As you may recall, in January Google decided they no longer wanted to comply with censorship guidelines in China and started to redirect visitors to their China “content” sites to servers in HK, where there are no censorship restrictions. In that move, the search, photo and news sites became hosted on unfettered servers at google.com.hk, while others like music and maps kept their locations on mainland servers.

On the Official Google Blog, Chief Legal Officer David Drummond was rather frank about their recent move:

…it’s clear from conversations we have had with Chinese government officials that they find the redirect unacceptable—and that if we continue redirecting users our Internet Content Provider license will not be renewed (it’s up for renewal on June 30). Without an ICP license, we can’t operate a commercial website like Google.cn—so Google would effectively go dark in China.

Now it’s important to note that until this move, Google.cn traffic has been a “redirect,” meaning visitors to www.google.cn were sent automatically to www.google.com.hk en masse. Clicks in Google’s top bar to music and maps would go back to google.cn, but it was by default an HK site. That is likely what Drummond was referring to as being “unacceptable” to the PRC authorities.

Today, Google changed how this works in order to comply with the “letter” of what the authorities wanted, even if it wasn’t keeping in the spirit:

…instead of automatically redirecting all our users, we have started taking … them to a landing page on Google.cn that links to Google.com.hk—where users can conduct web search or continue to use Google.cn services like music and text translate, which we can provide locally without filtering. This approach ensures we stay true to our commitment not to censor our results on Google.cn and gives users access to all of our services from one page.

A number of folks have asked whether this is a backtrack by Google on their January announcement.

Not really.

It shows Google is interested in keeping their presence in China, especially when there is much potential profit in entertainment and tool-orientedinformation services (translation, mapping) that don’t run afoul of Google’s “Don’t be evil” mantra.

But it is not much of a change from their earlier stance, and all Google is willing to do is to put up an intermediate landing page as a facade. And when I say facade, it truly is one.

The front page of Google.cn may look like a normal search page, but it’s actually a large button. Once you click on any portion of the screen it brings you to the old redirected page at Google.com.hk.

It’s hardly going to make PRC authorities happy, even though Google.cn is no longer just a redirect, and does technically return a page from a PRC server to the web surfer.

In fact, it can be seen as the least amount Google could do to comply with ICP guidelines. It will be interesting to see if it gets renewed.

• RenRen
• Kaixin001
• Qzone
• 51.com

What’s interesting is that each one comes from a different angle: students, music/games, instant messaging and rural users (respectively). That makes for an interesting scrum, as no single service rules the landscape quite like Facebook does in the US.

I’ll be on KCBS radio tomorrow to talk about Facebook’s prospects.

In general, RenRen (nee XiaoNei) is the most like Facebook, as it launched as pretty much a pixel-for-pixel clone. It has a valuation of approximately $1.2 bln with Softbank recently buying a 35% stake.

I’m not hopeful Facebook will make any successful splash in the China market, though the way it’s been reported via sina.com, there’s every indication this is just an unsubstantiated rumor.

Google announced today in a blog post that it has redirected visitors headed for google.cn to google.com.hk.

So earlier today we stopped censoring our search services—Google Search, Google News, and Google Images—on Google.cn. Users visiting Google.cn are now being redirected to Google.com.hk, where we are offering uncensored search in simplified Chinese, specifically designed for users in mainland China and delivered via our servers in Hong Kong.

As someone based in both Beijing and Hong Kong for significant periods in the 2000s and has been asked to comment on Google-China previously, here’s a backgrounder with some basic questions I’ve answered for reporters about the issue.

