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The purpose of this paper is to develop concepts and conduct a case study in order to evaluate Beijing’s "reform and openness" policy’s influence on the political openness and freedom in Chinese-written Internet. In the study, the political openness and freedom will first be explored and evaluated using the conceptual framework of “zoning” to encompass the social phenomenon of household registration, regional/dialect discrimination, special administra-tive/economic zones and Internet filtering. At the same time, a comparative case study of two major Chinese-written online encyclopedias, Baidu Baike and Chinese Wikipedia, will be presented by analyzing the relationship between Internet filtering and their development history, and the interaction between internal editorial processes and external speech regulation environment. The reason for combining a theoretical discussion and a case study is to better understand the implications of the uneven “openness” with theoretical improvement and substantial evidence.
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Special Speech Zones and Diversity in the Chinese-Written Internet
Han-Teng Liao [email protected] Oxford Internet Institute
University of Oxford
1 Introduction
The Internet as a whole has increasingly become a major case in evaluating
the economic and political achievement of the Beijing’s "reform and opening" that
begins earlier in the 1970s. Usually the central question is whether politics in
China become more open because of the Internet during the economic reform.
Zheng (2007) argues that the Internet contributes to political liberalisation but not
necessarily democratisation. Less optimistic and more critical, Zhao (2008) and
Schiller (2008) argue that the Internet, as part of the larger media and cultural
industry, has been appropriated by China’s urban middle class, not to oppose
authoritarian state, but to prevent and contain domestic social conflicts. Such two
views seem to be both correct as if one were to collect drops of evidence of “opening”
into a glass called China’s Internet. One can both see the political freedom online
in China as either “the glass half full” or “the glass half empty”1, which usually be
quickly judged as either supportive or dismissive for Beijing’s governance of
Internet. This article proposes the concepts of “speech zoning” and “dynamic
orders” to better evaluate political openness online that goes beyond the usual
dichotomy of control versus freedom.
Rather than aggregating the scores of control versus freedom into the glass
called China’s Internet, this article suggests that the diversity inside Chinese-
written Internet requires closer scrutiny. Damm (2007) criticizes the two Western
mainstream discourses of liberation versus control, proposes that “the fragmenta-
tion and localization of the Internet … mirrors contemporary Chinese society”(288).
Damm rightly points out the diverse development of the increasingly commercial-
ized China’s society and the corresponding special “zone of freedom”(285) that the
Internet has created. However, Damm’s (2003) borrowing of Sustein’s (2001)
fragmentation-because-of-commercialization hypotheses, though avoiding the usual
pitfalls of overgeneralizing Chinese Internet through the lens of freedom versus
control, may herald the arrival of ”consumerist postmodernity” too soon. Indeed,
commercialization is an important factor, but the commercialization process in the
larger political economy history of Chinese-written Internet needs further scrutiny
as Beijing has played an active role in shaping the landscape, particularly through
1 MacKinnon (2008) observes that bloggers in China tend to see political freedom online
as “the glass half full” as opposed to half empty.
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the “zoning technologies” such as institutions of special economic regions and
household registration (Ong, 2004). In other words, the observed fragmentation
phenomenon of Chinese-written Internet may not be resulted simply from the
identity politics in postmodern consumer society, but also from the actual Beijing’s
"reform and opening" policies.
In order to take into accounts both the observed fragmentation and Beijing’s
active role in shaping Chinese-written Internet, we need to read the dynamics
between China’s Internet and the rest of Chinese-written Internet (mainly in Hong
Kong, Taiwan and Singapore). The metaphor of the Great Firewall should be
rephrased as the Great Dam that aims to manipulate the flow of information, both
surface and underground, which is recently rechanneled through the Great Canal
of Chinese-written Internet that reconnects the Chinese-speaking regions. To
analyze such a dynamic and diverse development, the concepts of “speech zoning”
and “dynamic orders” are analytically designed to enrich the concepts of control
and freedom in this article. The first half of the article develops the conceptual
framework of “zoning technologies” and “dynamic orders” based on the political
economy of "reform and opening" and Chinese-written Internet. The second half of
the article includes a comparative case study on two major user-generated Chinese-
written encyclopedias, Baidu Baike and Chinese Wikipedia, in order to use the
proposed framework to generate hypotheses that go a bit deeper than the control-
versus-freedom and integration-versus-fragmentation dichotomies. It is hoped that
the proposed conceptual framework can provide better insights to understand the
political opening and closure in Chinese-written Internet in specific and Chinese
speaking regions in general.
2 Zoning Technologies and Dynamic Orders
It is my personal belief and assumption that Beijing’s success in the political
discourse on freedom-versus-control depends on the idea of unfettered freedom will
lead to political “instability” or “chaos” (luan). The dichotomy of two Chinese characters ‘luan’ (乱, meaning disorder, instability and chaos) and ‘zhi’ (治, meaning
order, governance, control and cure) is instructive here. It suggests a plausible
explanation why a series of surveys (Guo, 2007) has shown that the majority of
China’s Internet users hold the opinion that Internet should be managed or
controlled, and preferably by the government. Damm’s (2007) empirical research,
based on interviews conducted in 2002 and 2003 with users in southern coastal
cities of China, further shows that Russia and Taiwan are often referred as
notorious examples of ‘luan’ by interviewees. These findings are also confirmed by
my personal observation online as a student of media studies. For example, one
commentator from China has argued that Taiwan needs a leader like Russia’s Putin
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to solve the “mess” in Taiwan (Zhou, 2008). We should not ignore the elephant in
the room, which is exactly the struggle for political freedom in the Tiananmen
Square protests of 1989, which has been described by Beijing as unnecessary
disorder in contrast to the later economic achievement and de facto political
stability. Beijing’s selection of Russia and Taiwan is a rational calculation because
around 1989 Russia and Taiwan took on different paths of political transformation.
