For example, while Twitter is blocked in China, sinaweibo, a microblogging service hosted by China’s internet portal sina.cn has dominated the microblogging market in China. Han Han opened his account on sinaweibo on February 4, 2010, and, before he had even sent one message, he had gathered 30,000 followers. Three days later, he simply typed one Chinese word “Wei” (Hello). This single-character post immediately generated a frenzy on sinaweibo, with more than 6500 reposts, and over 13,900 “comments” from other sinaweibo users. In Han Han’s signature combination of humor and a sharp tongue, he then said: “I meant to type ‘Hey’ instead of ‘Wei,’ but I made a typo. I didn’t correct it for fear people would blame the ‘relevant agencies’ [ie censors].” [Han Han's blog posts are often targeted by censors, and each time, such censorship generates protest from his fans, and more netizens repost his censored text in other forums.]

On March 4, Han Han wrote a post on his blog titled, “Han Feng is a good cadre.” The post commented on the online leak of the personal diary of Han Feng, the Tobacco Bureau chief in Guangxi, which became the hottest topic in Chinese cyberspace. In Han Feng’s diary, he recorded, in a matter-of-fact way, activities such as his sexual encounters with several of his female subordinates, bribes taken in his work, and some other personal hobbies or work-related matters. (Han Feng was subsequently arrest for bribery, which was announced in a brief statement in official media after his diary became public.) Han Han’s post says that according to what Han Feng’s diary reveals, Bureau chief Han should really be considered a “good official”, since the amount of bribes and number of sexual relationships he had was peanuts compared with so many other officials in China today. Han wrote, “If his diary is true, I dare to say he is a good cadre. In six months, he only accepted bribes of 60,000 RMB. This is the first time in recent years I have seen a five-digit number after the word “bribery.” Where can you find such a clean bureau chief?”

The following are excerpts of Han Han’s new post, entitled: “Where can I find people as good as you are?”, translated by CDT:

In the post before my last post, I set a voting function (The two options are: 1) Han Feng is a good official, I hope that he will stay in his position, 2) Han Feng is a bad official, I hope that he will be punished severely according to the law) Over 210,000 independent IPs have voted, and the results show that 96%, which is to say, 200,000 voters, felt that Han Feng is a good cadre and hope that he will stay in his position. Less than 10,000, 4% of voters, felt that Han Feng is a bad cadre and hope that he will be punished severely according to law.

Of course, from now on I will set up the voting function more often, in order to compensate everyone’s dismay that no one has seen a ballot but somehow so many representatives in National People’s Congress have been elected.

From today on, I made a unilateral decision that I will be the strategic collaborative partner of all the main government websites. When they start to vote on some event, I will do the same on my blog. I will not write any text about those events to avoid misleading or indicating voting results, and we will see how different the results will be.

Among voters this time, some from the bottom of his or her heart felt that Han Feng is not a bad official, since he was not that greedy. Some others sincerely felt that Han Feng was actually relatively better stock among officials; some others are just being sarcastic, and then some are only following the crowd. Nevertheless, everyone feels quite powerless. In my grandfather’s time, when people knew things were difficult, if you went to the officials, they may have even more difficulties. Later on, everyone knows that there were good cadres and bad cadres in this country. The result of the vote on Han Feng tells us that we have officially entered the era in which there are almost no cadres who are not corrupt, and the only difference is between good corrupt cadres and bad corrupt cadres. Everyone obviously thinks that Han Feng belongs to the good corrupt cadre category.

…. (Ordinary people in this country’s) expectations for cadres are not that they will serve the people, but that they don’t make trouble for people. You can have your fabulous house, drive your luxurious car, have your mistress, we will not bother you as long as you do not step over my son, evict me from my house, or take my girl; then you are a good cadre in the eyes of ordinary people. If netizens have a problem with this, just delete their posts; if writers have a problem with it, just harmonize them; if journalists have a problem with this, just one sentence instruction — “do not report negative news.”

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: corruption, Han Feng, Han Han
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Have you ever used Internet in mainland China? Are there any websites you are unable to access? Just click to watch the brief history of China’s Great Firewall !!!

