We just undocked a spaceship from our Space Station. The Progress robot ship is loaded with trash, to burn up like a meteorite in 3.5 hrs.

— Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) February 9, 2013

Happy Chinese New Year! May it be filled with joy and success. To celebrate, we sent a Progress spaceship to burn like fireworks in the sky.

— Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) February 9, 2013

Morning clouds cast self-important shadows off the coast of China. twitter.com/Cmdr_Hadfield/…

— Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) February 9, 2013

Hangzhou, China. As one of the few space-faring nations, I salute China, her astronauts, and their accomplishments. twitter.com/Cmdr_Hadfield/…

— Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) February 9, 2013

Night city in northern China. What could be in the orange box at the top? Can anyone figure it out? twitter.com/Cmdr_Hadfield/…

— Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) February 9, 2013

Shanghai, China. Home to more than 23 million people. Vibrant, cosmopolitan port at the mouth of the Yangtze River. twitter.com/Cmdr_Hadfield/…

— Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) February 9, 2013

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: astronauts, chinese new year, Hangzhou, Shanghai, space, space program, space station, space technology, Twitter
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The most frequently asked question by China’s netizens is: why is Xinhua allowed to use Twitter, but not us?

“I am going to report this to the police: Xinhua is obviously breaching our internet laws,” said a netizen on Sina Weibo, China’s micro-blogging service.

“Xinhua has proved itself a traitor who has chosen an evil path,” said another Weibo user in an ironic tone, referring to a speech given by President Hu Jintao.

James Griffiths at the Shanghaiist points out that The Global Times and China Daily also have Twitter handles, and The Atlantic’s Dashiell Bennett has more on Xinhua’s account:

Xinhua’s account is written in English and has posted about 3,000 times, but is not following any other accounts and has ever @ replied to anyone. (They’ve also dished out 10 rare retweets.) There are two older, now defunct accounts that may or may not have been “official.” They reportedly once followed more than 400 people as recently as October, but slowly unfollowed everyone over the last several weeks. The fact that anyone living in China is not allowed to read it, almost make @XHNews the purest form of propaganda: It talks to no one who knows better and listens to no one who talks back.

Beijing Cream’s Anthony Tao thought @XHNews was a joke the first time he saw it, and he writes that “it did itself no favors” with posts in all-caps and screenshots of English articles:

But no, rest assured, @XHNews is not a spoof account. We’d love to meet the person who operates it (probably someone very senior on the copydesk). Short of that, we’ll just say that the feed is actually very clean, free of typos, sometimes rather informative. Xinhua currently has 6,611 followers while following no one back, which is probably a good thing — we’d hate to see it pull a China Daily.

However, it does seem slightly ironic for a government agency to be using Twitter when none of its people, technically, are allowed to. Twitter has been blocked by the Great Firewall since July 2009, and with recent upgrades to said firewall, several VPN services have been crippled as well. (Note to everyone: use Witopia; it still works.)

See also an interview from PRI’s The World with Weiliang Nie, a senior producer with the BBC’s China Service, about the issue.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Great Firewall, Internet, online public opinion, Twitter, Xinhua
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In this contradiction—between Singles Day and illegal tweets, between needing the middle class to sustain the Party’s rule, and punishing the middle class for passing jokes around—lies the Communist Party’s essential problem. For years, the Party, and many observers abroad, believed that the middle class would be the Party’s greatest ally, that it had gained so much during the boom years that it would never risk the trappings of prosperity for fuzzy notions of political freedom. It was an idea that reached all the way back to the ancient sage Mencius, who declared that “Those who have property are also inclined to preserve social stability.” In modern China, that turned into the belief that the middle class would become the xiaofei qianwei, zhengzhi houwei: “the consumer avant-garde and political rear guard.”

[…] The arrest of Zhai Xiaobing, which has inspired a petition calling for his release, stirred a particular kind of dread among China’s self-made liberals because it reached into the privileged domain beyond the Great Firewall, the electronic dinner table where members of China’s new knowledge class were supposed to be able to joke freely, as long as they kept shopping. Day by day, it seems, the Party is confronting the fact that prosperity alone—the politics of goods—is no match for the politics of information.