Taiwan’s achievement in freedom and democracy is downplayed. The disintegra-
tion of the Soviet Union is read as a warning sign for China. Thus, the struggle for
political freedom and democracy is portrayed as creating unnecessary disorder or
‘luan’, whereas Beijing’s action is regarded as providing necessary stability for
economic growth and prosperity. Beijing has successfully, to some extent,
replaced the dichotomy of freedom versus control with that of disorder versus order,
which is an important lesson for researchers on China’s political censorship.
2.1 Theoretical Framework
As a deliberative strategy to combine the two dichotomies (freedom-control
and ‘luan’-‘zhi’) without taking sides with Beijing authority or western observers,
this article proposes a synthesized theoretical framework of “zoning technologies”
and “dynamic orders”. First, I borrow liberal philosopher Michael Polanyi’s concept
of “dynamic order”, to describe the emergent order formed by “mutual adjustment”
(1941:432) of the free-moving units. Given the fact Polanyi’s theories of liberty
have some interesting connections with Hayek’s “spontaneous order”2, this article
chooses the concept of “dynamic order” to highlight the possibility that some order
can emerge freely from mutual adjustment of individuals. It should be also noted
that Polanyi’s concept “dynamic order” is a critique against central planning by
totalitarian states. Thus according to Polanyi, the foundation of “Liberalism” and
thus “Liberal Society” is the faith that “society may confide itself to a variety of
principles, which guide systems of co-operation by individual adjustment” (454).
Polanyi’s formulation of public liberty based on dynamic order can be regarded as
one of the anti-theses of the doctrine that freedom leads to chaos. Freedom can
lead to a dynamic order of diversity. As shown later in this article, the concept is
closer to how online communities such as Wikipedia organise themselves.
Second, to describe Beijing’s new modes of control through partial "reform
and opening", I borrow anthropologist Ong Aihwa’s notion of “zoning technologies”,
with which Beijing aims to “economically integrate disarticulated political entities as
2 The distinction between Polanyi’s “dynamic order” and Hayek’s “spontaneous order”
has been discussed between scholars such as Bladel (2005), Jacobs & Mullins (2008), Fischer & Mandell (2009), Thorpe (2009), etc. I prefer Polanyi’s concept here simply because it is closer to how academic community and Internet community organise themselves, whereas “spontaneous order” is closer to market mechanism.
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a detour toward eventual political integration” (2004:70). Though I may differ from
Ong’s assessment of Beijing’s success, I agree with Ong that Beijing’s "reform and
opening" is selective and partial in a way that freedom (or privilege) is granted
through exceptions implemented by zoning technologies such as economic zones,
science parks, and administrative regions. To illustrate the new modes of control
by deploying zoning technologies that make freedom as exceptions, my favourite
example is the “free speech zones” in the US mostly during the presidency of George
W. Bush (Fuller, 2005). “Free speech zones” policies in effect regulate the time,
location and forms of expressions: when, where and how one can be granted the
privileges to protest. In this article, I modify the term into “special speech zones” in
the context of China’s Internet to highlight the aspect that “freedom is special”. In
short, zoning technologies often treats freedom as exceptions granted by authori-
ties. Hence, the notion of “zoning technologies” and the concept of “dynamic order”
contain both the element of freedom and control, but their difference cannot be
overlooked. Although it is equally possible to have some orders emerge out of the
exceptional freedom granted by authorities and the dynamic mutual adjustment by
individuals, the orders that emerge can be different.
2.2 China’s Internet and Chinese-written Internet
The history of Beijing’s “reform and opening” practices can now be reframed
as a series of experiment to introduce some dynamic orders under Beijing’s zoning
technologies. The first decade (1979-1989) of “reform and opening” features the
creation of four “special economic zones” (SEZs) (Dietrich, 1997). Figure 1 shows
the location of the current six SEZs (Arabic numerical 1 to 6), which are close to
Hong Kong (symbol A), Macau (symbol B) and Taiwan (the purple-coloured island
near numerical 2 and 3), where the dynamic orders of global market are practiced.
Thus, it is not comprehensive “reform and opening” but rather selective and partial
exceptions. The second decade (1989-1999) begins with the disappointing
development of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, especially for people in
Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. A series of missile tests is conducted in 1995 and
1996 by Beijing in the waters around Taiwan, before the run-up to the first ever
direct election for President in Taiwan. Also politically, it is the last decade of Hong
Kong and Macau’s colonial status before their return to China in 1997 and 1999
respectively. The last decade (1999-2009) begins with China's internet population
surpassing Hong Kong’s in 1998 (UNdata, 2008) and Taiwan’s in 1999 (Executive
Yuan of Taiwan), along with the beginning of the Golden Shield Project in 1998, the
Internet censorship and surveillance project. From these major milestones in the
history of Beijing’s “reform and opening”, researchers need to acknowledge the
economic and political complexities involved in locating the sources of orders
emerged in the Chinese-written Internet.
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Figure 1. Special Administrative Regions and Special Economic Zones of China (Wikimedia
Commons, 2006).
From the history of Beijing’s “reform and opening” above, the distinction
between China’s Internet and Chinese-written Internet cannot be overlooked.
Indeed, China’s Internet (defined as the Internet segment that is completely under
Beijing’s control, thus excluding even Hong Kong and Macau) was connected
through the pre-existing Chinese-written Internet, which corresponds to a larger
economically integrated area. Infrastructure-wise, by comparing submarine
network maps in 1980 (Figure 2) and 2005 (Figure 3), it can be observed that Hong
Kong and Taiwan have remained crucial, while Shanghai and Shantou played an
increasing role (Gale Group, 2000). It should be noted that before China is
reconnected to the world’s Internet, the pre-existing Chinese-speaking Internet link
of Singapore-Hong Kong-Taiwan symbolises the corresponding sea trade links, east
to Japan and the US, west to India and Europe. In terms of consumer society and
cultural industry, Hong Kong and Taiwan have enjoyed commodity and popular culture much earlier, and the so-called GangTai culture (港台文化, Hong Kong-
Taiwan popular culture), due to cultural affinity and cosmopolitan aspirations (Gold
1993; Baranovitch, 2003; Kang, 2004; De Kloet, 2005), has played a significant role
in the production and consumption of music and video, which according to the
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CNNIC (2008) report, are the major usage of mainland users. However, these
historical facts do not necessarily suggest China’s Internet does not have its
autonomous development path. On the contrary, it must have some departures
from the rest of Chinese-written Internet in order to keep the “special political
development” in Hong Kong and Taiwan at bay. The mere freedom-virus-control
framework may fail to take into account the fact that Beijing has secured some
legitimacy from its economic performance and national confidence to maintain its
preferred political order and arrangement.
