The deal values Weibo at about $3.3 billion — equivalent to Sina’s entire market value as of Friday.

Alibaba and Sina also agreed to cooperate in improving ways to marry social networking with e-commerce, as microblogging services like Sina’s continue to grow in popularity. Sina Weibo said that last year it had more than 46 million daily active users, an increase of 82 percent from the period a year earlier.

Alibaba also retains the option to increase its stake to 30 percent in the future, according the Financial Times, as one research analyst said that the deal “suggests that Alibaba’s ambitions go beyond just commerce.” The Wall Street Journal reports that the deal also highlights Alibaba’s desire to compete more closely with Tencent Holdings, whose Weixin chat application has emerged to rival Sina Weibo.

Some analysts said that Alibaba’s offer for Weibo was generous, according to Reuters, though they pointed out the potential benefits of the strategic alliance:

“(The stake purchase) is as an endorsement from Alibaba … of the value of Sina’s Weibo platform,” Morningstar analyst Dan Su said.

“This indicates the tremendous value of the data that is present on the Weibo platform that can be mined for a lot of activities, such as ecommerce.”

…

“We believe this deal is very positive for Sina. It instantly gives pricing to Sina Weibo with a valuation of $3.26 billion; the per share base could be $48,” T.H. Capital Research analyst Tian Hou said.

“Sina’s resource consolidation with Alibaba Group, which has a huge dominant position in China’s e-commerce, can escalate Weibo’s development,” she said.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: alibaba, e-commerce, jack ma, mergers and acquisitions, microblogging, sina weibo, social media, tencent, WeChat
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[…] In China, the uprising at Tiananmen Square convinced some members of the Party that the old method of indoctrinating people—which relied on the kind of threats and denunciations we hear from North Korea today—was no longer working in the modern age. Since Soviet-style P.R. had failed them, the Chinese turned to the holy land of public relations—America—and found a new, if unlikely, role model: the late Walter Lippmann, columnist, editor, and advisor to Woodrow Wilson. They were willing to overlook his early anti-Communism in order to embrace his efforts to sway U.S. public opinion to enter the First World War. The Chinese comrades took to quoting Lippmann’s belief in the power of pictures, which, in his words, “magnify emotion while undermining critical thought.”

While the late Kim Jong-il was still threatening to turn Seoul into a “sea of fire,” Chinese propagandists were becoming admiring students of Coca-Cola’s strategy, observing, as one Party textbook put it, that Coke proved that “if you have a good image, any problem can be solved.” To learn the art of modern spin, the Chinese Communist Party studied the masters: a five-day seminar for top propaganda officials made case studies out of Tony Blair’s response to mad-cow disease, and the Bush Administration’s handling of the U.S. media after 9/11.

This revamp has struggled to keep pace with more recent developments such as the growth of weibo and other social media, however. The Financial Times’ Jamil Anderlini writes that Beijing is “losing the virtual propaganda war” in the face of a “wave of mockery and cynicism against government”.

In just the past few years it has become fashionable to be anti-establishment and in private, senior party officials worry they have lost control of the public discourse, which now revolves around Weibo.

The fact that the party used to exercise such a stranglehold over all forms of public expression – from newspapers to television to theatre and fine arts – has probably made the online awakening of petty dissent so much more shocking to the mandarins in Beijing.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: George W. Bush, June 4th, North Korea, propaganda, social media, Soviet Union, Tony Blair, weibo
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Mr. Cook said in the letter that the company deeply reflected on recent “feedback” on its warranty policies and apologized for misunderstandings created by poor communication with consumers.

“We are aware that a lack of communications…led to the perception that Apple is arrogant and doesn’t care or attach enough importance to consumer feedback,” Mr. Cook said, according to the letter. “We express our sincere apologies for any concerns or misunderstandings this gave consumers.”

…

In the letter, Mr. Cook said the company would amend its warranty policies for the iPhone 4 and 4S, streamline its customer feedback, give further training to Apple authorized resellers on warranty policy, and more clearly post its warranty policy on its website. He added that about 90% of consumers had been satisfied with its earlier repair policy.

Cook’s apology comes nearly three weeks after an annual CCTV program about consumer safety and rights criticized Apple for charging Chinese customers a fee to replace the back cover of iPhones, a service offered free of charge in other countries. Apple did not respond at the time, and other state media organizations stepped up their coverage of the issue. A number of celebrities chimed in on social media as well, though netizens suspected that some had done so at the request of CCTV. Then, last week, China’s quality inspection regulator said it would tighten its oversight on the company.

Reuters noted that Cook’s letter “highlights the importance of the market for Apple,” given that revenue from China, Taiwan and Hong Kong grew 60 percent in the first quarter this year. Apple may have played it smart by apologizing, according to observers who spoke with The New York Times:

Bill Bishop, a Beijing technology analyst and publisher of the online newsletter Sinocism China, said it was difficult to know what prompted the investigation by the state media, but he noted that Apple’s explosive growth in China might have outpaced the company’s ability to fully train and prepare its work force and management team to deal with the challenges of the Chinese market.

“Whatever the merits of the case, Apple’s not going to win here,” Mr. Bishop said in an interview Monday. “Apple can’t fight this.”

