Twitter and Google are helping to end China’s stranglehold on information and accelerate the process of democratisation

Google has been widely celebrated for its loud refusal to continue censoring its search results in China. It is still unclear whether Google will continue to operate in China (note: Google is hiring in China), but in any event we are not about to see much change in China’s internet policy. More likely, all this “foreign meddling” will merely cause the Chinese government to dig in its heels.

Even if Google does ultimately leave China, the game is not over. Western companies can promote internet freedom from the outside, by providing useful technology as well as the keys to access it. Call this “Twitter diplomacy”.

Twitter is largely blocked by China’s “great firewall” (GFW), which prevents Chinese people from accessing certain sites. Yet Twitter has an almost religious following among tech-savvy Chinese, whose determination to use the service outstrips authorities’ efforts to block access to it.

These “netizens” surmount the firewall by way of proxy servers or virtual private networks (VPNs) that allow them to browse the web as if they were outside China. Earlier this month, Chinese twitterati helped get the GFW on to the list of Twitter’s top 10 “trending topics” (or most tweeted terms) – an impressive feat given that Twitter is supposed to be inaccessible in China.

Twitter, which lets people send bite-size messages to large groups, allows the Chinese to quickly disseminate urgent news or even uncomfortable facts. “Twitter can create a faster information flow than any official agency,” says Michael Anti, a journalist in Beijing who has long been at the forefront of the Chinese internet movement. “That means people would get information faster than the government. That’s a real crisis for Communists.”

Twitter also helps protect individual citizens. Blogger Peter Guo claims that Twitter got him out of jail. He says he was arrested after spreading word about a crime that allegedly involved local officials. He tweeted an SOS via his mobile phone after he was arrested last July, and his case quickly attracted both domestic and international attention, which helped secure his release a little over two weeks later.

So just imagine if Twitter were available to the larger Chinese population. The problem is that many Chinese still lack the simple tools that would enable them to get past the GFW.

When I asked Guo how the outside world could make Twitter more accessible in China, he replied that we could help by “providing affordable VPN service”. Foreign companies, he added, could make available more secure browsers that would help “Chinese people to circumvent the GFW”.

Government can also play a role in empowering Chinese netizens. Jonathan Zittrain, co-director of Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, has suggested that the US, for example, could start with some basic funding for the kind of “science and technology innovation that gave us the internet to begin with”. This could include potential “game changers” in China such as ad hoc mesh networking, which allows users to communicate with one another by hopping from one device to the next without an internet service provider in the middle.

But, given the political sensitivities of foreign pressure on China, it is unclear how far western governments will be able to go. That is where companies like Twitter come in.

Even if Twitter’s co-founders did not necessarily develop it to be a tool of democratisation, that is precisely what it has become. In April 2009, young people in Moldova used Twitter to organise protests against their government. Two months later, Twitter famously helped Iranians assemble and share information during their election protests.

Now, we are beginning to see a similar phenomenon in China. In November, citizen protests against the construction of an incinerator in Guangzhou became a widely tweeted event. Referring to protests in Iran and Moldova, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey told me: “These are all events and movements that people chose to make happen, and Twitter was a tool that happened to be there to make it more easy.”

Twitter may now be taking more aggressive steps to promote internet freedom abroad. Co-founder and CEO Evan Williams recently suggested that software developers were working on technology to evade government barriers, though he did not give specific details.

Google’s adamant stance on Chinese censorship may have been well-intentioned. The problem is that the standoff has now taken on the tone of a state-to-state confrontation. China, apparently still reeling from a “century of humiliation” at the hands of outsiders, will not be pushed around by America. This view is not limited to the Chinese government. Right now, many netizens are applauding Google’s move. But if they begin to perceive Google as a pawn of the US government, this sentiment could turn on a dime.

Ultimately the Chinese internet cat-and-mouse game will be won with innovation, not political pressure. The world should continue to flood the Chinese market, and those of other countries that restrict freedom of expression, with cutting-edge technology. Of course, censors will often be just one step behind, filtering information and shutting down sites. But Chinese netizens are remarkably adept at using the limited tools available to them. In doing so, they are transforming their country in a slow but irreversible way.

Source: Guardian UK (March 1, 2010)

And here is an interesting article from China Youren about the anticipated fate of Google Buzz:

NOTE: For those readers who’ve been offline for the past 3 days, this is a post about Google Buzz, the new Google service that has invaded the World’s mailboxes this week.

But take it easy, hold on a sec, don’t rush to your GFWtest tools, this has not happened yet. I just want to be the first to announce it and get all the credit, since I am 90% certain that Google Buzz will be blocked within a week. The remaining 10% I am hedging in case the GFW censors get too high on Baiju over the New Years and their reactions are a bit slower than expected.

