China and India: Making Connections: 2013

Source: Five Books (6/17/13):

http://www.fivebooks.com/interviews/gady-epstein-on-china-and-internet

An interview with...

Gady Epstein on China and the Internet

By Sophie Roell

How has the Chinese Communist Party managed to survive the chaos of the

World Wide Web? The Economist correspondent chooses books on the world's

most successful case of authoritarian control of the Internet.

=====================================================

After the Internet, Before Democracy, by Johan Lagerqvist

The Power of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism Online, by Guobin Yang

Consent of the Networked, by Rebecca McKinnon

Marketing Dictatorship, by Anne-Marie Brady

Treason by the Book, by Jonathan Spence

====================================================

(Q) You just did a special report for the Economist on China and the

Internet

<http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21574628-internet-was-expecte

d-help-democratise-china-instead-it-has-enabled>. Is this something you’ve

been following for a long time?

(A) The Internet has been something that’s fascinated me in China since I

arrived in 2002. At that time there were fewer than 60 million people on

the Internet. There was a widespread assumption that as it spread

nationwide and to a much larger population, it would be much more

difficult for the Communist Party to maintain power, or that it would at

least undermine them. Some would argue that it has undermined them, but I

think they’ve done much better than people expected.

In the 11 years between then and now, I’ve written about various forms of

on-line activism, from the bulletin boards and blogs, talking with Boke –

an early blogging platform - about self-censorship and the monitors they

would hire. I’ve talked with journalists about blogging their reporter’s

notebook: whatever didn’t get into their stories that were officially

approved to be told, they would tell in their notes online. This

fascinated me, that there were these outlets. Over time I’ve developed a

more complex understanding of how it works, actually with the help of some

of the books on this list.

(Q) Yes, what are these books about, generally?

(A) There are three Internet-specific books on the list. Over the years,

each of the authors has contributed to my understanding of how the

Communist Party manages the Internet, and how effective or not it might

be. In the case of Yang Guobin, while he’s clear-eyed about the Party’s

abilities to manage the Internet, he still offers a somewhat hopeful

interpretation of Chinese activism online. It may not be directly

advancing democracy in the Western sense, but it is giving citizens online

more democratic-like freedoms and giving them a space, a public forum,

where they can develop some of the patterns and habits of democracy. This

is something you’ll also find in Johan Lagerkvist’s After the Internet,

Before Democracy.Lagerkvist also has a relatively hopeful view. The

Internet may not be speeding China towards democratization in the

short-term, but he believes that inevitably it will make that

transformation easier. He’s extremely cognizant, though, of the

technological determinism of the cyber-utopians, this idea that the

Internet will just lead to democratization. He rejects that, and tries to

offer a different understanding, which is quite helpful. What’s really

interesting about Lagerkvist’s work is that he compiles different threads

of thought about the Internet, and there are many. This list of books –

even just the three that are specifically related to the Internet – are

just a fraction of the amount of ink that’s been spilled over the Chinese

Internet…

(Q) And ultimately it’s about whether the Internet in China will lead to

democracy or whether it could be a more sinister force, leading to, say,

some sort of nationalist autocracy? Is that the key question?

(A) Yes, and it fits into the larger question of “Whither China?” and

“Whither the Chinese Communist Party?” which is the big question that

everybody asks themselves when they come here, especially to cover it as a

story, as journalists do. That’s why I’ve got Anne-Marie Brady’s book on

my list as well, Marketing Dictatorship. She focuses on the Party-state’s

ability to adapt after Tiananmen in 1989, and focus its efforts in

propaganda to reinforce certain concepts that it wants to spread and have

be absorbed by the public. These include not only embracing the market

economy, but also embracing one-party rule, the need for social stability,

nationalism, and, selectively, anti-foreign sentiment.

This framework undergirds the approach to the Internet as well. It’s part

of a holistic conception of how to maintain power. Some people will

interpret the massive, unwieldy, effort to “control” the Internet and the

similar massive, unwieldy, effort to control what people prioritize in

society, as, ultimately, a losing proposition. But I think what they’ve

done with the Internet shows that they can extend their ability to rule,

by making authoritarianism more flexible. So that’s where I would differ

with Lagerqvist. He proposes an interesting counter-factual, which is “Can

you imagine what China would be like without the Internet? Where you

wouldn’t be exposing corruption by lower level officials and you wouldn’t

be hearing about mass protests all around the country?” He supposes that

one-party rule would be more stable under those conditions. I disagree. In

my view, allowing citizens to expose corrupt low-level officials or other

wrongdoing that the centre maybe doesn’t even know about is in the

centre’s interest. It gives people some sense of freedom and some real

freedom, without necessarily challenging one-party rule.

