To me, collective amnesia of the Tiananmen incident 21 years ago fascinates and scares me. Is our understanding of history durable and resilient, ever marching on closer to the Truth? Or is it easily manipulated by commercial interests and by political agenda? Is the past completely malleable to serve the interests of those who seek to control the present and thus the future?

While the online commons of Twitter rages with the #8964 and #6421wj hashtags (see also ChinaGeeks’ translation of tweets), the events of 21 years ago seem largely irrelevant to the struggles of daily life in modern China today. Life in China is so fast-paced, demanding and full of constant change. Those who are not struggling, are far too busy pursuing the seemingly unlimited opportunities available to the privileged. Perhaps some who actually know about the Tiananmen incident are engaged in what Forbes’ Gady Epstein calls “willed forgetting in service of today’s prosperity.”

Honestly (and I may regret admitting this), I personally couldn’t care less that Foursquare got blocked (see David Feng’s blog on how this went down). Yes, I should defend the online rights of my friends who want to spam their social networks check-in with their favorite Location Based Service (LBS), because next They will be coming after my own beloved social sites.  Yes, They certainly have in the past.  But for some reason, Foursquare seems so trivial in comparison to what happened 21 years ago.  See Slate for a moving collection of photos…looking through these pictures is a far better way to “check-in” to the past.

Alec Ash writes an interesting post on Danwei that provides insights into Beida university students today vs. those 21 years ago.  Danwei itself is an interesting small case study of how you can serve the Motherland with great heart and personal sacrifice, only to get punished for doing so.  In this case, via getting their site blocked.  Because of the GFW,  I’ve excerpted heavily from the post:

What parallels, then, exist between the two generations? For all the noise about the exceptionality of China’s ‘post-80s’ youth (80后), there’s quite a few. If it’s dangerous to generalize about the class of ’89 from the actions of a few, then it’s less risky to generalize about students as a whole. Beida students today, like Lee before them, are concerned with their grades first, their fun second, and politics even further down the list. Yes, there are the nationalistic ‘angry youth’ (愤青) just as there are those who vocally criticize their government. But most are simply too busy preparing for their exams or TOEFL to care.
The second big similarity, though, is that there’s discontent beneath the surface, on a range of specific issues. For one, the sheer pressure and competitiveness of the world they find themselves in: 10 hours of study a day for many, just like it was in high school, and just like it will be in the best jobs. Then there’s the inequality, corruption and nepotism, just like in Lee’s day － perennial problems. A more recent one is the escalating price of housing in the big cities. Where thirty years ago their parents could buy a property relatively easy, students today are facing ever-more terrifying digits. There’s much to be unhappy about.
…

Another is that the West doesn’t cut it as an alternative to admire, like it used to. Sure, everyone watches Gossip Girl or Prison Break (depending on gender), but the idolization of everything Western which Lee describes － and which has a strong whiff of the May Fourth movement to it － simply isn’t there. And when it comes to politics, there’s a definite mistrust that the Western model could work in China. A metaphor told me by more than one young Chinese describes the Tiananmen generation of having just come out of a dark room, dazzled by the brightness. Their generation, the implication goes, has adjusted to the light.

I’ve heard Beida students describe their predecessors as “impulsive” and self-interested (why “I don’t like Wang Dan or Wu’er Kaixi”, one friend bluntly said). But how do they describe their own generation? Last week alone, I heard three self-definitions: one of a “pragmatic” generation, thinking of their own futures. Another of a generation with “no ideals”, nothing to fight for. But my favorite was simply a generation with “more choice”. Or put otherwise, a generation with more to lose from making noise, and more to gain from silence.

Alec first wrote about the differences about Beida students today vs. the late 80s on his blog 6.  The topic of the “disillusionment with the West” is definitely one that has gotten stronger after the 2008 financial crisis and the perception that China has weather the storm much better than the rest of the world.  Perhaps there is some idea that if they demonstrators had gotten their way, Western prescriptions would have been followed to the detriment of Chinese society.  Instead, Chinese leaders followed their own path adapted to the conditions of China at the time, and deserve some credit for the economic results that have come about.

Some have commemorated this day. From a smattering of red umbrellas on the square itself, to the now traditional demonstrations in Hong Kong (which has experienced some harassment), there are some efforts to bring people together to remember what happened.  Here’s Taiwan’s Ma Ying Jeou’s speech in translation. Peking Duck shares a new report and also shares his own feelings:

For me, this remains an open wound, and as long as the CCP keeps stonewalling, the much beloved phrase “Reform and Opening Up” will ring at least partially hollow. Those who keep demanding more contrition from the Japanese for their crimes against humanity should demand the same from their own rulers.

I don’t have the same feelings as Peking Duck. I feel the cadence of life in China, the all-consuming nature of the daily struggle for Chinese at all levels of society, and the sense that understanding modern history in China requires much more effort and discomfort than Westerners may realize. Modern China is simply too busy to remember.  Perhaps Gady’s “willed forgetting in service of today’s prosperity” is more like “inadvertent forgetting as a result of today’s prosperity.”

Tiananmen is not an “open wound” to me. Instead, it creates an uncomfortable realization of how fragile our conception of history is, and how the busyness of life can allow the past to be forgotten.

Photo credit: Bendilaowai.

2. Render that pavilion benign through the display of images of the Gulf of Mexico cartoons.

3. Attach solar panels to the State Grid Pavilion (actual connection to the grid is optional).

4. Produce inflatable mascots to no shorter than 1.7 meters, using no less than 36 oz PVC per unit of production.

5. Reduce the use of raw materials on unnecessary amenities, such as seating (foreground) and shading (background).

6. Reuse waste items whenever possible (for example: nighttime bicycle lights made extraneous by China’s glorious transition to a country of personal automobiles).

7. Recycle.

8. Achieve maximum beautification and environmental harmony through an appropriate ratio of greenery : concrete.

9. Prohibit the use of Chinese trees for production of all paper products.

10. Require that every country establish an emissions-free transportation option inside their pavilion.

11. Vigorously practice resource conservation.

12. Avow commitment to the circular economy through unwavering patriotism.

(Reduce the waste heat produced by Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan’s pavilions by reducing their size and placing them in the shadow of the Chinese pavilion).

Read more about the energy and the environment through Elizabeth’s blog.

My readers here on CNReviews have probably noticed that I haven’t blogged in quite some time. One of them probably wonders what happened. The other is probably hoping I’m actually dead.

Actually, I’m still around, as most of my hard-earned enemies and trolls rue whenever I pop up making the odd comment or 20 on my favorite garden of low-hanging fruit, chinaSMACK.

Oh boy, some of you are going to chafe at that one.

Heh, good.

However, the main reason I haven’t been posting much here on CNR is because I’ve been busy organizing a crack team of royal ass-kickers excellent bloggers and developing a new China blog.

But before I introduce this new blog, I want to publicly thank Elliott and CNR for having me here.