Look, I hate playing blogger of doom, but this is just how China works today. I’ve heard a few opposed opinions from bloggers I respect, and I am ascribing that to wishful thinking. There is no way Google Buzz is going to continue open, here is why:

• Gbuzz is attracting very fast a larger number of users than Twitter or Facebook in China, due to its use of Gmail, a relatively popular email service here.

• The viral transmission potential of Google Buzz is extraordinary, and very appealing for the Chinese way of using the internet. In the first 24 hours of GBuzz in China the popular Chinese bloggers where getting far more comments than pioneers like Robert Scoble.

• After their recent controversy with the Chinese authorities, Google put Gmail (and now GBuzz) on HTTPS, which means that the GFW cannot  see the content flowing inside China. They cannot block particular users or keywords, and neither can they force a self-censorship of Google as they did with the Google.cn, for reasons both technical and political for the Google company.

So what we have here is a means of massive viral communication, completely out of control and with a potential to piss off the Chinese authorities that may be second only to the Epoch Times.

A Real-time Simulation

For those who still don’t agree with me, I have used my old engineering supercomputer to do a real-time simulation of the upcoming events, starting from yesterday, when most Chinese Gmail users got access to GBuzz. The first 4 steps have already happened as of February 12:

Step1: GBuzz is rolled out in China and within hours the popular bloggers are getting streams of comments in the few hundreds. One of the first subjects of discussion is whether the Buzz will be blocked or not.

Step2: Some Chinese users start timidly testing the system with unmodified swearwords and taboos, such as Caonima and Malagebi. Euphoria: no comments are deleted or blocked!

Step3: - After 12h some Chinese users are already sending pictures of beautiful ladies with a peculiar tendency to wear less and less clothes even as the winter is hitting back hard on the mainland.

Step 4: Bloggers like Han Han or AiWeiwei discover GBuzz and start broadcasting there. Not only their posts, but worst still, the flow of comments is out of reach of the Chinese authorities. Comment threads are by now in the tens of thousands.

Step 5: The next big viral event hits the Chinese internet, and seeing that all comments get erased on the other blogs and microblogs, even more people starts flocking to GBuzz.

Step 6: By now most netizens have understood that GBuzz is their GFW free day out. Uncensored photos of Edison Chen or drunken party cadres recirculate widely, people even write appraisals of the performances. More than 50% of the words on GBuzz worldwide are in mandarin characters, and about 10% of them are some form of 妈/逼 word construction (mother /cunt).

Step 7: The early days of FOS were rather hectic, but the people finally realizes the advantages of communicating freely. The divide between the Chinese internet and the rest of the world is disappearing quickly, and Google Buzz has written a page in World history.

… in the meantime, somewhere in the middle kingdom…

… the evil 5Mao teams of netizens sold to the the party have caught up with GBuzz and are calling their bosses in the propaganda department to wake up from their baijiu dreams and show up at the GFW headquarters with red tape and pruning shears…

Conclusion

OK, I think you get the gist by now. And the conclusion is this: there is no way GBuzz is going to remain open in China. The only question remaining to answer is what will happen to the rest of the Google services, in particular Gmail and Google.com (G.cn is already doomed in my books).

I see here 2 possibilities:

1- Google Buzz could technically be blocked without blocking GMail, in spite of their integration. The GFW could achieve this by using intelligent URL blocks on the #buzz string that appears on all the buzz URLs. Easier still, since they are in negotiation with Google, they could ask G to facilitate the blocking of GBuzz in exchange for GMail remaining open.

2- GBuzz might go down and take down with it all the Google services in China once and for all. Especially this can be true if the negotiations between Google and the Chinese government are not as smooth as I supposed lately. This has happened already in Iran, and I am certain most leaders in the CCP wouldn’t even  blink. Or does anyone think they care about the outside opinion on China’s freedom of speech?

So this is only a 2-way dilemma, I don’t see any other solution. The final outcome of the Google vs. China affair is coming very soon, precipitated by the unexpected birth of GBuzz. Neither Google nor the CCP can afford to wait much longer, as the pressure is mounting on both sides. The end is near, fasten your belts and turn on your VPNs.

One other example how the Chinese netizens are getting around the Chinese Internet Censorship is by developing their own language – as an example below, the 10 Mythical creatures.

10 Mythical Creatures

The Baidu 10 Mythical Creatures (simplified Chinese: 百度十大神兽; traditional Chinese: 百度十大神獸; pinyin: bǎidù shí dà shénshòu), alternatively Ten Baidu Deities, was initially a humorous hoax from the interactive encyclopedia Baidu Baike which became a popular and widespread internet meme in the People’s Republic of China.^[1][2]

These hoaxes, ten in number, originated in response to increasingly pervasive and draconian online censorship in China, and have become an icon of citizens’ resistance to censorship.