Anna Han, an associate professor of law at Santa Clara University, said Mr. Cook’s letter of apology was a smart tactic and a “very Chinese thing to do.” She compared it with public apologies that plaintiffs will sometimes ask for from defendants in Chinese courts. That action, combined with the change in its warranty policy, “sort of takes the wind out of the government’s sails,” said Ms. Han, who advises American companies doing business in China.

“It says, ‘We’re accused of something and we’re doing something about it.’ ”

In his weekly China Insider column for The New York Times, which was published before Cook’s letter was issued, Sinocism’s Bill Bishop reiterated his stance that “Apple cannot win this fight”:

Apple looks to have a serious government and public relations problem that will require a much more proactive and forthright response than what the company has done so far. Dribbling out a petulant apology akin to its response to the problems with the 2010 iPhone 4 antenna will not work in China.

The standard response by a foreign company in China facing this kind of onslaught is to make public and private apologies, emphasize its commitment and contributions to China and dispatch senior executives from headquarters to make the rounds of the relevant Chinese government entities. Apple may also have to begin a new service for China, one it may also be able to sell to other foreign enterprises. It’s name? The iKowtow.

Investors have reason to be concerned. Between this brouhaha, the increased competition from Samsung and other high-end Android phones and the crackdown on corruption that is denting the gifting culture, Apple’s results in China for its current quarter may be disappointing, even though this is the first full quarter in which the iPhone 5 has been on sale in China.

The state-run Global Times claimed in a Tuesday editorial that the apology “benefits all sides:”

As the world’s leading high-tech enterprise, Apple can adjust its attitude in a timely manner, showing its professionalism and flexibility. Its reaction is worth respect compared with other American companies. CCTV also deserves our respect and encouragement for daring to criticize a business giant like Apple.

China’s market economy has experienced soaring development, while its rules are not mature enough and laws not so sound. Some international companies have not behaved well in China, and even treated Chinese customers differently to customers in other countries.

The blame should not only lie in foreign companies, but also China’s business environment. Having said that, the supervision by Chinese media is absolutely justified. Making sure the Chinese market is more regulated and Chinese law binding to both Chinese and foreign companies will benefit global investors, including companies such as Apple, which relies more and more on the Chinese market.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Apple, CCTV, consumer electronics, Global Times, social media, state media, Tim Cook
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China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the regulatory body that governs the Internet and telecommunications sectors, is looking at the possibility of users having to pay a small fee to the telcos to use the app, said Miao Wei, head of the ministry, according to Caixin Media.

Experts say charging a fee could affect its popularity.

Tencent, China’s largest online gaming and social networking company, said recently it plans to invest heavily in Weixin to attract more overseas users.

Weixin (known as WeChat in English) has emerged as a serious challenger to microblogging site Sina Weibo for social media supremacy in China, and Tea Leaf Nation’s Rachel Lu and David Wertime wrote Sunday that its rapid growth may also be affecting the fees that China’s three state-owned mobile providers earn on text messages:

The latest statement from the MIIT has gone viral on Sina Weibo, with over 18,000 users sharing the post and over 6,000 weighing in to comment. User @dhljl echoed a widely held sentiment that “the day Weixin charges a fee is the day it is destroyed.” Weibo commenters apparently comprised many Weixin users as well, as they rushed to defend the service with argument, epithet, or humor.

…

The smart money says that Chinese authorities, and the SOEs with whom they remain closely tied, will not follow through with their threat. At best, it would represent a short-term revenue boost to telecom providers, but at the expense of one of China’s most promising and innovative new products. Even that much cannot be guaranteed. The fee may simply drive erstwhile Weixin users into the arms of the inevitable next-generation Weixin copy-cats, who would gladly continue to siphon revenue from the Big Three.

At worst, the move would enrage users and simply shift wealth from everyday Chinese users and an innovative private company to three SOEs. The appearance of an unholy alliance between government and SOEs prompted one Reuters columnist to call the latter a “vampire squid” late last year, and that perception has only intensified with recent negative state media coverage of Apple, Inc. that appears protectionist in nature.

Without knowing Chinese authorities’ true intent, it’s at least likely that they have used recent statements as trial balloons, gauging reaction on Weibo and other social media platforms in order to determine the extent of possible blowback. It would not be the first time that the Chinese Internet, with its relatively free-wheeling commentary, were used as a window into public sentiment by officials who lack more democratic means of pulse-taking.

Forbes contributor Doug Young claims that the three Chinese telcos have “found a potent ally” in the MIIT:

Firstly, I want to give my strong view that the MIIT has no place in helping to resolve this dispute, and that similar mediation by a government regulator would never happen in a developed market like the US or Western Europe. Participation by the MIIT is even more problematic because the agency has a clear bias towards China’s 3 telcos, China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom[/entity]. Anyone who follows the industry will know that officials move freely back and forth between these 3 telcos and the regulator, meaning the MIIT can hardly be a fair middle man in this case. By comparison, Tencent is an entrepreneurial company that probably has few if any former MIIT officials in its ranks.

