Behind the Great Firewall of China - Michael Anti

[Music] [Music] [Applause]

In the past several days, I heard people talking about China, and also I talked to friends about China and Chinese internet. Something is very challenging to me: I want to make my friends still understand that China is complicated. So, I always want to tell the story like this: on one hand, it is there; on the other hand, you can't just tell one side of the story.

I give you an example. China is a BRICK country. BRICK country means Brazil, Russia, India, and China. This emerging economy really is helping the revival of the world economy. But at the same time, on the other hand, China is a SICK country. The terminology is called by the Facebook IPO paper. Five, he said the SICK country means Syria, Iran, China, and North Korea. These four countries have no access to Facebook. So basically, China is a sick BRICK country.

Another project was built to watch China and the Chinese internet. But now, today, I want to tell you my personal observations from the past several years from that war. So if you are a fan of the Game of Thrones, you definitely know how important a big war is for the Old Kingdom. It prevents weird things from the north. The same was true for China. In the north, there was a great war junction; it protected China from invaders for 2,000 years.

But China also has a great firewall. That's the biggest digital boundary in the whole world. It's not only to defend the Chinese regime from the overreach of universal values but also to prevent Chinese citizens from accessing the global free internet and even separate themselves into blocks—not united. So basically, the internet has two internets: one is the internet, the other is the China net.

But if you think the China net is something like a dead land, a roost land, I think it's wrong. But we also use a very simple metaphor: the cat and mouse game—to describe the continuing fight between Chinese censorship (government censorship being the cat) and Chinese internet users (that means us, the mouse). But sometimes, this kind of metaphor is too simple. So today, I want to upgrade it to version 2.0.

In China, we have 500 million internet users. That's the biggest population of internet users in the whole world. So even if the Chinese internet is totally censored, still, the Chinese internet society is really booming. How is this possible? It's simple: you have Google; we have Baidu. You have Twitter; we have Weibo. You have Facebook; we have Renren. You have YouTube; we have Yoku.

The Chinese government has blocked every single international Web 2.0 service, and we Chinese have copied everyone. So that's the kind of thing I call SM censorship. So, that's not only to censor you; sometimes that means the Chinese national internet policy is very simple: block and clone.

On the one hand, they want to satisfy people's need for social networking, which is very important; people really love social networking. But on the other hand, they want to keep the server in Beijing, so they can access the data anytime they want. That's also the reason Google was pulled out from China, because they can't accept the fact that the Chinese government wants to keep the server.

Sometimes the Arab dictators didn't understand these two hands. For example, Mubarak shut down the internet; he wanted to prevent people from criticizing him. But once people can't go online, they go to the street. And now the result is very simple: we all know Mubarak is technically dead. But also, Ben Ali, the president of Tunisia, didn't follow the second rule that means to keep the server in your hands.

He allowed Facebook, a U.S.-based service, to continue to stay inside Tunisia. So he couldn't prevent his own citizens from posting critical videos against his corruption. The same thing happened with him; he was the first to join the Arab Spring. But those two very smart national censorship policies didn't prevent Chinese social media from becoming a really public sphere—a sphere of public opinion and the nightmare of Chinese officials.

Because we have 300 million microbloggers in China—that's the entire population of the United States. So when these 300 million microbloggers even block tweets in a censored platform, themselves create very powerful energy which has never happened in Chinese history.

In July 2011, two high-speed trains crashed in Wenzhou city. Right after the train crash, authorities literally wanted to cover it up—bury the train, in a sense. This angered the Chinese people. The first five days after the train crash, there were 10 million criticisms posted on social media—which never happened in Chinese history.

Later, later this year, the Rail Minister was sacked and sentenced to jail for 10 years. Also, very recently, there was a very funny debate between the Beijing Environmental Ministry and the American Embassy in Beijing. Because the ministry blamed the American Embassy for intervening in Chinese internal politics by disclosing the air quality data of Beijing.

So the app is the embassy data; the PM 2.5 shows 148. They show it's dangerous for sensitive groups, so the suggestion is not good to go outside. But the ministry's data shows 50; he said it's good—it's good to go outside. But 99% of Chinese microbloggers stand firmly on the embassy's side.

I live in Beijing. Every day, I just watch the American Embassy data to decide whether I should open my window. Why is Chinese social networking so booming even within censorship? Part of the reason is the Chinese language. You know, Twitter and Weibo clones have a kind of limitation: 140 characters.

But in English, it's 20 words or a sentence with a short link. Maybe in German, the German language may be just AA. But in the Chinese language, it's really about 140 characters, which means a paragraph, a story. You can almost have all the journalistic elements there.

For example, this is like Hamlet of Shakespeare. The same content means one Chinese tweet is equal to 3.5 English tweets. Chinese is always cheating, right? So because of this, Chinese really regard this microblogging as a media—not only a headline to media.

The Clone Signal Company is the guy who cloned Twitter. They even have their own name; with Weibo, Weibo is the Chinese translation for mic blog. It has its own innovation in the commenting area, making the Chinese Weibo more like Facebook rather than the original Twitter.