Yasheng Huang questioned the nature of the link between stability and prosperity in a recent essay at Foreign Policy, featured on CDT earlier this week. “Some analysts believe that the Chinese people tolerate corruption in exchange for fast growth,” he wrote. “This is a bit like saying that New Yorkers tolerated Hurricane Sandy. Fast growth maintains a façade of stability not because it has secured tacit complicity from the Chinese people, but because it has funded the instruments of repression.”

The petition for @stariver can be found here.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 18th party congress, CCP, consumer class, consumerism, Evan Osnos, Great Firewall, mencius, middle class, singles day, social stability, stability, Twitter, Yasheng Huang
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Zhai Xiaobing with Ai Weiwei.

Even beyond China’s Great Firewall, Twitter is not always a safe haven for the country’s more outspoken critics. Just before the 18th Party Congress began, Zhai Xiaobing, a fund manager in Beijing, was arrested for a tweet deemed to “spread false terrorist information” (涉嫌散布虚假恐怖信息):

#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! (translated by Yaxue Cao)

Zhai has not been released since his November 7 detention. An online petition [zh] for his release, signed by prominent Chinese activists such as Ai Weiwei and Hu Jia, has collected 419 signatures as of this posting. “We hope the the Beijing police shows a sense of humor and do not create a big incident out of a small issue,” writes petition author Bei Feng (Wen Yunchao). “In particular, do not ruin the image of the new leadership soon after the 18th Party Congress.” Zhai’s is not the first Twitter-related arrest in China.

Zhai, whose Twitter handle is @Stariver, studied ancient (pre-Qin) literature at Peking University, and formerly worked in the media. His acerbic tweets make no excuses for the violence and corruption in China, while images of armed police in Lhasa streets and protests in Hong Kong against patriotic education mingle with cat and food photos. Yaxue Cao of Seeing Red in China writes, “In Twitter’s Chinese community, @Stariver is known for his cool and biting comments about current events in China that cut the froth and burst false ‘hopes.’ He is also known for the depth of his knowledge in classics.”

CDT Chinese has collected some of Zhai’s more urgent tweets, translated here by Mengyu Dong:

如果不是为了生物多样性的考虑，我相信上帝不会造出“中国人民的老朋友”这种畜牲。

— 星河舰队 (@Stariver) October 16, 2012

Stariver: If not in consideration of biodiversity, I believe God wouldn’t have created those beasts, the “old friends of the Chinese people.”

各级网警和小秘书团结协作，众志成城，投身救灾抢险工作，将受灾死亡人数牢牢控制在37人，用青春热血谱写了一曲忠诚的赞歌。 — 星河舰队 (@Stariver) July 25, 2012

Stariver: All levels of Internet policemen and little secretaries coordinated together, used their united will as strength and devoted to disaster relief work. They kept the number of victims to 37, and composed a faithful song of praise with their youth and ardor.

Noticing that the death toll was reported at 37 for multiple incidents across China this summer, netizens call this the “Law of 37” (死亡37定律). Zhai wrote this tweet soon after the Beijing flood.

人民日报的任务是把中国打扮成白富美，全球都不如它牛逼；环球时报的任务是把中国打扮成迫害狂，全球都是针对中国的阴谋陷害；新闻联播的任务是把中国打扮成班干部，德智体美劳全面发展，还能一帮一一对红。 — 星河舰队 (@Stariver) July 26, 2012

Stariver: The task of the People’s Daily is to dress up China as “white, rich, and beautiful,” the f**king best in the world; the task of the Global Times is to dress up China as a paranoid, as if the whole world is scheming against it; the task of Xinwen Lianbo is to dress up China as a class leader who is moral, intelligent, physically fit, tasteful and socially responsible, and can pair up with partners and help each other to develop.

文革暴力，是匪帮组织暴力对于底层民众的裹挟，是极端程序邪恶和实质邪恶对普遍人性黑暗面的强力激发，对此不了解，就是历史愚昧；民间暴力，是对匪帮利益勒索和国家机器暴力镇压的反抗，是在程序正义无可诉求之下的最后防线，对此的否定，就是现实无耻。 — 星河舰队 (@Stariver) July 28, 2012

Stariver: The violence of the Cultural Revolution was the coercion of the lowest in society by organized gangs, the brutal excitation of humanity’s dark side by essential and programmatic evil. Whoever does not understand this is ignorant of history. The violence among the people is revolt against extortion by gangs and the brutal oppression of the state apparatus, the final line of defense in a system where it is impossible to appeal for justice. Whoever denies this is truly shameless.

