MCLC: web of failure

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Han Meng <hanmeng at gmail.com>
Subject: web of failure
***********************************************************

Source: Tech in Asia (12/18/12):
http://www.techinasia.com/failure-china-internet-policies-doomed-chinese-so
ft-power/

Web of Failure: How China’s Internet Policies Have Doomed Chinese Soft
Power
By C. Custer

This past week, even as net users across the country were discovering that
China’s Great Firewall has been upgraded and that many VPNs no longer
work, China’s state-run Xinhua wire service was busyusing Twitter
<http://www.voanews.com/content/china-xinhua-twitter/1563869.html>. It’s
the kind of frustrating irony that Chinese web users are used to by now;
the nation embracing popular foreign web platforms to try to get its own
message out while simultaneously working tirelessly to ensure that its
citizens cannot access those same platforms.

When it comes to the web, China has continually struggled to choose
between its impulse to control things as tightly as possible and its
recognition of web platforms as a powerful way to broadcast its propaganda
both at home and abroad. In the past few years, its apparent strategy has
been to attempt to have its cake and eat it too: to broadcast its own
message using all the Western web channels at its disposal while blocking
those channels for domestic web users. Unfortunately for the government,
having your cake and eating it is impossible, and this policy — if it is
continued — will prove to be an utter failure.

Domestic Stability

China’s censorship of Western web platforms like Facebook
<http://techinasia.com/tag/facebook> and Twitter
<http://techinasia.com/tag/twitter> is predicated on the idea that those
platforms, because they are uncensored, threaten China’s domestic
stability. In the wake ofthe 2009 Urumqi riots
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_2009_%C3%9Cr%C3%BCmqi_riots>, numerous
Western social media sites (including the aforementioned Twitter and
Facebook) were blamed for facilitating the organization of protests and
the spread of “harmful information,” and were subsequently blocked.

Blocking websites does increase stability in the short term, because
people with dissenting messages have fewer ways to spread them. In the
long-term, though, this kind of stability is unsustainable. Censorship,
after all, does not eliminate dissent; it merely silences it, or more
often pushes it into different channels. And while China’s Great Firewall
(GFW) makes organizing dissent more difficult, it also foments dissent by
frustrating people who are trying to do normal internet things but can’t
because of the blockages.

Moreover, it encourages creative ways to circumvent the blocks both
technologically and ideologically (China’s net users may be the world’s
most creative when it comes to using puns and homophones to discuss
sensitive issues without setting off keyword blocks). The Great Firewall
also effectively moves many dissenters from foreign sites (where most of
the audience can’t understand them) onto domestic services like Sina Weibo
<http://techinasia.com/tag/sina-weibo>. And while Sina Weibo and other
Chinese social services are monitored and censored, they’re often not
monitored and censored quickly and efficiently enough to stop so-called
“harmful information” from spreading.

The harder China cracks down on VPNs and other GFW-circumventing
technology, the worse this is going to get. If Ai Weiwei
<http://techinasia.com/tag/ai-weiwei> and his followers (for example) are
prevented from using Twitter, does the government really think they’re
just going to stop expressing themselves and give up? No, they will turn
to domestic sites, and while domestic censors will block their accounts
and delete their messages, some of those messages will get through. And in
a country where strident dissent is often illegal, its impact and its
spread are intensified.

To put it another way, if the Chinese internet was uncensored
<http://www.techinasia.com/china-internet-wasnt-censored/>, the dramatic
statements of Ai Weiwei and other dissidents probably wouldn’t be
considered remarkable. And if everyone had the freedom to express
themselves without fear of censorship and reprisals, Ai Weiwei’s
fearlessness wouldn’t be particularly important. Honestly, if the
government really wants to effectively silence Ai Weiwei, they should
dismantle the Great Firewall tomorrow.

A Death Blow to Business

China: Taking the “inter” out of the internet.

What’s effective in fostering stability is, I’ll admit, debatable, but
it’s less debatable that China’s internet policies have had a strong
negative impact on businesses. If the recent blocking of foreign VPNs
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/dec/14/china-tightens-great-fire
wall-internet-control>proves to be the new normal — and we have every sign
that that is the case — I expect numerous foreign businesses to move some
or all of their operations out of China. In addition to the fact that many
businesses use blocked web services for communication and marketing, VPNs
provide a crucial layer of security to corporate communications by
encrypting the connection of those using the service. Without that layer
of security, companies worried about cyber attacks, IP theft, and
corporate espionage are going to be pretty exposed, and some of them will
inevitably decide that the advantages of doing business in China are
outweighed by the potential costs of having products or plans stolen by
competitors.
(True, many businesses use their own VPNs rather than the
commercially-available ones that are currently blocked. But the Chinese
government has said that all foreign-run VPNs are illegal
<http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/750158.shtml> unless they register with
and are approved by MIIT <http://techinasia.com/tag/miit>, which none of
them have.)