Kai and CNR, sitting in a tree…

I’ve been contributing posts to CNR for almost exactly two years now and last April, I had taken over as the main blogger and a part-time lead editor of sorts. Elliott and I had re-envisioned CNR and then rebooted it with a new design. At the time, we were getting ~30k visits a month. Today, CNR is enjoying 50k+ visits a month, which is not bad, considering that we haven’t updated recently nor have we been updating regularly over the past few months.

Even so, we had made the mistake of positioning CNR to be too much too soon, a harsh reality that set in over the subsequent months. Elliott spawned his third child and it, along with his day job, prevented him from blogging much about China. Min, through whom I first met Elliott, had retired into becoming a full-time quant, deciding that she wasn’t too keen on English blogging. As for me, as time went on, I realized that most of my posts revolved around socio-political commentary about contentious, divisive issues involving China and the Chinese. Yet CNR was to be more than just my personal opinions and rhetoric on cross-cultural politics and perceptions. The more I posted, the more my personal interests skewed what CNR professed to offer and deliver.

We had planned to scout and recruit other writers to join our little party, and over the past year, we’ve been blessed with contributions by Baoru, mollie, the BloggerInsight team (Ying, Lucas, and Kai Lukoff), Elizabeth, Aimee Barnes, voodikon,  and finally C. Custer. Unfortunately, we never managed to develop and keep the right team of people to adequately cover the many broad fields we so over-enthusiastically committed ourselves to.

And then…?

Several months ago, faced with this cognitive dissonance, I began rethinking my relationship with blogging on CNR. I had always wanted to build a reasonably “successful” blog.  By “successful”, all that meant was that the blog would be notable for something. I had also always wanted to accomplish this with a team of like-minded individuals, a group of people who would push each other, challenging each other to become better, all towards the goal of developing a notable blog. Why a blog, as opposed to, say, “curing world hunger?” Because a blog fulfills my personal interest in writing commentary, reacting, responding, and influencing the world I live in and the people I share this world with, even if it’s a wee tiny bit.

How very democratic of me, right?

I decided that CNR wasn’t the right platform for me to pursue my goals, despite my immense purely heterosexual love for Elliott. Even if I redesigned and rebooted it to be focused on the socio-political commentary I wanted to spend most of my free time writing, I would always be annoyed with the domain name. While CNReviews or “China Reviews” is perfectly fine for a blog broadly covering “People, Business, and Life in China”, but it doesn’t quite convey “socio-political commentary”. Blogging under CNR is like wearing boxers that are 10 times too large.

I’m Asian, I know my genetic limitations.

As such, I sought out fellow bloggers that shared my interest in writing socio-political commentary about issues facing and involving modern China. They also had to occupy a similar position as me on the ideological spectrum. They couldn’t be unrepentant “panda huggers”, nor unrepentant “panda bashers”. If they were, we’d end up clawing at each other’s faces too much to really cooperate. A good sense of humor wouldn’t hurt either.

Fortunately, I’ve been following the English-language China blogosphere for quite some time, and have come to know and admire quite a few people. So, I set some large steel traps where I knew they’d frequent and then waited in the bushes for the tell-tale clank of triumph.

Within days, I had caught me a Custer and an Abrams. While the Abrams is a bit more mangier than the younger Custer, both are fantastic specimens of bloggers who regularly and consistently publish critical, incisive, and nuanced commentary about modern China issues. After they agreed not to run away, I let them out of the traps and attached the collars.

CNR, compared to many other well-known small English-language China blogs, is pretty successful given the amount of traffic we pull, even when we’re sitting around twiddling our thumbs doing absolutely nothing. Of course, we’re no chinaSMACK or Shanghaiist, nor Danwei. Hell, we’re not even an ESWN. All blogs I — and we — admire and respect.

But 50,000+ visits a month is pretty decent for a small blog like CNR, and it suggests we’ve done something right. Therefore, giving up this built-in traffic up is hard, but it only makes sense for my captives and I to start a brand new blog, from square one, fresh, with a clean sheet.

And that’s exactly what we’ve done.

Entering the already crowded “English-language China blogosphere”, is china/divide, a daily updated group blog publishing social and political commentary on news and issues involving modern China written by Charles Custer, Stan Abrams, and your’s truly. We’re like the Three Amigos, except I’m not white bread. And, if everything goes according to plan, we won’t remain at three.

The first post is by Stan, titled “Goat Meat, Loose Women, and the Imperfect China Dialogue“, and it delivers. Of course, over the next few days, Custer and I will also rear our ugly heads, and henceforth, china/divide will be the place to read what much of what we think, and then proceed to disagree and hate us for it.

Please, do come and take a look.

As for CNR, given that I will be spending most of time and energies on china/divide, I’m formally saying “so long, and thanks for all the fish.” Ironically, and much to his consternation, just as Elliott’s starts a stint in Shanghai and may have more time to regularly blog on CNR, I’m seemingly abandoning him. I wouldn’t quite put it that way though. I can’t make any promises, but I don’t think this is the goodbye forever between CNR and myself, and I may guest post here in the future, especially if the subject-matter falls under CNR’s umbrella more than china/divide‘s.

But then again, which one of you actually enjoyed my non-socio-political commentary posts anyway?

See you in the divide.

Kudos to Kai Pan for all the work he did in laying out his argument. The winner, however, is Chinayouren.

Bastard! *shakes fist*

Richard also summarizes:

“Freedom of choice” sounds wonderful. It sounds a little less wonderful when it’s “freedom of manipulated choice.”

…except the thrust of my argument is that “no choice and no freedom” sounds a whole lot less wonderful than “freedom of manipulated choice”.

Fortunately, Richard also left a comment going into detail with his disagreement, which I’ll quote below and respond to. Before doing so, I do want to state very plainly that I’ve been a fan of The Peking Duck for a long time. I usually agree with Richard’s point of view and I generally respect him, even if we have and have had some very strong disagreements (mostly over rhetoric).

Here we go with Richard’s comment:

I have to disagree. First, since the results are manipulated and the deck well stacked, it won’t leave such a terrible void in most Chinese people’s lives.

Agree it won’t leave such a “terrible void” in “most” Chinese lives, just the market share of Chinese internet users Google commanded, which I personally feel is a significant amount of people. I’m worried for those people and any Chinese netizen that could’ve been a future Google convert. Unfortunately, I really don’t think many people are thinking much about them or what they want.

The market will fill that void soon enough if it’s so gaping.

I agree the market will fill it if it’s so gaping. Yet given how “well stacked” the deck is, I personally feel Google is better equipped and positioned to deliver more to the Chinese internet user even in such a hostile, unfair, stacked-deck environment. It’s not that I don’t expect someone to fill the void, it’s that I have more confidence in Google doing it better and thus offering significantly more value to the Chinese netizen.

Second, if google does indeed end up leaving China (a big if) it will do far more than merely cause Westerners some brief self-satisfaction. It will create a serious dilemma for other companies doing business with China and will force the world to rethink what it means to cooperate with China.

I agree that Google leaving China will do more than just give some Westerners some brief self-satisfaction. I just don’t think it’ll result in as much dilemma and rethinking Richard thinks it will. Foreign companies have been working in and with China long before Google agreed to self-censorship. I respectfully think Richard is overestimating the relevance of Google’s departure to the vast majority of industries and businesses. I’m not saying it won’t cause ripple effects. It will. I just don’t think it’s going to be as revolutionary in the business world as Richard (and many other journalists, commentators, and pundits) think it will be.

