China
Rebecca MacKinnon: China’s Newly Subtle Internet Censorship
Rebecca MacKinnon writes in today’s Wall Street Journal and in her blog on her recent research showing how - despite China’s assurances to open up the Internet during the Olympics - censorship continues. (Cue: shocked gasps)
Interestingly, she found newly subtle and sophisticated approaches to censorship.
The newly subtle approach:
The strategy seems clear: Give China’s professional journalists a longer leash to cover breaking news even if it’s not positive — since the news will come out anyway and unlike bloggers, the journalists are still on a leash. At the same time, clamp down on blogs, chat rooms and video-sharing sites that might allow too much unfettered discussion of the news.
China Mobile, however, has upgraded to censor jokes:
One evening last week, a Chinese blogger who writes under the name of “deerfang” was sharing a good laugh with a friend who knows some great political jokes — learned through mobile-phone text messages sent in May from other friends. The friend tried to forward one of the jokes about Chairman Mao and President Hu Jintao — still stored in his phone’s memory — to deerfang’s mobile. “My phone received the message but in blank saying ‘missing text,’” deerfang wrote on her blog. Her friend tried sending the message to other people’s phones in case it was a technical error. Same result. It seems that censorship on the China Mobile network has tightened since three months ago.
The actual censored joke?
The joke doesn’t translate very well, but the gist of it is that President Hu Jintao, at his wits’ end about what to do with all the crises happening around the nation, goes to see Mao - lying preserved under glass in his mausoleum - and asks for advice. Mao offers to trade places with Hu and to go out and kick some foreign behind, frighten all the foreigners and put them in their place by making them take a ridiculous series of Chinese tests. Or something like that. It’s (slightly) better in Chinese…
Perhaps China Mobile was right to censor (On the basis of humor).
David Brooks: China Collectivism trumps US Individualism
After witnessing the Olympic opening ceremony, David Brooks has a column in today’s New York Times concluding that China’s collectivism will trump US individualism.
In addition to what he saw at the opening ceremony Brooks cites scientific studies comparing Chinese and US thinking.
Be great to see the source material for the below assertions (UPDATE BELOW: SOUNDS LIKE ALL EAST ASIANS WERE GROUPED IN THE STUDY.). They sound quite 1950s. Would China’s newer generations give the same answers?
Fishtank study:
If you show an American an image of a fish tank, the American will usually describe the biggest fish in the tank and what it is doing. If you ask a Chinese person to describe a fish tank, the Chinese will usually describe the context in which the fish swim.
Cow, Chicken and Hay study
When the psychologist Richard Nisbett showed Americans individual pictures of a chicken, a cow and hay and asked the subjects to pick out the two that go together, the Americans would usually pick out the chicken and the cow. They’re both animals. Most Asian people, on the other hand, would pick out the cow and the hay, since cows depend on hay. Americans are more likely to see categories. Asians are more likely to see relationships.
Why do some societies turn collectivist?
some scientists have theorized that it all goes back to microbes. Collectivist societies tend to pop up in parts of the world, especially around the equator, with plenty of disease-causing microbes. In such an environment, you’d want to shun outsiders, who might bring strange diseases, and enforce a certain conformity over eating rituals and social behavior.
Collectivism will triumph! (Where is the study for this one?)
For one thing, there are relatively few individualistic societies on earth. For another, the essence of a lot of the latest scientific research is that the Western idea of individual choice is an illusion and the Chinese are right to put first emphasis on social contexts.
Final anti-dictatorship jab:
The ideal of a harmonious collective may turn out to be as attractive as the ideal of the American Dream. It’s certainly a useful ideology for aspiring autocrats.
UPDATE: James Fallows strongly disagrees with Brooks’ column.
UPDATE: Thanks Free 2 Fail for making link to Richard Nisbett’s Geography of Thought, How Asians and Westerners Think Differently…and Why. Review of the book after the jump.
Also, a Feb 2006 article on Asian-American Psychology from American Psychological Association.
(more…)
Best way to follow the Olympics
In case you are not already doing so, Twitter has been a great way to follow (and participate in) Olympics coverage.
For the opening ceremony a large group of us wrote 140 character postings with the agreed tag #080808.
Lonnie Hodge - who also Twitted - blogged about the outcome:
And yesterday’s hash mash (a way to view aggregated info on a single topic) during the Olympic Opening Ceremonies was just straight-up fun! David Feng, the hardest working tweeter in the business, did a better job at translations, and commentary than did any of the newscasters on CCTV or Pearl (HK).