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Great Firewall, Internet censorship
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Since he began blogging in 2006, Mr. Han has been delivering increasingly caustic attacks on China’s leadership and the policies he contends are creating misery for those unlucky enough to lack a powerful government post. With more than 300 million hits to his blog, he may be the most popular living writer in the world.

In a recent interview at his office in Shanghai, he described party officials as “useless” and prone to spouting nonsense, although he used more delicate language to dismiss their relevance. “Their lives are nothing like ours,” he said. “The only thing they have in common with young people is that like us, they too have girlfriends in their 20s, although theirs are on the side.”

Mr. Han has enjoyed widespread fame since he published his first novel at 19, but his popularity has ballooned in recent months through blog posts that seem to capture the zeitgeist of his peers, the so-called post-80s generation born after the economic reforms introduced by Deng Xiaoping.

Theirs is a generation of only children, the result of China’s one-child policy, and one that has known only uninterrupted growth. Whether true or not, it is also a demographic with a reputation for being spoiled, impatient and less accepting of the storyline fed to them by government-run media.

If Mr. Han’s tongue is sharp, he is careful to deliver his barbs through sarcasm and humorous anecdotes that obliquely take on corruption, censorship and everyday injustice.

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Post tags: bloggers, freedom of expression, Han Han, youth culture
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Illness of Neutrality

In the past, an incident occurred. It was too sensitive to allow people to talk about it.

An American, who grew up in China, falls ill of neutralism. She thought: I should make a film about it. So she directed a film. She believes Duan Qirui* is wrong, yet Liu Hezhen** may not be good. All in all, she should stay neutral. People in Mainland China manage to download the film despite all difficulties. So they watched it. Duan Qirui was very evil, and so was Liu Hezhen.

He thinks, since the film was made by an American, it must be in favor of Liu Hezhen, so I should stay neutral between the film and Duan Qirui.

Therefore he’s more in favor of Duan Qirui, and often blames Liu Hezhen for inciting the students.

Some smart guy read his blog, thinking, he has watched the film made by an American, then he’s certainly in favor of Liu Hezhen. No. I should stay neutral between him and Duan Qirui. He even suspects that Liu Hezhen conspired.

Afterward many smart people learned about this sensitive incident. The version they all agree upon is: kind-hearted Duan Qirui was deceived by Liu Hezhen, and Liu Hezhen ended up being killed, going out for wool and coming home shorn.

However, people in Hong Kong don’t think so.

So people throughout China deride those in Hong Kong as idiots.

* Duan Qirui was a warlord and the Premier of China under the Nationalists in the 1920s. On March 18, 1926, Duan dispatched troops against student protesters, killing 47. This incident is known as the March 18 massacre.

** Liu Hezhen was one of the students killed in the March 18 massacre, and the subject of an essay by Lu Xun.

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Post tags: 1989, carma hinton, gate of heavenly peace, history, June 4th, renren, students
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Google has drawn up detailed plans for the closure of its Chinese search engine and is now “99.9 per cent” certain to go ahead as talks over censorship with the Chinese authorities have reached an apparent impasse, according to a person familiar with the company’s thinking.

In a hardening of positions on both sides, the Chinese government also yesterday threw down a direct public challenge to the US search company, with a warning that it was not prepared to compromise on internet censorship to stop Google leaving.

The signs that Google was on the brink of closing Google.cn, its local search service in China, came two months after it promised to stop bowing to censorship there. But while a decision could be made very soon, the company is likely to take some time to follow through with the plan as it seeks an orderly closure and takes steps to protect local employees from retaliation by the authorities, the person familiar with its position said.

The status of talks between Google and the Chinese government has been unclear following confusing and contradictory statements from both sides. Then, earlier this week, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said he thought the stand-off with the Chinese government over Internet censorship and cyber attacks would be resolved “soon” but that the company was still committed to ending censorship of its Chinese search engine. His remarks launched speculation that Google was preparing to leave the China market, which a Google spokesperson has since denied. Now, Li Yizhong, China’s minister of industry and information technology, has warned Google against opening Google.cn, the New York Times reports:

Speaking on the sidelines of the National People’s Congress, China’s quasilegislative session, Mr. Li said that he hoped for an amicable resolution to the standoff. But he gave no indication that the government would ease the censorship rules that are at the heart of Google’s ultimatum.