官场小说的流行源于受众对中国政治“宫廷模式”神秘感的追求，对政治黑帮斗争之“阴谋艺术”和官商经济权力寻租的崇拜。它唯一想要证明的，就是官场规则的合理性。

— 星河舰队 (@Stariver) June 19, 2012

Stariver: The popularity of novels about official circles originates from reader’s pursuit of the mystique of China’s “court” politics, the worship of the “art of conspiracy” in struggles among political gangs, as well as the worship of rent-seeking among politician and businessmen. The only thing it intends to prove is the rationality of officialdom’s rules.

RT @stariver要是有人一边端着碗吃屎，一边埋怨桌子没擦干净，你一定认为他是个傻逼。要是一个人一边无视当局的暴力，一边对民间行为表现出理中客的洁癖，他就是个吃屎还埋怨桌子不干净的傻逼。

— 那谁谁 (@na_sheishei) July 9, 2012

Stariver: If someone eats from a bowl of crap he is clutching, yet at the same time complains that the table is not clean, you’ll definitely figure him for a loon. If someone ignores the atrocity of state power, yet shows pathological concern for the cleanliness of the people’s conduct, then he is the loon who eats crap and complains about the dirtiness of the table.

Stariver: 9.18子曰：“吾未见好德如好色者也。”～孔丘局长说：我就没见过在小姐面前还能坚持原则的。#论语今译#   Stariver: (9.18) Confucius said: “I have not seen one who loves virtue as much as he loves beauty.” ~ Bureau Director Confucius said: I have not seen someone who can uphold his principles in the presence of a hooker. #ModernAnalects#

重庆打黑成果表明，在任何地方以任何方式惩治任何党员干部，都可以得到人民群众的拥护。 — 星河舰队 (@Stariver) March 19, 2012

Stariver: The outcome of the “beat black” in Chongqing shows that people support any punishment of any cadre, regardless of when, where, or how. –Chinese re-tweet robot

牛 RT @stariver: 烈士求民主，今世壮心犹可励；英杰为自由，后生远志必行之。 — Jian Alan Huang (@hnjhj) April 8, 2012

Stariver: The martyr pursues democracy; those ambitious among us today will still find him encouraging. The hero seeks liberty; those idealists of tomorrow must pursue it.

每次倒烟灰的时候，我都觉得是在倒自己的骨灰。

— 星河舰队 (@Stariver) December 24, 2011

Stariver: Every time I throw away cigarette ashes, it feels like I’m dumping the ashes of my own bones.

First tweet translated by Yaxue Cao. Excerpts from petition translated by Oiwan Lam of Global Voices.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 18th party congress, Ai Weiwei, beat black, Bei Feng, censorship, Chongqing, Confucius, Cultural Revolution, Global Times, Hu Jia, Internet censorship, Peking University, people's daily, Twitter, Wen Yunchao, Xinwen Lianbo
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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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Starting earlier this year, Web police units directed the companies, which included joint ventures involving American corporations, to buy and install hardware to log the traffic of hundreds or thousands of computers, block selected Web sites, and connect with local police servers, according to industry executives and official directives obtained by The New York Times. Companies faced the threat of fines and suspended Internet service if they did not comply by prescribed deadlines.

The initiative was one in a range of shadowy tactics authorities deployed in the months leading up to the 18th Party Congress, which is scheduled to end on Wednesday, in an escalating campaign against information deemed threatening to party rule. The effort, while spottily executed, was alarming enough to spur one foreign industry association to lodge a complaint with the government. Several foreign companies quietly resisted the orders, which posed risks to communications and trade secrets that they take pains to secure.

…

This past summer, the Internet police in the provinces of Hebei and Shandong ordered three American companies to install the monitoring systems at local joint ventures, according to a spokesman for the Quality Brands Protection Committee, a foreign industry group representing more than 200 major corporations operating in China.

Elsewhere, American, Japanese and Korean companies received similar orders, executives said. They requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak for their companies and feared compromising local business relationships.