Figure 2. East Asian Part of the Pacific Region
Submarine Cable Map in 1982 (Burns, 2008)
Figure 3. East Asian Part of the Global
Subsea Network in 2005 (CyTRAP Labs, 2006)
It is thus essential to understand the nature of censorship and political
freedom in China in the context of other Chinese-speaking regions including Hong
Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. Table 4 not only indicates that Chinese-speaking
regions enjoy a better-than-half-of-the-world “digital opportunity” and “network
readiness”, but also shows the uneven development in areas such as democracy,
free speech, human rights, and Internet filtering. In these areas, Taiwan and the
mainland serve as two extreme cases with other regions in between. While Taiwan
is perceived to be a pro-free-speech democratic country, Mainland China’s rankings
in democracy and free speech are near the bottom. A similar contrast can be
observed in human rights violations and political Internet filtering. Mainland
China is the only region with major human rights violations and political Internet
filtering among the Chinese-speaking regions. Here although the economic
integration through zoning technologies may work, the political tensions seem
inevitable, as exemplified in the China-Taiwan relationship (Hughes, 2000; Hughes,
2006). Thus, the issues of censorship and political freedom in Chinese-written
Internet are bound to involve some regional comparison if not outright rivalry.
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Table 4. Selected Political Indexes for Regions with Sizable Chinese-speaking Population
Regions Digital
Opportunity Index Ranking (See NOTE 1)
Networked Readiness
Index Ranking (See NOTE 2)
Democracy World Ranking (See NOTE 3)
Free Speech World Ranking (See NOTE 4)
Major Human Rights Violation
(See Note 5)Political Internet
Filtering (See Note 6)
Mainland 77 59 138 163 Yes Pervasive
Singapore 5 5 84 141 No No
Hong Kong 8 22 78 61. No No
Taiwan 7 13 32 32 No No
NOTE 1 Data from the Digital Opportunity Index Ranking of 181 entities (ITU&UNCTAD, 2007). NOTE 2 Data from the Networked Readiness Index 2006-2007 Ranking among 122 countries surveyed (World Economic Forum, 2007). NOTE 3 Data from the Economist Intelligence Unit's index of democracy 2006, with 167 countries are ranked from the top democracies to authoritarian regimes (Economist, 2007). NOTE 4 Data from the Worldwide Press Freedom Index 2007, with 169 countries are ranked (Reporters Without Borders, 2007). NOTE 5 It is nominally determined whether the region in question is substantially mentioned in the Human Rights Watch World Report (2007). NOTE 6 Data from the OpenNet Initiative about Internet filtering of political content (OpenNet Initiative, 2007).
2.3 Zoning, Opening and Flow Control
The question of freedom-versus-control can thus be rephrased as such: Does
the economic and regional “reform and opening” lead to political opening? Media
events such as SARS (Tai, 2006, Tai & Sun, 2007) and Toxic Milk may prove that
Internet facilitates the flow of information against Beijing’s will, particularly
information originated from Hong Kong and Taiwan. On the other hand, some
politicians and commentators in Hong Kong and Taiwan express their concerns that
pro-Beijing news media and capital threaten the free speech they enjoyed (Lo 1998;
The Pied Piper of Beijing, 2001; Ni, 2005; Cheng & Tam, 2005; China and Martin
Lee, 2007). In addition, it could be argued that the regional factors have contrib-
uted to the making of more liberal media such as Guangzhou-based Nanfang Daily
Newspaper Group (including Nanfang Zhoumo and Nafang Dushi Bao). Thus,
though I start with the assumption that Beijing has successfully used the luan-zhi or disorder-order dichotomy to fend off possible demand for free speech or democ-
racy, some political openings do exist. I argue that it is exactly these potential
openings, usually in alignment with the economic and regional “reform and
opening”, that requires Beijing to dam effectively the undesired flow of ideas and
information. It should be remembered that after the first decade of China’s “reform
and opening”, the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 had garnered sympathy and
support from both Hong Kong and Taiwan. Hence, not only can and should
Internet filtering in China be read as part of the zoning practices, but also must the
democratic achievement in Hong Kong or Taiwan be portrayed by Beijing as foreign,
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not practical or even desirable in China to avoid potential political competition.
In addition to its rich historical connotation, the term “zoning” is also neutral
and practical enough to capture the essence of speech regulation within a certain
jurisdiction. Lessig & Resnick (1999) also use the term “zoning speech on the
Internet” to understand how speech regulation is possible the Internet across
different jurisdictions. Although they rightly conclude that the Internet architec-
ture is difficult for governments to exercise access control, Beijing’s relative success
in zoning speech in Chinese-written Internet across jurisdictions proves that it is
still doable. Zoning speech online may be financially expensive and technically
ineffective as Lessig & Resnick (1999) suggest, but it can still be politically effective.
In contrast to the economic goal of special economic zones to provide buffers
between the foreign (usually non-mainland Chinese) capital and mainland interior
labor, the political goal of zoning speech may not be thorough and complete
censorship. Rather, zoning speech aims to block the sensitive political exchanges
across Chinese-speaking jurisdictions that may challenge the status quo. Thus,
the concept of zoning technologies could be strangely political in the end. It is not
all-or-nothing political control of speech, but part of the larger flow control across
zones of jurisdictions. Dissents’ voice may still be heard across different zones but
at much lower volume and with much smaller constituencies.
Even within mainland China, the concept of zoning technologies can be used
to encompass the practices of household registration (or Hukou system), rural-
urban migration, and associated discriminative policies. Zoning technologies are
indeed semi-opening strategies to control flows of people, resources and discourses.