Arising in early 2009 ^[5], the meme initially began as a series of vandalised contributions to Baidu Baike ^[6], through the creation of humorous articles describing a series of fictional creatures, with each animal with names vaguely referring to Chinese profanities (utilizing homophones and characters using different tones).^[7] Eventually, images, videos (such as faux-documentaries) and even a song regarding aspects of the meme were released. ^[8] It was thought that the Baidu hoaxes were written in response to recent strict enforcements of keyword filters in China, introduced in 2009, which attempted to eliminate all forms of profanity ^[9][10]. The Baidu Baike “articles” initially began with “Four Mythical Creatures” (The “Grass Mud Horse”, “French-Croatian Squid”, “Small Elegant Butterfly” and “Chrysanthemum Silkworms”), and were later extended to ten.

The memes became widely discussed on Chinese Internet forums, and most netizens concluded that the initial aim of the hoaxes were to satirise and ridicule the pointlessness of the new keyword filters. The meme is interpreted by most Chinese online as a form of direct protest rather than motiveless intentional disruption to Baidu services.^[11] After the hoaxes were posted, news of the articles spread quickly online on joke websites, popular web portals and forums ^[12][13] such as Baidu Tieba, while a large number of posts were sent on the Tencent QQ Groups chat service. There have also been various parodies of the meme created (such as the “Baidu 10 Legendary Weapons” ^[14] and “Baidu 10 Secret Delicacies” ^[15][16]). Meme references can be found throughout Chinese websites ^[17].

The 10 Mythical Creatures

The mythical creatures have names which are innocuous in written Chinese, but sound similar to and recognizable as profanities when spoken. References to the creatures, particularly the Grass Mud Horse, are widely used as symbolic defiance of the widespread Internet censorship in China; censorship itself is symbolized by the river crab, a homophone of “harmony” (a euphemism for censorship in reference to the Harmonious Society).^[3]

Cao Ni Ma

Cao Ni Ma (草泥马), literally “Grass Mud Horse”, was supposedly a species of alpaca. The name is derived from cào nǐ mā (肏你妈), which translates to “fuck your mother”. Note that the comparison with the “animal” name is not an actual homophone, but rather the two terms have the same consonants and vowels with different tones, which are represented by different characters. Their greatest enemy are “river crabs” (河蟹, héxiè, resembles 和谐 héxié meaning “harmony”, referring to government censorship to create a “harmonious society”, while noting that river crabs are depicted wearing three wristwatches, vaguely referring to the Three Represents, where 代表 “represent” and 戴表 “to wear a watch” are homophones), and are said to be frequently seen in combat against these crabs.

Videos of songs^[18][19], as well as “documentaries” about “Grass Mud Horse” started appearing on Youtube and elsewhere on the internet.^[20][21] The video scored some 1.4 million hits; a cartoon attracted a quarter million more views; a nature documentary on its habits received 180,000 more.^[3]

The “Grass Mud Horse” became widely known on the English-language web following the 11 March 2009 publication of a New York Times article on the phenomenon,^[3] sparking widespread discussion on blogs, and even attempts to create “Grass Mud Horse” themed merchandise, such as plush dolls^[22].

Fa Ke You

Fa Ke You (法克鱿), literally “French-Croatian Squid” (with the name derived from the direct Chinese transliteration of “fuck you” in English), was supposedly a species of squid discovered simultaneously by France (法国) and Croatia (克罗地亚), hence the name “Fa Ke You”. The Baidu Baike article claims ^[23] that “Fa Ke You” is a species of invertebrate, aggressive squid found in Europe. When agitated, it is said that they release a form of “white-coloured liquid”. These squids are said to cause great harm to humans when attacked. When some of these squids reached East Asia, it is said that they became hunted, and eaten with corn. Such a dish is known as yù mǐ fǎ kè yóu (玉米法克鱿, “Corn French-Croatian Squid”, referring to the fans of Li Yuchun, dubbed “corns”), being one of the world’s top five greatest delicacies. An alternate name for the dish in question is 非主流的法克鱿 (fēi zhǔ liú de fǎ kè yóu, “Non-mainstream French-Croatian Squid”). This is apparently due to the behaviour of these squids, which do not inhabit major rivers, or the “main stream” of a river system, thus scientists dubbing them as squids with “deviant behaviour”.

