Chinese Democracy?
By Dan O'Connor May 23rd, 2007
In Blogging · Politics · Social media · Stories
In a not entirely characteristic move, the Chinese government has backed down over plans to force that nation’s bloggers to identify themselves by their real names. (Incidentally, this was an idea also discussed by Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian during the shortlived “Code of Conduct” farago) The Chinese government’s climbdown is being reported by the Beeb as being the result of “huge protests by Chinese internet users”, which is fairly remarkable considering said government’s historical fondness for well, completely ignoring all forms of protest.
A sea-change in attitudes in Beijing? Are the forces of Web 2.0 too much even for the Communist Party of China to suppress? Not really. You still can’t read, say, the Beeb article about this story online in China. Googling “Falung gong” there probably still returns the result “Did you mean re-education camp?”
It did make me wonder though, why most bloggers blog under a pseudonym (Fr: nom du blogue)? I do it (elsewhere - not telling you!), mostly because all the other blogs I’d ever read did so and I assumed it was some sort of question of ettiquette, y’know: what happens in the blogosphere stays in the blogosphere and all that. But clearly in China it is a way of avoiding the more, ahem, draconian instincts of the party’s censors.
And now, in “Compare and Contrast Corner”:
Mao Zedong (noted Chinese mass-murderer and best-selling author): “Classes struggle, some classes triumph, others are eliminated… such is the history of civilization for thousands of years.“
Wang Xiofeng (noted Chinese blogger): “Uncivilised is one of the characteristics of the internet. Uncivlised is what we are and the internet reflects that.”
NB: apologies to anyone reading this who hoped to find out more about the latest Guns n’ Roses album. All I can tell you is 2010’s looking pretty good.
1 DL // May 31, 2007 at 6:35 pm
Relative to its Western counterparts, China’s stint at nationalism has taken particularly long. To the extent I am not sure if it has emerged yet as a defined and accepted idea by the subjects upon whom it’s supposedly vested. This slow development is exhibited by the fact in China there does not exist a generally endorsed concept of nation-state in the modern international reality - consequentially leading to antithetical treatment of minorities, other aliens and perhaps more interestingly the various overseas Chinese peoples.
Moreover, China’s nationalism is more alarming than that of the US and perhaps most other states as well, with only countable few dictatorial states as the exception. This is caused by the fact that China as a political entity is systematically and institutionally devoted to gag any idea that does not conform with the Selected Principles of the Celestial Order and its various secondary measures and regulations at full throttle. The execution of this institutional constrain has been deservedly effective, an aspect undoubtedly linked to the strong and long existence of Chinese traditions - ironical that the raison de’tre of which would be the existence of modern international values. I am of the opinion that China’s brand of unchecked nationalism projects greater danger.
2 gary // Jul 6, 2007 at 8:01 am
> A sea-change in attitudes in Beijing? Are the forces of Web 2.0 too much even for the Communist Party of China to suppress?
China has taken the bait. By opening up the country and embracing capitalism, democracy is knocking on the door. Look what an economic power China has become….imagine how much MORE powerful China will be as a democracy.
btw, to encourage the growth of democracy in the world, we need to first embrace democracy in the UN, specifically…
http://www.UnitedDemocraticNations.org
After all, pretending that the man behind the ‘CHINA’ nameplate represents the Chinese people is a slap in the face of those same people.
gary