The concept provides a relevant socio-political context for digital exclusion and
empowerment research. Although ethnic, dialect or regional stereotypes may pre-
exist before governments’ policies, the proposed framework of zoning technologies
and dynamic orders demands an analytical distinction between state action and
societal reaction. With his research on the migrant workers’ use and environments
of ICT, Qiu et al. (2009) find that the emergent “translocal networks” has guided
migrants with social support. Such “translocal networks” should be regarded as
dynamic orders that alleviate some of the socio-political tensions resulted from the
unhelpful zoning technologies that treat them as second-class citizens. Qiu et al.
(2009) provides a powerful explanation why migrant dearth (mingonghuang), a
temporary labor shortage, can occur: The dynamic exchange between workers
across different economic zones about wages and benefits help them to “vote with
their feet” (120). However, these translocal networks may not be able to change
the zoning technologies that set the boundary conditions for the flow of labor and
social resources. For example, they cannot form a political constituency under the
zoning regime that dictates the tax and benefit regime, at least not yet.
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2.4 Questions in Reading the Orders Online
Since "reform and opening" practices is selective within China and connected
to other non-Mainland Chinese-speaking regions, Beijing’s zoning technologies
make exceptions of freedom for regulated flows of information, people, capital, and
political discourse. Although Hong Kong and Taiwan have been seen by interna-
tional observers as relatively positive examples of political freedom and free speech,
they has been constantly portrayed in China as cases of democracy in disorder,
economy in turmoil, and renegade regions under foreign influence. It should also
be emphasized that choosing between individual freedom versus government
control may suggest many things to citizens in China, which often involves the
historical interpretations of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. The dichot-
omy can suggest ‘luan’ (chaos and disorder) -‘zhi’ (order and stability), pro-
Foreigners or pro-China, or even pro-Taiwan and pro-Beijing. Dissents can thus
be politically quarantined by zoning technologies such as Internet filtering. Thus
analytically, one should not simply measure the level of freedom in China as
absence of government control since the "reform and opening" practices are about
giving out exceptional freedoms by authorities. The proposed framework of zoning
technologies and dynamic order thus provides a pragmatic, non-political and yet
historical alternative to study post-Mao China. Is the new principles organising
political, economic and social activities influenced by Beijing’s zoning technologies
or other emergent social order?
A series of questions can thus be asked to examine the sources of order in
Chinese-written Internet. Rather than relying on snapshots of the opinions of
mainland citizens or questioning the autonomy of their support for governmental
control, we can instead examine the outcome from actual cases: How does a
particular order emerge from different makeup of its participants? Is it heavily
influenced by market players or state authority? Or does it simply reflect the
dynamic interactions between the self-selecting participants with the shared belief
or sense of purpose? Is it heavily conditioned by zoning technologies such as
Internet filtering along the line between mainland and non-mainland regions?
What impact does it have on the dynamics of Chinese-written Internet? These
questions are particularly important when one tries to understand the user-
generated content in Chinese-written Internet. While user-generated content are
supposed to be bottom-up and some dynamic order is expected to emerge, the
coordination does not emerge in a vacuum. What follows is a comparative case
study on two major user-generated Chinese-written encyclopedias, Baidu Baike and
Chinese Wikipedia, situated into the bigger context of “reform and opening” by
profiling its participants, Beijing’s zoning technologies, and their position in
Chinese-speaking world.
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3 A case study of Baidu Baike and Chinese Wikipedia
As prominent example of user-generated content, Wikipedia can be regarded
as a case of unplanned collaboration and dynamic order emerged from Chinese-
written Internet. The appropriation of and resistance to Wikipedia in Chinese-
written Internet can be studied as a case study of the struggle between Beijing’s
zoning technologies and Internet users’ dynamic order. Indeed, the “special”
treatment Wikipedia received from Beijing is a proof of that struggle in its short
history of localisation, blockade and competition3. From 2003 to 2005, the
Chinese Wikipedia community gradually took shape with contributors from
Mainland, Hong Kong, Taiwan and overseas, with some localised editorial policies
and extra software codes in order to overcome some linguistic and regional barriers.
From 2004 to 2008, Chinese Wikipedia has been blocked and then unblocked
several times by Beijing. Sometimes the complete website is blocked and some-
times several specific articles are blocked. From April 2006, China’s leading search
engine company Baidu created its own version of Chinese user-generated encyclo-
pedia, Baidu Baike, while Chinese Wikipedia was inaccessible for most of mainland
users during one of the blockade period. The fact that Beijing has attempted to
block Chinese Wikipedia while another user-generated encyclopedia is created as a
major competitor suggests a need to direct or shape emergent dynamic order online,
more than just simple censorship. It is essential to compare how different dynamic
order formed in the two and how they respond to Beijing’s zoning technologies.
Before presenting some evidence from their editorial policies, webometric
data and interactions with “grass mud horse” event, I have summarised some basic
information below (also see Table 5). Since its inception in 2002, Chinese Wikipe-
dia had become increasingly popular, whereas Baidu Baike was launched when
Chinese Wikipedia has been blocked for a year (BBC, 2006). Thus, Baidu Baike is
a service provided by a pro-profit company, which is the first Chinese company to
be included in the NASDAQ-100 index (Chmielewski, 2007), whereas Chinese
Wikipedia is a separate language version hosted by the non-profit charitable
organization. When Baidu Baike is subject to Chinese laws and regulation
whereas Wikimedia Foundation has to follow laws and regulations as a charity
based in San Francisco, USA. Although some has alleged that Baidu Baike has
been copying some content from CW from the beginning (Nystedt, 2007), Baidu
Baike now boosts one million entries, six times higher than CW (see also Table 5).
Their different starting point (one as national online encyclopedia, another as part
of the global online encyclopedia project) may also explains why Baidu Baike is
simplified-Chinese-only with the language encoding standard of “gb2312’” whereas
3 See the summary in the entry of “Chinese Wikipedia” in English Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Wikipedia
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Chinese Wikipedia accommodates both Simplified and Traditional Chinese with its
adaption of the universal language encoding standard of “Unicode”.