Miao’s new comments indicate that his agency is siding with the telcos and pressuring Tencent to start charging fees for WeChat, better known by its Chinese name Weixin. Tencent had previously indicated it would let the service remain free and try to monetize the platform by offering value-added services like online games and mobile shopping. If it succumbs to the MIIT’s pressure, look for WeChat’s rapid growth to stall as users defect to other free services. The case could should be an important one to watch, as it could well become a template for the kinds of relationships we’ll see between the Chinese telcos and popular app developers in the future.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: microblogging, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, netizens, online public opinion, social media, telecommunications, tencent, text messaging, Weixin
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Why does it seem like censorship is getting worse?

You are correct. Over the past decade, the rapid development of the Internet has led people to believe there will be more space for speech. But the constraints [on the press] have actually gotten tighter. Fortunately, journalists are resisting. Otherwise, it would be worse. Now, the government’s domestic strategy is to maintain stability. Hu Jintao once said China should learn from North Korea, and sent people to investigate the Eastern European system. Although this trend began in the Jiang Zemin era, the Hu and Wen administration furthered it, regardless of the cost. For example, they bought the most advanced Internet surveillance technology, say, from CISCO. Internet companies like Sina and Tencent have struck a deal with the authorities—or you might call it collusion. In order to secure their business interests, they spend huge amounts monitoring social media. The […] space society has carved out for free expression is being constricted. Moreover, the “stability maintenance” system is making social management crueler. For example, the way law enforcement handles petitioners and property demolition is becoming ever more gangster-like. Although the media tries to fight, it can’t be a counterweight to the giant “stability maintenance” machine.

[…] Do you think new media, such as social media, can further China’s freedom of speech?

New media by itself is a tool. What is more important is how it is used. The government definitely wants to use it to control and steer public opinion. And, indeed, they are spending hugely on it. People in society hope social media will expand the space for expression. It’s not clear how things will turn out. New media might become society’s tool if society uses it more aggressively. For instance, in the current Southern Weekend and Yanhuang Chunqiu cases, new media played an important role. Without new media, it would have been unimaginable for the propaganda department’s work to have been exposed.

See also Yu Jianrong’s recent critique of China’s rigid “stability maintenance” system via CDT.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Chang Ping, cisco, freedom of information, freedom of speech, Hu Jintao, Internet surveillance, journalists, media censorship, news media, petitioners, reform, sina, social media, Southern Weekly, southern weekly protest 2013, stability maintenance, tencent, Xi Jinping, Yanhuang Chunqiu
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“I also turned down their demand for the original version of those already exposed clips, for the safety of the person from Chongqing’s police bureau who fed me the information,” said Zhu, adding that he is not ready to publish the remaining evidence, as time is needed to authenticate them.

The negotiations came after Zhu claimed some local officials involved in the scandal haven’t yet been netted and accused local police of a coverup and destroying evidence.

[…] Si Weijiang, a Shanghai-based lawyer, told the Global Times there is no crime of withholding evidence, and that the process to compel Zhu to be a witness is not clear. The police have no right to forcibly request the evidence, he said.

The videos were recorded as part of an extortion racket targeting a number of Chongqing officials, 11 of whom have now been dismissed as a result. Former Chongqing Party chief Bo Xilai and his police chief Wang Lijun reportedly covered up an earlier investigation into the case. While Zhu says that his source is associated with the Chongqing police, the police now claim that he may have obtained the videos from a member of the gang itself.

The Washington Post’s Wang Juan highlighted Zhu’s use of social media for protection:

Zhu’s lawyer, Li, said he believed the policemen originally intended to detain Zhu when they tried to get into his house Sunday night but were forced to change their plan once Zhu’s online posts for help and calls to Chinese and foreign media drew widespread attention.

[…] Before leaving his home for the police station on Monday, Zhu posted a picture online of a signed legal document. The document named several people he was officially authorizing as his lawyers and representatives and said that any confession or change of lawyers after he is imprisoned would likely be made under duress. Mindful of several recent high-profile cases in which detainees have been cut off entirely from the outside world and with their lawyers switched out for government-friendly ones, Zhu said in the document that the lawyers he named are the only ones he wants, “even if I later write a letter in blood asking for a change of lawyers.”

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Beijing, Bo Xilai, Chongqing, Chongqing corruption, drinking tea, extortion, Global Times, journalistic ethics, lawyers, lei zhengfu, police, Si Weijiang, sina weibo, social media, Wang Lijun, Zhu Ruifeng
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Seasoned at playing the provocateur, Mr Li moved from reporting on sport to writing essays on politics and society soon after the Sichuan earthquake of 2008, which killed more than 80,000 people. His writing on the struggles of common people after the disaster brought his work to a whole new audience of internet-savvy young Chinese. He went on to publish a novel in 2011, “Li Kele Protests Demolitions”. Mr Li’s “Li Kele” was an immediate hit; the descriptions of ordinary people who united together to fight faceless forces and venality propelled the writer into the arms of a more organized new audience: China’s advocates for social reform.

Later that year Mr Li announced that he would be running for public office in Chengdu as an independent. Although his election campaign was never allowed to get under way (candidates for office are carefully screened by the Communist Party and eventually Mr Li failed his background check), he gained a new degree of credibility. Here, it seemed, was a man who would back up his words with actions.

