五毛党 Fifty Cent Party

Contrary to the title, this post has nothing to do with the cool American rapper who I'm going to get down with on my birfday.

The wumaodang, or fifty cent party (link blocked in China), are a group of Chinese probably numbering in the thousands who go onto Internet chat rooms and BBS pages to write posts that support the communist party. They get paid fifty cents for each post that criticizes other subversive netizens.

Today, as I was wandering around tianya, an Internet portal, I saw that some Chinese internet users abbreviate the term wumaodang 'wmd,' probably to avoid the censors. I don't think the Chinese are aware what this means in English, but I thought it was pretty funny since my sophomore year policy debate topic was on WMDs, a/k/a weapons of mass destruction.

我今天发现有些中国网民会把五毛党写成wmd。英文里也有这个简称：WMD就是大规模销毁武器的意思。中国网民实在太厉害了。

China's Number 1 Again!

If you've ever been to China, you know that they're obsessed with having the largest this or the oldest that. This often results in strange titles. Tiananmen Square is the largest city-center public square in the world. Xinghai Square in Dalian is the largest non-city-center square in Asia. The giant TV screen outside my office building is Asia's largest skyscreen (whatever that means).

Today, China edged out Cuba for another superlative: most journalists in prison with a total of 28 (story here). Cuba wins for most journalists in jail per capita (24 in jail with a total population of only 11 million!), but they will soon be freed because Barack is letting Hyman Roth go to Havana to build casinos.

I don't know the names of all of these reporters but one of them, Shi Tao, is in jail thanks in part to Yahoo! In 2004 Shi Tao sent an email containing a directive regualting reports on the 15th Anniversary of Tiananmen Square. The directive, which came down from a high level in the government, said that no one would be allowed to mention the event and that the human rights activists who returned to commemorate the anniversary were to be ignored. The police asked Yahoo! to help, and being a good American, freedom-loving company, they gave them access to Shi Tao's account. Shi Tao has now spent five years in prison and won't be released until 2014. (The Chinese police must not have realized that that is the 25th anniversary of June 4th.)

In other news, Pirate Bay has been found guilty (surprised?). I am completely unaffected. Now Google China, another one of those red, white, and blue internet companies, lets you download music for free just like on Baidu (the largest search engine in China).

Also, in reference to my post yesterday, tommorrow is Earth Day and there is a cool environment conference that has attracted many big names like Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, and Kenneth Lieberthal, Brookings's China environment guy. Anyone in Beijing should try to make it there, although you'll need a press pass or some other invite from an attending company.

Youtube is Blocked!

I noticed something odd when I tried to watch a harmless music video. When I switched to my browser that was running out of Germany (a country full of the most responsible netizens you can find), I had no problem accessing Youtube, which means it was blocked. Apparently the reason for the blockage is this video of Chinese soldiers beating the hell out of Tibetans last year. Xinhua has reported that the video is faked by the Dalai Lama, a/k/a the Tibetan John Carpenter. Obviously a fake video is a threat to internal stability. To be perfectly honest, this video wouldn't convert a single Chinese person to the Dalai Lama's cause even if it were run on a non-stop loop on Chinese Central TV for days on end. You don't stay in power for 60 years without being cautious.

The Great Firewall gets a lot of publicity outside of China, and most Chinese internet users are aware of its existence. Surprisingly, it's very easy to circumvent, but that's not the point. This site teaches you (in Chinese!) how to jump the wall and rock on in the free world (at least online). This site is not blocked. So what's the point? According to James Fallows of the Atlantic (annual subscription for under 50 bucks, do it now!), as long as the government makes it slightly difficult to get to that information, only people with a bone to pick with the government already will bother to hop over the firewall and bathe in the soothing, unfiltered waters of freedom.

I agree with Fallows's conclusion, but would also add that the internet has created much more access to information than the government would like and people like all the Chinese blogs on my blogroll routinely criticize the government online without being blocked or facing retribution. (That much cannot be said for Zan Aizong, whose blog is blocked and he is prevented from leaving the country.)

Currently Ai Weiwei, former artist and now full-time activist, is roiling the government over its negligence in building supervision of Sichuan schools that collapsed killing thousands of students.

I think in the end the Great Firewall, like the Great Wall itself will fail. People won't put up with it forever. The only question is: "when?"