Table 5: Basic Facts of Chinese Wikipedia and Baidu Baike
Baidu Baike Chinese Wikipedia
Operator Baidu.com, Inc. Wikimedia Foundation Inc.
Physical Location Beijing, China San Francisco, USA Number of Entries
(2009/04/14) 1,538,837 246,317
Major Language Simplified Chinese Only (gb2312)
Both Simplified and Traditional Chinese (Unicode)
To further substantiate the significance of the two user-generated encyclope-
dias in Chinese-written Internet, Figure 6 provides an indicator of search popularity
that is based on Google’s search data4. Baidu Baike’s popularity, represented by
the red line, catches up with Chinese Wikipedia around mid 2008. Although
another Beijing-based user-generated encyclopedia, HuDong.com, claims to be the
largest Chinese-written encyclopedia online, it seems not yet to be popular accord-
ing to Google’s search data. Even the similar search keyword measurement
provided by Baidu.com has similar outcome: Baidu Baike and Chinese Wikipedia
both have users’ attention number over 3000 while Hudong Encyclopedia’s number
is around 4005. Although it is open to debate whether search data provided by
search engine companies could be used as a proxy for actual traffic, the data
provided by two competing search engine companies should conclude without
major biases that Baidu Baike and Chinese Wikipedia are the major two online
encyclopedias in Chinese-written Internet. In addition, some regional information
provided by Google also indicates some degree of separation of Chinese language
usage online. At the bottom of Figure 6, one can clearly see where the Chinese-
written keywords are submitted, from Chinese-speaking regions to regions with
sizable overseas Chinese. Also, since the term Chinese Wikipedia is written
4 The Google’s Search Volume Index is based on the data collected by Google Search,
which is often used as an indicator the popularity of a given search term. The hyperlink of this graph is provided here: http://trends.google.com/trends?q=%E4%BA%92%E5%8A%A8%E7%99%BE%E7%A7%91%2C%E7%99%BE%E5%BA%A6%E7%99%BE%E7%A7%91%2C%E7%BB%B4%E5%9F%BA%E7%99%BE%E7%A7%91%2C%E7%B6%AD%E5%9F%BA%E7%99%BE%E7%A7%91&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0
5 The Baidu’s Index is based on the data collected by Baidu.com. The hyperlink of this service is provided as follows. For Chinese Wikipedia (simplified forms): http://index.baidu.com/main/word.php?word=%CE%AC%BB%F9%B0%D9%BF%C6 For Baidu Baike: http://index.baidu.com/main/word.php?word=%B0%D9%B6%C8%B0%D9%BF%C6 For Hudong Encyclopedia: http://index.baidu.com/main/word.php?word=%BB%A5%B6%AF%B0%D9%BF%C6
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slightly differently in simplified Chinese and in traditional Chinese, the search
keyword in Hong Kong and Taiwan is thus predominately traditional Chinese (see
the green bar), compared to that in China where simplified Chinese dominates (see
the yellow bar).
HuDong
Encyclopedia
Baidu
Baike
Chinese Wikipedia
(in simplified forms)
Chinese Wikipedia (in
traditional forms)
Figure 6. Google’s Search Volume Index for four keywords of three Chinese-written user-
generated encyclopedias.
3.1 Editorial Policies and Processes
Both Chinese Wikipedia and Baidu Baike claim to embody the Internet’s
open spirit of sharing and freedom, or “every one can edit”, Baidu Baike is influ-
enced more by the zoning technologies set by Beijing. First, in terms of editing,
any new edit is moderated by Baidu employees by default whereas Chinese
Wikipedia automatically reflects latest edits in most instances. Thus, although
both supports software functions such as editing, commenting and edit-history
tracking, the actual editorial practices differ. Baidu Baike requires its employees
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to moderate any new contribution according to its editorial policies, which leads to
the second point of policies-setting. The rules in Baidu Baike are decided centrally
and exclusively by Baidu.com6, whereas the guidelines in Chinese Wikipedia are a
set of policies and guidelines7, some of which are localized from the rules used in
the English version. All of the policies and guidelines in Chinese Wikipedia are
written, maintained and executed by the participants of Chinese Wikipedia. In
contrast to Baidu’s role in Baidu Baike, the global Wikipedia Foundation has in
effect minimum to none influence over how Chinese Wikipedia is run daily8. Thus
the centralized rules in Baidu Baike are more prone to Beijing’s preferences (Woo,
2007) whereas the policies and guidelines in Chinese Wikipedia tend to reflect the
dynamic orders among the participants from different Chinese-speaking regions,
which lead to the third point about regionalism and zoning technologies. Of Baidu
Baike’s seven categories for deletion, the third category refers to “reactionary content” (反动内容), which is ideologically loaded in the Chinese-speaking world.
This category specifically ban any content that “maliciously criticize the current
system of the state”, “disrupt social and public order”, “provoke disputes over
nationalities, ethnicities, religions and regions”, “maliciously attack state agencies
and officials”, “promote superstition and cults”, and “provide any hyperlinks to
aforementioned content”.9 Third, though it is not specifically mentioned, but it is
clearly assumed that the state in Baidu Baike’s policies is Beijing. In contrast,
Chinese Wikipedia has a policy that does not exist in English Wikipedia called “Anti-Regionalism Policy” (避免地域中心). It mandates that any Beijing-centric,
Han-centric and Chinese-centric statement should be avoided. Hence, although
both recognize the potential issues of regionalism, Baidu Baike’s operational
framework is more national (and thus potentially Beijing-centric) while Chinese
Wikipedia’s is more transnational.
