Horn
12th May 2011, 03:10 PM
French leader Napoleon Bonaparte once said "quand la chine s'eveillera, le monde tremblera [When China wakes up, the world will tremble]."
Nowadays, when the world trembles, China blogs. From the Tunisian fruit-stand vendor Mohamed Bouazizi's self-immolation in Ben Arous, Tunisia on December 18, 2010, to Osama bin Laden's death in Abbottabad, Pakistan this month, Chinese netizens have actively discussed their interpretations of events.
Although the Internet in China is censored, the relative anonymity of blogging and the government's futile efforts to monitor each of the country's 420 million surfers makes the Internet China's most - and perhaps only - free forum for discussion. Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and other social networking and information-sharing sites are blocked and replaced with government-approved parallel sites, such as Renrenwang (Facebook), Weibo (Twitter) and Youku (Youtube), which are run by Chinese Internet service providers. However, countless sites exist which the government has little hope of effectively regulating speech on the micro-level.
Fortunately for the Communist Party, an analysis of the Chinese blogosphere - including chat forums, discussion boards and blogs - shows that the Chinese peoples' views on the events in the broader Middle East region do not differ markedly from the official party line and, like much of the rest of world, Chinese bloggers are distrustful of American intentions and proclamations.
This is significant because the Arab Spring has made inroads in the pro-democracy movement in China. Before the Arab Spring, 2010 Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo's "Charter 08" was the symbol of the movement, but with the wave of protests against autocratic governments in the Middle East, some online activists in the China have also called for protests, spurring the potential for a "Jasmine" revolution in China.
The "Jasmine" revolution demonstrations in February fizzled out quickly though, partly because of a police crackdown in which leading online activists were arrested, and partly because of the intense police surveillance of potential gathering sites in Beijing, including the famous shopping street, Wangfu Dajie, as well as popular cinemas, McDonalds, and Tiananmen Square.
Another reason for the failure of China's "revolution" to catch on is because, as the blogosphere shows, the Chinese online community remains highly skeptical about the Arab Spring and what good it would bring China.
A common viewpoint about the Arab Spring was offered on the official blog of a military Professor Jin Yinan. He argued on February 22, "Whether it's the Rose Revolution or the Jasmine Revolution, America has always been supporting this type of mood, and even secretly conjuring it up."
Regarding the "chaos" in Egypt and Tunisia, he says that what is "crucial is that America is playing a role in the middle" and that "if the overthrow of the regime will have an adverse impact, then American support [for the protests] will be reduced."
Like Jin Yinan, other Chinese bloggers see the Arab Spring as "chaos" and an American creation. A self-proclaimed "Air Fighter" from Dalian argued on March 9 that the US made a serious mistake when it showed its hand by supporting the anti-government protests. Had America laid off, argued "Air Fighter," and let the revolutionaries succeed independently, "then surely the other countries in the Middle East would have followed suit anyway."
A blogger on China's popular discussion forum "Tianya Club" argued on May 5 that the protests in the Middle East would delay, but not interfere with the "eastward shift of US military strategy".
While attributing the cause of the Arab world protests to the "butterfly effect" of decades of oppression, inflation and high unemployment, the blogger highlighted the United States real interests as evidence by the National Military Strategy issued in February 2011.
According to the blogger, in the report the United States decided that "relative to the terrorist forces, the more long-term, more important, and more deadly threat to the United States is the rise of great powers [ie China], which will become a top priority in America's strategy, and the war on terror relegated to second."
One of the most popular articles in China, with more than 500,000 hits, was originally written for a Singapore newspaper and is titled "China is Not the Arab World". It argues that unlike the "closed" Middle Eastern regimes which are led for the long term by single-family monarchies, the Communist Party represents a much larger mass of the population.
The party recruits talent and personnel from all sectors of society and has developed a "very effective system of elite turnover", set by the precedent of former paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, "who eliminated personal tyranny and the personal authoritarian system".
According to the article, unlike Western democracies where political parties can "pass the buck", in China the Communist Party - as the only ruling party - cannot shirk responsibility. This led the party to make "significant policy transformations" in 1980s and 1990s.