At the book launch in Chengdu, an elderly man named Liu Shahe sat behind Mr Li. Mr Liu is one of the signatories of Charter 08, the document demanding a list political reforms that Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel laureate, was jailed for drafting. Mr Li tweeted Mr Liu’s words to him—“You man of words, just keep writing”—and said the encouragement from the older man had reduced him to tears.

Li has answered questions about the silent signing in Chengdu on Sina Weibo, explaining why he opted to go through with the event, and why a book published through official channels had encountered such opposition. Introducing his partial translation at China Media Project, David Bandurski commented that the disruptions have only made Li’s voice louder.

In Guangzhou, the final leg of Li’s tour, the signing was cancelled at the last minute because the building where it was being hosted was closed for fire safety inspections.

Li Chengpeng apologized to his readers for the Guangzhou cancellation with a tongue-in-cheek post to his Sina Weibo account playing on the title of his book [Everybody in the World Knows]: “Once again I apologize to everyone: Because fire safety inspections are happening at the Tianya Building, outsiders cannot go in, and therefore my book signing for readers is cancelled. I’m accepting this fact, because this place is really in need of a fire safety inspection. Everybody in the world knows, fire safety is really important.”

For all of its hitches and hijinks, Li Chengpeng’s book tour illustrates the limitations of control in the era of social media. Li’s “silent” signing in Chengdu was anything but silent — it was broadcast loudly across the internet. Every leg of his tour became the subject of fevered discussion online, pitting the values of speech and openness against controls that appeared foolish and anachronistic.

See more about and by Li Chengpeng via CDT.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 2008 Sichuan earthquake, books, Charter 08, Chengdu, corruption, David Bandurski, Guangzhou, Li Chengpeng, Liu Xiaobo, local elections, sina weibo, soccer, social media
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First, the inauguration of pro-market president Xi Jinping marks a shift away from the conservation-oriented, government-planned approach of his predecessor toward a model marked by increased privatization, including tax cuts for private enterprises, relaxed political controls, programs to boost domestic consumption and intensified resource exploitation. Xi insists that low-carbon growth will remain a priority and that the ambitious energy-saving targets of the twelfth Five Year Plan, issued in March 2011, will be met. But the targets were written in such a way that many of the details for implementation are open to interpretation. While the government had previously signaled that it would rely on growth in wind and solar to meet its goal (11.4 percent of total energy from renewable sources by 2015), it now looks like the bulk of that will come from nuclear and hydroelectric. Wind and solar are growing, but as a proportion of China’s total energy expenditure, coal is growing much faster.

…

Second, shifts in US energy consumption patterns, as well as changes in estimates of global oil reserves, will affect China’s long-term energy strategy. The International Energy Agency reports that discoveries of shale gas combined with new drilling technologies will make the United States the world’s largest oil producer by 2020. This is expected to make oil reserves in the Middle East and Central Asia newly available to China—which could reverse the shortage-driven incentive structure that promoted growth in China’s renewable energy sector. At the same time, China discovered that it may have the largest shale gas reserves in the world. A Chinese shale gas boom, coupled with increased output from coal and imported oil, could marginalize wind and solar energy. Moreover, with Washington now looking to shale gas rather than wind and solar for new energy resources, prospects for increased US consumption of China’s green exports are diminished.

…

Third, consumption patterns have eroded one of China’s most promising areas for low-carbon development: electric vehicles. A recent McKinsey & Co. report ranked China’s EV market a dismal fifth behind Japan, the United States, France and Germany. Even with generous subsidies for consumers and manufacturers, EV sales are sluggish, accounting for less than 0.02 percent of total vehicles sold (in the United States, it’s 0.09 percent). Demand is growing for gas-guzzling SUVs as well as luxury and medium-weight vehicles, especially foreign models, with imports of foreign-manufactured cars nearly doubling in 2010. The top-selling car in 2011 was the Buick Excelle, followed by the Volkswagen Lavida and the Chevrolet Cruze. China’s domestic vehicle manufacturers are drastically scaling back their small, fuel-efficient models and EV fleets and attempting to regroup around the new high-carbon model. In fact, China’s EV manufacturers are turning away from personal cars altogether and focusing on hybrid and electric city buses and taxi cabs. The major buyers of EVs are local governments and large state-owned corporations, not individuals.

The most glaring sign of resilience in China’s high carbon growth model, air pollution, hit record levels in Beijing last week. But the Economist reports that other cities in China are wrapped in smog too:

China’s crisis in air quality is indeed a national one. This month dozens of other cities, from Shandong province in the east to Guizhou in the south-west, recorded pollution spikes. Experts attribute this to an exceptionally cold winter that has caused more burning of coal and other fuels than usual, to temperature inversions over some places, and to unfortunate wind patterns in others.

…

Now officials must contend with the political impact of bad air. China’s government has long staked its legitimacy on being able to generate improved standards of living, and people have grown used to complaining about things they do not like. Adding chronically poisoned air to the mix could prove volatile, some think.

Dai Qing, a veteran environmental activist, says that the angry reaction to this month’s extreme pollution shows that the issue now overshadows other pressing problems such as corruption and infringements on people’s liberties. “For years, we environmentalists have been telling the authorities that GDP growth at any cost is a mistake,” she says.