The linguistic practices and regional demographic of the two also reflect the
difference of national versus transnational approach, which hints at the presence of
Beijing’s zoning technologies. Traditional Chinese users, mainly from Hong Kong
and Taiwan are de-facto excluded by Baidu Baike since it adopts the national
encoding standard of GB-2312, which does not include Tibetan language for
example. In contrast, Chinese Wikipedia has accommodated diverse Chinese-
6 Baidu Baike’s editorial polices can be accessed here:
http://www.baidu.com/search/baike_help.html 7 Chinese Wikipedia’s editorial guidelines and policies are maintained here:
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:%E6%96%B9%E9%87%9D%E8%88%87%E6%8C%87%E5%BC%95
8 As a proof of the autonomous decision making in Chinese Wikipedia, some western oberservers have questioned the content differnces between English Wikipedia and Chinese Wikipedia as suspicious cases of self-censorship (French, 2006).
9 The translation of the categories is done by the author and the list of categories can be found at the source provided at footnote 6.
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speaking contributors, despite the linguistic, regional, and political differences
between four regions (Mainland China, Hong Kong/Macau, Taiwan, and Singa-
pore/Malaysia) with its innovative automatic conversion technologies that exploit
the user-generated vitality of wiki technology (Liao, 2009). Thus, Chinese Wikipe-
dia can be presented, according to users’ preferences, in simplified Chinese,
traditional Chinese, simplified Chinese used in Mainland, simplified Chinese used
in Singapore/Malaysia, traditional Chinese used in Hong Kong/Macau, orthodox
Chinese used in Taiwan, or non-converted original format where the diversity of
contribution can be shown. Although actual regional demographic data of Baidu
Baike’s contributors remains a research challenge because they are automatically
part of the larger Baidu users by design, my own personal observation is that non-
Mainland contributors are rare. In contrast, the users in Chinese Wikipedia are
regionally diverse. Based on the traffic statistics collected in March 2005, 46% of
users connect from mainland China, 22% from North America, 12% from Taiwan,
9% from Hong Kong, 3% from Japan, 3% from Europe, 2% from Southeast Asia,
and 3% from other regions (Wikipedia English, 2009). As a proxy for active
contributors, the regional distribution of the current eighty-eight administrators in
Chinese Wikipedia also reflects similar diversity: 27 (31%) from mainland, 20 (23%)
from Hong Kong/Macau, 2 (2%) from Singapore, 18 (20%) from Taiwan and 21
(24%) from other regions.10 It should be noted that because the current Chinese
Wikipedia is a historical outcome of the combination of two originally separate
Chinese versions (simplified and traditional) it has to maintain a delicate balance
not to favor one regional preference over the other (Liao, 2009). It is in direct
contrast to Beijing’s suspicious favoritism for Baidu, which is substantiated by
incidents of directing traffic to Baidu from major websites such as Google, Microsoft
and Yahoo in 2002 and 2007 (Metz, 2007). Different zones are thus created in
Chinese-written Internet by Beijing’s active zoning technologies such as traffic
directing, linguistic exclusion, content moderation and informal favoritism.
The order is different as well in the hierarchy of the membership: Baidu
Baike exhibits, in Polanyi’s term, “corporate order” (planned or bureaucratic), as
opposed to the “dynamic order” (Polanyi, 1941:431). In Baidu Baike, a hierarchy of
membership system is established with eighteen levels and five categories of
professions, akin to the online role-playing games, where users are upgraded to the
next level by earning points. In addition, although moderation power remains a
Baidu-employee-only privilege, some users can be selected by Baidu into a special group called “Tadpole Group” (蝌蚪团) to enjoy the privilege of “green channel” (绿色
10 Data compiled by the author from the list published by Chinese Wikipedia:
http://zh.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:%E7%AE%A1%E7%90%86%E5%91%98%E5%90%8D%E5%8D%95
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通道), meaning that the contributed content can pass through without usual
moderation process. According to an incomplete list11 provided by Baidu.com,
there are currently thirty two members, with sixty four members have resigned or
left. Thus, the overall order in Baidu Baike is built upon a combination of penalty
and reward systems. The reward system is characterized with titles and give-
aways issued by Baidu, and penalty system is the subtraction in the reward system
which includes Beijing’s need to filter the undesired content. In contrast, although
Chinese Wikipedia is not free from the usual hierarchy of administrators and
common editors, there is no points-earning reward system but rather a reputation
system that acknowledges the fact the editing statistics could be manipulated. In
addition, the authority of administrators in Chinese Wikipedia is not absolute and
rules are designed to avoid any potential conflicts of interest12, which is different
from the absolute authority of Baidu employees in Baidu Baike. All the privileged
actions taken by the administrators are open to public scrutiny in Chinese
Wikipedia, whereas the Baidu Baike’s moderation done by its employees is only
visible to the parties involved. It follows that the authority in Baidu Baike is more
centralized and the order in Chinese Wikipedia is more dynamic. It does not
suggest that policing in Chinese Wikipedia does not exist, but rather it is closer to
the concept of “dynamic order” that emerge freely from mutual adjustment of
individuals, rather than that of “corporate order” that originated from a central
point of authority.
3.2 Webometric Coverage
"There's, in fact, no reason for China to use Wikipedia, a service based 'out
there’…It's very natural for China to make its own products," claimed by William
Chang, the chief scientist of Baidu in the WWW2008 conference in Beijing (Webster,
2008). As shown in the comparative analysis in the previous section, whether the
Chinese Wikipedia is “out there” depends on personal views whether these partici-
pants, mostly from Chinese-speaking regions including mainland China, are “out
there” in the sense of “outside China”. However, William Chang could be right if
indeed the content of Baidu Baike is good enough to serve Chinese-speaking people
in mainland China (if we ignore people from Hong Kong and Macau for a moment).
The topic coverage of general-purpose encyclopedias should be comprehensive. As
part of my content analysis of Baidu Baike and Chinese Wikipedia, the webometric
coverage, meaning the distribution of the linking/citing external resources over
different languages and regions, can provide a useful proxy for the actual coverage
11 See the webpage on http://baike.baidu.com/view/881001.htm 12 See the section of “restrictions” in Chinese Wikipedia’s page on administrators:
http://zh.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:%E7%AE%A1%E7%90%86%E5%91%98&variant=zh#.E9.99.90.E5.88.B6
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of encyclopedia content, and thus the effects of Beijing’s zoning technologies.