• Google.cn servers are located within the borders of the PRC, and are subject to the ICP (Internet content provider) licensing scheme. Google had been self-censoring its search results to retain its ICP license. In the PRC, it is up to the operating entity to make sure it does not run afoul of the content guidelines put out by the authorities.
• This morning, California time, Google changed things such that traffic to google.cn started to be redirected to the google.com.hk site, in the simplified Chinese character mode. (Hong Kong and Taiwan use traditional Chinese characters, while the mainland uses simplified. They are somewhat mutually intelligible, but it does require some adjustment in reading to  get used to the other system. More info here.)
• Hong Kong SAR (Special Administrative Region) while technically part of China, is completely separate in terms of free speech, expression and rule of law. (See “One country, two systems.”) After it was handed over in 1997 by the Brits, it has had its own chief executive and Legislative Council independent of Beijing. Rule of law is strong in Hong Kong, with PRC dissidents and naysayers operating freely and in the open.
• Hong Kong’s Internet service and content providers are not subject to PRC’s censorship regime. The Great Firewall of China also does not play a part in content coming into or out of Hong Kong with the rest of the world.
• Google.com.hk results are not censored to conform with PRC ICP guidelines because being located in Hong Kong, it is governed by HK SAR laws.
• Content between Hong Kong and the PRC *are* subject to filtering by the Great Firewall, because HK is considered outside the mainland’s domestic Internet. For that reason, even though Google.com.hk is not censored by Google, the HTTP stream (ie. Web traffic) going between HK and PRC may be interrupted by the Great Firewall, based on content. This is often seen as a “Connection reset” by the user.
• It is possible that in the future, the Google.com.hk domain name or Internet protocol address may be blocked as a whole, but they don’t appear to be so right now.
• While Google.cn Search, News and Images are now being redirected to HK, the Video, Music, Maps and Translate sites are not, and still seem to be hitting PRC domestic servers. (Google Music has gained notoriety because it provides free, legal downloads of popular music via top100.cn).

China’s just waking to the reality that Google.cn (now Google.com.hk) is now subject to the Great Firewall. Let the commenting begin.

Our new home: Venice, California, and a nice modern bungalow near the beach where the sun shines bright and the sea air welcomes you each morning with a cool relaxing breeze. I’ll be taking up a new post as associate professor and director of new media the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Journalism.

I’ve always said I like to go where “interesting problems” are. For the last six years in Asia, I got to observe the growth and impact of the Internet in the region, especially while living in China. I also had the chance to write a book, the book, about Wikipedia while traveling the world to meet enthusiastic volunteers contributing their slice of human knowledge for free. It’s been a great ride.

As a journalist and educator, right now, there is no more compelling place to be than the US where the news industry is facing an incredibly tough challenge as it looks for ways to survive an era of digital economics with Craigslist, hyperlocal content, and rapidly changing subscriber and revenue models. It will require smart analysis, enthusiastic practitioners and a unique new role for the academy to help determine how the news industry remains solvent and relevant in the 21st century. I’m thrilled to be with USC to help figure out that future. It’s a city I never imagined I’d live in, but have been impressed and excited at every turn.

To outsiders, this must seem quite puzzling. Why would China’s “totalitarian” system need to back down on this?

This should be seen as a case study on how the complexities of China’s decision system is much more nuanced than what a “Communist” regime would suggest, and the role of citizen deliberation in a new, upwardly mobile, aspirational, IT-savvy China.

While the outside world sees the PRC government in absolute control, in reality the heavy handed, top down authoritarian system rides on a delicate balance of, bottom up public consent that supports the state’s legitimacy.

Here’s why Green Dam illustrates this quite well.

China’s Internet filtering is by far the most advanced in the world in terms of precision and scale. But until now, it happened in the “cloud,” in far off intangible spaces through two main vehicles:

• One is through massive domestic Web site content regulation through revokable Internet Content Provider licenses (ICP). Operators have to self-censor through technical or human means to please the authorities regarding general guidelines on taboo topics. Keywords are banned and discussion topics are forbidden. In some cases, explicit timely edicts are required, such as for significant June anniversaries, sensitive political meetings (People’s Congress) or poor construction standards in Sichuan earthquake zones. Even with these, China’s netizens have come up with clever tricks and puns to get around many of these automated filtering systems.

• The other is the Great Firewall, the blocking of what foreign Web sites China users can surf. The implementation is clever, in that restrictions show up as technical errors (connection reset, site not found/unreachable) and curb behavior through uncertainty and doubt about a site’s reach-ability, rather than fear. You don’t know whether it’s the Internet acting flaky, or whether a site is actually being filtered. Tech-savvy users can trivially circumvent this.