Kaiser Kuo, Paul Denlinger, Thomas Cramption, China Buzz (from the news center), Rebecca MacKinnon, Papa John, Siok Siok Tan, Marc (from inside the stadium), Frank, and a host of others joined the creators, like Flypig, of a phenomenon that was and is by turns funny, wonderfully irreverent, informative and better at fashion critiques and obscure celebrity sightings than (insert the dubious catch of Canadian language geek DaShan walking with the Canuck team) is Perez Hilton’s army of snitches. And they do this while character-cuffed to 140 (133 if you count the hash tag) keyboard ticks a tweet.
I think having to compress thoughts quickly and concisely forces you to write free of your normal subjective shorthand and makes for unusual candor and sometimes great comedy: Cyber-Haiku.
UBS Economist: Olympics “No Big Deal”
Jonathan Anderson, an economist at UBS, today released a study using Olympic history and population to assess likely economic impact of the Beijing Olympics on China’s economy.
His conclusion: The Olympics are “no big deal”.
We published this chart twice before in our Asian economics coverage - but with the continued flood of interest around the opening of the 2008 Olympic Games and the seemingly endless questions about what they mean for Chinese growth, we thought this would make an ideal initiation for our EM Daily Chart series.
What we’ve done in the chart is to take the host cities for every summer Olympics, beginning with Munich in 1972 and ending with London in 2012, and show the ratio of the metropolitan area population as a share of national population for the country in question. This is a good minimum proxy indicator for the relative size of the city economy in national GDP (minimum, since urban incomes are almost universally higher than rural incomes).
Look at Athens in 2004, Seoul in 1988, Sydney in 2000; these Olympic games were clearly a “big deal” for the countries in question, since the host cities accounted for 20% to 40% of national population and almost certainly an even higher share of national income.
Now look at Beijing 2008. As it turns out, Beijing comprises a total of 1.1% of the Chinese population and around 2.5% of Chinese GDP - the lowest ratio for any Olympic games in the past 30 years and likely the lowest ratio for any Olympic games in modern recorded history.
The only other instance that even came close was Atlanta in 1996, and as best we can measure the Atlanta Olympics were emphatically not a “big deal” for the US economy in that year. Sure enough, our estimates for China put the impact of the 2008 Olympics far behind the decimal point in terms of growth impact as well.
Obama’s Brother Runs Internet Company in China
Barack Obama has a half-brother living in Shenzhen who runs an Internet company that helps Chinese companies export to the US.
The company, called Worldnexus, assists Chinese companies set up websites for foreign customers. Their motto: “Good Communication is Good Business”.
Boilerplate says Worldnexus is registered with the Shenzhen city government and under the Chinese name 天下(TIAN XIA).
Mark’s name has been removed from the site, but I pulled the below image from the Google cache.
This is the text next to his name: 2005.05.01 －Mark Ndesandjo 晋升为WorldNEXUS公司的总经理.
Michael Sheridan of the Sunday Times wrote about the brother and company this weekend:
Mark Ndesandjo is the son of Barack Obama’s late father and his third wife, an American woman named Ruth Nidesand who runs the up-market Maduri kindergarten in Nairobi.
Obama, however, refers to him simply as “my brother” and says he was the only uncontested heir after their father, a Kenyan, died in a car crash in 1982.
Sheridan writes that Ndesandjo lives in Nanshan district of Shenzhen and has a long-term girlfriend in her 20s who is from landlocked Henan province. Ndesandjo has a degree from Brown University, a masters in physics from Stanford and an MBA from Emory, Sheridan writes.
Mark is one of Barack Obama senior’s eight children by four different women. Here is an Obama family tree showing the relationship.
There are, however, some questions about his Internet-based company, Sheridan writes.
Chinese officials said there are unanswered questions about his internet-based company, Worldnexus Ltd. It has provided corporate communications and website design to Chinese firms seeking customers in English-speaking markets, of which the United States is the biggest.
Worldnexus is not registered to conduct business in Shenzhen and officials at the city’s commercial administration bureau said this raised potential issues of taxation and compliance with the law by its customers.
Ndesandjo’s reply to an interview request: “Thanks for your interest. However I am not giving interviews at this time.”
It will not play well in Peoria that Obama’s half-brother is working to promote cheap Chinese exports into the United States, Sheridan muses.
Anybody know him or the company?
Beijing Olympics Advice from ex-CNN journalist
Journalists coming to cover the Beijing Olympics must balance convenience and paranoia when it comes to their digital security, according to Rebecca MacKinnon, former Beijing Bureau Chief of CNN who now teaches digital journalism at Hong Kong University.
In this video Rebecca offers tips on how to:
1- Get behind the Great Firewall
The Beijing government blocks access to many websites (Wikipedia, some publications, many blogging sites).
To reach these sites, reporters will need to set up a VPN such as WiTopia or use a browser enabled with TOR.
That said, the government seems to be unblocking much of the Internet and may remove most blocks at international hotels and press centers during the games.