“I hope Google will abide by Chinese laws and regulations,” The Associated Press quoted Mr. Li as saying. But “if you want to do something that disobeys Chinese law and regulations, you are unfriendly, you are irresponsible and you will have to bear the consequences.”

Whether the company chooses to remain in China, he added, is up to Google.

Also from the Wall Street Journal, via PoliticalDog101.com:

Google’s threat to stop censoring challenges the core premise of engagement with China for the last several decades: that the country is so big and its market so important that it must be accepted on its own terms.

Google’s challenge to Beijing stunned the business world. It is unusual for a company to publicly take issue with China’s policies—particularly something as sensitive as censorship—and even rarer for one to talk about the possibility of scaling back its business or leaving a market that is so important.

“If Google does indeed get shut down, it is not the end of the story—it is the beginning,” said Xiao Qiang, the director of the China Internet Project at University of California at Berkeley. It is the beginning of the ‘Chinternet,’ which is under Chinese government regulation. It will control so much that even Google cannot exist. Other companies will have to face the same choice of whether to continue to operate under China’s heavy regulation or leave the country.

Read a report about Li’s statement from the Global Times. Read more about the Google dispute via CDT.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: chinternet, Googlecn, Li Yizhong, Xiao Qiang
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Then the workers began trying to clear a path for the governor to leave. One reporter from Beijing Times hurriedly asked: Governor, what are your thoughts on Deng Yujiao? Li Hongzhong became enraged, and his face went cloudy in 0.1 seconds flat as he scowled at this reporter. He looked at the pen recorder and the hands holding it and, moving subtly but firmly, grabbed hold of them. He then stormed out into the hall. At the main door, Li stopped and asked furiously of this reporter, “which media are you from?” “I’m from People’s Daily” (note: Beijing Times is a commercial paper affiliate of People’s Daily). “And you’re a Party paper! This isn’t how a Party paper handles opinion guidance! I’m going to your publisher!!” And then without looking back, Li Hongzhong went to the elevator and back to his room. The reporters standing around looked on, dumbfounded. Reportedly, at this time, this female reporter began to tear up, feeling hurt.

Listen to an audio recording of the exchange here. Now, several Chinese media have publicly called on Li to apologize to the reporter, identified as Liu Jie of the Beijing Times, an offshoot of the People’s Daily.

Li Hongzhong’s story was the perfect storm for netizens. “Hongzhong Grabbing the Recorder” became a new hot online expression. Here are some samples of sarcastic comments from Chinese Twitterers, at the tag #lihongzhong:

* Sony Advertisement: the recorder even Chinese governors want to grab. (Jie Liu’s pen was a Sony.)

* Grabbing a recorder should be his staff’s job. This governor did it himself, so down to earth. Good official!.

* Let my three-year-old daughter explain this to you: “If one take something after the owner agrees, that is called borrowing; if the owner did not agree and one takes it in front of the owner, it’s called grabbing; if one takes it behind the back of owner without agreement, it’s called stealing.”

“Watch out, the governor will come… No recording allowed!”:

T-shirt for women reporters at the “two sessions”: “Please don’t grab my recorder; you can talk to my boss”:

From Cartoonist Guaiguai’s BlogTD website: “This ‘Two Sessions’ recorder is stealing-, grabbing- and governor-proof, perfect for you female reporters…”

The following cartoon is from Sohu Community:

Caijing’s website published at least three articles on this topic, one titled: “Li Hongzhong Grabs Female Reporter’s Recorder,” and an editorial titled, “Governor Li, Please Publicly Apologize.” Southern Metropolis Daily, Times Weekly (时代周报), New Daily (新快报), Youth Times (青年时报), and Yancheng Evening News (羊城晚报) all published editorials as well. Two former high government officials, Zhou Ruijin (周瑞金), the former deputy editor-in-chief of People’s Daily under Jiang Zemin, and Zhong Peizhang, in his 80s, former director of the News Bureau of Central Propaganda Department, wrote commentaries on the issue for Caijing. Those former senior officials have strong ties with Chinese media, and some of them have become very outspoken on various topics after they left their official positions.

