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