China Substitutes `Spin' for Suppression as Web Weakens Control
By Dune Lawrence
Nov. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Disgruntled taxi drivers in Chongqing air their complaints following a two-day strike while a top official of the southwestern Chinese city nods intently.
``You spoke really well, thank you,'' says Bo Xilai, the Commmunist Party chief, complimenting a participant who talked with a thick regional accent. ``I was able to understand 90 percent of what you said.''
The three-hour meeting, available online across China through major Web portals, is more reminiscent of local government access in the U.S. than in a country where protests have typically met with swift repression.
As Chinese citizens increasingly use the Internet to get news, share videos, vent frustrations and expose abuses of power, leaders are being forced to react publicly to their concerns. Government officials are also adapting traditional media-control techniques to the information age -- including sending out press releases and approved articles on topics that once would have been completely suppressed.
``They've learned that they come off looking better if they're somewhat more transparent, somewhat quicker to respond,'' says Jeffrey Wasserstrom, a professor at the University of California, Irvine who has studied protest in China. ``They're learning spin control.''
China has surpassed the U.S. as the world's biggest online market, with 253 million Web users at the end of June, according to the government-backed China Internet Network Information Center. The country also had 624.1 million mobile- phone subscribers by the end of September, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
Growing Challenge
While the government has encouraged the rapid adoption of technology to enhance China's global competitiveness, the increasing access also represents a growing challenge to a single-party state's monopoly on power as the avenues for public expression multiply.
Online condemnation of an official in the southern city of Shenzhen led to his dismissal this month after a surveillance video hit cyberspace showing his drunken argument with the parents of a young girl he allegedly tried to grope.
In March, the mayor of another southern city, Xiamen, announced the relocation of a proposed chemical plant after residents, concerned about possible health and environmental hazards, used cell-phone text messages and online chats to organize a series of protests that drew thousands of people.
Violent Demonstration
Riots in late June exposed the shifting dynamic between government and citizens. Rumors about a cover-up in the death of a teenage girl escalated into violence when 30,000 people demonstrated in the southwestern province of Guizhou, setting fire to cars and the local Communist Party building.
The government initially blamed the protests on ``criminals.'' After images of the riots spread on the Internet and bloggers questioned the government's version of events, local leaders fired police officials and the provincial party head apologized, according to the state-run Xinhua News Agency.
``If there's something holding them accountable, that's the Internet,'' says Xiao Qiang, founder of news site China Digital Times and an adjunct professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
Bo Xilai's star turn in the Nov. 6 meeting with the taxi drivers illustrates the effort to showcase a leadership in touch with people's concerns. His late father, Bo Yibo, was a key member of the first generation of Communist leaders and supported the 1989 military crackdown on student protests in Tiananmen Square calling for political liberalization. Xinhua also sent out a news story when the strike began and published numerous updates.
New Rules
New rules this year reinforce official responsibility to respond to citizen criticism and questions. A regulation that took effect May 1 requires agencies to counter false information with accurate disclosures or clarification, particularly when there is a danger to social stability.
``The party has no choice but to change its approach to information control and information access,'' says David Bandurski, a researcher at the University of Hong Kong's China Media Project. ``The traditional way of guiding public opinion is no longer effective.''
In a June speech during a visit to the Communist Party newspaper, People's Daily, President Hu Jintao urged that the party and government ``perfect our system of news release'' and ``actively set the agenda'' for unfolding events, disseminating ``authoritative information at the earliest moment'' and ``grasping the initiative in news propaganda.''
Online Discussion
Officials at all levels are following Hu's advice, some by hiring people to nip negative online discussions in the bud. An Internet search turns up announcements like this one from Chongqing that explains their duties:
``In order to further purify the Internet environment, Wanzhou District Internet Propaganda Leading Group has started setting up a Web commentator team,'' the Feb. 21 notice says. ``Commentators' work includes online comment on articles, news threads, blogs, etc.'' along with ``relaxing'' public emotion and ``refuting rumors.''
All this doesn't mean the central government has abandoned its traditional techniques to tame the flow of information: It still blocks many Web sites focused on topics such as Tibetan independence and employs censors to track down and delete content it disagrees with. Cyber cafes, where many Chinese access the Web, must install filtering software, monitor users' activities and record their identities under Chinese law.
The Sichuan earthquake in May also shows that the government, for all its growing savvy, intends to maintain control.
Disaster Response
After allowing relatively free discussion online and in the media immediately following the quake, which killed more than 85,000, officials began to restrict access as stories about the quality of school construction and corruption surfaced. A July report by PEN, an international writers' group that monitors human-rights abuses, cited arrests of Zeng Hongling and Huang Qi for criticizing the disaster response in reports on the Web.
Still, Berkeley's Xiao sees some positive signs.
``The words `transparency,' `openness,' even `accountability' start to enter official documents because of the Internet; that's progress,'' he says. ``The public more and more feels, `I'm entitled to say those things, to monitor those things, to see the response.'''
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