To the casual eye, China’s social media landscape might look diverse and lively. But the social media clones are careful to follow Communist Party censorship.
As the showdown escalated between Chinese security forces and residents of Wukan, where villagers revolted against the Chinese Communist Party, you didn’t find as much discussion of the incident in Chinese social media as you might expect. And it wasn’t only because the internet was shut off in the town.
It was also a result of China’s development of a set of “social media clones” that ably mimic the functions of the most popular, internationally recognized social media applications, such as Facebook and Twitter. The replicas, however, come with a major catch: they systematically comply with the Chinese Communist Party’s strict censorship requirements.
This innovative approach embraces, rather than resists, technological advances. It satisfies the growing demand of hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens for social media tools, reducing incentives for them to circumvent the “Great Firewall,” while still enabling the Communist Party to control what they say to each other on matters of political consequence.
Here’s how this critical piece of China’s modern censorship mosaic works.
First, the big transnational social media players – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube – are blocked in China. This clears the playing field for homegrown firms, such as Renren, which provides Facebook-type functions, Youku.com, a YouTube-like video sharing service, and Sina Weibo, a Twitter-like microblogging service.
These services are then required to have automated or manual monitoring and censorship mechanisms in place to quickly identify and delete user-generated postings or disable accounts that run afoul of the Communist Party’s ever-changing censorship red lines. It’s a daily reality for Chinese bloggers, academics, activists, and even ordinary users to discover a posting deleted, their account locked, or their “friends” unable to view what they have just shared.
The case of Sina Weibo, which boasts some 250 million registered users, is instructive. Launched in 2009, it’s similar to Twitter in that it allows users to post 140-character “tweets” and gather followers. Since coming on the scene, the company has enjoyed explosive growth and the service’s millions of users have become an important audience for a diverse range of interests.
But in the same way this microblogging service can enable commerce, entertainment and personal communication, it’s also increasingly used to share information and commentary unwelcome to the ruling Communist Party. To keep pace, Sina Weibo reportedly employs some 700 people to perform around the clock monitoring of millions of tweets.
Despite Sina Weibo’s vast user base, it represents just a small corner of China’s parallel social media universe. Instead of MSN messenger, there’s QQ, which downloads automated keyword filtering upon installation. Instead of Wikipedia, there is Baidu’s Baike. Instead of Blogspot, every major web portal has its own blogging service.
Photo Credit: Photobucket / Blaque_07
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Mark Downham
“..the big transnational social media players – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube – are blocked in China. This clears the playing field for homegrown firms, such as Renren, which provides Facebook-type functions, Youku.com, a YouTube-like video sharing service, and Sina Weibo, a Twitter-like microblogging service.”
They are starting to look like us. They are starting to sound like us. They are starting to act and behave like us. They are starting to copy (and mimetically replicate)everything we do….but it is still not Coca Cola (lol) and the Chinese people are more than capable of identifying (and authenticating) “the real thing”.
Shawn
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2011/02/latest-directives-from-the-ministry-of-truth-february-10-15-2011/
Too bad Chan won’t be able to see this link from behind his firewall.
Assume every single pro-China comment on every forum originates from the Central Propaganda Department.
Too bad he can’t see this link either:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward
Bill Webb
People know when they are being duped, especially when they’ve grown to expect it. The Chinese are doing a masterful job of containing the criticism while not providing a compeling reason to go beyond what is allowed. They may continue this for a long time to come, but they cannot extinguish the spark of freedom that the people instinctively know is out there.
John Chan
@Bill Webb,
Do you know you are duped by the Wall St. bankers? Too big to fail, so the USA citizens bailed the Wall St. out with trillion of dollars, meanwhile those bankers gave themselves billions of bonuses. Is it you and your compatriots have grown to expect to be taken for granted like suckers, therefore none of Americans raise a voice to say no to the Wall St. rip-off?
Wall St. has taken the Americans to the laundry not just for the current generation, but they have taken next few generations of Americans to the laundry too already, do the Americans have a desire of freedom to break free form the debt yoke imposed on them by the Wall St. swindlers? It is the question you should ask first, instead of meddling something you don’t know.
Mike
Wall Streets misdeeds are actually covered by US media, second, the US government does not suppress information and commit crimes against its own people on a massive scale, like your darling Beijing does. Ironically, your slavish devotion to the soul crushing authoritarian leviathan that is the CCP blinds you to understanding how US politics works, beyond the incomprehensibly warped neo-Maoist interpretations you spout on a regular basis.
Craig Purcell
NDAA
http://annapolispoliticalscene.blogspot.com/2011/12/obama-sells-out-in-name-of-defense.html
Tony Gilbert
Wow Mike, you jump straight into attack mode don’t you? I find your defensiveness very revealing. OK, so John Chan is apparently Chinese (although you make some big assumptions even there) and therefore can be labeled as some kind of spokesperson for the CCP because of that? The rest of the world would also like to ask similar questions not just about Wall St but about the global financial system bailouts and where that money went, when the financial system is again paying massive bonuses and ripping off its customers. I’m Australian, what can you attack me with?