The Global Times reports that Li refuses to apologize:

“We thought she might not be a reporter, so we took away her recorder to check,” he said.

In response, Li allegedly snapped her tape recorder and one of his followers grabbed the identification card around her neck and inspected it.

…In response to the Internet comments, Li said the reporter is now free to talk to him if she is unhappy about the incident. He said there is no need to raise the incident all over the Internet.

As of Thursday, more than 1,200 comments about Li’s explanation appeared on a sohu.com forum.

See also ESWN’s translation of an interview with Li.

Then today, an official who oversees Chinese media emphasized that Chinese journalists should undergo training in Marxist theory. From the Guardian:

Li Dongdong, deputy director of the General Administration of Press and Publication, told the South China Morning Post that some mainland reporters were giving Chinese journalism a bad name because they were not properly trained.

Under communist theories of journalism, media should support the leadership rather than operate as a watchdog.

The initiative seems to be aimed at mainland journalists only.

Chinese officials already routinely censor journalists, but Chinese media has become less restricted in recent years as they have gained more revenue from independent sources via advertising.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Deng Yujiao, Li Hongzhong, press freedom
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Google threatened in January to shut its Chinese Google.cn portal and to pull back from China, citing problems of censorship and a hacking attack from within the country.

“I’m going to use the word ’soon’, which I will not define otherwise,” Schmidt told journalists at the Abu Dhabi Media Summit.

“There is no specific timetable. Something will happen soon,” he added, without elaborating.

Chinese officials have said they were working with Google to resolve the dispute.

Meanwhile, Google deputy general counsel Nicole Wong told a congressional committee that the copany remained committed to ending censorship of its Chinese search engine:

Nicole Wong, the firm’s vice president and deputy general counsel, told the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee that Google would stop censorship and “(if) the option is that we will shutter our .cn property and leave the country, we are prepared to do that.”

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: foreign IT companies, googlecn. Internet censorship
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Like the United States, China is having its own tea party movement, but this one has a very different agenda.

Police have long tried to shush and isolate potential activists, usually starting with a low-key warning, perhaps over a meal or a cup of tea. Now, the country’s troublemakers are openly blogging and tweeting their stories about “drinking tea” with the cops, allowing the targeted citizens to bond and diluting the intimidation they feel.

The movement is an embarrassment for officials, who are suspicious of anything that looks like an organized challenge to their authority. And it can’t help that “drinking tea” stories seem to be spreading among ordinary Chinese, including ones who signed a recent online call for political reform.

The country’s top political event of the year, the National People’s Congress, has given the stories another bump. More than 200 people say they’ve been invited by police to “drink tea” since just Friday, when the congress began, said independent political blogger Ran Yunfei.

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: drinking tea, Internet culture, police conversation, Ran Yunfei, Xiao Qiang
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NetEase is a veteran of Chinese online gaming, with seven years of industry experience. So it was stunned when a seemingly straight development path suddenly descended into a dark maze after the company sought government permission to operate China’s version of World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, an online role-playing game enjoyed by millions of Chinese.

NetEase eventually succeeded. But along the way, the company lost a lot of money and had to play games with a pair of competing bureaucracies that each sought an upper hand in regulating the online gaming business.

Now more than ever, NetEase understands how necessary it is to play the government’s license game and the regulatory contest between the Ministry of Culture and the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP). The company also learned that good government relation is the key to winning in the online gaming sector.

And NetEase is not out of the woods. World of Warcraft is back online after a long blackout, but the dispute between the culture ministry and GAPP over gaming regulation has yet to be settled.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: gaming, GAPP, Internet regulation, Ministry of Culture, netease, World of Warcraft
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Perhaps because Americans can surf a number of websites cordoned off by the great Chinese Fire Wall – from the Dalai Lama’s personal web page to the Internet Movie Database – more Chinese (87 percent) see the Internet as a fundamental human right than do Americans (76 percent).

