The Bold and the Beautiful

http://special.globaltimes.cn/2009-11/488006.html

The Bold and the Beautiful

• Source: Global Times
• [22:27 November 26 2009]

Ai Weiwei employs 9,000 school backpacks to form the message %26quot;She led a happy life in this world for seven years%26quot;, dedicated to the memory of Yang Xiaowan who died in the Sichuan earthquake last year. This artwork is exhibited in the %26quot;So Sorry%26quot; Exhibition at the Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany until January 17 next year. Photo: Courtesy of Ai Weiwei

By Jiang Xueqing

Reports of the death of blogging appear greatly exaggerated.

Like the loud-mouthed street hawker who kick-started China's market economy in 1979, a new breed of blogger is employing all available means to pioneer freedom of speech to a ravenous mainland market in 2009.

The newly-published Bold Chinese Blog showcases public intellectuals who refuse to remain silent, dare to confront, are capable of clarifying their opinions to the public and opening up the frontiers of freedom by making comments and taking actions, according to Chan Yuen-Ying, director of the Journalism and Media Studies Center at the University of Hong Kong.

As the Internet enjoys much broader freedom than newspapers and broadcast companies, the best blogging can often be found in the cracks between traditional and new media.

%26quot;Blogging is like making love without wearing a condom,%26quot; said magazine reporter Wang Xiaofeng, one of 17 named in the book.

Such bold characters as the writer Han Han, playwright Sha Yexin or architect Ai Weiwei assert that the Internet's relative openness and freedom has helped the government maintain social stability.

%26quot;Some officials want to reinforce the dam rather than draining the water, but it's not working,%26quot; Ai said. %26quot;Without proper actions, the quake lake will collapse sooner or later. Like drains, blogs helped the government resolve conflicts and relieved its pressure.%26quot;

Zhang Yiwu, a professor at the Department of Chinese Language and Literature of Peking University, agreed with Ai that blogs have made a significant contribution to freedom of expression in China. However, he said, some Chinese web users including bloggers are %26quot;too free%26quot; to say whatever is on their mind.

%26quot;Without a broad view of the world and enough awareness of what democracy really is, they are not open-minded to social diversity and prejudiced against a lot of subjects, such as race and sex,%26quot; claimed Zhang. Lou Jing fell victim to this prejudice. During her participation in a talent show held by the Shanghai Eastern Cable TV, the media focused on her background: she was reportedly an illegitimate daughter of an African-American man. After divorce, her Shanghainese mother raised her alone. Hundreds of web users then racially abused Lou and her mother online.

%26quot;Lacking ethical and legal bindings, Chinese web users just use the Internet as a way to vent out subconsciously whatever can't be said in public,%26quot; Zhang said.

%26quot;The Americans, on the contrary, pay much more attention to the political correctness of topics about race and sex, since they have formed a cultural atmosphere about these sensitive issues in their society.%26quot;

Chinese web users must therefore be held responsible for libel or spreading false information that might cause social panic, he insisted. For example, an angry ex-boyfriend posted an entirely false story in October that waitress Yan Deli was a prostitute infected with HIV/AIDS and listed all the phone numbers of her clients.

Zhang Shihe interviews a migrant worker in Shaanxi Province who helped build the Xiangfan-Chongqing railway 40 years ago. Photo: Courtesy of Zhang Shihe

%26quot;Freedom of speech does not mean freedom to make things up,%26quot; he said. %26quot;We should strike a balance between protecting civil rights and maintaining social stability.%26quot;

The number of Chinese bloggers hit 181 million by June 30, according to statistics from the China Internet Network Information Center.

As people find it difficult to have their opinions published on the traditional media, more Chinese are turning to the web to publish what they see and what they think, sparking a rise in citizen journalism, according to Chan. The public voice grows louder and more open, some observers have noted. Many formerly taboo issues barely seem to merit blocking at all today, Ai argued.

%26quot;Now there are more possibilities and a higher degree of freedom in Chinese society,%26quot; Ai said. %26quot;Ideological control no longer fits, nor can it convince any people anymore.%26quot;

The exact same restrictions and controls occur in other parts of the world, claimed an expert who requested anonymity. As an example, he cited the Guardian newspaper of England report this September that the British oil trader Trafigura had dumped toxic waste in waters off the Ivory Coast.

A high court injunction forbad reporting of this case by traditional media but within hours of the ban, both the case and the ban were revealed on Twitter.

Ai himself turned to Twitter after his blogs were closed and became a fan of brief, penetrating punchlines.

%26quot;Chairman Mao was the first in the world to use Twitter,%26quot; Ai said. %26quot;All his quotations are within 140 words.%26quot;

Tofu %26amp; Twitter

On November 3, Ai sent a Twitter that volunteers and staff members of his studio had sent a package of applications for the disclosure of government information on the Sichuan earthquake last year to the education department of Sichuan Province.

At the same time, they were busy sending similar applications to other provincial government branches, such as the department of civil affairs, the department of construction and earthquake administration. They had raised several hundred specific questions to each department in an attached document to the application, which was based on one year's research and investigation by dozens of volunteers.

To write a blog, Ai often racks his brains and knows his words might reach maybe 10,000 readers. Twitter is different, he said. He never knows how many people will read his message as it is constantly reposted by other Twitterers, spreading fast like a virus.