The report adds color to the connection issues experienced by many within China last week, where netizens reportedly lost access to all Google services on Friday and Twitter warned users that efforts had been made to compromise their accounts. The Wall Street Journal noted that the Google outage highlighted the dangers Beijing’s information war poses to global businesses operating in China:

Beijing risks a backlash if it were to block Google outright on a long-term basis, said Mr. Wolf, of Wolf Group Asia. Many corporate users rely on Gmail and other Google services, and a blockage could make China a less-attractive place to do business. In addition, disruptions are increasingly unappealing to businesses that rely on cloud services, which are offered by Google and others and in which data are stored remotely.

“If China insists in the medium and long term of creating another Great Firewall between the China cloud and the rest of the world, China will be an increasingly untenable place to do business,” Mr. Wolf said.

Such a move also could put Beijing in violation of its free-trade commitment under the World Trade Organization, which China joined in 2001. China has said it complies with WTO requirements.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: censorship, cybersecurity, Google, Great Firewall, information control, online public opinion, Twitter
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All Google services, including its search engine, Gmail and Maps, were inaccessible in China on Friday night and into Saturday, the company confirmed. The block comes as the 18th Communist Party Congress, the once-in-a-decade meeting to appoint new government leadership, gets under way.

Traffic to Google sites fell off Friday evening in China, according to Google’s Transparency Report, which provides information about traffic worldwide.

The company said it was not having any technical problems, but did not say whether it believed its sites had been blocked by the government or were the victims of hacking.

“We’ve checked and there’s nothing wrong on our end,” said Christine Chen, a Google spokeswoman.

GreatFire.org provided technical details and advice on workarounds, claiming that “never before have so many people been affected by a decision to block a website.”

Here’s what we know:

• The subdomains www.google.com, mail.google.com, google-analytics.com, docs.google.com, drive.google.com, maps.google.com, play.google.com and perhaps many more are all currently DNS poisoned in China. Instead of the real IP addresses, any lookups from China to any of these domains result in the following IP: 59.24.3.173. That IP address is located in Korea and doesn’t serve any website at all.
• This means that none of these websites, including Google Search, currently work in China, unless you have a VPN or other cirumvention tool.
• Using a DNS server outside of China doesn’t help. A lookup of www.google.com to 8.8.8.8 is also distorted, by the Great Firewall.
• So far you can still access other country versions of Google such as www.google.co.uk.

Even before Friday, users in China had experienced more than usually severe problems, even when using VPNs to tunnel under the Great Firewall. From Paul Mozur at China Real Time on Wednesday:

Chinese authorities routinely move to exert more control over the Internet around big meetings and politically sensitive dates, including by disrupting traffic to foreign websites outside the country’s censorship system, commonly referred to as the Great Firewall. But a number of users have complained of unusually frequent disruptions in the run-up to the 18th Party Congress, with some saying they had all but given up trying to use Google’s search engine and email service.

[…] Foreigners and a savvy minority of Chinese Internet users have typically gotten around blocks of Western sites like Facebook and Youtube with VPNs, which form an encrypted link to a server outside of the country, thereby directing traffic around China’s Internet filters. But in recent weeks VPNs as well have been targeted, with two separate VPN companies telling China Real Time that they have noticed an uptick in blockages and interferences.

A spokesman for Witopia said the recent disruption is “one of the most severe” the company had ever seen.

[…] “China, with their globalized economy and growth rate, obviously cannot completely isolate themselves from the global Internet or it would exact a significant cost on their economy. It likely already is. They just seem to like to remind everyone that they are the boss of their corner of the Internet and they will integrate with the rest of us at their own pace,” he said.

On top of these other problems, Twitter warned many users on Thursday that efforts had been made to compromise their accounts. It quickly became apparent that these warnings were not limited to users with links to China, and that most had been sent out by mistake, but the company has given no indication of how many or which warnings were genuine.

