By Joab Jackson, IDG News Service

During a New York panel discussion on social media and digital activism held Monday, Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei secured a promise from Twitter creator Jack Dorsey that his company will offer a Chinese version of its social networking service.

Though Dorsey quickly qualified his response by noting that it may be some time yet before the service will be available for the country, due to technical and legal hurdles.

The exchange took place at the Paley Center in New York, in a session sponsored by the ReadWriteWeb Web 2.0 news site.

“Is it possible to provide a Chinese access on Twitter?” Ai asked Dorsey. “I need a clear answer, yes or no.”

“I would say yes. It’s just a matter of time,” responded Dorsey, who participated by teleconference.

Ai called Dorsey’s answer “very philosophical,” and sighed, “I don’t like to hear that.”

For Ai, the question was an important one, as he sees Twitter as an essential tool for circumnavigating government oversight of communications; For Dorsey it is a loaded question, especially now that Google is considering pulling its search service out of the country due to Chinese government’s demands for the company to censor its search results.

Ai said that the influence of Twitter in China is already great, even though it is blocked for the entire country, with the exception of 50,000 participants.

“In China, we cannot see YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter, and very soon, maybe not see Google,” Ai said. “Basically it is society that forbids any flow of information and freedom of speech.”

There are ways around the Chinese government’s so-called Great Firewall, but they take a fair amount of work, Ai said. Users must sign up for the service using another language.

For China, tweeting can be a rich form of communication. “At 140 words, in Chinese, you can really write a novel. You can discuss most profound ideas really to democracy, freedom, poetry,” Ai said.

Dorsey said that Twitter is working on rolling out a version of its service for all languages, but translation remains a big issue for the company. For instance, the Web may support the Unicode character set, which can include Chinese characters, but most cell phone SMS (short message services) does not support Unicode.

Dorsey said he also isn’t sure how to get the service inside China’s firewall, though conceded that translation would be the problem that needs to be solved first.

If Twitter were to try to offer such a service, it may also face pressure from the Chinese government to filter and censor politically-inflammatory material, one audience member pointed out.

Nonetheless, Ai stressed the importance that Twitter could have by establishing a Chinese service. He had noted that he uses the service eight hours a day, after his blog was taken down by the Chinese government.

Ai is a well-established Chinese artist who has had multiple exhibits around the world, as well as served as a design consultant for the 2008 Beijing Olympics “Bird’s Nest” National Stadium. He has also increasingly run into trouble with the Chinese government as well.

Last June, a blog he started to tally the number of fatalities in a 2008 Sichuan earthquake was shut down by Chinese authorities.

And in December, Ai reported that his Gmail accounts were among those that were allegedly hacked into by Chinese intruders

“You will become one of the most important heroes in Chinese political development,” Ai told Dorsey.

A conversation about social media, China and freedom: a follow-up

For those of you that didn’t catch last night’s conversation between Chinese digital activist Ai Wei Wei, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, and Richard McManus, founder of ReadWriteWeb, here’s some initial coverage of the event. (You can, of course, also check out the Think Social live blog of the event, here.)

And while you’re reading, what’s interesting is to note different takes on some of the night’s more notable moments. Key points? I’d include  Jack Dorsey admitting that he didn’t know Twitter was blocked in China (and the discernible disappointment in the audience and pointed follow-up questions directed at Dorsey); the witty and often downright bawdy Ai Wei Wei cracking jokes about the power of Twitter in courting girls and how his eight hours a day using the platform made it a “true lover”; a heated back-and-forth on whether Chinese people were happy or actually oppressed, and discussion about a timeline for Chinese democracy, between Ai Wei Wei and a Chinese businesswoman in the audience; and Richard McManus talking about Google’s “brave move” in pulling out of China and refusing to self-censor, and the panel’s discussion of whether internet companies were responsible in acting to preserve people’s internet freedoms. (The answer to the last point was a decided yes — Ai Wei Wei said there’s no excuse for not acting out “for human values.”)

“Digital Activism in China: A Discussion Between Ai Wei Wei, Jack Dorsey and Richard McManus”

Check out ReadWriteWeb’s recap of the event — pretty straightforward. For a refresher on censorship in China, it’s helpful to check out Kaiser Kuo’s SXSW presentation on Google in China this week or his earlier interview with ReadWriteWeb.

Read on for more after the jump …

“Some Thoughts On Ai Wei Wei and Jack Dorsey from ReadWriteWeb’s Social Media Activism Panel”

Digital East Asia is a web site that aggregates and analyzes news about digital and social media in and about East Asia. This post focuses more on discussion between Dorsey and Ai Wei Wei on translating Twitter in Chinese (which one audience member later said was more about Chinese display and input than just translating text).

“Artist Ai Wei Wei Makes Rare U.S. Appearance to Talk About Digital Activism”

The Los Angeles Times’ arts blog devotes its post to Ai Wei Wei’s evolution from artist to activist, and reports on the confrontational Q&A moment between Ai Wei Wei and the Chinese businesswoman.

A number of write-ups of the event focused on Dorsey’s promise that Twitter in China was in the works:

“Twitter in China? In Due Time, Twitter Founder Promises” (PC World)

“Twitter Working on Chinese Translation” (Portfolio’s Tech Observer)

“Twitter Working on Chinese Registration Page” (Associated Press)

Hm — I wonder when Twitter began considering the creation of Twitter.cn? Ai Wei Wei was pretty insistent on getting an answer from Dorsey yesterday, and so was the audience. Keep an eye on @aiww for more (though you might want to send it through a translator, unless you can read Chinese!) and keep an eye on this blog for future commentary on this subject.

Source: Think Social (March 16, 2010)