The pro-Communist Party and anti-American sentiment in the Chinese blogosphere may reflect the genuine mood in China. A poll conducted on Tianya Club corroborates the level of anti-American sentiment. For the question, "What do you think of the US killing Bin Laden?" 58.6% of voters felt "sad" because he was an "anti-American fighter", although 56.4% still responded that Bin Laden's "harming innocent civilians was unacceptable".
The Pew Global Attitudes Project in 2008 also revealed that only 41% of Chinese people had favorable views at the United States.
Thus, the blogosphere and on-land world data are mutually consistent.
Underlying the anti-American sentiment is the belief that America is attempting to "control all of the world's resources" and that China will bear the brunt of the endgame of that strategy. A blogger named "Tian Zhongguo" wrote on his blog that America has a "time schedule for solving the world's problems: the order is: (a) Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran, (b) Korea, China, (c) Russia."
There are three main takeaways from evaluating the Chinese blogosphere's response to the events in the Middle East, which also reflect negative perceptions of American pre-eminence. First, most bloggers believe that the Arab Spring is evidence of "chaos", rather than "revolution", and the Chinese word for "chaos", "saoluan", is the same word used to describe the Tiananmen protests of 1989.
Second, there are a considerable number of bloggers who think that external factors, including the media, the Internet, and foreign funds and influence played an important role in producing the protests. Third, many bloggers think that the unrest in the Middle East is Western-driven and the United States, because of its own economic and political interests, covertly planned and guided the movements.
The death of Bin Laden and the emerging democratic order in the Middle East may make terrorist groups like al-Qaeda increasingly irrelevant. At the same time, US President Barack Obama will start pushing forth his plans to reduce the numbers of American boots on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan.
If America wins the "war on terror" and significantly reduces the threat of Islamic terrorism within the next decade, the blogosphere in China suggests that China is already on alert in case it becomes the next focus of US power projection.
Jacob Zenn works as an international security consultant and is a third-year law student and Global Law Scholar at Georgetown Law.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/ME13Ad01.html
Nowadays, when the world trembles, China blogs. From the Tunisian fruit-stand vendor Mohamed Bouazizi's self-immolation in Ben Arous, Tunisia on December 18, 2010, to Osama bin Laden's death in Abbottabad, Pakistan this month, Chinese netizens have actively discussed their interpretations of events.
Although the Internet in China is censored, the relative anonymity of blogging and the government's futile efforts to monitor each of the country's 420 million surfers makes the Internet China's most - and perhaps only - free forum for discussion. Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and other social networking and information-sharing sites are blocked and replaced with government-approved parallel sites, such as Renrenwang (Facebook), Weibo (Twitter) and Youku (Youtube), which are run by Chinese Internet service providers. However, countless sites exist which the government has little hope of effectively regulating speech on the micro-level.
Fortunately for the Communist Party, an analysis of the Chinese blogosphere - including chat forums, discussion boards and blogs - shows that the Chinese peoples' views on the events in the broader Middle East region do not differ markedly from the official party line and, like much of the rest of world, Chinese bloggers are distrustful of American intentions and proclamations.
This is significant because the Arab Spring has made inroads in the pro-democracy movement in China. Before the Arab Spring, 2010 Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo's "Charter 08" was the symbol of the movement, but with the wave of protests against autocratic governments in the Middle East, some online activists in the China have also called for protests, spurring the potential for a "Jasmine" revolution in China.
The "Jasmine" revolution demonstrations in February fizzled out quickly though, partly because of a police crackdown in which leading online activists were arrested, and partly because of the intense police surveillance of potential gathering sites in Beijing, including the famous shopping street, Wangfu Dajie, as well as popular cinemas, McDonalds, and Tiananmen Square.
Another reason for the failure of China's "revolution" to catch on is because, as the blogosphere shows, the Chinese online community remains highly skeptical about the Arab Spring and what good it would bring China.