(Q) Are you saying it would be better if there were no Internet in China?

(A) There’s almost nobody who would say they would rather have no

Internet, than the Internet they have. Dissidents and others argue that

the Internet has vastly enabled them. That can be true, while it’s still

true that it might be helping extend authoritarian rule.

(Q) Let’s talk a bit more about these books individually. So Lagerqvist’s

After the Internet, Before Democracy is quite a long and comprehensive

book, I gather from some of the reviews.

(A) Yes, I wouldn’t say this is the layman’s guide to the Internet. Maybe

none of these books quite are. They get very deep into the ideological

weeds, because that gets to the core of whether authoritarian management

of the Internet can work. In After the Internet, Before Democracy,

Lagerqvist tries to find a middle ground between technological

determinism/cyberutopianism - this notion that the Internet will

automatically bring about democracy in authoritarian states - and the much

darker view that authoritarian states can control the Internet and hold

onto power regardless of how citizens use the Internet. What he describes

is a much more fluid, authoritarian Internet. He looks at the different

interest groups in China that use the Internet. There’s the Communist

Party, the Party-state, but there’s also what he describes as the

subalterns: the people who sometimes have oppositional interests to the

Party, who also have access to the Internet and use it. That can be middle

class Chinese with urban gripes, migrant workers, activists and people

with environmental concerns.

He believes we’re in a phase now where the Communist Party is effectively

maintaining control and surviving the embrace of the Internet, but he sees

the embrace of the Internet as inevitably aiding the transformation to

democracy. That is a more hopeful view than my ownreport

<http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21574628-internet-was-expecte

d-help-democratise-china-instead-it-has-enabled> takes. But in getting

there, in his argument, he provides a very helpful roadmap of the history

of the Internet in China, the different conceptions of how the Internet is

managed, and how people are active online, that makes for an interesting

read.

(Q) terms of numbers, more than 40% of Chinese people are online now

aren’t they? Plus you mentioned in your report that China has more online

shoppers than the US.

(A) Yes, there were 564 million people online as of the end of last year

[2012]. There were 200 million people shopping online, and more than that

watching videos every month. There’s lots of stuff going on besides

political activism. It’s an extremely vibrant community inside what I call

this giant cage

<http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21574628-internet-was-expecte

d-help-democratise-china-instead-it-has-enabled>.

(Q) And it’s not just in rich cities like Beijing and Shanghai.

(A) No, in fact the fastest growth right now is in the interior. Part of

that is because there’s so much penetration already in cities and

wealthier areas. But another part of it is that now it’s much easier to

get online via mobile, so people can skip a step. Just as they skipped

landlines to go mobile, they can get on the Internet very easily.

(Q) So if you went to visit, say, a peasant in Henan province, is he

likely to be online?

(A) Some are. I did a story last year

<http://www.economist.com/node/21563780> about a peasant activist in Hebei

who has been online five or six years now. He’s a rabble-rouser, and a

very effective one. He has a Weibo [the Chinese Twitter] account, and also

Weixin (WeChat in English) and has contacts with the media. When they [the

local authorities] were upset with him, the thugs in his village decided

to try and destroy his computer. That gives you a sense of how important

it is. (They didn’t know he’d already upgraded to a laptop). There’s an

increasing number of farmers online. They’re not all activists, in fact

most of them are not, but they’re definitely getting online.

(Q) Tell me more about Yang Guobin’s book, The Power of the Internet in

China, about online citizen activism. What surprised me coming back to

China last year is just how lively some of the talk-back in online

communities can be

<http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2013/02/netizen-voices-doubts-over-dprk-nucle

ar-drift/>.

(A) Yang Guobin is looking at online activism dating back to the 1990s. He

writes about a number of different cases, over the years, where average

citizens, because of the ability to post online, have been able to effect

change. He thinks that fact, in itself, is significant and, in a sense,

democratizing with a small “d.” He goes back to the case of Sun Zhigang,

the migrant worker who was beaten to death [while in police custody] in

Guangzhou, he talks about the slave labour and brick kilns, cases where

information spreading online helped lead to action, by generating

attention, and putting on public pressure. He is not a cyber-utopian, but

he’s saying that this is a real effect that the Internet has had, it has

empowered regular Chinese citizens. He recognizes it’s not just a rosy

scenario, but he’s presenting an optimistic case for use of the Internet

in China. Overall his view is quite hopeful about where it is leading.

