bloggers in the country and DW Best of Blog winner, Milk Massage.

The three blogs are Milk Massage, Milkpig and Pro State in Flames. The first two are hosted on Yculblog and the last is hosted on Sohoxiaobao. Now trying to access to those blogs, you will get message like “Due to some unavoidalbe reasons that all of us know, this blog is temoprarily closed” or “For nontechnical reasons, this blog is closed from today”. Here is a screenshot.

Apparently, this blockage is not done by the government but by the personnels in the Blog Service Providers who consider the three blogs offending and dangerous. Danwei has a story. He aslo compares this with another blogger, who is a member of CPPCC that is having the yearly joint session in Beijing.

The news quickly spread in Chinese blogosphere. Lianyue, a columnist said on his blog with his usually ironical style(in translation):

Yesterday, the officals at “Administration of Blog” has receieved an email, demanding the shutdown of “Lianyue's Blog”. It's wonderful that the sender of the mail is Lianyue himself. His reason is “All are blocked except for me. So I am faceless”

Hellomedia, a blog dedicated to tracing the development of new media, analyzes the reasons leading to the blocking. Showing a screenshot, he thinks that it is the mention of FaLungong that close the blog Milk Massage. For Milkpig, it seems quite unreasonable since she only talk about celebrities stories and gossip. And the “Pro State in Flames” has long been politically aggressive and it's blocked because the two major political conferences are undergoing in Beijing:CPPCC and CPC.

Happy Chinese Lunar New Year

Frank Dai — Sat, 28 Jan 2006 14:30:55 +0000

Today is the Chinese Lunar New Year's eve, which are regarded as the most important festival in China and mark the beginning of a year with warm spring coming, so it's also called Spring Festival. We are blogging and aggregating on the what Chinese Blogger are celebrating the evening, with photos, stories and more!

This year is called “Dog Year”. There is a cycle of 12 years in which each year was represented by a kind of totally 12 animals, and this year was for the Dog. People celebrating this holiday by fireworks, banquet, and family reunion in the 7 days off session. “Dog Stamp” and “Dog Year Wishing Card“

The most important part of the festival is the reunion dinner, where family members joined together in new year's eve, served with a banquet of traditional Chinese food like noodles and dumplings. Andrea of T-Salon have some photos showing how the food is like. Daxing Stef have the photo that explained the procedure of making a special kinds of dumpling called “Kok Tsai“. An article on Xinhua news agency reports the debate over a reunion dinner worth of $24444.

Firework is also the very interesting part of new year. When the bell rings at the 12 o'clock, the firework should be set, which means “Goodbye to the last year and Greeting with the new year.” However for recent years firework is prohibited or confined to certain areas for security and environmental reasons in major cities like Beijing. This year the prohibition was lifted and the Beijing police are sending short messages via cellphone to remind citizens of safety in playing with fireworks.

Sending SMS(Short Message) is also the rising phenomenon in China. People use it to send wishes and blessings to their friends, colleagues and relatives. It was estimated that during Spring Festival which will last from Jan29 to Feb4, there are more than 10 billion short messages sent over the country.

After the dinner, came the “Spring Festival Eve Gala” by China Central Television. For last 20 years, it has become one of the major entertainment of Chinese, featuring many star, singing&dancing and traditional folk performance like cross talk. But due to the abundance in means of entertainment, the audience's passion has dropped dramatically. Raymond Zhou, a blogger and movie critics tells you why. He uses the word “Camp” coined by Susan Sontag to describe it.

BingFeng gives you some suggestions in New Year if you are in Shanghai and he is doing his New Year Blogging.

Wayne, an American who lived in Xiamen, China wrote a great post about his understanding of Chinese New Year and suggested on helping foreign people mark the festival like a native.

Laoluo, a very famous blogger, wrote his news year's wishes. China Digital Times has translated part of his post.

Benetleong teaches you how to read and pronounce Chinese idioms and characters that you usually says when you meet someone in the festival.

See more photos via Flickr cluster, including the clothing, performance, paper back, and parade in China town.

Find more posts via Technorati and Icerocket.

Google.cn in China

Frank Dai — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 11:54:55 +0000

Google, the online web search giant, launched its Chinese version of services with new domain, Google.cn. Formerly this domain would be redirected to http://www.google.com/ig?hl=zh-CN, a Chinese version of Google Search based in US. This services, according to various sources(1,2,3), has censored many content and websites in comply with Chinese government and its law.

The Google.cn was launched with little public promotion. It provides just few services on the main page like web and picture searching, and news, without email service like Gmail and Blog Hosting Service like Blogger. Right in the bottom of the search box, it has a link which demonstrate the website and domain was registered in Beijing,China and the serial number is “Beijing ICP050124″. If you searchs with some sensitively key words like 1989(Background info via Wikipedia), the website will show no results that was “offensive”. Under the search results, it also has a statement in Chinese, means “Some Search Results was not displayed according to local laws and policies”(Screenshot).

According to Sina Tech(Link in Chinese), Google in a public statement, says:”Eliminating search results was not consistent with our policy, but it's a violation to our principles to provide no information”. They also said they did not intend to provide email and blogging services.

Chinese BloggerCathayan said:”Obviously Google was in conflict between ideal and reality, so the reason why it did not provide many services to Chinese customers is that they are still unsure about what they can do.”

GFans.org, website by Google Fans in China, said “Yes, it's a shame, but not for Google”.