Richard also says Google leaving China is “a big if”. I actually suspect likewise, but right now we still have Google saying it is going to uncensor Google.cn, possibly to probably playing a game of chicken with the Chinese government censors, seeing who will flinch first. If and when Google uncensors Google.cn, I’m curious as to what people, especially Richard, think will happen next. Will it get blocked but Google.com won’t? Or will it get blocked and then so will Google.com? We’re all making educated and reasoned predictions here, but I’m trying to figure out what will happen in the context of how it hurts the Chinese internet users.

I’m not saying that these are necessarily good things, but they would almost certainly happen. It would create all sorts of issues among China’s educated classes, whose support China counts on.

I agree that Google’s departure will create issues among China’s educated classes. Unfortunately, I think they can be mollified so long as the most practical tools Google offers, that may be so integrated into their professional lives so much that it would be a monumentally painful loss if they could not longer access and use them, remains accessible. And this wouldn’t be web search. This would be Google Apps like GMail, Google Docs, etc.

There would have to be considerable loss of face for China as well, though it’s hard to say how much they care about that.

I agree that there will be a considerable loss of face for China. But is that what we’re after? To embarrass China? To make it lose face? Without a question, I believe China has done many–too many–shameful and embarrassing things. It deserves what it gets. But this isn’t China forcing Google to leave. It’s Google forcing China to force it to leave by reneging on an agreement. The only argument against that is to say China is now breaking its part of the agreement and making it so uncomfortable for Google that Google has to leave, which I can accept if Google tells us just what it is. Until then, it’s more like a girlfriend threatening to leave until she gets something her boyfriend isn’t willing to give but she previously was fine with. Again, she’s free to change her mind, but what about their pooch (the Chinese internet users)? What happens to the dog?

So while it would be a shame for the Chinese who use google to be deprived of a choice, no matter how manipulated and bastardized it may be, the greater effect would be on China’s reputation both among its own citizens and among the global community China has been eagerly courting. It would be a painful step backwards. Compared to this full-frontal assault on China’s reputation, the “self-satisfaction” that may be felt by some Westerners can only be described as trivial.

I’m not comfortable with the attitude of using this as a “full-frontal assault” on China’s reputation. I think there’s a huge amount of “self-satisfaction” underpinning even the desire to do so. It’s retribution for all perceived slights, disagreements, and frustrations. I understand the inevitability, even necessity, of geo-political hardball, but cheering this on over how much face China is going to lose and how much trouble it will cause the Chinese government amongst not just the international community but also its own people is a little disturbing. This is the attitude that fuels China’s argument that foreigners are trying to destabilize it, trying to keep it down.

That might be playing into China’s hand.

The most amusing thing in the Google crisis is all the commentators crying about the loss of Google.cn and its negative consequences for the freedom of the Chinese.

No.

Wrong.

At least for this English-language China blogger.

I don’t believe that a censored Google.cn is far better than no Google.cn, much less cry about it.

I believe that Google in China is better than no Google in China. I cry about the loss of Google in China and its negative consequences for the freedom of the Chinese. It isn’t about the loss of Google.cn itself. There are several reasons, which I’ll get to in a second.

Evil is Search Engine Manipulation with Google’s name on it

But first, Uln’s argument is that the loss of Google.cn is a good thing for Chinese users because Google.cn engages in search engine manipulation (SEM). In other words, while the “engine” underneath Google.cn is the same as Google.com, the results shown are different, manipulated under agreement with the Chinese government censors to hide results the Chinese government finds objectionable and doesn’t want its populace to see. An internet user in China using Google.com would be able to see all the results but might get blocked when he or she tries to click on a result that leads to a blocked website. The user would be reminded of the government’s censorship. However, an internet user in China using Google.cn would see only manipulated results, effectively hiding both the information and the censorship. That Google.cn explicitly notifies users when results are manipulated is dismissed by Uln as being largely inconsequential because users begin to ignore it or it is often placed below the list of results.

These are all valid criticisms of Google.cn and, by extension, Google itself. Uln argues that this compromises the integrity of the Google brand name and value proposition (do no evil, we provide information, etc.) thereby betraying the trust of its Chinese users who see the Google name slapped on Google.cn as meaning something about the information Google.cn will provide. Uln writes:

When you type a “sensitive” term and G.cn removes all the results except the People’s Daily and Xinhua, Google’s responsibility is double: not only it supports those often objectible views on the first page, but it also implicitly states that it is the ONLY opinion existing in the World.

And the worse is, the Chinese who believed that would be right to do so, because Google’s well known principles clearly specify their commitment to give all the information available  in a democratic way.

G.cn is a shame for Google and it is probably the single most evil page on the Chinese internet (because it manipulates just like Baidu, but lends the brand name of Google to the manipulation).

But is a loss of Google.cn a good thing?

No.

Google.cn is Choice

Google.cn represents choice. It gives Chinese internet users another option for searching the web other than Baidu. Yes, there is Yahoo and there is Bing but neither of them are remotely as big as Google.cn, even if Google.cn is second place to Baidu. It gives Chinese internet users access to Google’s internet indexing and search methodology and algorithms. Even as Google.cn suffers the same manipulation of potentially displayed search results as Baidu, it provides different ordering and ranking of displayed search results.

This different ordering and ranking is precisely one of the main reasons why Google beat Yahoo and other search engines (MSN Search, Ask.com, etc.) elsewhere in the world. Google’s search engine returned better sorted and more relevant search results to users. Why continue finding your answers in the 3rd or 5th Yahoo search result when Google gave it to you in its first result? People started using Google because it delivered what they were looking for more efficiently.

That’s what a good search engine is about, providing the best search results for any given user inputted query, and Google is a good search engine.

Yes, having incomplete search results due to government-mandated self-censorship is bad, but Chinese users are not searching for potentially censored or blocked material all day long on Google.cn. They, you know, use it to do other fairly mundane things that don’t get the Chinese government censors’ panties in a twist. They look up news on celebrities, research product information, find the latest scores to last night’s NBA game, etc. etc. etc. Google.cn provides a valuable service to its users in China because it still helps them find the information they are looking for using qualitatively different and valuable methodology and algorithms than Baidu.

Google.cn gives Chinese internet users a choice.

Choice is freedom.

Losing Google.cn is a loss of choice.

Less choice is less freedom.

Therefore, loss of Google.cn is arguably a negative consequence for the freedom of the Chinese. It may even be something worth crying about.

The reason why “a censored google.cn is better than no google.cn” is exactly this. Google.cn still provides different results of value in the vast majority of Chinese web searches. This was very much part of the whole utilitarian argument that Google gave for agreeing to market and censor Google.cn in the first place. Even with the same scrubbed search results as Baidu, Google still has some competitive advantage worth offering to Chinese netizens through Google.cn.

No, the competitive advantage isn't only Chinese-specific Google logos.