(Q) Is he just looking at specific incidents or does he also look at

broader issues?

(A) He presents these examples within his own conceptual framework of

“Where is the Chinese Internet heading?” I don’t think he offers a

definitive answer. But he talks about the Internet’s ability to build

communities online, its changing the behaviour of official institutions,

forcing the Party to react. He talks about the Party’s efforts at control

meeting resistance, and that while this doesn’t necessarily lead to

democracy or democratizing the political system, it changes the terms on

which society is ruled, between the rulers and the ruled.

(Q) So if I posted a question on Weibo, “Is democracy better than being

ruled by the Communist Party?” would that just be removed instantly by

censors? Or are these kinds of broader discussions possible online in

China?

(A) It depends on how you put it. If you hit enough keywords, you’re

pretty safe to assume that your tweet will be automatically deleted. But

it’s pretty smart censorship. If you’re a person with two followers who no

one cares about, if automatic keyword detection hasn’t found your post, it

might just kind of sit there. It’s more likely to be discovered if it

develops velocity online, gets retweeted, and more people see it. They pay

much more attention, as they should, from their perspective, to people who

have 30 million followers than those who have two. Certain types of post

will automatically get deleted, but all evidence we have indicates that

there is a human element to all of this. There’s a lot of human

individuals involved in reading through tweets and deciding whether

something should be deleted. There’s hundreds [of employees] at any large

Internet site, and probably a lot more than that at Sina and Weibo. What

they’re looking out for is whether your tweet actually leads to collective

action or generates some sort of more collective sentiment online.

Censorship has become pretty fine-tuned, despite the fact they have to

keep adding sensitive words to their list.

(Q) If I did have a large following could I say “We should have a free

society!”

(A) You can use the word “freedom,” or say “this is a free society” or “we

should have a free society,” but it depends on the context. If it’s about

a very sensitive issue, it might get deleted, and if it’s not, and just

gets popular, people liked it, they’re probably going to let it slide.

It’s a little bit too general to nail down.

(Q) Do you want to talk about Consent of the Networked by Rebecca

Mackinnon next?

(A) Rebecca, used to be a [CNN] journalist here. Her work on the Internet

in China and on Internet freedom in general has been very important in the

field and a lot of people have cited her work. Her book provides a sober

context for understanding how the Chinese Internet works.

(Q) Her book is not just about China though, is it?

(A) Correct, but China is where her expertise began and she’s used that to

apply her understanding globally. Also, as she puts it in her book, China

is the most advanced case of authoritarian control of the Internet, and

the most advanced example of the negative case for cyber-utopians. She

also is no technological determinist, and I would say she is less

optimistic than the other two [Lagerkvist and Yang], about where the

Chinese Internet is heading, or whether the Internet is a democratizing

force. She sees it more as a struggle, depending on who controls the

levers of the Internet - whether it’s companies or governments. In China

obviously it’s the government, but in the West it can be corporations as

well. So I thought it was useful for contextualizing how to think about

the Internet globally.

(Q) On the blurb for the book it says that for every case of an Arab

Spring, there are more counter-examples of governments and corporations

using the Internet to corrode civil liberties…

(A) Yes, and that mindset was always helpful for me to keep in mind as I

was writing about China’s approach to the Internet. We’re not necessarily

comparing China to a completely free Internet globally. But it helped me

conceptualize that what’s different here in China - versus infringements

on freedom in the West - is that the Chinese government has worked very

hard to make its Internet particularly different and distinct.

(Q) Yes, I don’t think people overseas realize just how different the

Internet is here, behind the Great Firewall. People send me YouTube

videos, without even knowing it doesn’t exist here. There’s no Facebook,

no Twitter, and Google search is so slow you basically can’t use it. I

follow Harvard professor Greg Mankiw’s economics blog – he’d probably be

surprised to learn that he is blocked in China because Blogspot is. What’s

amazes me is how this has led to this classic feature of East Asian

industrialization, namely the creation of domestic national champions in

China who provide these services instead.

It has. I think those national champions would have arisen anyway, because

as Chinese companies they have some advantages over foreigners - the

Chinese language advantage, the Chinese market advantage. But obviously

they’re being helped tremendously by what amounts, essentially, to

political protectionism. I don’t think protectionism is the goal of the

Great Firewall, but it is definitely a by-product. So you have these

national champions that rise up and they’re trusted by the government, and

by the Party and they’re allowed to flourish, to some degree. They also

have to bear the burden of monitoring and self-censorship.