The pollution has even reached other countries, according to researchers in the United States and Japan. Writing from Los Angeles, where he’s seen his share of bad smog in the past, UC Irvine’s Jeffrey Wasserstrom agrees that the Chinese Communist Party may be choking:

But public-health scares and heavy smog in Beijing and others places—believe it or not, at times other cities have even darker skies than the capital—are leaving some people skeptical about whether things are really getting better simply because they can now buy things at a mall. Is life really improving, they ask each other in private conversations, in online forums, and at protest rallies, if doing ordinary things like drinking milk and playing outside can cause your child to get sick? How can we trust a government, they wonder, that tries to hide the truth about obvious dangers, by censoring reports of doctored food and drink and until very recently used the word fog to describe the noxious substance that made it hard to see even nearby skyscrapers?

In most places, a smog crisis is an environmental danger and, on some days, a public health emergency. In China, the grey skies overhead strike at the very legitimacy of the country’s ruling party. At its worst, Los Angeles never had anything that could compare to that.

Still, writes NPR’s Louisa Lim, transparency has brought more scrutiny to the China’s “airpocalypse” ever since the government started releasing hourly PM2.5 readings this year. And The Atlantic’s James Fallows points out that the smog has seen a lot of recent coverage in the Chinese press, which used to downplay the issue.

Disputing other explanations, such as China’s experience with SARS and the perception of Xi Jinping as a reformer, The Atlantic’s Matt Shiavenza explores what may have really caused the unexpected silver lining:

Why, then, would the Chinese government allow such candor on the pollution question? Social media plays a role. Prominent Beijing real estate developer Pan Shiyi regularly tweets information about pollution to his several million followers on Sina’s Weibo, and the flurry of similar comments by more ordinary users has brought the pollution issue into the open. At a basic level, the government understands that once an issue hits critical mass, there’s little point in perpetuating the myth any further.

Also, unlike other issues which threaten the Chinese government’s hold on power, environmental concerns do not discriminate by class or income level. While many of Beijing’s citizens may not pay attention to esoteric political issues, the Communist Party surely believes that pollution has the potential to unite a large number of people against its governance. That, more than anything else, may explain why the government has approached this issue with unusual openness.

Still, the pitfalls of China’s rapid economic growth are felt beyond the skies. Writing for The Council on Foreign Relations, Elizabeth Economy reminds China watchers that “the country’s water pollution is easily as alarming:”

[...] According to one 2011 report, in 2010, “up to 40 percent of China’s rivers were seriously polluted” and “20 percent were so polluted their water quality was rated too toxic even to come into contact with.” Part of the explanation may rest in the “estimated 10,000 petrochemical plants along the Yangtze and 4000 along the Yellow rivers.” (And the Yellow and Yangtze are not even the most polluted of China’s seven major rivers.) On top of whatever polluted wastewater might be leaching or simply dumped into China’s rivers from these factories, the Ministry of Supervision reports that there are almost 1,700 water pollution accidents annually. The total cost in terms of human life: 60,000 premature deaths annually.

While the macro picture is concerning, even more worrying is that individual Chinese don’t know whether their water is safe to drink or not. A Chinese newspaper, the Southern Weekly, recently featured an interview with a married couple, both of whom are water experts in Beijing (available in English here). They stated that they hadn’t drunk from the tap in twenty years, and have watched the water quality deteriorate significantly over just the past few years, even while state officials claim that more than 80 percent of water leaving treatment facilities met government standards in 2011.

…

In the 1950s, China, like other countries, neither understood well nor had the capacity to deal effectively with the environmental and health challenges its rapid development was creating. Today, however, China has both the knowledge and the capability. In the midst of the recent air pollution crisis, Premier-elect Li Keqiang said it would take time to address the air pollution problem: “There has been a long-term buildup to this problem, and the resolution will require a long-term process. But we must act.” In the meantime, the Chinese people can only wear their masks, buy their bottled water, and hope they are not in this year’s batch of pollution-related casualties.

Listen also as Tom Gjelten of NPR discusses the cost of growth in China, and read more about pollution in China at CDT.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: air pollution, CCP, CCP legitimacy, economic growth, greenhouse gas emissions, pollution, river pollution, social media, transparency, water pollution
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Right now, the Chinese name of the outspoken magazine caught up in a tense struggle of willswith the government – Southern Weekend in English, 南方周末 (nan fang zhou mo) in Chinese – is censored in Chinese on WeChat. But it’s not just restricted to users in China (where the app is called Weixin), and typing that name in the Chinese language is now blocked globally. The restriction notice says (pictured):

The message “南方周末” you sent contains restricted words. Please check it again.

We’ve tested it out going from users in China to Thailand (blocked), Thailand to China (blocked), and even Thailand to Singapore (blocked); the prohibited words are not sent at all. The name of the magazine can be sent in English.

TechInAsia contacted Tencent for a comment, and a newer post quotes the company writing off the restricted characters as a “technical glitch”. The post goes on to offer “incriminating evidence” that the restrictions were more deliberate:

Referring to the case as a “glitch”, the full statement given to us reads:

A small number of WeChat international users were not able to send certain messages due to a technical glitch this Thursday. Immediate actions have been taken to rectify it. We apologize for any inconvenience it has caused to our users. We will continue to improve the product features and technological support to provide better user experience.