The webometric results, based on respective 1,100 entries randomly-selected
from Baidu Baike and Chinese Wikipedia, have conclusively supported that Baidu
Baike’s outlinks are less diverse in both linguistic and regional terms. Figure 7
shows that Baidu Baike’s outlinks are mostly (69%) in simplified Chinese, and the
number will be as high as 93% (183 out of 196) if the inaccessible (or broken)
outlinks are excluded. In contrast, as shown in Figure 8, the outlinks in Chinese
Wikipedia are relatively diverse, with sizable portion of them linking to web pages
written in both simplified Chinese and traditional Chinese. A similar contrast
could be found in the regional diversity based on country codes extracted from the
URLs of the outlinks. Although the generic top-level domain names (TLDs) such as
“.com”, “.net”, “.org” and so on may constitute some challenges for analysis, the
contrast shown in Figure 9 and Figure 10 is clear: While the mainland top-level
domain name “.cn” dominates the BB’s outlinks, CW’s outlinks distribute across
Chinese-speaking regions such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and other
countries.
Grey-area Unicode
114%
Mostly Simplified
3614%
Traditional2
1%
Simplified14755%
other197%
#N/A49
19%
Figure 7: Linguistic Distribution of BB's Out-links
g y
Mostly Simplified
953%
Simplified37011%
Grey-Area Unicode,
555
Korean1
0%
#N/A54215%
other97227%
Japanese1234%
Traditional61917%
Mostly Traditional
2317%
Figure 8: Linguistic Distribution of CW's Out-links
Generic TLDs,
165
.cn, 94#N/A, 2
.tw, 3
Figure 9: Regional Distribution of BB's Out-links
#N/A, 79U.S. TLDs,
224.tw, 646
.cn, 271
Pacific Ocean, 3
.sg, 7
East Asia, 137
.hk, 169
Generic TLDs, 1640
Americas, 12
Commonwealth,
179Middle-East, 2
Europe, 137
Figure 10: Regional Distribution of CW's Out-links
Thus, it is safe to argue that BB is surprisingly much more “focused” on the
simplified Chinese content and on the content hosted inside China, even though
ideal encyclopedia content may require more balanced and diverse sources.
Though a firmer conclusion can be reached in the near future with the comprehen-
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sive webometric analysis of all entries, the results so far unmistakenly suggest that
Baidu Baike is less diverse than Chinese Wikipedia. Several hypotheses can thus
be generated to be tested in the future about the purpose and effects of Beijing’s
regulation of online speech. Is the difference between the diversity in Chinese-
written Internet and that in China’s Internet direct results of Beijing’s zoning
technologies? The fact that Baidu Baike’s outlinks have low proportion in linking
to pages written in traditional Chinese or with regional domain names such as “.tw”
and “.hk” suggests a discrepancy regarding the effects of zoning in fragmenting and
integrating. If Beijing keeps undesired information from Hong Kong and Taiwan,
does it undermine its ultimate political goal to unite Hong Kong and Taiwan? To
put it bluntly, how could Beijing integrate Hong Kong or, even more problematically,
Taiwan as ‘same here’ rather than ‘out there’? Of course, one can argue the results
merely imply that the information demand in mainland China is at best self-
sufficient and at worst inward-looking. However, it cannot explain away why some
people in mainland China still want to take the extra effort to use or even partici-
pate in Chinese Wikipedia, which in Baidu’s eyes is the service “out there” that
Chinese do not “naturally” need. If Beijing’s zoning technologies as Ong (2004)
suggested will integrate disjoint regions inside and outside China, has Internet
played an integrative or a divisive role under Beijing’s policies? One could argue
that zoning technologies at the very least help Beijing to maintain an integrative,
“harmonious” China’s Internet. Then is it at the expense of keeping the “chaotic”
Chinese-written Internet outside?
3.3 Interaction with the “Grass Mud Horse” event
This leads to an alternative interpretation of the “Grass Mud Horse” event,
which represents, in the eyes of many western observers (Elegant, 2009; Wines,
2009), the subversive tactic against authoritarian censorship regime. This article
argues instead that the “Grass Mud Horse” event demonstrates both the limits and
strengths of zoning technologies, not necessarily a direct confrontation with
Beijing’s censorship. Some relevant background information is summarized as
follows. First, the “Grass Mud Horse”, a dirty pun that refers to penetrative sex
with a close female relative as one of the vulgar Chinese curse phrases, was
generated online against Beijing’s “Anti-vulgarization of Internet” policy in early
2009. Interestingly enough, Beijing named and shamed Baidu for its hosting
vulgar content (mainly about “beautiful girls”13) of in its photo and post sharing
13 See the exposure list of websites and their specific offenses, summarized in the entry
of “the Action Project of Anti-Vulgarization of Internet” in Chinese Wikipedia: http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%95%B4%E6%B2%BB%E4%BA%92%E8%81%94%E7%BD%91%E4%BD%8E%E4%BF%97%E4%B9%8B%E9%A3%8E%E4%B8%93%E9%A1%B9%E8%A1%8C%E5%8A%A8
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services as early as in November 200814. Given what we have learned about
Baidu’s cooperation with Beijing in political speech online, the November warning
was hardly about political freedom in a traditional “human rights or free speech”
sense. Second, it is true that Beijing’s actual crack-down on vulgar content has
overreached, stretching to other innocent websites from animation fan sites to
political blogs such as Bullog.cn (Reporters Without Borders, 2009), but it remains
to be seen whether any collective action will be made among the pro-beauty and
against-political-censorship crowds before we can call the “Grass Mud Horse” as a
symbol of resistance to Beijing’s Internet censorship. Third, given the fact that the
short history of the “Grass Mud Horse” did heavily involve Baidu and Baidu Baike,
we need to re-examine this event from the proposed conceptual framework in order
to understand both Beijing’s governance rationale of luan-zhi (order-disorder)
dichotomy, and the actual dynamic order emerge online.