But you don’t need perfect censorship to have effective censorship. Both these systems do quite well for the PRC government in keeping the 3T1F topics outside the mainstream, and ensuring that the government is not embarrassed by reporting on its incompetence.

The key, here is that both the domestic and international filtering activities happened in the cloud, the ether, the machines that comprise the Internet. It wasn’t in your home and it didn’t intrude beyond the cable to your desk.

Green Dam suddenly put the specter of restriction, surveillance and control in your home.

With that one stroke, which probably seemed like the next logical innocuous extension of the censorship regime for PRC bureaucrats, the government took the big miscalculation of crossing into the the private space, and the personal property of China’s citizens. And that’s where the outrage came.

This was the camel’s nose into the private tent of Internet users. A poll on China’s major sites (Sina, Netease, et al) all showed over 3/4 of respondents said Green Dam was not necessary or a bad idea.

(NB: China is not the first or the only government wanting to censor Internet traffic for content. Australia’s Clean Feed proposal to covertly filter out sites at the ISP level has been under fire from their netizens, and was unceremoniously put on hiatus as well. Most public schools and libraries in the United States implement content filtering at some level. This is not a uniquely China issue.)

What the authorities in China didn’t realize was how serious that breach of boundary would be.

I knew it was going to be a tough road for Green Dam when it appeared the MIIT initiative was not a unified effort. Before leaving for my travels, I did commentaries with the Associated Press, Deutsche Welle, Al Jazeera and others, making the point that even China’s official news outlets were openly questioning Green Dam’s legitimacy. The new Global Times newspaper, which has been rather frank about other issues, led off with serious questions about the software’s safety.

Then came the big one.

China Daily, the official mouthpiece of the government, was publishing criticisms of Green Dam shortly after it was announced, even publishing Photoshop’ed illustrations of netizens mocking the system. (“Outrage over bid to tame Web“, China Daily, June 18, 2009)

One picture it included with the article was a “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” multiple choice question describing Green Dam as “spyware” with “systemic flaws” that could be “exploited by hackers.” Another cartoon shows a gray hand of censorship coming from the computer screen and stiff-arming a computer user in the face.

It was clear at this point, the Green Dam initiative was from a smaller portion of the PRC bureaucracy, and not from the highest levels. China Daily would have never published something so critical if it was of the highest-level of agenda pushing.

China’s netizens were speaking, and the media and government were taking notice (and with higher ups looking the other way). So while this was not democracy in action, it certainly was something in action.

At TEDxShanghai last month, I described the phenomenon of Wikipedia and Twitter forming the basis of a new online commons where global netizens come to share and reinforce memes across geographic and social boundaries (SlideShare presentation). For years, enthusiastic faith-based technology enthusiasts hoped the Internet would bring democracy to any place it touched. This has been spectacularly elusive. On the flipside, some viewed the new Web 2.0 social revolution as “socialist”, “collectivist” and at worst, Maoist. That’s been inaccurate as well.

Instead, I describe the new borderless, socially agile, activist associations that crop up on the Internet as a new system of ‘deliberative adhocracy’. Alvin Toffler, and later Cory Doctorow, used adhocracy to describe a new form of rule based ephemeral associations that “capture opportunities, solve problems, and get results.” (Waterman)

Whether it’s as massive as #IranElection to bring global awareness to its politics, or as small as #MotrinMoms to discuss outrage at an insulting advertisement, we now have an online information commons (Twitter) and knowledge commons (Wikipedia) that supports a space for the new distributed Zeitgeist. In China, obviously there are other analogs (Twitter clone Fanfou, Baidu Baike, BBS forums, et al.) but the effect is the same. To see deliberative adhocracy in action look no further than the Human Flesh Search Engine that metes out social justice in the absence of a strong rule of law in China.

