The Times: “There was a time when a hardline editorial in the Beijing Daily could strike fear into Chinese hearts. These days, such clumsy propaganda draws a stream of sarcasm from the country’s 300 million or so microbloggers. …
Welcome to the world of the Twitter-like Sina Weibo — weibo means microblog — which has become one of the greatest threats to Communist Party supremacy. With 20 million followers, the most popular microblogger is the actress Yao Chen, whose musings, like “the traffic is good today” or “I recommend that documentary” are hardly incendiary. But many more want to weigh in on touchier topics … It is clashes like these that are reframing the battle for control of information.
Concerns have intensified as China approaches its once-a-decade change of leadership in a state of political turmoil not seen for 20 years. What Beijing wants is stability, a smooth transfer of power and a public convinced that everything is improving. The microbloggers ensure that it will have to achieve that against a backdrop of scrutiny, mockery and even defiance.
For a regime that has long prided itself on its control of information, the huge numbers who follow the most popular microblogs are a potent reminder of diminishing influence. In common with the most followed people on Twitter, which is banned by Chinese censors, the most popular weibos have readerships that dwarf the circulation of the largest newspapers.
“It has given a voice to 300 million Chinese and that has never happened before,” said Zhan Jiang, a professor of journalism at the Beijing Foreign Studies University. “It has taken on the role of spreading information when news is breaking and that is a big challenge to the Government and media.” As the Government is quickly recognising, sheer size of readership is not the real problem. The war being lost by the authorities, said Hu Xingdou, of the Beijing University of Technology, involves the sophistication of the information in the public domain, the speed of its flow and the vibrant debate. “Weibo has started the enlightenment in China and promoted social progress,” he said. “It is pushing the Government to disclose more, exposing more truths and allowing people to play a role in politics. We should thank God for giving weibo to China: without it, our prospects would not be good.”
Some bloggers talk about 2012 as the year in which Beijing might finally lose control of information. But they also fear that some of the most influential weibos are being quietly shut down — an attempt, said one, to test the “arrogant and stupid idea” that information can still be controlled. The 140-character weibo offers far more scope for provocative content than a 140-letter Tweet. Official data is ridiculed, corruption is outed and the contradictions of the system laid bare. When officials tried to bury news of a fatal train crash in southern Wenzhou last year, it was the exposure via weibo that forced the authorities to change tactics immediately.
“The more powerful weibo has become, the more use it could be to the central government if they thought about it,” said Francis Cheung, a China economist at CLSA Securities. “They are still thinking of weibo as something that can be controlled. In reality it is a new media that is telling Beijing more about what is going on around the country than it ever knew before.”For now, the Government appears to be resorting to tried and tested strategies: it is insisting that users register with their real names and has made it a crime to spread false rumours. Some believe these measures could kill the weibo phenomenon, others are convinced the genie is out of the bottle.
A large part of the power of weibo, which is hosted by Sina, the state-owned ISP, is its resilience. When words are blocked by the censors, codes and puns evolve within minutes to get around the ban. Premier Wen Jiabao becomes known as “teletubbies” while the deposed Chongqing party secretary, Bo Xilai, becomes “tomato”.
This week, weibo users were on form when the National Bureau of Corruption Prevention said that 72.7 per cent of Chinese were satisfied with government progress on fighting corruption. The derision went viral. “Public opinion poll? Did they conduct it inside the Politburo? Poor old public opinion — raped once again,” wrote one user.
“Weibo is doing something in China that is very different from what microblogs are doing in the West,” said Mr Hu. “It has become a means of making sure that people’s constitutionally guaranteed rights are actually upheld.”
via How China’s 300m microbloggers are shaking the system | The Times.
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