Ya Mie Die

Ya Mie Die (雅蠛蝶), literally “Small Elegant Butterfly” (name derived from Japanese yamete (止めて), meaning “stop”, a reference to rape scenes and common conceptions and stereotypes Chinese display towards the Japanese in regards to pornography and erotomania), was supposedly a type of butterfly discovered on 1 January 2009 at the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, and that legends state that there was once a Japanese girl who turned into these butterflies after harsh pressures during a romantic relationship. ^[24] These butterflies are able to change colour, and are luminescent, naturally emitting light from its wings. This is due to the cold temperatures and low oxygen environment these butterflies live in. There are an estimated 14,000 butterflies living throughout the world, and thus are considered to be precious and highly uncommon.

Ju Hua Can

Ju Hua Can (菊花蚕), literally “Chrysanthemum Silkworms” (referring to Intestinal worms, where the term “Chrysanthemums” (júhuā) is vulgar slang which refers to the anus). This referred to Chrysanthemum Terrace, a song by Jay Chou, where the lyrics “菊花残，满地伤” (Chrysanthemums scattered, fill the floor with wounds) are re-rendered with homophones and similar sounds as “菊花蚕，满腚伤” (“Chrysanthemum(Anus)” worms, buttocks covered with wounds). Ju Hua Can can also be interpreted as a pun on another homophone, 菊花残, meaning “broken chrysanthemum”, which would be slang for a “broken anus”, referring to (possibly painful) anal sex, as 残 is a homophone meaning “broken”. Such a phrase implies hopelessness, as once a person is given a “broken anus”, they would find difficulty in sitting down, and so “broken Chrysanthemum” is a common (vulgar) Chinese idiom. These silkworms are said to feed on chrysanthemum flowers rather than mulberry leaves (from the article). ^[25] The article also states that the usage of Chrysanthemum Silkworms dates back to 3000 years ago in Ancient China, and that they were the first cultivation method of silk obtained by early scientists. The silk produced by silkworms that feed on chrysanthemums rather than mulberry are able to be produced at a much faster rate, are higher in mass, are fireproof, protective against ionizing radiation, bulletproof, and lightweight. However, these silkworms are very difficult to maintain, and easily die. They are vulnerable to cold, heat, and are susceptible to changes in humidity, and thus are very costly to nurture. Noblewomen from ancient times are said to pay large sums of money for such types of silk.

Chun Ge

Chun Ge (鹑鸽), literally “Quail Pigeon” is a homophone with 春哥 (Big Brother Chun). This species of bird is apparently found only in Sichuan and Hunan; formerly found in the area that is now the Republic of Yemen. ^[26]

The term “Big Brother Chun” (春哥 has been used to refer to the female singer Li Yuchun due to her apparent androgynous appearance. “Yemen” comes from the catchphrase chūn gē chún yé men (春哥纯爷们), meaning “Brother Chun is all man” — 爷, meaning “grandfather”, can also be read as “masculine” (young males in Northeast China use the slang term 爷 as a personal pronoun in an impolite context). The 春 Chun can also refer to fa chun (发春), which is slang for sexual arousal – literally “Spring has come”.

Ji Ba Mao

Ji Ba Mao (吉跋猫), literally “Lucky Journey Cat” (a homophone with 鸡巴毛, referring to pubic hair, as the homophone jība (鸡巴) translates to “penis”, while the definiton of 毛 máo is “hair” or “fur”.) The original article states that this cat lives in dark, damp environments and competes for food with the White Tiger (white tiger is a slang term for a woman’s shaved pubic area). Additionally, the Ji Ba Mao flourished during the reign of the Zhengde Emperor. ^[27]

Wei Shen Jing

Wei Shen Jing (尾申鲸), literally “Stretch-Tailed Whale” (a homophone with 卫生巾, referring to menstrual pads). From the Baidu Baike article, it was discovered by Zheng He during his maritime adventures, this creature was hunted for clothing material to manufacture women’s lingerie. ^[28]

Yin Dao Yan

Yin Dao Yan (吟稻雁), literally “Singing Field Goose” (a homophone with 阴道炎, meaning a Vaginitis infection). From the article on Yin Dao Yan, in the Kangxi era, a large goose dove into a certain field, damaging it and causing the local farmers to come down with a strange sickness. ^[29]

Da Fei Ji

Da Fei Ji (达菲鸡), literally “Intelligent Fragrant Chicken” (a homophone with 打飞机, slang for masturbation while literally meaning “hit the aeroplane”). According to the original article, Da Fei Ji is a species of bird that likes exercise, and the males use neck spasms and spit out a white secretion to impress females during mating seasons.^[30]

Qian Lie Xie

Qian Lie Xie (潜烈蟹), literally “Hidden Fiery Crab”, closely resembles qián liè xiàn (前列腺), which translates to prostate glands. According to the article, this is a legendary crab that once stopped up the Grand Canal (referring to the urinary tract). ^[31]