Updated on November 10th at 1:36 PST: GreatFire.org has published a follow-up post speculating on reasons for the Google blocking and its rapid reversal:

1. Was it a mistake?

The blocking of the worlds number one (and Chinas number two) search engine took place on a Friday night. It’s possible that someone simply pressed the wrong button and accidentally DNS poisoned the wrong website. Perhaps they only meant to block mail.google.com. If it was a mistake, that would explain why it was seemingly reversed this morning. […]

2. Were the authorities testing the public opinion?

We’ve argued before that the authorites have stayed away from blocking access to GMail only because they are afraid of the reaction if they would cut it off completely. However, they have taken actions to make it slow and unstable. In March, 2011, it seemed like they were going to block GMail but then they backed down. Could it be that this quick decision to reverse the blocking of Google was a similar test of the publics reaction? […]

3. Were the authorities testing the “block Google” button?

Another possibility is that this was a test of a new “block Google” button. The authorities may want to know that, if they so wish, they can easily order the blocking of all Google services in China. If this was indeed such a test, the timing seems convenient (Friday night, when international businesses are closed).

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 18th party congress, Google, Great Firewall, Internet censorship, Twitter, VPN
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Wow, my Twitter account just got hacked. Party Congresses are such fun.

— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec) November 8, 2012

Hmm. Just notified by Twitter that others were attempting access to cmphku account.

— China Media Project (@cmphku) November 8, 2012

Count me among those reporting their twitter accts were hacked/compromised in the last hour. also @cmphku @prchovanec

— Adam Minter (@AdamMinter) November 8, 2012

@tulletilsynet I got kicked off Twitter with a message that account had been compromised, sent me an email link to reset password

— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec) November 8, 2012

And me. Should I feel proud? @adamminter: Count me among those reporting twitter accts were hacked in the last hour also @cmphku @prchovanec

— Offbeat China (@OffbeatChina) November 8, 2012

@larsonchristina @prchovanec @offbeatchina @adamminter @cmphku Me too. And I’m not even in Beijing this week.

— Mara Hvistendahl (@MaraHvistendahl) November 8, 2012

At The Next Web, Josh Ong has posted a screenshot of the warning sent to China Media Project, as well as background on similar cases and other current disruptions.

Twitter’s support pages offer suggestions for keeping your account secure, including the following basics:

• Use a strong password.
• Watch out for suspicious links, and always make sure you’re on Twitter.com before you enter your login information.
• Don’t give your username and password out to untrusted third-parties, especially those promising to get you followers or make you money.
• Make sure your computer and operating system is up-to-date with the most recent patches, upgrades, and anti-virus software.

Updated on November 8th at 10:55 PST: As the number of reports increased, it became clear that the forced password resets were not limited to China or those with links to it. Twitter has issued a statement explaining that the number of warnings issued was inflated by mistake. The company has not said where the epicentre of actually suspected attacks lay.

We’re committed to keeping Twitter a safe and open community. As part of that commitment, in instances when we believe an account may have been compromised, we reset the password and send an email letting the account owner know this has happened along with information about creating a new password. This is a routine part of our processes to protect our users.

In this case, we unintentionally reset passwords of a larger number of accounts, beyond those that we believed to have been compromised. We apologize for any inconvenience or confusion this may have caused.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 18th party congress, hacking, security, Twitter
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Wang Xiaoning’s wife Yu Ling said in a phone interview that the Beijing No. 2 Prison told her of his release Friday morning and that she should meet him at the prison gate.

[…] Rights groups said that passages from writings cited at his trial in 2003 included: “Without a multiparty system, free elections and separation of powers, any political reform is fraudulent.” Others called China an “authoritarian dictatorship,” and complained of continuing widespread corruption, poverty and workers exploitation.

A lawsuit Wang and others filed in the United States showed that Yahoo’s wholly owned subsidiary based in Hong Kong gave police information linking Wang to his anonymous e-mails and other political writings he posted online.

Yahoo could not immediately be reached for comment.

Yu told AFP that Wang’s political rights will be suspended for another two years, and that he has been mistreated in prison but remains in reasonable health.

Yahoo was also involved in the prosecution of journalist Shi Tao, who is still serving a ten-year sentence passed in 2005 for leaking state secrets. Wang and others later sued the US company, which settled in 2007 for an undisclosed amount. Yahoo founder and then-CEO Jerry Yang later urged the Bush administration to demand Wang and Shi’s release.