Without Google.cn, its users will switch to Google.com, which is better anyway

Uln argues that…

Google.com is a Search Engine that is:

1- Exactly as good quality as Google.cn (identical index)
2- Without the manipulation of Google.cn
3- AND much less censored than Google.cn

…which is definitely true.

So, like Uln, some people may be asking why Chinese users use the self-censored Google.cn instead of the freely accessible Google.com? Uln answers:

And the only reason why Chinese don’t use it is that Google.cn sounds more Chinese to them, and they just don’t care enough.

No, it isn’t because Google.cn sounds more Chinese to them, it is because Google.cn is more Chinese to them.

I don’t think there’s enough emphasis given to display language being a major reason why people prefer Google.cn over Google.com. The vast majority of Chinese internet users instantly feel intimidated and overwhelmed by any website that is not written in Chinese. This is a big reason why Chinese people say “Google.cn is for the Chinese”. We can’t underestimate the importance of first impressions.

“But you can change the interface language of Google.com to Simplified Chinese…”

Never underestimate the importance of first impressions.

Hell, people even cite “google” being hard to spell for Chinese people as being a reason why Google is behind Baidu. Ever wonder why Google owns g.cn?

I feel there’s a tenuous compromise between the CCP censors and Google right now that allows Google.com to remain freely accessible despite it not providing the same manipulated search results as Google.cn. This is as long as the majority of Chinese internet users willingly head for Google.cn, as long as they see Google.cn as being tailored specifically for them, the Chinese. It’s like the GFW still allowing proxies to work so long as it achieves its mission with blocking the vast majority. The CCP information control scheme is not about preventing everyone from knowing certain things, it’s about preventing too many people from knowing certain things.

If Google.cn is no more and this leads former Google.cn users to simply migrate to Baidu, then maybe — just maybe — Google.com will remain freely accessible in China. However, if it results in too many former Google.cn users subsequently adopting and using Google.com, the CCP will indeed worry.

So a question then is how much will Google push the envelope with an unblocked Google.com. After all, Google will still have a business necessity and plan for capturing Chinese internet users, right? Even if Google does nothing to appeal to mainland Chinese users, leaving it the way it is, it could still get blocked if too many mainland users flock to it. If Google, however, intentionally seeks to make Google.com user-friendly enough to bring in substantial Chinese people to search and get its non-manipulated results, then it will be seen as a threat to the Chinese government’s efforts to control information and thus it will definitely face the possibility of being blocked outright.

And when that happens, Uln’s conclusion here…

Most probably the disappearance of G.cn will push the present G.cn users to switch to G.com, and the outcome will be increased freedom in the Chinese internet.

…will definitely look short-sighted and naive.

His argument isn’t hard to understand, though. Uln argues that this forced migration from a shut-down Google.cn to Google.com is a good thing because Google.com at least offers non-manipulated search results. Even if the Chinese users still can’t click through to the blocked websites due to the GFW, at least they can see and read the search result excerpts and, more importantly, know that such information exists out there. They would at least be aware of the existence of those dissenters and dissenting opinions that the Chinese government ideally doesn’t even want them to be aware of. That’s more freedom, right? That’s good, right?

That’s more freedom, right? That’s good, right?

Yeah, that’s good. It’s better than nothing.

Yeah, except until the Chinese government realizes that, blocks Google.com, and it indeed becomes nothing.

Nothing for the Chinese internet user. No Google.cn, no Google.com, no Google search methodology and algorithms. Only Baidu.

No choice.

No freedom.

Of course, Uln acknowledges such near the end of his post:

On the other hand, some commenters are already saying that I am too optimistic, and that the CCP will quickly come to the same conclusion I have come and block Google.com.

Without Google.com, the Chinese will learn of the Great Firewall and how to get around it, which is better anyway

But Uln continues:

The good news is that EVEN if they do block Google.com, the situation will still be better than today. The Chinese Google users will start to miss the G, and they will start to use web proxies to access Google.com, expanding their use and making the Chinese net population more conscious of the GFW and of the ways to cross it.

I’m not so sold on that situation still being better than the situation today. It is extremely optimistic, almost unreasonably so, to think a blocking of Google.com will by itself, or through the former Google users, make the general Chinese internet populace more conscious of the GFW and of the tools that could be used to cross it. Remember, most of the Chinese internet doesn’t use Google. It wouldn’t be a loss for most Chinese netizens because it wouldn’t directly affect their internet lives. If they aren’t inconvenienced in a practical manner, how can we expect a meaningful expansion of GFW-consciousness or use of GFW-circumventing tools?

Are we really hoping former Google.cn and then Google.com Chinese users are going to be freedom fighters? That they’ll become internet freedom and anti-censorship activists, handing out information on proxies and VPNs to the masses, enlightening them all?

For web searches, Baidu is the easy alternative. The one stickiness point will be Google productivity tools like Google Apps and, most notably, GMail. It will probably be easier to use a proxy or VPN than to accept losing one’s e-mail account, and this is definitely more so for companies and organizations. Yes, we’ll get a lot of these people but they’re likely and already plenty aware of the GFW, of proxies and VPNs. The real coup is not in these people expanding their use of proxies and VPNs or hoping they’ll help the general Chinese net population become “more conscious of the GFW and of the ways to cross it”, it is in them being inconvenienced so much that they demand the government unblock Google.com.

Yet, even then, it may only go as far as so they can use their productivity tools, not necessarily Google’s web search.

So where’s the “increased freedom in the Chinese internet” in that?

How is that situation really better than now?

Because a few more people will learn about the GFW and fewer still will bother to find out how to use proxies and VPNs? All this at the expense of broader daily practical choice and productivity for all the existing Chinese Google users and future would-be Google converts?

Some people surely see this trade-off as being worth-it, as being acceptable, as being desirable.

Me? I’m not so sure.

Why Google.cn is Evil and should leave China

That’s the title of Uln’s post.

It’s also a straw man.

This was never about whether or not Google.cn would or should leave China. It was about whether or not Google would or should leave China. I hope everyone caught onto the difference from the beginning. Everything is hinging on whether or not Google.cn is what allows Google, and also Google.com, to remain in China. We cannot approach answering this question without considering Google being blocked from China entirely if it doesn’t play ball with the Chinese government on Google.cn. If Google refuses to play ball on Google.cn, by uncensoring it or just shutting it down, we have to consider what may happen to Google.com. We should even expect the worst. In fact, that’s what we do best when it comes to Chinese government censorship, right? Why are we even entertaining that Google.com will remain unscathed and freely accessible in mainland China at all?

I’m not going to say there are only two possibilities. Life can surprise us at times. But requiring Google to censor its Google.cn search results was always, at heart, about the Chinese government’s insecurities with letting its citizens know too much information it fears will bring chaos to their order. It was not about dicking with Google just because it could. How reasonable is it to even suggest that access to an unrestricted Google.com can persist in mainland China, behind the Great Firewall, without a restricted Google.cn running cover?

Uln declares:

In fact, I maintain that Google.cn is the most evil product to ever have existed in the Chinese internet, and the World will be a better place without it.