2- Keep your Communications Private
To ensure your communications are secure from government snooping, don’t use MSN Messenger or most other chat services.
A simple way to ensure a higher level of email security with Gmail is by adding an S for a secure connection. Instead of http://mail.google.com/ add an S to make it https://mail.google.com/.
For those who want even more secure options, there is Vaulet Soft or PGP to encrypt email. More details available on the Frontline Defenders digital security website.
Keep in mind, however, that the recipient of your email must also be using secure email to keep your message private. The best way to be absolutely certain communications are secure is to have substantive communications in person. (Didn’t they have conversations near a running shower in John Le Carre novels?)
3- Protect your sources and fixers
As a foreign journalist you are not in any real danger.
The worst thing that will happen is to a foreign journalist is getting kicked out. Your main concern should be for your local sources and assistants who will be in danger if you misquote them or place them at odds with the government.
They - and their families - could suffer the consequences of your story long after you go home and the Olympics ends.
4- Scramble your data
Chinese authorities have been known to copy laptop data from jouranlists who leave computers in their hotel room.
If you are concerned about sensitive information, you could scramble your laptop hard drive, keep your laptop with you at all times or keep sensitive information on a USB key.
5- Do smart stories
Rebecca’s concern is that there will be many so-called Parachute Journalists arriving on their first trip to China and eager to make a splash.
“I doubt we will see much dissident activity, but there will be a lot of journalists roaming around looking for a story,” Rebecca said. “I have told many of my friends to avoid speaking with parachute journalists, because the outcome of being misquoted could be devastating.”
Uncensored Printing Presses in China
Quick video tour of newspaper presses on the soil of China that run without asking authorization from Beijing or any other government before publishing.
These presses, in Hong Kong at Next Media, where I work, print the Hong Kong edition of the largest circulation newspaper in Hong Kong and Taiwan, Apple Daily, along with the International Herald Tribune, USA Today, and other international titles.
I love the sound, smell and messiness of uncensored presses. Enjoy!
Hat tip to Far Eastern Economic Review.
Microsoft Exec: Chinese will, in fact, pay for content
This photograph was used by Chinnee M. Tong of Microsoft TV to illustrate how - despite China’s famed-penchant for piracy - Chinese consumers are in fact willing to pay for content.
The yellow dots highlight satellite dishes on this building Chinnee photographed. Note that some apartments have several dishes and most would have to pay service providers - legal and illegal - for the sim cards that allow access to content.
Perhaps Chinnee should discuss this concept with his colleagues trying to sell Windows. Any lessons in this for others facing piracy?
Oiwan Lam: China’s 50-cent Twitter Censors
The Chinese government hires a small army of freelance censors to manipulate opinion in chatrooms, blogs and now even Twitter, Oiwan Lam, a prominent Chinese-language blogger currently writing for Global Voices and Inmediahk, says in this video.
Some of Oiwan’s friends have done stints as online censors, getting paid 50 cents per comment, to earn up to several hundred RMB per month (US$30 or so).
Many of these censors, who are know as 50-cent-ers, have been recruited from China’s top universities and some government agencies. (One recent recruitment campaign looked for male party members willing to do a job that involved surfing the Internet for p0rngrphie. Imagine they found more than a few young male applicants willing to surf for that. A female friend of Oiwan’s tried to apply for the job, but was rejected because she is a woman.)
Although not entirely new, the phenomenon has recently started including people working to shape opinion on Twitter and similar new channels towards stances more favorable to the government.
Turns out the Chinese government has heard of Web 2.0.
China votes for Barack Obama
At least that is the conclusion of the Asia Society.
The Asia Society compiled a nicely presented video of policy leaders from across Asia saying which US presidential candidate is viewed most favorably in their part of the world.
Barack Obama won hands down in countries across the region.
China would vote for Obama in part because he is from a minority ethnic group, said Shen Dingli of Shanghai’s Fudan University.
“Such a minority’s emergence represents a great achievement of American progress in terms of human rights and social equity,” Shen Dingli said, adding that Obama’s lack of experience might give some hesitation.
Indonesian respondents spoke about the significance of Senator Obama’s early childhood in the country.
Somewhat ironic to poll people living in countries with varying levels of electoral and dictatorial governments about how they feel about the US elections. Wonder how Myanmar would vote? Imagine Vietnam is pro-McCain. Anyone know?
In other Obama news out of Asia, the city named “Obama” in Japan’s Fukui Prefecture has been enjoying newfound fame, as Reuters reports.
NOTE: If you like this posting, you may want to check out the Asia advisors list for McCain and Obama.
Newspaper Writings:
French Blogging:
Digital profiles:
Add to Favorites:
Random Faceroll