But the Great Firewall doesn’t just damage foreign companies in China, it
is also crippling to Chinese companies that are looking to expand
globally. Without access to social media tools like Facebook and Twitter,
Chinese web companies are at a significant disadvantage when it comes to
everything from market research to actual marketing. And although
companies can establish overseas offices or find other ways to circumvent
censorship and access these platforms, with all of them so widely blocked
in China, there’s little impetus for Chinese developers to try to work
with them. Chinese startups are focused on developing products that work
with Chinese social platforms like Weibo, and that’s great, but it
ultimately limits the scalability and global relevance of their products.
At present, China’s regulatory environment might encourage the development
of some truly remarkable domestic services, but it is difficult to imagine
a globally dominant web startup from China because the Chinese internet is
so thoroughly walled off from the rest of the world.

Soft Power in Chains

Of course, the Great Firewall does more than just prevent Chinese web
services from going global; it is also a huge hindrance for Chinese
cultural exports. I was reminded of this just recently while writing about
the award Korea’s Ministry of Culture gave to Google
<http://www.techinasia.com/korean-government-awards-google-helping-spread-k
orean-culture/> because Youtube <http://techinasia.com/tag/youtube> has
been such an effective platform to spread Korean culture. In China, the
success of Korean pop star PSY’sGangnam Style video
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bZkp7q19f0> prompted a lot of discussion
about whether China could ever produce its own PSY. I’m not sure what the
answer to that question is, but it is irrelevant, because even if China
could produce its own PSY, it could never export it. PSY’s song exploded
in large part because his video went viral on Youtube which — surprise,
surprise — is blocked in China.

Now granted, even if VPNs were totally blocked, a Chinese PSY could just
fly out of China with a USB stick and upload his video to Youtube from
abroad. But I highly doubt the global response would be the same, because
whether we’re aware of it or not, a big part of enjoying any cultural
experience is interaction. Gangnam Style was catchy and weird — certainly
China can produce something like that — but it ultimately also got the
Western media to interact with Korea and Korean culture, and we all
learned a little something about the Gangnam district and Korean satire
along the way.

That is the part of Gangnam Style that China could never produce, because
the government actively discourages that sort of interaction. While it
wants to promote Chinese culture, it does not believe that pop music — and
certainly not politically satirical pop music — has any place in that
promotional effort. Instead, the government pushes Confucius and other
valuable-but-unappealing-and-mostly-irrelevant aspects of Chinese culture
to Westerners while keeping its citizens and whatever culture they create
quiet. Chinese and foreign net users are carefully segregated, and while
China is happy to use foreign platforms to promote the party line through
official channels like Xinhua, it is unwilling to trust its own people
with access to almost any foreign social communication platforms.

The problem (for China’s government) is that culture doesn’t work that
way. Great cultural works are rarely produced by the state; they are
produced by artists, creatives, academics, entrepreneurs and other regular
people. Chinese artists have produced many great works, but China’s
government is generally not willing to let these people communicate
directly with the outside world. In an age where global communication and
cultural broadcasting is simpler and more direct than ever before, China
has shackled its own soft power by ensuring that its cultural producers
have access to almost none of these new platforms.

True soft power — in fact, true culture — cannot come without discussion
and interchange. When was the last time you saw a really powerful movie or
read a really powerful book and then discussed it with no one? Culture is
by definition a discussion, an exchange, and a kind of ongoing
communication. But China’s government has for the past several years been
attempting to shove its own message into the global internet’s cultural
exchange while doing what it can to keep the West out of China’s culture
and keep Chinese people from easily interacting with the outside world.
That is why Xinhua has a Twitter account but the average Zhou cannot. It’s
also why Xinhua’s Twitter account isn’t actually following anyone
<https://twitter.com/XHNews>. China is interested in using social media
services only to broadcast itself; it has no interest in interacting with
the outside world in a meaningful way.

No Hope for the Future?

It is a terrible sign that China’s crackdown on VPNs does not seem to have
lessened after the conclusion of the 18th Party Congress. And at the same
time, despite a couple years of massive expenditures in return for almost
nothing in the way of results, China has shown no signs of wanting to
adjust its shut-up-and-let-me-talk-dammit approach to soft power.

China’s state media frequently complains that the West doesn’t understand
China 
<http://www.techinasia.com/hey-g-your-china-infographic-kind-of-sucks/>,
but China has steadfastly refused to use internet platforms like Twitter
and Facebook to attempt to increase that understanding in any meaningful
way. And although the government remains dedicated to improving Chinese
soft power, I have seen no signs that it is inclined to attempt a shift in
strategy anytime soon.

In the long term, I suspect the Great Firewall will prove to be
domestically unsustainable. But until the wall comes down, China’s
attempts at soft power are little more than a pipe dream, and its economic
growth, especially in the tech arena, is ultimately going to be limited by
the severe barriers it has erected between itself and the world at large.