AudiencScapes

Despite the government crackdown on Facebook and Twitter, more Chinese citizens than ever are using the internet. Some are using social media to question or criticize the government. Will the pressure from China’s growing population of netizens usher in a new era of transparency or information control?

By Caldwell Bishop

China’s leadership will soon face a decision: Move toward democratization or revert to tighter control on information and media as existed during the Mao era? This is the contention of Dr. Wu Junhua, a China scholar, who believes the growing number of Chinese netizens (internet users) will force the issue. Wu made her remarks during a Woodrow Wilson Institute event last week in Washington, D.C.

Wu spoke about the crossroads that China will face when party leadership changes in 2012. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is feeling increasing pressure, she said, resulting from the growing use of social media platforms that emerged after the CCP censored Facebook and Twitter. Perhaps the most popular of these is China’s version of Twitter, called “WeiBo” (“micro-blog”), which has approximately 50 million users monthly and gets more than 200 million visits a month.

As the number of internet users grows, the CCP will find it more and more difficult to crack down on “dissenters.” Consequently, criticism of the government will become much more public and stories that were once kept local or covered up entirely will gain national and international attention. Two examples Wu offered were the WenZhou train crash and the death of Qian Yunhui, whose death was reportedly covered up by the government.

When the train crashed, the government sent out directives to journalists telling them to only report what they are told to report. Meanwhile, the public continued using sites such as WeiBo to express their anger and frustration at the situation as well as provide news from non-government sources.

Qian Yunhui was a village head who had been petitioning on behalf of some village residents in a dispute with a local power plant for better compensation. The conditions surrounding Qian’s death are uncertain, but initially the police ruled it an accident. In response, eyewitnesses and people close to the situation took to the Web posting photos and what they believed to be the true version of events. Eventually the government was forced to investigate the alleged murderers.

As Wu’s examples illustrate, the internet is indeed being used to publish protests, government criticisms, and report unfiltered news. But it is important to understand how the “Great Firewall” of China works and whether the discontent is representative of the majority or a small minority.

The Great Firewall allows the government to block IP addresses, keywords from search engines or Web addresses, and entire Web pages. In the case of Chinese social media sites such as WeiBo, the CCP has the ability to delete accounts, remove posts as they happen, and filter out certain topics. By blocking Twitter, Facebook and other globally popular social networking sites, the Chinese government has routed netizens onto domestic social networking alternatives that are much easier for the government to monitor and control. Yet, Chinese netizens continue to push the boundaries of acceptable online speech in China.

Nat Kretchun of InterMedia, who has conducted extensive media research in China, offers another perspective. Kretchun believes that rather than a sudden shift toward greater control or greater opening, the current state/society negotiations over what can be discussed online in China will likely be an ongoing debate. It is his observation that, although the Chinese government is more accountable to its citizens as a result of their ability to raise awareness of issues online, the CCP maintains impressive control over information and narratives related to particularly sensitive issues.

What does seem certain is that the CCP is taking accountability more seriously than it has in the past. For example, the CCP is allowing the public to witness the prosecution of corrupt officials. Yet at the same time, Beijing is steering the masses toward an outlet for venting their frustrations that it can easily control. Whether reform will actually come is something that only time can tell, but what we can be certain of is that the Great Firewall won’t be crumbling anytime soon.

Caldwell Bishop works with AudienceScapes and is a graduate student at The George Washington University. His research interests are in East Asia, development, economics, the environment and human rights.

Photo courtesy of 'Ms. Jackson' at Flickr