(Q) Yes, as you say, employing hundreds of staff to ensure they don’t

publish anything that’s a no-no, otherwise that’ll be the end of their

business…

(A) It certainly limits their revenue growth and makes their jobs much

harder, but it’s a trade-off that some of these companies I’m sure are

willing to make.

(Q) Here’s a question I’ve been wanting to ask ever since arriving in

Beijing and discovering another by-product of censorship which is that the

Internet is painfully slow, sometimes to the point of not functioning at

all. If a large part of the Communist Party’s legitimacy comes from

continuing to deliver economic growth – doesn’t a very slow and unwieldy

Internet have economic implications?

(A) There’s no question censorship slows the Internet in China down,

though it does depend on what part of the Internet you’re using. If you’re

using the Chinese Internet, and you’re not going to Western sites, it’s

much faster. But if you’re going outside China to go online, it will be

slower. And people who are working in information technology, say, and

many other fields will often need to go outside of China. I think that

does impact productivity both for foreigners and Chinese here. I also

think not allowing a free-flow of ideas on the Internet impedes

innovation. If you’re not allowing Facebook, and Twitter and YouTube and

whatever chaos the world brings, then you have an environment that is

stifling innovation.

(Q) Are people at all concerned about this or even talking about it or

measuring the impact of these restrictions on the economy?

(A) People are concerned. You will hear people speak about this publicly.

Kai-Fu Lee [a Beijing based Internet entrepreneur who was head of Google

China] talks about it a bit. Whether the Communist Party is concerned, I’m

not so sure. They see a lot of benefits to the way they manage the

Internet, and of course Chinese Internet companies benefit to a great

degree, because they don’t have as much competition from foreign Internet

companies.

(Q) You’ve already mentioned Anne-Marie Brady’s book, Marketing

Dictatorship. Do you want to expand on your comments a bit?

(A) Anne Marie Brady has done a lot to advance the notion that, contrary

to what some people felt in the 1990s, China’s efforts at propaganda and

thought-work have actually intensified since 1989, not weakened. Some

people argue that the effectiveness of China’s propaganda system has

become weaker over that time - as China’s media has become more

commercialized, as society has become more pluralized, including because

of the Internet. But what she shows is that that has not deterred Chinese

leaders from an aggressive and ongoing effort to instil a certain

fundamental logic of control into the system. That logic is very much

reflected in the Internet: “You can have this set of freedoms, including

economic freedom, and some freedom to criticize. We maintain one-party

rule. You don’t challenge that directly. You support what we do, because

we’re all interested in social stability.” All of that is embedded in

Chinese management of the Internet. From Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao, to now

Xi Jinping, the importance of using the Internet as a tool in their

propaganda strategy has become increasingly clear over time. They’ve made

it explicit.

(Q) Are there any specific examples? Say the huge protests over the Diaoyu

Islands outside the Japanese Embassy last year. Was that the government

using the Internet to get people out on the streets?

(A) In the case of anti-Japanese protests, it’s a little bit more complex

than that. In some sense, that is allowing an existing online sentiment to

express itself. Now China’s nationalist, patriotic education has helped

feed into those sentiments, as has mass media: there are anti-Japan

television shows and movies and even cartoons for kids. All of this feeds

into anti-Japan sentiment. As far as online activism is concerned, it’s a

matter of allowing it to happen or not. When it gets to a point where the

Party is concerned, they’ll shut it down. This has happened again and

again over the years. In fact, the earliest examples of censorship of the

Internet and of exercising authoritarian control, relate to the organizing

of pro-government rallies: nationalist rallies responding to some foreign

event, like the anti-Chinese riots in Indonesia. They’re concerned about

collective action. When it comes to nationalist activism what they’re

trying to do is to allow it to some extent but shut it down if they

perceive it to be a threat.

In terms of day-to-day examples they have these “50-cent Party” or leading

commentators that they encourage to comment on issues either to guide the

public conversation or, in some cases, to stay out of it. If there’s an

incident in some locality in China where they decide to trigger this

process, the local Internet publicity department will send out either

texts or emails to these 50-cent Party workers or volunteers, asking them

to post to microblogs, bulletin boards, what have you, to try and steer

the conversation in a more acceptable direction.

(Q) What kind of thing are they going to be posting? “Actually the

government handled this coal mine explosion really well”?