It is instructive to revisit first in greater detail from Guo’s (2007: 13) survey
about what “types of Internet content should be managed or controlled”. Although
more than 80 percent of the respondents believe Internet should be managed and
controlled, preferably by government, Figure 11 shows the overwhelming support
for controlling pornography and violence content online (over 85 percent for Internet
users), in contrast to controlling politics content (less than 41 percent for Internet
users). From this contrast, it can be argued that the “Anti-vulgarization of
Internet” has its policy legitimacy and that its overreach to political blogs is indeed
problematic. What is more significant is the contradiction if not outright hypocrisy
that Baidu has censored political content while keeping “vulgar content”.
Figure 11: What types of Internet contents should be managed or controlled (Guo, 2007:13).
The way Baidu Baike and Chinese Wikipedia interact with the “Grass Mud
14 See the official announcement by the China Internet Illegal Information Reporting
Centre: http://net.china.com.cn/qzl/txt/2008-11/28/content_2604476.htm
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Horse” event demonstrates the successes and failures of zoning technologies and
dynamic order. Despite Baidu Baike’s strict moderation mechanism, the entry of
“Grass Mud Horse” was approved, as if they are real animals, along with other nine
fictional animals with similar level of vulgarity and “kuso” (an East Asian subcul-
ture of parody). That is why these animals are now collectively called as “the Baidu
10 Mythical Creatures”15. It only shows that the zoning technologies do not
produce the order that mainland Chinese wants (more control over pornography
and relative less control over politics). In reality, it was chaotic inside Baidu Baike
and now all these entries are now deleted. It seems to be a choice between chaos
and sterile, not between chaos and order. In contrast, the dynamic order of
Chinese Wikipedia has documented, in great detail and accuracy, both the mythical
creatures and anti-vulgarization crack-down correctly from the start. It does not
mean that “kuso” and creative use of vulgarity does not exit in the larger Chinese-
written Internet. In fact, with its motto “the Kuso encyclopedia”, a Chinese-written website called Uncyclopedia, or literally “Fake Wikipedia” (偽基百科) in Chinese, has
existed since 200616. It uses similar technology, license and basic editing princi-
ples as the normal Wikipedia. Thus, it can be argued that some order is still
possible without zoning technology because the normal and kuso content is
dynamically built and separated. In contrast, Beijing’s zoning technology and
Baidu’s cooperation fails to build similar order, perhaps simply because their quest
for order is different: a certain political order for Beijing and a certain market order
for Baidu. If it is true, then zoning technologies in China’s Internet works only for
Beijing and Baidu, with occasional conflicts of interest, but it seems to be working
against China’s citizens expectations about brining in the desired order they want.
The struggle between zoning technologies and dynamic order provides plausible
explanations how China’s Internet is trimmed into a “harmonic society” with hidden
contradictions if not hypocrisy.
4 Locating the Sources of Order Online
This article has proposed a conceptual framework of zoning technologies and
dynamic order. Its main and first concern is how order emerges and gets shaped
by zoning technologies. It is hoped the research results presented and analyzed in
the framework will be more readily and widely accepted by a wider audience,
especially those who have some higher principles than freedom, those who are more
comfortable with government control, and those who simply believes freedom means
chaos. It is not to say that the research on censorship and call for speech freedom
15 See the entry of “The Baidu 10 Mythical Creatures” in English Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baidu_10_Mythical_Creatures 16 See the website at http://zh.uncyclopedia.wikia.com/
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no longer matter. They are still important. However, Chinese people’s longing for
a certain order cannot be overlooked; otherwise it will be appropriated or even
misused by politicians. This is my personal concern and basic rationale to
acknowledge Beijing’s previous success in using the political discourse of luan-zhi (disorder-order), and propose the conceptual framework of zoning technologies and
dynamic order to understand the intricate dynamics between freedom and control
online. Specifically, the proposed framework take into accounts the historical
context of Beijing’s “reform and opening” and its role in shaping Chinese-written
Internet and China’s Internet. Generally speaking, the concept of “zoning tech-
nologies” treats freedom as privileges granted by authorities whereas the notion of
“dynamic order” treats order as dynamic outcome resulted from the way free
elements or individuals who make their own decisions.
It is worth repeating Polanyi’s quote that the foundation of “Liberalism” and
thus “Liberal Society” is the faith that “society may confide itself to a variety of
principles, which guide systems of co-operation by individual adjustment” (1941:
454). The keyword here may be the “variety of principles” and “co-operation by
individual adjustment”. Thus, it is crucial how diversity is managed: either by
mutual adjustment, clashes of principles or by state’s zoning authority. It is
outside of the scope of the article to discuss the normative aspects of zoning
technologies and dynamic order. Still, the analytic power of the two concepts can
guide the freedom-versus-censorship research a bit further in asking: Can we
predict what kind of order will emerge given a certain set of decisions made between
employing zoning technologies and promoting dynamic order? The case study of
Baidu Baike and Chinese Wikipedia presented in this paper, with the comparison of
their editorial processes, webometric coverage and interaction with the “Grass Mud
Horse” event, is only an initial attempt in this direction. We need further analytic
tools to understand the possible causes of the diversity or fragmentation of
Chinese-written Internet. Diversity or fragmentation could be a healthy sign of
diversity or a warning sign of deliberative division by zoning technologies.
By locating the sources of order online, we may discover new understandings
and finer options beyond the useful but primitive dichotomy of freedom versus
control, both to citizens inside and outside China. Simply put, I am looking
forward a symbolic inclusion of the option “Internet communities” in the choices to
Guo’s survey question: “Who should play the most important role in Internet
management or control?” Currently, the multiple-choice answers available are
government (84.8%), Internet companies (78.8%), Parents (67.5%), Schools (64.1%)
and Internet Cafés (59.2%), and we have seen that the zoning technologies designed
by Beijing (the government) and implemented by Baidu (the Internet company) may
benefit themselves more so than the general users of Chinese-written Internet.
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