Indeed, testing out the offending phrase today, it does now work within WeChat.

[...]But what about that warning that many saw? It’s as clear as day in many screenshots. “The message “南方周末” you sent contains restricted words. Please check it again.”

Yes: Restricted words. That’s no error message. It’s very far from being: Ooops, our servers are a bit busy right now, please try again a few minutes later.[...]

TechInAsia has previously reported on Tencent’s (largely successful) efforts to go global with their popular new product. A post from PandoDaily.com describes the new opportunities to globalize offered by the mobile market, and suggests that internationalizing the self-censorship required for a media company to sustain in China would impede Tencent’s quest for global presence:

In the past, Chinese social networks have only had to worry about censorship in regards to users inside the country – because, proportionately speaking, so few users of China’s Internet properties access the sites from overseas – but WeChat, which has the potential to be more international, presents a new challenge.

The advent of the mobile age has opened up the possibility for China to compete on a global stage and develop Internet products in parallel with the rest of the world. In particular, many entrepreneurs, investors, and businesses within China consider themselves to have an advantage over their Western counterparts when it comes to expanding into developing countries, such as India, Brazil, and those in Southeast Asia.

[...]Until now, WeChat has been allowed to spread beyond China without having to deal with a big censorship blowup. Now it’s being put to the ultimate test. For users in China, it’s business as usual. For everyone else, it’s time to reassess.

For more on Tencent and WeChat, see “WeChat, a Threat to All?” Also see CDT’s ongoing coverage of censorship, strike and lingering concern surrounding the notoriously candid Southern Weekly (also known as Southern Weekend) – the newspaper whose name was reportedly restricted for international WeChat users.

© josh rudolph for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: censorship, Internet companies, social media, Southern Weekly, tencent, WeChat, Weixin
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I’m honestly not entirely sure how to reconcile these two trends: on the one hand, expressions of approval for independent public and media oversight of officials, and on the other, the recent push to increase the power of Chinese censors, who are being given new tools to control online content while foreign media outlets are being punished for critical stories about the wealth of Chinese leaders – financial firms have reportedly been told not to buy Bloomberg terminals, while the New York Times is facing difficulty renewing visas for its staff (the foreign ministry is suggesting that Buckley may eventually receive his new visa, but the case is clearly not merely a bureaucratic delay).

But for the time being, it seems very clear that Xi Jinping is happy to allow social media to continue exposing corrupt officials.  His pro-reform speeches and signals have encouraged the present mini-glasnost – which includes a significant uptick in the number of allegations of corruption emerging on Weibo, and prominent scholars petitioning for political reform for the first time since Charter 08.  Xi has been experimenting with Weibo himself, allowing state media to live-tweet a recent routine visit to some villages in Hebei, with great success.  He, or someone close to him, may even be maintaining a personal account.  If Xi can keep this trick going, he stands to become an exceptionally powerful president.  Online discontent isone of the primal fears of the Communist Party.  If Xi’s brand can defuse it, or even successfully exploit it, it will be very hard indeed for stability-minded officials to oppose his policies.

Nor does the anti-corruption drive necessarily run counter to the policy goals of China’s leaders – on the contrary, reducing corruption among “grassroots-level officials” has been a longstanding aim of the Hu administration – one which even Hu seems to recognize that he has not achieved.  The problem, most likely, is that online discussion about local corruption threatens to raise questions about the legitimacy of the entire party.  It makes sense, then, to think that Chinese leaders might be willing to experiment with using social media to get a handle on local corruption, provided they have the tools to stop such hunts from going beyond their control.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: corruption, Internet censorship, microblogs, online public opinion, social media, Xi Jinping
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According to Southern Weekly [zh], there are around 16,000 registered urban planners in China, theoretically responsible for everything from the layout of the city to the planning of a small road. However, according to a recent interview in Southern Weekly, most city planners admit that their work in China is often compromised. One urban planner stated:

“Government leaders usually have a strong opinion about the projects, although sometimes their ideas are not scientific. For example, leaders like wide roads and large squares.”

[...] Since 2011, more and more city planners have found a new platform to communicate with the public by using Weibo, which helped urban planning become more transparent and involving.

According to Southern Weekly, 80 percent of city planners use Weibo. They are the most critical group towards urban planning in China. For Ma Xiangming, chief engineer of Urban and Rural Planning Institute in Guangdong Province, his tweet changed the fate of the old buildings in Guangdong. In 2011, Ma tweeted about the demolition of old buildings on a street in Guangdong. Little did he realize that his post was soon retweeted thousands of times before it elevated into a public debate. Media[zh] also reported on it. Within 7 days, the city planning bureau decided to keep the old building due to pressure from the public.

See more on urban planning via CDT.

© Mengyu Dong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: cities, online public opinion, public opinion, social media, urban planning, weibo
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WeChat is similar to the popular US-based mobile messaging serviceWhatsApp, but it does more. An amalgamation of social media tools akin to Twitter, Facebook and Skype, it comes in eight languages including English, Arabic and Russian.

[...] Hu Jia, a human rights activist jailed for three years on a charge of sedition, suspects that voicemail messages to his friends had been listened to by guobao officials (internal security bureau).

