Walter Hutchens’ Blog

The New York Times has published a story on a Shanghai blogger who 1) dances provocatively in front of a webcam (her face, but not much else, concealed) and also 2) claims to be a Communist Party member (so that’s Party girl, as well as party girl).

When people talk about the importance of blogs (博客 bókè) and podcasts (播客 bōkè), they often talk about disintermediation—the removal of intermediaries like editors and traditional publishers from the publishing process. With these new tools, an individual can reach the masses. That’s an important change.

In China, editors and publishers in main stream media (MSM) are supplemented by an overlord intermediary—the Chinese Communist Party. The Party exercises prior restraint of speech (through PRC government administrative controls including requirements that publishers register and obtain government approval prior to publishing). The Party also sometimes intervenes after the fact to punish and suppress publication of ideas it deems unacceptable. This of course creates a lot of self-censorship as people try to stay well clear of (unstated) limits.

Thus, in China disintermediation is threatening not just to established MSM but also to the ruling regime.

China makes some efforts to monitor and fight the onslaught of uncontrolled publishing. Within China they have a variety of ways to do this, as partially described above. With regard to bloggers beyond their borders, they have tried to erect a new Great (fire)Wall to keep out undesirable content. I am frequently frustrated that while in China I cannot access blogs on blogspot.com (owned by Google) or blogs on typepad.com’s site. Millions of blogs are on these two hosting sites. Precious few of them have anything to do with China or even contain content considered verboten here. But the government just crudely blocks the entire sites. Consequently, I cannot (easily) access a variety of blogs on mobile technology (for example, jkontherun.com). This stupidity also reaches wikis and even the wordpress.org codex!

But as the Chinese say, when there is policy from above their is counter-reaction below (上面有政策下面有对策, shangmian you zhengce, xiamian you duice). While I cannot visit many blogs directly, I can read them through RSS feeds and sites that aggregate RSS feeds. Like the sclerotic Qing dynasty, Beijing conservatives may be able to delay but probably not ultimately halt changing times.