(A) It can be like that. They can also try to divert attention by making

some outrageous comment about something else. It might not be so overt as

just being pro-government.

(Q) Your final choice is Treason by the Book by Jonathan Spence which is

about an incident in 18th century China. How does this book fit into our

theme?

(A) I suppose I’m cheating because there was no Internet in the 18th

century. But it happens to be my favourite book of Jonathan Spence’s and

it’s on a theme that is very relevant today, which is control of how

rumours and information spread. So this is about the Yongzheng Emperor,

who becomes concerned about a treasonous letter that is written somewhere

in some part of China. He doesn’t know much about it, but he wants to find

out who wrote it, who is responsible for circulating it and this triggers

an imperial investigation. The imperial bureaucracy goes to work, and the

horses are literally sent out. What’s interesting about it is the

obsession with something that would seem so insignificant to most people,

that it could have just been ignored. Instead, the resources of empire are

marshalled to try and figure out the source of this rumour and to crush

whatever sentiment is behind it. I think that is relevant today, in the

age of the Internet, with all the rumours and rumour-hunters online. It is

something you’ll see an obsession with from the Party as well. They want

to crush rumours, they’re constantly sending out directives against

spreading rumours and even arresting people for spreading rumours – as in

the supposed “coup attempt” of March 2012. That authoritarian instinct to

control rumours is fascinating.

(Q) They’re even worried about non-seditious rumours?

(A) Yes, anything that might lead to instability or panic. They were

concerned about the rumours about salt-buying after Fukushima happened.

There were rumours that you needed to get salt and there was a rush on

salt. At that time they mobilized people to counteract those rumours,

saying the rumours were false. They don’t have to be seditious, they see

rumours as inherently worrisome. Of course the notion of trying to chase

down every rumour in the age of the Internet seems Sisyphean, but this is

actually an ancient instinct of Chinese Empire…

(Q) Maybe it’s sensible though, if you’re trying to rule so many people.

(A) Whether or not it’s sensible is an interesting question. Also 2000

years ago, another emperor’s approach was to actually collect information

from rumours. He listened to them for any intimations that officials were

corrupt or not doing their jobs, or to hear about sources of

dissatisfaction. They actually do that today as well. Online public

opinion monitoring is a key component of how China manages the Internet.

They are listening on the Internet as well as trying to control it.

(Q) What’s your broader view of where China is heading politically? Even

if you think the Internet has slowed things down, do you think we will end

up with democracy à la Francis Fukuyama? Or do you think China has shown

there can be another way of organizing a country? Because the government

can be really responsive now. Say with the air pollution in Beijing. If

people kicked up a huge fuss about it, the government could presumably

clean it up very quickly. They’re a one party state so, unlike the US,

they wouldn’t have to spend years arguing in Congress about it, they can

just do it…

(A) They can fix the very visible cracks, the ones that get the most

attention and that cause the public the most concern. They can patch those

up. The more fundamental problems - the deeper cracks in the foundation of

the system - persist and get worse. Down the road there could be some

crisis or catastrophe or economic crash, that will lead to both social

unrest and political uncertainty and quite dicey times for the Communist

Party. I just think the Internet is not hastening that day. It may

actually be delaying that day of reckoning. There is quite a strong

potential for a political transformation. How that takes place, what form

it takes, really remains unclear to me. I do think a multi-party system or

a system where people can vote and actually participate in choosing their

leaders is inherently more stable long-term. So that would seem to suggest

that eventually one party rule won’t work. But it could be decades before

we come to that day of reckoning. Or it could be a shorter time.

(Q) And if there is a day of reckoning presumably at that point the

Internet will be a catalyst for change.

(A) At that point the Internet could become quite an important player in

the whole thing. I talk about that in the report. From the authoritarian

perspective the options will be limited. Shutting down the Internet -

turning on the “kill switch” as they did in Xinjiang

<http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21574633-turning-entire-inter

net-nuclear-option-best-not-exercised-thou-shalt-not-kill>- doesn’t seem a

really viable option and would be an admission of system failure. Whether

the Internet plays a decisive role in whatever transformation is to come,

I don’t know. But what some of these authors have written about, that the

Internet has actually prepared Chinese citizens for political

transformation, I think there is probably truth to that.

About Gady Epstein: Gady Epstein is China correspondent for the Economist.

Previously, he served as Beijing bureau chief for Forbes for four years,

opening the magazine's Beijing office in 2007.

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