“I took a chance and assumed WeChat was relatively safe,” he said. “It’s a new product and not developed by China Mobile or China Unicom, [two of China's main telecoms companies], which have been monitoring my calls and text messages for over 10 years. But the guobao surprised me with their ability to repeat my words or voice messages verbatim, though I’m sure I only sent them to some friends through WeChat.”

[...] Adam Segal, a Council on Foreign Relations cyber-security expert, said that WeChat was not alone in offering potential security loopholes. “Information technology services and software are all fundamentally insecure,” he said. “WeChat shouldn’t be singled out in this instance. Many technologies have some type of vulnerability, and a directed adversary can figure out vulnerabilities to exploit and gather intelligence.”

At Tech in Asia, Charles Custer discussed the other side of the coin:

That WeChat, like all domestic social media, poses a security risk to dissidents should not come as a surprise. Nor is it particularly surprising that countries like Taiwan are concerned about the potential security implications of the service. But interestingly, Chinese authorities see the service as something of a threat as well. On Sunday evening, state-run broadcaster CCTV ran a feature piece about the dangers of WeChat, focusing primarily on how its anonymity and location-reporting features can give criminals an easy in. For example, the report told the story of Xu Xiaohong, a single woman who was ultimately ambushed and murdered when a man she met on WeChat attempted to rob her. He knew where she was, and when she was going to be there, because of WeChat.

[...] Of course, any chat tool can be used to perpetrate fraud, robbery, and other crimes, and many Chinese commenters have already pointed out that the CCTV seems to be unnecessarily blaming WeChat for the faults of its users. And it’s worth mentioning that the app does have a warning message reminding users not to trust strangers when they first engage its find-users-in-my-vicinity feature. Still, though, it’s clear the location reporting has made a lot of people nervous. Expectations of privacy in China can be lower than they are in some Western countries (if you’ll forgive the sweeping generalization), so it is interesting to see that WeChat’s location-reporting unnerves both China’s dissidents and its police. The concerns of those groups don’t seem to have had much effect on regular users, though, who are still signing up at an impressive clip.

© Mengyu Dong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Hu Jia, Internet privacy, Internet technology, social media, state security, tencent
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Fortunately for Ren, he had thousands of impassioned web users in his corner, who seemed aware that Ren’s case would have repercussions for their own ability to use social media. In October, thousands tweeted their support for Ren and outrage at his treatment. What most stirred online ire was not simply Ren’s imprisonment., but the evidence against him. When Ren’s case was initially tried, authorities introduced as evidence a T-Shirt, found in Ren’s home at the time of his arrest, with the words “Freedom or Death” printed in Chinese.

[…] Ren also has his lawyer to thank. Pu Zhiqiang (@哈儿浦志强有戏) is well known for taking cases involving press freedom, and Pu was aggressive not only in bringing Ren’s case to trial, but in using social media to enlist public sympathy. Pu recently told the Global Times, “Ren Jianyu’s case has a certain amount of resonance and social influence. Our nation’s laws protect the right to free speech, but Ren was imprisoned for a speech crime. His receiving ‘re-education through labor’ was extremely unreasonable.”

Weighing against encouraging signs from Chongqing, however, is news from Beijing of a 36-year-old fund manager detained on the eve of the 18th Party Congress for “spreading false and terrible information”. Zhai Xiaobing, or @stariver, posted a satirical tweet based on the Final Destination series of horror films on November 5th. He has not yet been released. With translation by Yaxue Cao at Seeing Red in China:

#剧透推 #慎入 死神来了6即将上映。大会堂突然倒塌，正在开会的2000多人只有7人幸免，事后却又一一离奇死亡。是上帝的游戏，还是死神的怒火，神秘数字18怎样开启地狱之门？11月8日全球院线震撼登场！

— 星河舰队 (@Stariver) November 5, 2012

.#SpoilerTweet #Enter-at-your-own-peril “Final Destination 6” has arrived. In which the Great Hall of the People collapses all of a sudden. All 2,000+ people meeting there died except for 7 of them. But afterwards, the seven die one after another in bizarre ways. Is it a game of God, or the wrath of Death? How will 18, the mysterious number, unlock the gate of Hell? Premieres globally on November the 8th to bring you an earthshaking experience!

Twitter is sometimes seen as a relatively safe haven compared with domestic services like Sina Weibo, but as past cases show, the service is actively monitored. In 2010, user @wangyi09 was sentenced to a year of re-education through labour for tweeting the five characters, “Go, angry youth!”, jokingly encouraging anti-Japanese protesters.

