The following is how I reported on Rebecca MacKinnon's comments at the 2005 PopTech conference regarding China in Conferenza Premium Reports, which is now becoming a blog. We find her comments on bloggers to have an ironic twist to them in view of recent events.
"Former CNN Journalist Rebecca MacKinnon discussed the impact of the Internet and blogging on China, illustrating for the audience how what we hear can often deceive us into thinking that society is becoming more open than it really is. In fact, she described a setting in the world’s largest nation that might have stretched even George Orwell’s sense of irony.
For about a decade, MacKinnon covered Northeast Asia, building a reputation for the accurate, thoughtful useful TV journalism that CNN used to serve up. She said she left when the global broadcaster started moving away from the hard news for which she was known, and is now a research fellow at Harvard Law’s Berkman Center, where she is co-founder with Ethan Zuckerman of Global Voices Online, a media project designed to bring citizen journalism to the remote places and topics that mainstream media ignores.
MacKinnnon recalled journalists writing in 1995 that the Internet would kill the Chinese government. “[But] it didn’t come out that way,” MacKinnon said. “The Internet gives people a new sense of freedom – and some people would agree that the Chinese people have never had it so good.” However, “if you are someone known to have political views,” she said, “the government will investigate you” and take action how and when they see fit.
Today, Chinese blogs are creating the perception of individual freedom. Yet at the same time, “the government is cracking down on what people are actually free to do.” The crackdown is very focused: For example, the “Super Girl” site lets Chinese citizens vote for their favorite online female entertainer – yet they are not allowed to vote for or even discuss the performance of their heads of state. Bloggers cannot talk about government corruption without being censored. Google searches on Tiananmen Square are prohibited – and Google complies. The words “free speech” are classified as profane and are strictly prohibited. Each day the government searches hundreds of thousands of blog sites to make certain there is no content that they find offensive.
MacKinnon cited Isaac Mao, China’s best-known blogger, who no longer writes for GM Blogbugs, a company he founded, because of censorship. We interviewed Mao for our recent book on blogging, and during our email conversation we asked him if our discussion might be under the watchful eye of government censors. “The policies of my government are well known, and cannot be disputed,” he carefully responded. There’s good reason for his caution: MacKinnon noted that there are at least 60 bloggers in Chinese jails for commentary that offended government officials. We follow Mao’s blog, and there have been several periods when it has simply disappeared without explanation. Recently, he was scheduled to speak at Les Blogs, an international gathering of bloggers and Mao cancelled at the last minute without clear explanation. One can only speculate on the reasons.
MacKinnon noted that because there is authentic new freedom in some places, the illusion of widespread new freedom has been created. She noted that Westerners often overrate the impact of the Internet on Chinese culture, estimating that are 103 million Chinese online today – but that most of these are China’s wealthiest, best-educated and most content members of society. Yet even that is only about eight percent of the total Chinese population. She said the breakthrough of Internet access would not come through PCs, but from cell phones, which are now in the hands of 385 million users. In rural areas, most people post and read blogs on phones, not computers.
MacKinnon noted that America’s Big Three of the Internet — Google, Yahoo and Microsoft – all comply with Chinese official policies. “China is building censorship into the business model, so it doesn’t slow down innovation,” she said. “How should we feel about companies helping and cooperating? How does it bode for the rest of the world if China succeeds in baking censorship into the business model?”
All good questions. If Internet companies refuse to cooperate, they’ll be banned from doing business in China, and so can have no influence: If they cooperate with authorities, they’ll be helping a system that’s not conducive to an open society."
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