Like a panda with a Fabrege Egg, Beijing paws out a torrent of controlled spontaneity in response to Google and Secretary of State Clinton’s recent public commentary about free speech on the Internet.
The Wall Street Journal has this today on the bureaucratic spasm over the Chinese Government’s waning control of the thoughts of its citizens:
Dozens of commentaries were published and broadcast across major state-run Chinese media for a second straight day Monday calling allegations by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Google Inc. hypocritical and accusing the Internet company of becoming a pawn in an American “ideology war.”
The media onslaught followed a series of statements from the government that dismissed both Mrs. Clinton’s remarks on Internet freedom last week and allegations by Google two weeks ago that sophisticated cyber attacks targeting it and many other U.S. companies had originated in China. The commentaries largely accused the U.S. of using “Internet freedom” as an excuse to incite anti-China forces, to infringe on other countries’ domestic affairs and to mislead Chinese Internet users.
China is not going to become Berkley overnight (though Conservative pundits have often accused Berkley of becoming China), but this fusillade of rhetoric does indicate another sharp click of the ratchet mechanism in that direction. The growing personal freedoms of the Chinese population tied to the growing increase in capitalism in the psuedo-communist state inevitably raise the expectations of the individual Chinese citizen. The decentralized technical nature of Internet communications – as predicted by savvy Internet observers – increasingly provides the Chinese population access to more internal and external sources of information and therefore provides an unstoppable decrease in the central government’s control.
Dozens of commentaries were published and broadcast across major state-run Chinese media for a second straight day Monday calling allegations by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Google Inc. hypocritical and accusing the Internet company of becoming a pawn in an American “ideology war.”
People of all political stripe (well, almost all) should be heartened by this development. In a world with escalating Chinese influence, increasing freedoms for the Chinese citizenry bring the country more inline with the social structures of most of the world’s nations. Business is freer and human rights are safer when ubiquitous transparency seeps further into the global infrastructure. The fact that the warrens of Beijing’s bureaucrats felt the need to risk public humiliation with this thick-fingered broadside of communications is an indication that those who wish to maintain control of speech are worried they are losing the ability.
The blanket attempt to steer public opinion is also an implicit recognition of the limits to the government’s control over the Web in China, as the nation’s rapidly growing Internet population of 384 million users makes the spread of information increasingly difficult to control. State-run media outlets initially carried little or no mention of the content of Mrs. Clinton’s speech or the Google allegations, but after that information was widely disseminated through bloggers and other unofficial media, Chinese authorities clearly felt the need to forcefully clarify its stance.
Mark one up for Vint Cerf.
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