These cases illustrate the legal entanglements that come with a physical business presence in China. Google avoided storing sensitive user information on Chinese servers in order to avoid any similar predicament, but was still forced to filter search results and eventually left the Chinese mainland. Twitter alarmed users in January with an announcement that the service would selectively block posts in accordance with local laws, a move widely suspected of being a concession to allow entry to the Chinese market. CEO Dick Costolo quickly clarified, however, that “I don’t think the current environment in China is one in which we can operate“.

See also a 2007 Wired article on Wang’s case (via Isolda Morillo), and more on Wang and Yahoo via CDT.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: freedom of expression, Google, Internet companies, Jerry Yang, Shi Tao, Twitter, Wang Xiaoning, Yahoo
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In the world’s largest democracy, recent fears of pogroms and ethnic violence have highlighted just how fractious and febrile India’s social makeup is. Rumors circulating last week of planned attacks on migrants from the Indian Northeast saw tens of thousands of Northeasterners in some of India’s main cities cram onto trains bound for their remote homelands. The “exodus” — as it was branded in bold block letters by the Indian media — followed earlier incidents of ethnic strife in the northeastern state of Assam, where members of the indigenous Bodo tribe clashed with Bengali Muslim settlers, driving hundreds of thousands of Muslims out of their homes. Mass SMSes, emails and posts over Facebook and Twitter warned of (and, in some cases, encouraged) Muslim reprisal attacks on Northeasterners in cities like India’s tech capital, Bangalore, as the Muslim holy month of Ramadan drew to a close, sparking a nationwide panic.

The government’s efforts to stem the panic included a flurry of take-down requests to Google, Twitter and Facebook, as well as limited blocks on webpages from Al Jazeera, The Telegraph, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Wikipedia. While there has been some speculation about ulterior motives behind this response, The Atlantic’s Max Fisher wrote that the episode raises difficult questions about the role of social networks in spreading the hysteria.

Technology didn’t cause any of this, of course. But social media and text messaging, both of which are becoming increasingly common in reaches of India’s enormous lower and middle classes, accelerated the flow of rumors and of inflammatory images. Some of the material turns out to have been fake: doctored images and videos showed anti-Muslim attacks that never happened. Because the rumors can be self-fulfilling, their lightening-fast spread across India’s vast population, much of which is very newly connected to the web, can be costly. The original 1993 crisis displaced an estimated 20,000 people, but this most recent manifestation has already displaced 300,000, and killed 80. No doubt there are many factors that might explain the new severity of this old crisis, but with the spread of rumors apparently playing a significant role, the recent explosion in Indian Internet access rates (the 100 millionth Indian web users logged on in December) could be relevant. The government, unable to counter the destabilizing rumors, shut down some of the means of their dispersal.

[…] When world governments in places like Ethiopia or China censor the internet, they tend to cite some version of the same basic idea: free discussion is a threat to “national stability.” Typically, web freedom activists perceive this as little more than an excuse for online authoritarianism, and they’re probably often correct. But what if, in India’s case, the government could actually be right? Can Photoshopping up some “evidence” of ethnic attacks be akin to inciting violence? What about sending a text message falsely claiming such attacks, for which a Bangalore man was arrested? At what point does a Facebook rumor become a cry of “fire” in the crowded theatre of Indian ethnic anxieties?

Chinese authorities have long used the “cancer” (or bats) of potentially destabilising online rumours to justify Internet controls. The exodus in India, argued Global Times, demonstrated the danger posed by “unchecked websites”, and the need for tough measures to control them:

[…] What happened in India can help us understand more objectively whether the Internet can foment social instability and how it does so. The exodus was a result of public panic that was easily ignited by rumors. It takes more than working with social networking websites to appease the agitated public and prevent this from happening again.

But New Delhi’s worries that the Internet promoted the rumors didn’t come out of nowhere. As the inventor of social networking sites, the US has experience in regulating them. But these websites have caused disturbances in other countries. The unrest in the UK last summer exposed the side effects of these networking sites, prompting the government to ponder blocking Internet information flow in times of emergency, a decision that led to an outcry.

[…] India is a poor country. Survival is top priority for the majority of the population. Every piece of information carried by the Internet or cell phone looks real to grass-roots people.

