Google’s departure from China has revived an old dream and an old fantasy — that the walls of authoritarianism are destroyed when oppressed peoples realize their information is being censored. In essence, if you give them CNN, they’ll give you a revolution. That revolution will not happen in China, because nobody is coming to the war.
I’ll explain why, but the nature of the fantasy is worth fleshing out first. It goes something like this: technology and its advance mean death for authoritarian regimes, from Tehran to Beijing. When people have access to Twitter, Google and other social networking and information gathering tools, they will throw off their chains. It is a tempting dream.
In China this fall, I found an entirely different story. Ryan Seacrest and Lady Gaga hold more currency than CNN (and the Chinese don’t want to topple Seacrest as much as I do). The Communist Party’s hold on power is underwritten by a social contract Westerners find strange. The people give up certain political freedoms in exchange for social stability and economic growth.
The Chinese people covet stability and growth since mass famine, civil war and cities laid to waste exist in living memory. The fear of a return to such times keeps the Party in power. Economic boom since the 1980s has lifted more people out of poverty and into the middle class than in any other country, ever. From the Chinese perspective, it’s “Deal or No Deal,” and the answer is easy.
In China, I found my Chinese friends much more interested in personal success than in joining a political rally. My roommate Lu Yao and my tutor Lu Yan are students at Beijing Foreign Studies University, China’s elite ambassador factory. They are interested in getting high grades, running the IT club and finding a good job that provides security and familial honor. They also happen to love their interests (business and teaching, respectively).
Lu Yao, Lu Yan and others are not clamoring for access to Facebook and YouTube, much less to The Huffington Post or any pro-democracy blogs. They have more pressing concerns. Westerners tend to see foreign political scenes as vibrant and effusive, like theirs. That is not always the case. In China and elsewhere, the people are not itching for change or freedom, a la “V For Vendetta.”
I thought my perspective might be skewed, so I asked Amherst freshman Lester Hu, a Beijing native, to let me in on his ancient Chinese secrets (mindful of the unscientific nature of my survey). I never saw my roommate use Google, so I asked Lester how often Chinese people do so.
“It really depends,” he told me. “I use Google all the time because you can search stuff in any language on that. A lot of people, however, use Baidu, a Chinese-run search engine that might be more powerful in terms of searching Chinese articles.”
I asked Lester how Chinese people will react to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s recent criticism of Chinese censorship practices. He found two opposing lines of thought here.
“Indeed a number of Chinese are critical of the government’s tightening up of its Internet policies under the name of ‘harmonization and protecting intellectual property rights.’ Those who often use [the] Internet would probably be against those censorships,” he said. At the same time, he added,
“…If Mrs. Clinton gives critical remarks on that, many Chinese might see this as ‘an infringement upon the independence of China’…as they are really, really sensitive to issues related to sovereignty. In this way a lot of them, even though against censorships, are also against U.S.’ criticizing — or by their terms ‘interfering with’ — the Chinese Internet policies.”
Lester’s last point illustrates how profoundly misguided the ‘Twitter Revolution’ fantasy is. The Chinese government is not likely to be weakened by this episode, as many hope and proclaim. It will more likely be strengthened.
The government can now reemploy rhetoric about “foreign interference” and “neo-imperialism.” The technology-as-democracy boosters forget this recurring Party habit, as well as China’s century of exploitation at the hands of foreigners during the 1800s, which left a pungent and lingering aftertaste in the mouths of the Chinese people.
The Chinese authorities can also reiterate China’s raw economic power. Companies that have not already taken note will discover the Party is running a “pay to play” scheme whereby foreign companies “pay” (submit to censorship) in order to “play” (make lots of money). The Chinese Internet and mobile market is huge and profitable for foreign companies. Google made $300 million last year in China. Google’s take this year? Probably almost nothing. Beijing can now flaunt its ability to be choosy and empowered.
Are these censorship policies sustainable for the Party? I asked Lester and he said the answer was “hard…to predict,” but noted a recurring cycle in Chinese discontent.
“…People tend to get angry when a new policy tightening Internet control comes out, yet this kind of sentiment will soon die out when they adjust themselves to the new Internet environment.”
Thanks, Lester. I guess my “V For Vendetta” fantasies will have to settle for ousting Ryan Seacrest.