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags:
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The original plan for the joint editorial was hatched last year when the Economic Observer joined the Guardian newspaper in a joint editorial on climate change that was published by 56 media outlets. At the time I was responsible for communicating with the Guardian, discussing and translating the joint editorial, and developed a fairly deep understanding of the entire process. Afterward the idea sprung up of whether we could publish a similar type of editorial domestically.

The suggestion to use the household registration issue as a focal point came from another colleague. In choosing this as the topic, it’s important to understand that hukou reform has already seen breakthroughs on many fronts, many cities are speeding it up, and Premier Wen Jiabao and high level central government officials have stated their position on this item of reform on many public occasions. We believed that publishing an editorial on this topic would be in line with the direction of Chinese government reforms and with the broad public interest, and that the risks were not too great. Some foreign news agencies have said that the order for this may have come down from high levels of government, but in fact it was not at all like that. This was the product of a few editors working behind closed doors, but the stir it created went beyond our initial expectations.

Moreover, we decided to use the two meetings [of the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference currently taking place in Beijing] as the timeframe for publication in order to express the media’s wish to participate in China’s overall reform. To put it bluntly, I’ve lived for 36 years, but never known which representatives were chosen by me, who are able to seek justice on my behalf. I think many people might also have similar views. As part of the media, we hope that the voices of the masses can make themselves heard among the representatives who “represent public opinion.” This is a moderate stance, but it is the type of thing that before was rarely expressed directly in the media.

Read about Zhang’s dismissal from the New York Times.

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Post tags: hukou, media conditions, press freedom, Zhang Hong
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China Publishing Group, which had Rmb3.9bn in revenues last year, is a cornerstone of Beijing’s policy to keep publishing under state control while allowing private investors a limited, but legal, role.

“There will definitely be significant changes in our international operations,” Mr Nie said. “At least we can learn from some multinational publishers from developed countries, like Oxford University Press and Harper Collins … We will not just be there to propagate Chinese culture, but also to run a commercial business.”

Last year, the General Administration of Press and Publications, the regulator, promised to dilute the state publishing houses’ monopoly by allowing private companies to produce books for the first time in more than half a century.

Private publishers have long outperformed state rivals in spotting and producing best-selling manuscripts, but they operate in a legal grey area. Chinese law excludes them from publishing books, so they have to buy or rent International Standard Book Numbers from the state companies. Mr Nie said that he would seek to greatly expand this kind of partnership.

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Post tags: GAPP, literature, publishing
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In recent years, the Internet public opinion has threatened corrupted government officials. There is a huge tension between robber and crime fighter, monitoring and reaction against monitoring. The “real name registration” for government officials’ property has been brought out since 1995, but still being resisted. While the “real name registration” of internet users was introduced three years ago, it has already been implemented in some regions. Policies that are favorable towards government officials would be implemented in full speed, while those that are against their interests would encounter a lot of difficulties. Many netizens mock the situation as the new “Two Whatevers“. What has occupied the drunk’s mind is not the alcohol, the “whitelisting” and “real name registration” of the Internet has very suspicious motive. Dont’ they see that the blocking of public opinion would eventually bring people to the street? And the control over citizen access to information would bring about savagery?
　
Cartoonist Kuang Biao has a popular drawing: an ordinary citizen stripped off his clothes until he only has his underpants on says to a well-dressed government official that “now it is your turn”. Transparence is now a trend, if we are to go naked, everyone has to strip their clothes off by making public of their income and property. The Internet is like a paper window full of holes now, whether netizens use their real name or stay anonymous, they are running naked. If we all tell the truth in real name, hopefully we can attain our freedom away from fear.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Internet control, Internet public opinion, real name registration
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Xiao Han, an outspoken intellectual at the Chinese Politics and Law University, wrote a piece which classifies China’s Fifty Cents Party into different types.

