"http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2007/11/27/michael-anti-and-the-end-of-the-golden-age-of-blogs-in-china/
(((There's some awesome on-the-ground stuff in here, though this Michael Anti guy sounds at least as cranky and mulish as most American political bloggers.)))
Link: …My heart’s in Accra » Michael Anti and the end of the golden age of blogs in China.
"Anti ends us talk with a challenging argument: “China is not America - it’s a bigger Singapore. That’s not a bad thing - you’ve got money, you can go abroad. But you’re not free to lead a political movement.” The Chinese government, over years, has learned how to control the Internet very effectively. It’s turned it from a tool of free expression into a tool for social monitoring. (((How useful!)))
“In 1989, the government didn’t know why Tiananmen happened. Now, by reading the Internet, they know what’s going to happen. They know about movements in their infancy and they’re able to kill them when they’re still young.”
(((And least they're getting rich while they kill them.)))I referenced this quote when asking Michael a question after his talk. I wanted to know what percentage of Chinese users he thought were interested in getting around censorship and expressing themselves freely online, observing that the rise of the internet in China has already created a great deal more freedom than most Chinese people had a decade ago.
Michael’s response began with a story: “When I first came to America, I thought it was very conservative. In China, it’s easy to have sex before marriage, and we are more open to homosexuals. We have no conservative party, and we have no God.” He asks, “Why does the China government allow people to have so much freedom in sex and business?” The answer is that the government wants to exchange personal freedom for political freedom.
(((You heard it here first – the Chinese have more personal freedom than Americans do.)))
You’ve got a life now that’s so much better than your parents’ life was. “There’s a generation gap. The children of the 1970s want social change. They remember Tiananmen. But the newer generation simply accepts this exchange” of political freedoms for personal freedoms. As a result, “only very weird people care about political freedom. At least 95% of people don’t care about censorship.”
((("All progress depends on the unreasonable man," as Shaw used to say.)))Anti says that the Chinese government has suceeded in controling the Internet for the majority of people. “I see no hope of changing this situation.” Where he sees hope is in mobilizing and connecting elites, not in changing how the mainstream sees the internet or politics....
((((Found it through WORLDCHANGING – go give them some funding for Christmas.)))