No, I strongly disagree. I think it offered Chinese internet users valuable choice in most practical matters. Yes, I wish it could do so without manipulated search results but life is not black and white and sometimes we have to make the best of what we can control. You have to be in a game to win it.

No, I don’t think “the World” will be a better place without Google.cn. I think certain people in “the World” will rejoice for about a week and then continue on living their merry lives, using Google as they always have, and not really care one way or another that nearly 400 million internet users in China no longer have a user-friendly version of Google at their disposal. So no, “the World” will not be a better place, just temporarily more smug.

China, on the other hand, will definitely be a worse place without it and Chinese internet users will definitely be worse off for it.

Recommended Reading:

• “Google China cyber espionage saga” from ZDNet’s Zero Day (h/t ESWN)

What was interesting and memorable about 2009?

Interested in your answer to this question.  To jog your memory, we compiled our “best” posts of the year.  Here’s part two of our “CN Reviews Best of 2009,” covering the topics we touched on in the second half of 2009 (including some stuff in June).  Part one is here.

People

In June, Kai brought us up to date on what happened to Chai Ling, the controversial TAM incident protester turned software company executive.  She brought defamation charges onto the filmmakers of the award-winning documentary “The Gate of Heavenly Peace” where “she arguably came across as a sniveling self-centered, power-hungry, emotional wreck quoted as secretly desiring bloodshed to advance her ends.”

In June, Kai also covered Barcamp Shanghai (coverage overview) and TedxShanghai (coverage overview), including some write-ups of:  Jenny Bai on Youth Pop Culture and how make China cool;  Renee Hartmann of enovate on selling to the China youth Market;  John Fan on the challenges of serving the China’s internet market from a Taiwan base;  Toine Roojimans on payment systems in China;  Gang Lu, on the overall state of the social internet in China;  Stefano Negri of McKinsey on China’s rapid urbanization; and Andrew Yu on how travel can be transformative, and his NGO 1kg.org

In July, Kai met up with Tania Branigan, correspondent of the Guardian, and spoke about her experience covering the Urumqi riots and the general topic of Western coverage of China.  The Guardian also did an excellent piece called China at the Crossroads which includes video and photography from colleague Dan Chung who also posts at DSLR News Shooter blog and did a great timelapse and slow-motion video on the National Day parade in October.

In August, I met up with Rebecca MacKinnon and wrote about her perspective on the internet’s uncertain future globally and US-China relations.  I also noted that prominent Chinese tech blogger Keso was suspended from Twitter, probably because the use of VPN services, and shortly after we publicized this, his account was reinstated.

In September, Thomas Friedman wrote an editorial contrasting China’s “one-party autocracy” with the U.S.’ “one-party democracy.”  Here’s an excerpt of his post:

Watching both the health care and climate/energy debates in Congress, it is hard not to draw the following conclusion: There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today.
One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century. It is not an accident that China is committed to overtaking us in electric cars, solar power, energy efficiency, batteries, nuclear power and wind power.

This drew some reaction from Richard Berger at Peking Duck who felt that Friedman was papering over the significant flaws in the Chinese system:

Namely, that that kind of authority comes only with a very heavy price, and that while the CCP may be “reasonably enlightened” about energy, natural resources and ensuring sustainability, these benefits are balanced, and sometimes far outweighed, by its knee-jerk self-protective tendencies, which put the party’s survival on the very top of its priority list…

We felt that Western reactions to Friedman were largely defensive and overreacting, in a way the flip side of the “easily hurt feelings of the sensitive Chinese netizens defending China’s fragile online honor.” (paraphrasing Kaiser Kuo).

In September, I wrote about Jack Ma‘s speech at the Clinton Global Initiative (see below).  Kai also rounded up the usual suspects in his post about great China blogs that translate Chinese news content, including:  Roland Soong, Oiwan Lam, Bob Chen, et al; Fauna, and Key.

In September, we were 2nd after the WSJ in breaking the news on Kai-Fu Lee‘s resignation from Google, and we broke the news (in English) on the name of Kai-Fu Lee’s new firm, Innovation Works.  We also interviewed Keso on Lee’s transition. BloggerInsight followed up with a poll of bloggers that uncovered a sense of the constraints that Lee was under at Google.

In October, we discovered David Moser’s Blue Ocean Network who profiled Jeremy Goldkorn & Michael Anti and the Chinese blogosphere.

In November, we wrote about Kaiser Kuo‘s speech at TedX Honolulu entitled “Red Guards vs. Rednecks” and the effects of online extremism creating a growing rift between Chinese and the West.

During the 2nd half of the year, Kai also experimented with CNReviews Quotes, where we featured short quotes from:  Elaine Chow, Roland Soong, Josh from Cup of Cha, Alec Ash, Charles Custer, Col. Timothy Reese, Paul Carr, Jeremiah Jenne, Carol Bartz, Andy Keller, Kelly Hammond, and Howard French.

Business

In July, Kai highlighted an Ogilvy China report on the opportunity in 4th-6th tier cities and encouraged entrepreneurs to get out of Beijing and Shanghai to see how life is different in these other cities.  I didn’t even know cities were tiered beyond 1st and 2nd tier!

In August, BloggerInsight posted on the top 4 reasons why Chinese social networking is different.  One insight I appreciated: “Young Chinese netizens view their SNS profiles as representations of themselves to the world, establishments of self territory outside of their parents’ and schools’ oversight. For them, social networking is about standing out and building a reputation in an online world. Local social networking sites do a great job of catering to this need for self-expression.”

Meanwhile, in August I was invited to attend a Churchill Club roundtable hosted by Symbio.  Speakers included: Linda Chen (Partner, KPMG), Jacob Hsu (CEO, Symbio), Harry Shum (Corporate VP, Search Development; Microsoft), and Lip-Bu Tan (President & CEO, Cadence Design Systems, Inc.). My coverage in two parts (part 1, part 2) included some discussion of the nature of innovation in China, the myth of cheap labor (in certain industries), the cost advantages of China eroded by the high cost of senior people and “always having to have a Plan B,” and techniques for retaining staff through rewards on one hand, and guilt on the other.

In September, I attended the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting (CGI) and seemed to be the only blogger/journalist covering the China related news (all CNReviews CGI posts tagged cgi2009).  I posted on the fact that Jessica Alba was there, but no China.   Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba Group, was the only major representative of China.  Together with Grameen Trust, Alibaba announced its involvement in Grameen China.  Also in attendance was  Calvin Chin of Qifang.  Wang Yusuo of ENN Group announced a partnership with Duke Energy to work on clean coal and carbon capture and sequestration (CCS).  There was extensive discussion about approaches toward innovation in social entrepreneurship.

In September, BloggerInsight continued to cover social game trends featuring iPartment, which was designed to appeal to teen girls who, you guessed it, would attract pimply teen boys.  As a result of that post, we now rank #3 in Google for the term “hot teen girls China.”  Thanks a lot, BloggerInsight!

In December, Ying Xue (founder of BloggerInsight) wrote about the future of microblogging in China and her talk at Ad:Tech China.  She was later quoted in a CNN piece about trends in this space.