Fifty Cents Party is now a well-known satirical term for online commentators employed by the government to guide public opinion. In an article written last week, Xiao further classifies the Party into three types according to income and professional standing.

And from Xiao Han’s post, the first type:

Type 1: New-Rich Fifty Cents

This type of fifty cents usually appears university professors, experts (like legal experts and economists), researchers, media professionals and political commentators. They have good image and usually appear on TV, newspapers and headlines of official websites. Their arguments are full of concepts and seem logical, but with only one aim: to prove that the government actions are correct, legal or great, even though they are often unjust, unfair and inhuman. Their opinions enable them to get rich within the establishment; what they receive far exceed fifty cents per comment. Therefore they are the most expensive type of fifty cents; they are the new-rich. They can further be classified into two types: academic (represented by university professors), or popular (represented by political commentators and media professionals).

Read more about the Fifty Cent Party via CDT.

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Post tags: fifty cent party, Internet culture, Internet stars, Xiao Han
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Internet giant Google must obey Chinese law if it still wishes to continue to operate in the country, said Li Yizhong, Minister of Industry and Information Technology.

“If Google still plans to continue its operations in China, it must abide by Chinese laws and respect the wills of Chinese Internet users,” the minister told reporters on Monday during a plenary session of the annual legislative meeting at the Great Hall of the People.

Also from the PC World:

The remarks came after ministry head Li Yizhong earlier said China was talking with Google to settle the row, according to Reuters, marking the first Chinese government confirmation of talks with the company.

Li was not cited as giving details and his remark could have referred to talks between Google and a different branch of the Chinese government. But Chinese state media on Monday appeared further to play down Li’s statement by citing him declining to comment on whether authorities were still in talks with Google.

“On this matter, Google knows it best itself,” he was quoted as saying in the state-run China Daily.

Google did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

The remarks by the IT vice minister appeared partly aimed at preventing harm from the Google row to U.S. ties. The Google problem is a “technical” one that “has not risen to the level of affecting China-U.S. relations,” Miao was cited as saying.

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Google, Googlecn, Li Yizhong
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Google had never filed a report to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology over the cyber attacks or sought negotiations, Vice Minister Miao Wei was quoted as saying by state news agency Xinhua late on Saturday.

“If Google has had evidence that the attacks came from China, the Chinese government will welcome them to provide the information and will severely punish the offenders according to the law,” Miao said.

“We never support hacking attacks because China also falls victim to hacking attacks,” he said.

Google also never informed the ministry that it was planning to withdraw from China, Miao added, speaking on the sidelines of the annual session of parliament.

See also “China says no request yet from Google for talks” from AFP.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Aurora, Googlecn, hacking
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In many ways, the online forum now matters more to those who rule over this rising superpower than the rubber-stamp parliament that is theoretically the guarantor of the country’s constitution. While the NPC’s 2,987 delegates sat silently through Mr. Wen’s two-hour speech yesterday, and then filed meekly onto government-organized buses that returned them to their hotels, the debate at an “e-congress” hosted on the website of the People’s Daily newspaper was marked by heated words on sensitive topics such as official corruption and whether Dubai-style asset-price bubbles are forming in China’s booming economy.

The Internet has for years been the most democratic place in China, hosting discussions that would never make it past the censors in the government-controlled newspapers and on television stations.

While the first instinct of the country’s rulers has been to try and stamp that out – social-networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter are blocked inside the People’s Republic, as are websites that refer to the bloodshed on Tiananmen Square in 1989 or portray the Dalai Lama in a positive light – leaders such as Mr. Wen and President Hu Jintao have also tried hard to appear responsive to the concerns of “netizens.”