So these innovations and clones, such as Weibo and microblogging, when they came to China in 2009, they immediately became media platforms in themselves. It became a media platform for 300 million readers. It became the media. If anything is not mentioned in Weibo, it does not appear to exist for the Chinese public.

But also, Chinese social media is really changing the Chinese mindset and Chinese life. For example, they give the voiceless people a chance to make their voices heard. We had a petition system as a remedy outside the judicial system, because the Chinese central government wants to keep a myth: the emperor is good, but all the local officials are horrible.

So, that's why the petitioners—the victims of the past—went to take the train to Beijing to petition the central government, wanting the emperor to settle their problems. But when more and more people go to Beijing, they also cause the risk of revolution. So they sent them back. In recent years, some of them were even put into black jails.

But now we have Weibo. I call it "Weibo petition.” People just use their cell phones to tweet their sad stories. By some chance, your story will be picked up by reporters, professors, or celebrities. One of them is Yaan; she's the most popular microblogger in China, who has about 21 million followers. They’re almost like a national TV station.

If you have a sad story, it might be picked up by her. So this Weibo social media, even in censorship, still gave Chinese a real chance for 300 million people to chat together, to talk together. It's like a big TED talk; but also it is like the first time a public sphere happened in China.

Chinese people are starting to learn how to negotiate and talk to each other. But also, the cat—the censorship—is not sleeping. It's so hard to post some sensitive words in Chinese Weibo. For example, you can't post the name of the president, Hu JinTao, and also you can't post the city name Chongqing.

Until recently, you couldn't search the surname of top leaders. So the Chinese people are very good at using alternative wording and even memes. They even use a name from this world-changing battle between "Green Horse" and "River Crab." "Green Horse" is the phonogram for "crab," while "River Crab" is the phonogram for "harmonization" (censorship).

So that's kind of a cat versus the mouse. That's very good. But so, when some very politically exciting moments happen, you can see on Weibo, still a lot of very weird stories happened, weird phrases, and words. Even if you have a PhD in Chinese language, you can't understand them.

But can you expect more? No, because the Chinese signal Weibo was founded exactly one month after the official blocking of twitter.com. That means from the very beginning, Weibo has already convinced the Chinese government that we will not become the stage for any kind of threat to the regime.

For example, anything you want to post, like "get together," "meet up," or "work," will automatically be recorded, data-mined, and reported to a pool for further political analysis. Even if you want to have some gathering before you go there, the place is already waiting for you.

Why? Because they have the data; they have everything in their hands. So they can use the 1984 scenario of data mining of the dissidents. The crackdown is very serious. But I want you to notice a very funny thing during the process of this cat and mouse game.

The cat is the censorship, but the Chinese are not only one cat; they have local cats, central cats, and local cats. You know, the server is in the local cat's hands. So, when the people criticize the local government, the local government has no access to the data in Beijing without bribing the central cat—they can do nothing but apologize.

So, in the past three years, the social movement about microblogging really changed local governments; they can become more and more transparent because they can't access the data. The server is in Beijing. The story about the train crash: maybe the question is not about why there were 10 million criticisms in 5 days, but why did the Chinese central government allow five days of freedom of speech online? It never happened before.

The answer is very simple: because even the top leaders were fed up with this independent kingdom. So, they want an excuse; public opinion is a very good excuse to punish him. But also, the Bo Xilai case—recently very big news—he’s a princeling. From February to April of this year, Weibo really became a marketplace of rumors. You could almost joke about everything related to this princeling.

It’s almost like you were living in the United States, but if you dared to tweet or mention any fake coup about Beijing, you would definitely be arrested. So this kind of freedom is targeted and precise. The window is very controlled. So, Chinese censorship is normal. Something you find is freedom is weird; something will happen behind it.

Because he was a very popular leftist leader, the central government wanted to purge him. They needed a very cute excuse to convince all the Chinese people why he was so bad. So the Weibo platform—a 300 million public sphere—became a very convenient tool for political fights.

But this technology is very new, and the technique is very old. It was made famous by Chairman Mao, because he mobilized millions of Chinese people in the Cultural Revolution to destroy every local government. It’s very simple because the Chinese central government doesn't even need to lead public opinion; they just give them a target window.

The non-censoring people in China become a political tool, so that's the update about this game of cat and mouse. Social media changes the Chinese mindset. More and more Chinese intend to embrace freedom of speech and human rights as their birthright—not some important American privilege.

But also, it gives the Chinese a national public sphere for people to engage; it’s like training for their citizenship, preparing for future democracy. But it didn't change the Chinese political system. Also, the Chinese central government utilized this centralized server structure to strengthen its power to control the local government and the different factions.

So what's the future? After all, we are the mouse. Whatever the future is, we should fight against the cats. There are not only cats in China; there are also some very small, cute but bad cats in the United States.

So, PACTA, TPP, and ITU, and also companies like Facebook and Google claim they are friends of the mouse, but sometimes we see them dating with the cats. So my conclusion is very simple: we, the Chinese, fight for our freedom. You just watch your bad cats and don't let them hook up with the Chinese cats. Only in this way, in the future, we will achieve the dreams of the mouse, that we can tweet anytime, anywhere, without fear.

Thank you.