Life

In June, Baoru (Katherine) posted on a report that Chinese students have longest study hours.  During the Gaokao examination season, Kai pulled together a review of some posts from Wang Jianshuo (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6), James Fallows, and Jeremiah Jenne.

In July, Kai commented on the widely read spoof of Chinese journalism by The Onion.  Kai’s take: “While most of the pieces are pretty amusing (some are pretty lame, as if they were trying too hard), I have to agree with Elaine when she concludes that the satire overall falls a bit short from the ludicrous content of genuine state-sponsored Chinese journalism and rhetoric.”  I thought it rang pretty true!

Kai also wrote about Transformers in China and how Chinese netizens saw it as American propaganda.   Roland Soong comments “outlines three arguments for how Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was a big showcase advertisement for the sale of American arms, propaganda for all countries to cooperate with the United States, and an idealization of American soldiers.”  Will Moss followed up with an Imagethief post aptly entitled “Hard robots, soft power.”

Kai also highlighted a post about FLG persecution by Charles Custer at ChinaGeeks:

There is nowhere on earth we can learn about or read about without bias, but even given the assumption that bias exists everywhere, China might be the worst country in the world to attempt to study if you’re trying to assess the veracity of anything remotely controversial.

In July, the Urumqi riots were well underway, and Kai covered an interesting story about why the Uighurs didn’t get the same love as the Tibetans from the West.  One writer concluded that they were simply “less photogenic.”  Whatever that means.

In September, Kai followed up with a post that talked more about Han discrimination toward Tibetans, inspired by a Chinese writer at Alec Ash’s 6 blog who said “it is not easy to comment on Tibet [for Han people]”

In September, we continued to muse about manufacturing reality with media with an excellent follow up post about The Onion spoof and some commentary from a blogger called the Last Psychiatrist, which basically talks about the propaganda power of media.

We also followed the blowback from the Lou Jing incident.  Lou Jing is a Shanghainese girl who’s father was African-American and mother is Shanghainese.  After appearing on DragonTV’s Jia You! Oriental Angels, she was faced with online racism in Chinese BBSs, translated by chinaSMACK.  However, Kai noted that foreigners attacking Chinese racists reveated their own racism:

Just as the examples of Chinese racism were outrageous were the foreigner comments predictable. In the face of ridiculously ignorant and malicious racism by many Chinese netizens, many foreign netizens flooded chinaSMACK’s comment section with equally ignorant and malicious racism against the Chinese. “A hah! I knew Chinese society was racist!” the chorus crooned.

Chinayouren also offered some commentary on racism in China.

Kai also generated some discussion around Taiwan’s status, weaving between the Straits to say that while eventual reunification is in Taiwan’s best interests, Taiwan currently is a de facto, independent state.

October was the scene of National Day celebrations, which we reported would be larger than the Olympics.  Kai shared a contemplative piece about Shanghai side streets, away from the manufactured excitement of the parade itself.

November brought more commentary on American interference with China’s internal affairs, and Kai’s general indifference to that.  We also talked about the movie 2012 and whether or not it was really praising the Chinese (more youth reaction to 2012 reported by enovateChina).

Yes, Obama made his first visit to China, but we (and Chinese netizens) were more entranced by a beautiful girl wearing red and black.  Wonder if her name is “Creamy.”

In December, Kai shared his experience on overnight trains between Shanghai and Beijing and whether or not to take it vs. flying. Min also wrote about 2010′s Chinese holiday schedule.

Well, that’s what we blogged about.  Pretty sure a lot of interesting stuff happened in 2009 that we didn’t blog about.

What did you find interesting and memorable about 2009?

Photo credit: ED Jones/AFP/Getty Images via Boston.com

So what did you find interesting and memorable about 2009? In April, we (led by Kai Pan) rebooted CNReviews with the goal of focusing on interesting people, business opportunities, and aspects of life in China.  Here’s part one of two of “CN Reviews Best Of 2009″ from my perspective (Kai may differ), covering the first half of 2009.

People

In January, Rebecca MacKinnon wrote a great letter to Obama (in Huffington Post) that highlighted four key misunderstandings that Westerners have about China, namely:  (1) popular opinion does actually matter to the authoritarian CCP, (2) that young Chinese don’t see the West as liberators, (3) that popular support for the government is greater than most Western people think, and (4) the Chinese are not “an undifferentiated mass of brainwashed drones.”

In April, Jackie Chan created a Western media sh1tstorm with his comments that “Chinese need to be controlled.” Translated by the AP (via Taipei Times):

I’m not sure if it’s good to have freedom or not,” Chan said. “I’m really confused now. If you’re too free, you’re like the way Hong Kong is now. It’s very chaotic. Taiwan is also chaotic.”  Chan added: “I’m gradually beginning to feel that we Chinese need to be controlled. If we’re not being controlled, we’ll just do what we want.

Kai Pan took issue with this translation (as did ESWN) and argued that the Western media is mistranslating his words and ignoring the context of Chinese history:

Any person with a passing interest in Chinese history should be aware of the Chinese people’s preoccupation with order and chaos. Unification and revolution throughout China’s much boasted 5000 years of history has almost always bore the cause of bringing order to a China plagued with chaos. As a Chinese person, however Hollywood-ified, Chan is deeply aware of this, and his comments regarding his uncertainty over more freedom or less freedom are made with reference to what balance would best serve the interests of developing China forward as a whole.

So please, for the love of God, stop trying to make his comments into some sort of high-profile betrayal of — or backtracking from — the unassailable righteousness and immutable pinnacle of human enlightenment that is “Freedom.” Doing so says more about the colored-lenses you’re wearing than it does about Chan’s personal thoughts regarding individual rights and liberties. It also says your Chinese sucks, or you’re allowing yourself to play stupid.

In April and May, we also highlighted the progressive development of the English-language China blogosphere.  First, we noted  the growing trend of translating Chinese BBS and social media by chinaSMACK, ChinaHush and others, joining old stalwarts like Global Voices Online and Danwei.  Kai also profiled some of our favorite bloggers, including Charles Custer of ChinaGeeks and Rand Han of LittleRedBook.cn.  I then highlighted 10 Ecletic China blogs including Adam Schokora’s 56minus1, Alec Ash’s 6, Zafka Zhang’s China Youth Watch, street fashion blog Stylites in Beijing, and many others.  Finally, we compiled a list of 72+ women English-language China bloggers to prove (to ourselves) that not all China bloggers are culturally-sensitive white guys in China (many of whom we know and love, and whose Chinese is much better than mine).

Business

In March, I attended a panel at SXSW about Entrepreneurship in China that was surprisingly well attended considering it was in Austin, TX.  Kris Krug, Robert Scales, Andrew Lih, Sage Brennan, and Kaiser Kuo (from the audience) contributed some great points for Westerners interested in going to China.  Some of my favorite points were as follows:

1. Take your time to understand China.
2. You simply cannot succeed without a trusted and capable local Chinese partner
3. Question your assumptions about how things work in China.  Always.
4. Learn to handle more nuance and complexity than you are used to in the West.  Evaluate China on its own terms
5. If you want to truly change China, you must also localize your approach (in reference to the Tibetan activists during the Olympics)

In March and April, I also fretted about seeing the first clear signals that US dollar hegemony is coming to an end, with People’s Bank of China governor Zhao Xiaochaun asking the International Monetary Fund to begin playing the role that US has historically played in providing an international reserve currency.  I later wrote about 5 signs the Chinese government is preparing an escape route from the US dollar.  I’m afraid this story is far from over.