A petition has been set up to call for Zhai’s release, with signatories so far including Bei Feng, Hu Jia, Mo Zhixu, and Ai Weiwei. The petition letter concludes, from Oiwan Lam’s translation at Global Voices Advocacy:

We hope the the Beijing police shows a sense of humor and do not create a big incident out of a small issue. In particular, do not ruin the image of the new leadership soon after the 18th Party Congress. Such groundless prosecution against citizen who exercise their freedom of expression is disgraceful. We urge the immediate release of Twitter user @stariver.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 18th party congress, Ai Weiwei, anti-Japan protests, Beijing, Bo Xilai, Chongqing, Internet censorship, netizens, pu zhiqiang, re-education through labor, sina weibo, social media, Twitter, wang yi
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While [Sina] Weibo can on occasion help incite real change, even on the streets, the sheer number of injustices that flash almost daily across Chinese Web users’ respective feeds means that citizens, armed with social media alone, simply do not have the power to combat even a small portion of them. As a result, some measure of ennui and resignation has begun to set in. In late October, online personality Zuoye Ben (@作业本), a pseudonymous Weibo user known for original and often critical views, gave voice to a growing feeling of fatigue among social media users. In a post commemorating three years of using the Weibo service, Zuoye Ben concluded that “Weibo has not changed China, it has just changed you and me: I have gradually got used to being cold and indifferent, just like you have slowly got tired of Weibo.” These words have been re-posted over [30,000] times and have garnered over [10,000] comments.

[…] Taken alone, Weibo is inadequate as a tool for delivering social justice because the service is not an open forum for comment — the Chinese government maintains firm control over how wide this window of free discussion is allowed to open. When debate grows too ferocious, authorities have the power to choke it off, banning keyword terms and strategically disabling functions to tamp down discussion. […]

As a result the service finds itself in a position similar to that of the country’s legal system. In theory, Weibo is a platform for citizens to give feedback and raise complaints, but ultimately the Party has the final say on whether anyone can open their mouth or not. When authorities do on occasion respond to pressure online, they do so unilaterally after the fact; web users never gain the satisfying sense they have engaged in a true dialogue with their government, or have enjoyed the benefit of due process.

Underlining the point, TLN notes elsewhere that during the 18th Party Congress that concluded this week, Zuoyeben’s posting was limited to pictures of food.

Online communications can be not only ineffective but actively harmful. In July, police warned that various criminals had exploited location data optionally broadcast by Tencent’s popular Weixin messaging service, known in English as WeChat and increasingly seen as a key rival to Sina Weibo. In other cases, security forces are the ones turning service against user. At the South China Morning Post, John Kennedy discussed activist Hu Jia’s suspicions about Weixin’s use as a surveillance tool:

Citing things he was told after being sentenced to prison for “inciting subversion of state power” in 2008 as well as numerous experiences resembling the ones above, Hu has come to the conclusion that:

The Guobao [Domestic Security Department] have become more efficient in their jobs by eliminating the need for cooperation from China Mobile or Tencent in many surveillance tasks. What they have now is direct backdoor access to China Mobile and Tencent systems. The Guobao are now able, in real-time, to both eavesdrop on or block your SMSs or WeChat from their technical investigation department offices.

[…] One QQ.com department head based in Beijing who was willing to speak off the record would only say:

As far as I understand, there is no full backdoor surveillance access given to the PSB. When QQ [was still Tencent's flagship product], there was a department set up in Tencent’s office in Shenzhen tasked with dealing with PSB inquiries and providing assistance with cases. With regard to surveillance of dissidents, if the PSB provided an administrative order Tencent would provide the requested information…Each separate case required [that the PSB provide] a new order.

See more on corporate cooperation in online controls via CDT.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 18th party congress, Hu Jia, legal system, QQ, sina weibo, social media, surveillance, tencent, weibo
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They said the probe into China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) chairman Jiang Jiemin focused on a large sum of money – several tens of millions of yuan – that was transferred from CNPC to the families of two women injured in the single-vehicle accident.

The episode raises doubts about corporate governance practices at CNPC, the giant state-owned energy company. Sources said the party’s top disciplinary officials were shocked by the ease with which such a large sum of money could be transferred out of a giant state firm without any accountability or proper documentation.

It also raises questions about the oversight capability of government regulators including the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, led by Wang Yong. At a group discussion at the party’s 18th congress last week among delegates from central government-administered companies and agencies, Jiang sat next to Wang in the front row.

Sources said Jiang had been trying to help Ling [Jihua], then head of the powerful General Office of the party’s Central Committee, pay compensation to the families of the other victims and prevent details of the car crash from leaking out to the public.

The crash occurred in March and attracted a considerable amount of attention in Chinese social media, though an official report from the Global Times did not mention the name of the driver. Key details did not emerge until September, when Ling Jihua was removed from his post atop the General Office of the Communist Party’s Central Committee. The Wall Street Journal reported on the government’s response to the crash last month, calling out the quiet way in which officials suppressed information about the incident and spared Ling Jihua public embarrassment over his son’s lifestyle and his family’s wealth.

The involvement of CNPC and any payments made to the victims’ families, however, is new information. Sources also told the South China Morning Post that the investigation into Jiang may partly explain his disappearance from public view from late July onwards, which CNPC downplayed in a September statement. From The Financial Times:

Mao Zefeng, a PetroChina spokesman, told the Financial Times that Mr Jiang “presides over PetroChina and CNPC as usual”.

Xinhua, the state-run news agency, said Mr Jiang was ill, having been admitted to hospital in July, and was being treated.

However, citing CNPC, the agency added that he did not suffer from “cancer or any other serious illness”.

The Daily Mail also published several photos from the crash scene which had appeared on Chinese social media.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: bribery, CCP, China National Petroleum Corp, corruption, Jiang Jiemin, Ling Jihua, social media
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