China’s situation is relatively good. It is hard to imagine rumors causing an exodus. The government’s reaction and public’s ability to discern false information are much better. But the mass of information flowing through the Internet still presents a challenge to governance. The Internet has become deeply integrated in Chinese society, but can still create a disturbance.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Facebook, Global Times, Google, India, Internet censorship, social stability, Twitter
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JEREMY GOLDKORN: Social media has, perhaps for the first time in Chinese history, given every citizen a space where they can express themselves that really never used to exist in any institutionalised format. China’s never had a very uncensored letters to the editors pages in its newspapers etc. and social media has given people a place to express themselves that is just unprecedented.

STEPHEN MCDONELL: And on Weibo can you just talk about anything, or are there certain subjects completely off limits, or where are the lines?

JEREMY GOLDKORN: People do try to talk about absolutely anything on Weibo but there are lots of subjects that you can’t talk about. And most of the subjects that you can’t talk about if you do start talking about them your postings get deleted and if you continue to talk about them your account may possibly be deleted. And this censorship is done by Sina, the company that controls Weibo, because they have to because their business licence is dependent on government approval of them, and the government expects them to make sure that the content is clean.

But it is nonetheless remarkable, despite the censorship what a wide and vibrant range of discussion there is on Weibo about every issue imaginable of concern to the Chinese people.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: foreign media, Jeremy Goldkorn, sina weibo, social media, Twitter
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Feng Jicai: The U.S. doesn’t have the Central Committee Organizing Department, so it has no market for political titles; no Ministry of Land and Resources, so no forced demolition; no Ministry of Railways, so no train ticket scalpers; no Ministry of Propaganda, so journalists can investigate the truth; no Ministry of Culture, so culture flourishes; no SARFT, so people can make blockbusters; no Ministry of Science and Technology, so science and tech are developed; no State Ethnic Affairs Commission, so different groups get along; no State Administration for Religious Affairs, so religion can benefit people and society.

RT @eyrading: 冯骥才：美国没有组织部，所以没有买官卖官；没有国土部，所以没有强拆；没有铁道部，所以没有黄牛倒票；没有宣传部，所以记者可以探究真相；没有文化部，所以文化繁荣；没有广电总局，所以能拍出大片；没有科技部，所以科技发达；没有国家民委，所以民族和睦；没 …

— Victor Yang (@Victoraiyang) June 1, 2012

Feng is the author of Ten Years of Madness: Oral Histories of China’s Cultural Revolution, The Three-Inch Golden Lotus and other stories and novels.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, CPPCC, Feng Jicai, forced demolitions, forced evictions, People's Political Consultative Conference, Political Consultative Conference, SARFT, Twitter
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The proposed deal will strengthen the new company’s ability to compete with Baidu Inc. (BIDU) and Tencent Holdings Ltd. (700) in adding online video users in a nation where Google Inc. (GOOG)’s YouTube is restricted. Youku and Tudou together accounted for more than a third of China’s Web video advertising revenue last quarter, according to research company Analysys International.

“There are huge purchasing economies for content through this merger,” said Eric Wen, head of Internet research at Mirae Asset Securities in Hong Kong. “They need to have scale, bargaining power with upstream TV producers and deter entry by Tencent and Baidu.”

The two companies have been locked in a recent legal battle over allegations of stolen content on both sides, as television viewers increasingly look to the Internet for their entertainment fix amid a crackdown on state TV content. Forbes’ Russell Flannery called the merger news the “latest sign of consolidation and search for ecnomics of scale” in an industry whose rapid early-stage growth has waned:

It’s instructive to look over the rest of China’s top 25 to see some of the larger cross-over and consolidation trends afoot. No. 1 Baidu, a search site led by the richest mainland Chinese entrepreneur Robin Li on the new Forbes Billionaires List, crossed over into the travel space last year by spending $306 million for a stake in Qunar. Baidu already owns no. 17 Hao123.com, a directory site. Alibaba Group, which is 40% owned by Yahoo and led by Chinese billionaire Jack Ma, owns three sites in the top 25: no. 3 Taobao.com, no. 13 Tmall.com, and no. 19 Alipay.com. No. 19 Renren has built it itself up in part through acquisitions, and No. 12 Soso is owned by the same company that runs No. 2 qq.com, Hong Kong-listed Tencent. No. 22 Sogou.com, another search site, is owned by No. 8, Sohu.com.