Because of its high speed and unknown scope of distribution, Ai believes Twitter will replace the traditional blog.

%26quot;A bullet targeting nowhere and anywhere is the most dangerous,%26quot; he said.

Volunteers for his project were first recruited via a post on Ai's blog last year. In that post, he called on people to travel to earthquake-stricken areas and collect names of students who died in the disaster, hoping to reveal the truth and identify responsibility for %26quot;tofu%26quot; collapsed buildings.

%26quot;When the government refused to disclose the names of the victims, the common people saw the possibility of participating in a major public activity,%26quot; he said. %26quot;Democracy is all about participation. It's not based on the decision of a government, but the participation of all citizens with political conscience and responsibility.%26quot;

Blogging changed Ai's view of the world, his relationship with society and even his lifestyle.

%26quot;I became a one-man media,%26quot; he said. %26quot;Before blogging, I was living in the Middle Ages. Now my feelings for time and space are entirely different.%26quot;

His Sina blog was the most frequently updated, averaging 2.5 posts a day over the last three years. He told Global Times he often thought the story he was writing might be the last.

Because of a sensitive date, all three of his blogs were closed simultaneously earlier this year. At time of closing, he had made more than 2,700 posts and had received 12,070,000 page views.

Wang Xiaofeng once did a survey with the China Sexology Association on whether Chinese women are satisfied with their sex life. After the results came out, he wanted to post them on his blog, but somehow failed no matter how hard he tried.

Wondering what went wrong, Wang tried posting the survey line by line.

Finally, he found the source of his trouble: a percentage in the survey coincided with a sensitive date. Later, he registered an independent domain name.

Attractive %26amp; addictive

Freedom of expression has entered a new phase, according to Hu Yong, a specialist in new media studies at the School of Journalism and Communication in Peking University.

Public intellectual bloggers, who used to play an insignificant role during the age of the Internet forum, are now taking center stage, he said.

There are three kinds of blog, he said:

%26bull; blogs by %26quot;angry youth%26quot;, young urban residents expressing indignation towards social, cultural and ethical issues in contemporary China;

%26bull; mainstream blogs, written by the middle class in big cities, mostly talking about lifestyle and fashion; and

%26bull; business-related.

For many Chinese, blogging is a new way to take part in politics. As people have limited channels of political participation, this new channel is helpful and effective as far as Hu is concerned.

%26quot;The negative side is many bloggers are keen to make na%26iuml;ve and extreme criticisms, which lack systematic thinking,%26quot; he said. %26quot;Without reasonable discussions, people cannot make sound judgments or find solutions to a problem.%26quot;

It's only natural for Chinese bloggers to make irrational remarks, he said, as there was no such space for expression before and the Internet has become the only open outlet.

%26quot;As the flood from all over the country hits the same water gate, a violent eruption will definitely come up,%26quot; he said. %26quot;The officials can't only blame web users for being irrational.%26quot;

If the government could encourage the traditional media to open up, encourage social interactions, enhance direct communication between officials and common people and provide effective channels for citizens to participate in national affairs, the wild uproar and noise coming from netizens would gradually diminish, he said.

Traditional media editors trove the web for information or inspiration from popular blogs looking for a sharp point of view. The recent Shanghai taxi entrapment cases, for example, only gained nationwide attention after the stories were re-posted by Han Han on his popular blog.

%26quot;The right of saying is decentralized,%26quot; Hu said. %26quot;Like a pyramid, it used to be controlled exclusively by people on the top, but now it is moving down to the bottom.%26quot;

As bloggers eye the government more critically than traditional media, it is possible to form a culture of political participation based on discussions of citizen values and rights while Chinese society is transforming slowly, Hu argued.

Some people and organizations are even employing blogs to organize events and call for action.

Zhang Shihe, whose blog %26quot;Tiger Temple%26quot; is well-known for its grass-roots reporting, in December 2007 by chance discovered dozens of homeless people in the Qianmen area in Beijing. At that time, Qianmen Avenue was under renovation and the homeless took shelter in temporary shelters.

Zhang decided to find them a better and safer place to live by renting rooms for them in Daxing District of Beijing. He posted a call for small donations on his blog and soon received enough money from web users. Now 15 homeless people %26ndash; mostly seniors and disabled %26ndash; live in five rooms at a rental of 160-180 yuan per month each room.

Zhang covered his own long trips by bike to a number of provinces for three consecutive years since 2007. During the latest trip starting in August, he kept sending photos and videos via mobile phone and computer to his blog and Twitter.

After first learning how to type, Ai Weiwei soon discovered the benefits of blogging, spending more than 10 hours a day uploading pictures, posting interviews with other modern artists and making comments on the latest hot public affairs.

%26quot;Expressing oneself is like a drug,%26quot; he said. %26quot;I'm so addicted to it.%26quot;

Whether or not a person can become a free individual totally depends on whether that person can obtain information independently and whether he has the opportunity to express his own voice, according to Ai.

This channel of communication did not exist in the past. Most people never made themselves heard from cradle to grave.

%26quot;Only with the Internet can a peasant I have never met hear my voice and I can learn what's on his mind,%26quot; he said. %26quot;A fairy tale has come true.%26quot;

The elite always emphasize the grassroots channel to speak out, Wang Xiaofeng said.

%26quot;When the public want a voice, they will look hard for a channel, whether it's blog, Internet forum or word of mouth.%26quot;