In May, our partner BloggerInsight translated a post called “Taobao is Toxic” by prominent Chinese blogger Keso which highlighted Alibaba’s push into transforming university graduates into businesspeople through becoming Taobao sellers.  The only problem is that Taobao is brutally competitive and that this initiative would merely enslave students into becoming part of the Taobao system, with little hope of success.

In May, I also took the opportunity to observe a bit of “parachute journalism,” with Sarah Lacy of TechCrunch swooping into the China VC community in dramatic fashion and writing an expose of alleged bribe-taking at Sequoia China.  The post was later quietly edited with all the major claims removed.

In June, internet control continued to be in the news with the proposed Green Dam initiative and then CCTV attacks on yellow content (aka porn) on Google (which include a “fake” student as an interview subject).  BloggerInsight then polled Chinese bloggers on their opinion regarding the CCTV attack.  Bloggers sardonically noted that Baidu also received negative CCTV press until they spent 40 mm RMB in advertising, at which point the reports went away.

Finally, we and BloggerInsight also highlighted the opportunities in the Chinese travel industry, and mused about the future of travel metasearch in China.

Life

We captured some of the current events that affected people living in China in 2009 and covered some other random topics along the way.

What’s life without food? In January, I reposted a version of Min Guo’s excellent slideshow of regional differences of Chinese New Year food.

In February, David Feng committed an act of journalism by breaking the news on the CCTV fire (TVCC building, actually) on Twitter and driving to the CCTV building to live-tweet and take photos of the fire which burned the TVCC/Mandarin Oriental building to a crisp.

In April, Kai waded into the discussion on racism in China. Kai also stirred up some controversy by highlighting the fact that many expats come to China and then not really make an effort to develop “real” friends who are local Chinese.  Min Guo also translated a few posts from overseas Chinese community site Wenxue City highlighting a Chinese returnee’s experience coming back to Shanghai after time outside of China.

In May, Kai also provided an exceptional news summary on the Swine Flu response in China. We also remembered the victims of the Wenchuan earthquake on the 1 year anniversary on May 12.

June 4 was Chinese Internet Maintenance Day in China, with over 390 sites down for scheduled maintenance.  I blogged about edited memories and consensual amnesia on this sensitive anniversary.  Kai also commented on Mark Anthony Jones‘ Fools Mountain blog post that questioned the dominant Western narrative of the TAM Crackdown.  We also remembered where we each were in 1989, and highlighted some newly released Tiananmen photos of the event.  Finally, BloggerInsight blogged about Chinese bloggers’ perspective on the 20th anniversary June 4.  I’m proud of our coverage on this important historical event.

That’s it.  In the vastness of the topical areas we broadly covered, what happened in the first-half of 2009 that we should remember?

US Ambassador Huntsman addressed FACES, a group of American & Chinese students, on Nov. 21, 2009

The student group FACES (Forum for American/Chinese Exchange at Stanford) offers one vision: it brings together 20 American and 20 Chinese students at Stanford University in the spring and then the same students again in China in the fall–the latest conference was jointly held at Peking and Remin Universities in Beijing last week. Three takeaways from my FACES experience:

1. Pragmatists trump ideologues;
2. Familiarity breeds friendship;
3. US-China programs benefit from robust institutional support.

These three lessons lead me to believe that student exchange can contribute to a more cooperative US-China relationship.

1. Pragmatists Trump Ideologues

Students care more about economics and exchange than politics, if FACES is any indication. Admittedly, there is a selection bias: top students passionate about the US-China relations tend to be cooperatively inclined.

Still, the group is willing to tackle sensitive topics: a discussion of religious freedom raised more than a few eyebrows because student groups tend to be closely monitored in China, especially at elite universities. One panelist addressed the subject of why some Chinese youth choose to join the CCP despite then having to renounce (or disguise) their religious faith: “I ask them, ‘Why do you want to join the CCP?’ ‘To get a good job,’ they reply. It’s not because they’re Marxists. I’ve been in China for 6 years and never once met a Marxist.” In the end, materialism–not ideology or the CCP–was cited as the main inhibitor of religion in China.

When a Taiwanese student (3 of the 20 “Chinese” were from Taiwan) indicated a separation between China and Taiwan, he was jokingly jeered. But in a later serious discussion, students were all in favor of holding a FACES “China” conference in Taiwan in the future. The mainland Chinese sounded eager to visit Taiwan—more interested in sights, clubs, and the reputedly gorgeous girls than any political symbolism. The risk lies with older, powerful, and more political generations: jeopardizing sponsorship from Peking, Renmin, and Fudan Universities, for example.

2. Familiarity Breeds Friendship

For one week, students room, debate, karaoke, joke, feast and gan bei together. This in-person exchange is of a different nature from the impersonal internet exchange that can arguably further entrench “rednecks, red guards, and trolls.” Diverse ideas are exchanged in a civil forum, instead of an echo chamber of pre-existing views. I know of innumerable friendships (and a few relationships) that have arisen from FACES, but have not yet spoken to anyone alienated by “the other side.”

Is the social integration seamless? Absolutely not. Social differences persist even among the most internationally-oriented students. Karaoke kept all of the Chinese up late (followed by mafia, the wildly popular group game until 4am). The Americans all dropped out early, with waning enthusiasm for public singing and many exhausted from an earlier night at a club. Many Chinese, on the other hand, paid their first visit to a club (which can be viewed as locales of ill-repute in Chinese culture). Suffice it to say that not all were converted into Paris Hilton, or clubbers at all. On a positive note, it is reported that students were universally satisfied with the copious quantities of banquet food.

3. US-China Programs Benefit from Robust Institutional Support

It seems everybody needs a China strategy today—not just companies, but also governments, universities, and donors, which is good news for China-oriented student groups. FACES was founded at Stanford University to promote mutual understanding following the hysterical reactions to the 2001 spy plane incident. While it required tireless effort, the group has since garnered institutional support from universities (Stanford, Peking, Renmin, Fudan, and Zhejiang) and private donors, as well as corporations (New Oriental and Renren were conference sponsors).

US Ambassador Jon Huntsman feels the air of cooperation in the room

The same goes for attracting speakers: US Ambassador to China, Jon Huntsman delivered the keynote address on Nov. 21 at Peking University, stating that President Obama told him, “some relationships transcend politics” and touting a seemingly genuine spirit of pragmatic bipartisanship; Huntsman did after all give up a governorship and shot at the presidency in 2012 for the post. President George H.W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have spoken in the past, while the President of Stanford University, John Hennessy, regularly addresses the FACES conference at Stanford. Such institutional and financial support indicates that political, business, and academic leaders do attach importance to the US-China relationship.