As RedTech advisors managing director Mike Clendenin recently told China Wealth, a larger trend in China’s internet space is the adjustment to slower growth. “If you look at the Internet in general, you see the maturation of the Chinese Internet,” he said. Click here for the full Mike Clendenin interview.

Analysts called the deal constructive, Reuters reports, but cautioned against conceding dominance of China’s highly competitive online video industry to the new combined company:

“This creates China’s biggest video site, but it doesn’t create a YouTube – they still have less than 50 percent market share,” said Bill Bishop, an independent analyst based in Beijing.

Youku currently leads the fragmented Chinese online video market with a 21.8 percent share, ahead of Tudou’s 13.7 percent, according to Internet research firm Analysys International.

“We know online video is way too competitive. There are 10 players, where there should be only one to two,” said Michael Clendenin, managing director of Shanghai-based RedTech Advisors.

“After this merger there are still too many players in the industry,” he said, noting others in the market such as Sohu.com Inc, Baidu Inc, and Tencent Holdings Ltd , which is trying to develop an online video platform.

“These are not small, insignificant players. So even though this is a step in the right direction in terms of consolidation, there’s still a long way to go,” Clendenin added.

Twitter is also abuzz over the deal, according to Shanghaiist.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: industry consolidation, Internet, merger, Online video, tudou, Twitter, Youku
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• Signing 08 Charter (the document for which Liu Xiaobo was sentenced to 10 years in jail);
• Attending, or expressing interest in, Jasmine gatherings;
• Signing online appeals, in one case, for improving prison management; in another, against the detention of a Uighur scholar;
• Intent to attend events organized by Ai Weiwei (this was before Ai Weiwei was detained and held for 86 days last year);
• Attending the memorial of a woman who self-immolated to protest against violent demolition;
• Writing blogs or articles on the themes of democracy and freedom, about June 4th, Tibet or Xinjiang;
• Twitter expressions;
• Sending a bouquet to the Norwegian Hall of Shanghai Expo in connection to the Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to Liu Xiaobo;

Cao’s second post describes the typical content of a tea-drinking session, and the spectrum of invitees’ reactions, from defiance to fear or sadness:

Hecha, it appeared, doesn’t involve beating or sustained verbal abuse. That’s because it is the “low end” of the government intimidation and persecution, and depending on how big a threat you are in their perception, things can become much worse ….

Some people dealt with their hecha sessions with composure and even playfulness, others left useful advice, such as “be firm and you have done nothing wrong ….”

One way or the other, it is hard to exaggerate the kind of fear hecha can strike into ordinary people. It lays bare the fact that the state has every power over you, is prepared to use it in the most wanton way, while you no power, no rights, and there is nothing you can do to protect yourself.

See more on tea-drinking at CDT, including the Grass Mud Horse Lexicon’s entry on the term, translations of several first-hand accounts, and some tongue-in-cheek advice for tea-drinkers.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ai Weiwei, drinking tea, DSD, interrogation, June 4th, Liu Xiaobo, Tibet, Twitter, Xinjiang
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… He began thinking about leaving last spring, and got permission last month, he said. Officials probably believed it would be better to have him outside China in this transition year, Mr. Yu said. Officers accompanied him, his wife, Liu Min, and their son, Yu Guangyi, to the Beijing airport boarding gate and took their picture.

And how will he remain relevant while outside China? Mr. Yu said he believed the Internet would help. He has a Twitter account, @yujie89, with nearly [now over] 30,000 followers. (He said he preferred not to use Chinese microblogs because of censorship.)

Mr. Yu said his immediate goals were to apply for asylum and finish the two books due this year. Then he plans to work on a book about the history of Christianity in China.

“Maybe in a couple years I’ll have a green card, and maybe I’ll become an American citizen,” he said. “But I see my career and lifelong goal as achieving democracy and freedom in China. And so my goal is to eventually return to China.”

See more on Yu Jie via CDT, including his 2010 account of “drinking tea” with State Security, news of his move to the US, and a Global Times response insisting that “[Yu's] personal feelings do not conform with the overwhelming majority of people in China.”

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Charter 08, Christianity, exile, Liao Yiwu, liu xia, Liu Xiaobo, Twitter, United States, writers, yu jie
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