A common viewpoint about the Arab Spring was offered on the official blog of a military Professor Jin Yinan. He argued on February 22, "Whether it's the Rose Revolution or the Jasmine Revolution, America has always been supporting this type of mood, and even secretly conjuring it up."
Regarding the "chaos" in Egypt and Tunisia, he says that what is "crucial is that America is playing a role in the middle" and that "if the overthrow of the regime will have an adverse impact, then American support [for the protests] will be reduced."
Like Jin Yinan, other Chinese bloggers see the Arab Spring as "chaos" and an American creation. A self-proclaimed "Air Fighter" from Dalian argued on March 9 that the US made a serious mistake when it showed its hand by supporting the anti-government protests. Had America laid off, argued "Air Fighter," and let the revolutionaries succeed independently, "then surely the other countries in the Middle East would have followed suit anyway."
A blogger on China's popular discussion forum "Tianya Club" argued on May 5 that the protests in the Middle East would delay, but not interfere with the "eastward shift of US military strategy".
While attributing the cause of the Arab world protests to the "butterfly effect" of decades of oppression, inflation and high unemployment, the blogger highlighted the United States real interests as evidence by the National Military Strategy issued in February 2011.
According to the blogger, in the report the United States decided that "relative to the terrorist forces, the more long-term, more important, and more deadly threat to the United States is the rise of great powers [ie China], which will become a top priority in America's strategy, and the war on terror relegated to second."
One of the most popular articles in China, with more than 500,000 hits, was originally written for a Singapore newspaper and is titled "China is Not the Arab World". It argues that unlike the "closed" Middle Eastern regimes which are led for the long term by single-family monarchies, the Communist Party represents a much larger mass of the population.
The party recruits talent and personnel from all sectors of society and has developed a "very effective system of elite turnover", set by the precedent of former paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, "who eliminated personal tyranny and the personal authoritarian system".
According to the article, unlike Western democracies where political parties can "pass the buck", in China the Communist Party - as the only ruling party - cannot shirk responsibility. This led the party to make "significant policy transformations" in 1980s and 1990s.
The pro-Communist Party and anti-American sentiment in the Chinese blogosphere may reflect the genuine mood in China. A poll conducted on Tianya Club corroborates the level of anti-American sentiment. For the question, "What do you think of the US killing Bin Laden?" 58.6% of voters felt "sad" because he was an "anti-American fighter", although 56.4% still responded that Bin Laden's "harming innocent civilians was unacceptable".
The Pew Global Attitudes Project in 2008 also revealed that only 41% of Chinese people had favorable views at the United States.
Thus, the blogosphere and on-land world data are mutually consistent.
Underlying the anti-American sentiment is the belief that America is attempting to "control all of the world's resources" and that China will bear the brunt of the endgame of that strategy. A blogger named "Tian Zhongguo" wrote on his blog that America has a "time schedule for solving the world's problems: the order is: (a) Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran, (b) Korea, China, (c) Russia."
There are three main takeaways from evaluating the Chinese blogosphere's response to the events in the Middle East, which also reflect negative perceptions of American pre-eminence. First, most bloggers believe that the Arab Spring is evidence of "chaos", rather than "revolution", and the Chinese word for "chaos", "saoluan", is the same word used to describe the Tiananmen protests of 1989.
Second, there are a considerable number of bloggers who think that external factors, including the media, the Internet, and foreign funds and influence played an important role in producing the protests. Third, many bloggers think that the unrest in the Middle East is Western-driven and the United States, because of its own economic and political interests, covertly planned and guided the movements.
The death of Bin Laden and the emerging democratic order in the Middle East may make terrorist groups like al-Qaeda increasingly irrelevant. At the same time, US President Barack Obama will start pushing forth his plans to reduce the numbers of American boots on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan.
If America wins the "war on terror" and significantly reduces the threat of Islamic terrorism within the next decade, the blogosphere in China suggests that China is already on alert in case it becomes the next focus of US power projection.
Jacob Zenn works as an international security consultant and is a third-year law student and Global Law Scholar at Georgetown Law.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/ME13Ad01.html