News From Chinese Blogosphere

Frank Dai — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 06:38:57 +0000

Blogger Movie: the first short DV movie that is produced and casted by Chinese bloggers is under way for public show, named “A Hard Day's Night”(Or Adventure Of XiaoQiang). The play was written by Wangxiaofeng, a.k.a Massage Milk, winner of Deutsche World for Best Chinese Journalist Blog. He wrote the original script(in ZH)for the short comedy piece and invited his friends in the blogosphere to take the job of shooting, producing and playing. Here is the trailer and here is some photos in the scene. They also have hold a premier ceremony sponsored by Bokee.com(here is some photos taken by Wang's friend on the occasion). However, as the some foreign media like Reuters noticed and reported on the movie, they interpreted the movie as a political satire while the people who shoot it only considered the movie to be just for fun, as Buchimfan explained(in ZH). In a public promotion article, Wangxiaofeng said (in partial translation):

There is no “main topic” in movie while it only want to tell a story in a narrative voice, which is quite “black humor” or absurd. Besides there is noting else….it has almost no aesthetic value. It is only a kind of entertainment, in which you can feel funny after watching the movie. We don't want to teach anything.

Podcast Analysis: Jack wrote an analysis of podcast in China based on data derived from Poodlook.com , the largest podcast directory website in China that he founded last year. The Chinese version of complete report can be downloaded here and China Web2.0 Review has translate part of the report. The conclusion is that Chinese podcast was developing very fast for last 3 months but it is still in the early stage.

Sohu Blog Award: The blog award held by Sohu.com, one of the three largest internet portal websites is closed. It offered reward worth of 2000-10000 RMB(about 300-1200 US Dollar) to the final winners. Here is the flash with popup window that showcase the contests' blog. Interestingly, it also has a section which aggregated news reports on the event from bloggers. In a previous high-level forum, Sohu also invited some bloggers to do journalist reporting.

Gang of four are all gone: Gang of four, a term coined by the government that refers to four high ranking officials who launched and lead the so-called Cultural Revolution, are all gone after the last surviving member, Yaowenyuan died recently. After the Cultural Revolution, they were all sentenced to prison in late 1970s for the damage they did to the country. Danwei has a roundup of reports in the official Chinese news agency and ESWN has translated a related article named “2006, 1976“

Other Posts:
The department of public security in Shenzhen released the comic internet police. For cartoon image here. It will hang on the websites in Shenzhen, reminding everyone of doing the “legal” thing on internet

BBC reviewed Roland Song of ESWN, in which Roland explained why and how he set up the blog which concentrate on Chinese media scenes and blogosphere and became the most valuable source of information concerned with China for his impartial viewpoint. The audio file can be downloaded here.

The official website for Chinese Government is online in Jan 1st, www.gov.cn. It has functions such as conference video casting. The traffic was rising at very high speed. However some bloggers (one example in ZH)questioned the welcoming remarks that it did not support any interaction.

Chinese Blogosphere:Year in Review

Frank Dai — Sat, 31 Dec 2005 06:48:12 +0000

The development of blog in 2005 is fast and influential. Compared with early years when blog was first introduced, 2005 is the booming year of Chinese Blogosphere in terms of the number of blogs, quality of posting and recognition of blogging.

From perspective of blog hosting service, all the BSPs experienced firece competition following a acquisition of Blogdriver by Bokee. The three major BSPs, Bokee, Blogcn and Blogbus have received funding from venture capital firms, which showed the confidence from investment. They have been making progress on cultivating their blogosphere culture and improving the quality of their service. On the other hand, the traditional website and online portal, like MSN, QQ, Sina and Sohu, all have entered the new fast growing market, who are steadily gaining large portion of market share.

As for the number of blogs, the exact number of blogs and bloggers are very difficult to calculate exactly. Though the statistics from Baidu has been questioned by some bloggers, the fact is undeniable that in 2005, the number of Chinese blogs is skyrocketing. Also some blog searching engines can prove the rise of blogs in Chinese as a test by Keso demonstrated(in ZH).

Besides, a group of opinion leaders in blogosphere have emerged. They are usually well-educated, focusing on the development and news in certain field. More significantly, much of their prestige is gained from blogging, like Keso, Mumu, Anti and Milk Massage (Who is the DW Best Blogger winner). As more and more people became acquainted and familiar with blog, blog has been transformed from new stuff into a normal means of communication and expression, and the writing style of blogging is now more mature and diversified.

From media coverage on blogging phenomenon from newspapers and magazines, we can perceive the recognition of blog by the mass media. Economic Observer and Life Weekly have run stories or specials on their cover. This kind of attention reached its highest point in November, when the first Chinese Blogger Conference was held in Shanghai. Under the limelight, blog has become a major application of internet.

For some reasons like censorship, Chinese blogs are very slow to adopt the grassroots news concept, or citizen journalism. The people who treated blog as a media are still very few; instead they are inclined to express feeling of life rather than political opinion.

The biggest question for Chinese blogs is still the censorship issue. As the blogosphere evolved, so did the great firewall. Blogsome, Typepad and Blog-City were blocked in succession, and Blogspot, after a short interval, were still blocked by the government. The policy that require every website to resigster administrator's real name, and the Regulation on Internet Information and News Services, have put rigid control and restriction blogger. Whatever the consequence of such measures are, the censorship will influence the development of blog to a very large proportion.