Readers familiar with my book will know I described how a Wikipedia Revolution changed forever how we deal with free access to knowledge and its production. I will however, be quite Burke-ian in my pronouncement about the Internet’s effect on China.

Revolutions are sudden overthrows and disruptive repudiations of the status quo. China has a terrible modern history with revolutions, with more of them going bad than good. The rule law is sometimes described as when “reason trumps politics.” To China’s authorities, the Internet is being used in a deliberative process that fulfills that role. It is not perfect, nor prevalent enough to ensure social justice on a large scale. However, it is a huge step forward for a country that is convinced that after a century of turmoil, that any step must take safety and efficiency into account.

The hiatus for Green Dam, is the standard face-saving way for the government to back down. There is a good possibility it may come back in another form, watered down or otherwise. But for now, China’s netizens are having their day.

DATE: Saturday, May 16, 2009, 2pm to 5pm
LOCATION: Beijing, Renmin University, Room 509, Ming De Main Building, Entrance A1

Renowned author and commentator James Fallows of The Atlantic, in one of his final talks in China, will reprise some of his major themes on China’s economy and its future. Event sponsored by Renda School of Finance and Worldview Global Consulting. Talk will be in English with Chinese translation.

DIRECTIONS:

By taxi: Go to the West Gate of Renda (3rd Ring Rd to Suzhou Bridge exit, on Suzhou Dajie and you will see Renda looming in red brick on the right after 1 km).

Walk through the West Gate, take a left into the giant courtyard. You will see Entrance A 1 slightly to the left of center.  Take elevator to 6th floor and walk down one flight (Chinese conservation measure: no up service to first five floors).

Renmin Mingde Building

View Larger Map

The best writeup is at CN Reviews, and James Fallows follows up with some additional insights on my comments. I wish I could have someone as smart as James Fallows always annotate my talks. You can also see the Twitter tag of #sxswchina for the audience chatter.

We can see the TVCC building’s all-metal west facade from our living room window, so imagine our shock when at 930pm, we see it lit up like a vertical kebab grill, glowing orange. It was 40-stories of flames and smoke. After grabbing video camera, SLR, tripod, Blackberry and cell phones, we ran out of the apartment to report the story (all in less than two minutes).

You can see some of the Flickr photos I’ve taken, of the fire and morning after. The images have been featured in a number of places, thanks to Twittering: Shanghaiist, Gizmodo, Curbed to name a few. This has driven about 15,000 image views in just under 36 hours. [Flickr]

Here’s the video story I worked on with the Wall Street Journal that evening with reporter/wife Mei Fong. (Flash needed)

UPDATE: The Dezeen architecture and design blog also carried the photos, which has pushed image views to over 24,000.

UPDATE 2: Actually the number of image views is north of 65,000, since it seems the 24,000 number is only for photos visited through the main set.

But one thing that did crane my neck while zipping around the city was the sight of a London cab in Beijing taxi colors. So I finally tracked down one of the 30 new London cabs driving the streets of the Olympic city. Made under an agreement between Geely (China) and London Taxis International, the TX4 was brought in as a nod to the international tourists and the Paralympic Games that follow in September. I was lucky enough to find one queueing up, and the driver interested in gabbing.

He said they are indeed limited, to around 30 in the city, and they will continue to stay in service even after all the Olympics are over. They are wheelchair capable, and are left-hand drive, unlike their British-bound counterparts.

]]> http://www.andrewlih.com/blog/2008/08/27/london-cabs-in-beijing/feed/ 5 http://www.andrewlih.com/blog/2008/08/07/morning-in-beijing/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=morning-in-beijing http://www.andrewlih.com/blog/2008/08/07/morning-in-beijing/#comments Thu, 07 Aug 2008 22:34:06 +0000 Andrew http://www.andrewlih.com/blog/2008/08/07/morning-in-beijing/ Continue reading →]]> It’s August 8, 2008, the day the Olympics officially begin, and the weather is probably close the worst case scenario for the organizers. Hazy, hot, humid and smoggy. It’s not clear it’s “dangerous” per se, but it doesn’t make for good pictures. (Taken 5:50 am)