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: e-government, NPC 2010, online public opinion
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AT THE BEIJING headquarters of Mop, Ben Du, the site’s head of interactive communities, told me that the Chinese term for human-flesh search engine has been around since 2001, when it was used to describe a search that was human-powered rather than computer-driven. Mop had a forum called human-flesh search engine, where users could pose questions about entertainment trivia that other users would answer: a type of crowd-sourcing. The kitten-killer case and subsequent hunts changed all that. Some Netizens, including Du, argue that the term continues to mean a cooperative, crowd-sourced investigation. “It’s just Netizens helping each other and sharing information,” he told me. But the Chinese public’s primary understanding of the term is no longer so benign. The popular meaning is now not just a search by humans but also a search for humans, initially performed online but intended to cause real-world consequences. Searches have been directed against all kinds of people, including cheating spouses, corrupt government officials, amateur pornography makers, Chinese citizens who are perceived as unpatriotic, journalists who urge a moderate stance on Tibet and rich people who try to game the Chinese system. Human-flesh searches highlight what people are willing to fight for: the political issues, polarizing events and contested moral standards that are the fault lines of contemporary China.

Versions of the human-flesh search have taken place in other countries. In the United States in 2006, one online search singled out a woman who found a cellphone in a New York City taxi and started to use it as her own, rebuffing requests from the phone’s rightful owner to return it. In South Korea in 2005, Internet users identified and shamed a young woman who was caught on video refusing to clean up after her dog on a Seoul subway car. But China is the only place in the world with a nearly universal recognition (among Internet users) of the concept. I met a film director in China who was about to release a feature film based on a human-flesh-search story and a mystery writer who had just published a novel titled “Human-Flesh Search.”

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: human flesh search engines, Internet culture
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But a report released Tuesday by Atlanta security firm Damballa says the Aurora attack looks like work of amateurs working with unsophisticated tools. That revelation, along with a separate story in the Financial Times that a freelancer wrote the Aurora code, is focusing attention on China’s loose web of cowboy hackers. And SharpWinner — the leader of a coalition including anywhere from 50,000 to 100,000 civilian members and, before he disappeared from public view in 2007, a regular participant in international cyberconflicts, including the 2001 hacker war stretching from China to the White House — is just the beginning.

The Aurora attacks represented an attempt by hackers apparently based in China to steal valuable information from leading U.S. companies. (So far the list of victims includes Adobe Systems, the RAND Corporation, and Dow Chemical, in addition to Google. Over the weekend, a security researcher told Computerworld that Aurora might have penetrated more than 100 firms.) Investigators are still trying to understand where Aurora came from and what it means, but already some surprising clues have emerged. The Financial Times story followed on the heels of a New York Times story reporting that researchers have traced the attacks back to two Chinese universities, one of which has long been a training ground for freelance or “patriotic” hackers. Among the implications of these reports: The U.S. understanding of Chinese hacking is seriously out of date.

Western media accounts typically overlook freelancers in favor of bluster about the Chinese government. Some pair breathy accounts of cyberwar with images dredged up from 1960s People’s Liberation Army propaganda, as if to suggest China has some centrally administered cyberbureau housing an army of professional hackers. Others make improbable or unsubstantiated allegations.

A sidebar to the report includes a translation of “Selections from a hacker’s manifesto and how-to guide written by one of China’s preeminent hackers, Peng Yinan.”

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Aurora, cyber attack, Googlecn, hackers, hacking
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The U.S. Trade Representative’s office is consulting with industry groups about China’s Internet policies, spokeswoman Carol Guthrie said. Two groups with links to Google, the Computer & Communications Industry Association and the First Amendment Coalition, have told the trade office that China’s restrictions on Web access and content discriminate against U.S. Internet companies and online commerce.

“There is a little bit of a Cold War going on here,” said Michael DeGolyer, a professor of government and international studies at Hong Kong Baptist University. “This is a way of putting pressure on China in a way that is going to be popular with many countries.”

Going to the WTO is “well worth consideration,” Nicole Wong, deputy general counsel of Google, operator of the most popular Internet search site, told reporters after a congressional hearing in Washington yesterday. Using censorship “in a manner that favors domestic Internet companies goes against basic international trade principles,” Wong told lawmakers.

At the congressional hearings today. Nicole Wong also said Google was still “weighing its options” on how to proceed in China after laying down an ultimatum over censorship of its Chinese search engine. See a report on the hearings from the LA Times blog.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Googlecn, Internet censorship, U.S trade, U.S. Congress, WTO
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