Hopeless Idealists?

While perhaps idealistic, these students are not of the fresh-off-the boat, coming to see “Red China” for the first time variety. The majority of the Americans speak decent Chinese (some excellent) and have a strong China focus (whether it be politics, arts, economics, sports, or cuisine). The Chinese students all speak fluent English and most have been abroad. FACES students include Rhodes, Marshall, and Truman Scholars, the discoverer of a new species of newt, an accomplished concert pianist, and perhaps the world’s foreign expert on China’s Happy Farm game—future leaders. President Obama was not the only one striving to strengthen the US-China relationship in Beijing last week.

More:

• FACES Website (now accepting applications for the 2010 student delegate class)
• FACES Blog
• Twitter: @StanfordFACES

Kai Lukoff, American, was a FACES delegate ’07, executive ’08, and is now a proud alum. He is also perhaps the world’s foreign expert on China’s Happy Farm game. His opinions do not represent the official views of the FACES Organization. On Twitter: @klukoff

“…or obtaining political or diplomatic results with China, I think the evidence is the contrary,” criticizes Howard French, associate professor at Columbia University and former senior foreign correspondent for the New York Times, of the premise underlying the negative conclusions the American press have made of United States President Obama’s recent diplomatic visit to China:

…the problem with the way the press has covered this is there’s a kind of implicit premise [that...] is misleading, I think. Maybe disingenuous is even a better word, because it seems to suggest that if Obama had pulled a Khrushchev and banged his shoe on the table on these [human rights] issues and really jumped up and down and made a lot of noise, then this would have achieved a markedly different result for the better. I don’t think there’s any evidence of that. It may have made certain people in this society feel better about themselves, but if the goal is changing behaviors in China or obtaining political or diplomatic results with China, I think the evidence is the contrary.”

The above comes from an interview with Mr. French in the Columbia Journalism Review, by way of James Fallows and his excellent coverage on “how badly the mainstream American press distorted the picture of what happened during Barack Obama’s just-ended tour of Asia.” In short, the American media and thus many Americans feel Obama disappointingly failed to accomplish anything in and with China.

Naturally, a part of this is hardcore politics, which I won’t comment much on here, but the reason French’s comment stands out is because of how poignant a reminder it is that so much — not all — of the commentary, suggestions, and demands (mine likely included) critics of China make of China are often exasperatingly divorced from reality. I say this because too often — not always — these efforts are premised upon amplifying the complaints instead of considering feasible solutions to very real challenges. Too often, these efforts seem more about assuaging selfish consciences (and moralities) or sending messages to audiences back home instead of really communicating with the Chinese that actually hold any real power in driving change. It’s more about “look at me, this is what I stand for”. It’s about “we need more outrage and more outside pressure on China”. It’s about “we need to get them to change for us now!”

Thanks to Richard Burger of The Peking Duck (still blocked in China), I just read Joshua Kurlantzick’s recently published “Nonstop party: The surprising persistence of Chinese communism” on The Boston Globe. It’s a lengthy article telling Americans how China and its government has thus far managed to defy the expectations and predictions of American leaders and China-watchers, by simply not imploding and still be around…arguably stronger than ever.

For example, China’s economic rise has led to the growth of a Chinese middle class, but this middle class that many Americans imagined would gradually hanker for greater political freedoms to complement their growing economic freedom has instead largely stood behind the CCP authoritarian government. Why? Because they see the Party as both the entity that gave them their economic prosperity and their best bet for safeguarding those economic gains.

Kurlantzick outlines how China has seemingly successfully managed — even co-opted — the effects of other things such as global integration, ethnic minorities, and increasing technology (in both information and communications), “forcing the world to re-evaluate the stability of authoritarian regimes”, forcing Western countries to realize that countries can “survive” (what about “thrive”?) without making a transition to democracy as they get richer.

Then, after noting (or threatening) that many countries are eying and trying to emulate this new, apparently feasible, and so-called “China model”, Kurlantzick reminds us that this model “contains some serious flaws,” or rather persistent problems: growing income disparity and wealth gap, disaffected rural masses despite economically bullish urbanites, increasingly violent mass incidents, the double-edged volatility of nationalism, and the friction between economic control and economic growth. He’s fair, however, by acknowledging that China “appears to understand its own weaknesses and is prepared to combat them”, trying to direct investment towards those being left behind and reining in excessive, counter-productive nationalism.

All of this is more or less matter-of-fact. I may not necessarily agree with the degree to which Kurlantzick attributes or frames certain things to CCP machinations and control, but overall, he’s offering a lot of clarity on a very complex but immensely important to understand conclusion that The Peking Duck summarizes as:  “China is not about to collapse, democracy is not arriving in the forseeable future, censorship will continue, the CCP isn’t going away and it may still be in power generations from now.”

But then Kurlantzick offers some political advice and guidance on how America can mind China’s business:

An effective American China policy, then, should balance greater acceptance of Beijing’s rising power with a demonstration that, despite China’s rising influence, the US is not going to back off core beliefs, such as human rights advocacy. Washington also must recognize that trade and investment alone will not open up Chinese politics; the US could focus on areas where Beijing, though increasingly sure of itself, remains weak – such as providing technology for Chinese bloggers to get around Internet filters, or highlighting the vast problems of rural Chinese society (both Voice of America and Radio Free Asia have extensive Chinese broadcasts which penetrate rural China).

Washington has walked this line before. In a previous era when many academics believed the Soviet regime would last for decades, American administrations both dealt with Moscow on issues like arms control and pressured it on human rights. And the Soviet Union, perhaps like China today, had internal fissures whose extent went unappreciated. Ultimately, the USSR’s weaknesses overwhelmed it.

Emphases mine. Make no mistake, I’m personally all for freedom of information and society being aware of its problems, but this is, without a doubt, interfering with another country’s internal affairs. These are premeditated and coordinated efforts to influence and affect what goes on in another sovereign nation’s society, with its people, involving its politics.

And I say, “so what?”

Nations have been doing this to each other ever since ideology has existed as a concept. There’s no big surprise that we seek to influence each other both on an individual level and in aggregate as families, towns, cities, states, countries, and geo-political spheres. It’s just the way we function as a species in a shared, now global, society. Ideas and the will to use ideas cannot always be stopped by arbitrary and artificial lines drawn with blood, nationality, or race. We are organisms that seek to control our existence by controlling our environment, and whatever shares that environment with us.

China and the United States, Chinese and American, authoritarian and democratic, nationalism and patriotic dissent, oppression and freedom…these all coexist in a shared environment.

So when China and Chinese complain that Americans (and/or Westerners) are once again trying to subvert their sovereignty or sow discord, they’re not always wrong. We can argue about specific instances and degree, but let’s not delude ourselves into thinking they’re spouting nonsense. It’s true.

Likewise, when America and Americans complain that China and the Chinese are exporting their propaganda and censorship overseas, they’re not necessarily wrong either. Again, we can argue about specific accusations and extent, but let’s not pretend China doesn’t have interests it wants to protect or project.

It’s only fair.