Page 3 of
3 Google
vs China: the endgame By John
Parker
Is this leaked document genuine? Of
course, the mere existence of information on the
Internet has no necessary relationship to
provenance or truth value. Having said that, the
document's consistency with known PRC policy; its
high level of detail and thoroughness; its
stilted, bureaucratic language ("relevant
departments", "managers in different regions");
and the reporting about it by high-profile media
organizations including the Daily Telegraph (UK),
BBC, and the Washington Post argue that it is
genuine. A definitive proof would require the
cooperation of Twitter, which was reportedly used
for the original leak; Twitter presumably knows
the identity of the leaker, at least in the form
of a DNS number, but the company has made no
public statement about the leak.
Assuming
the document is genuine, what does it mean? First,
it clearly shows that the CCP itself perceives the
Google case as
important, and a
potential source of public unrest. Second, it
shows that Chinese journalists and intellectuals
investigate, or comment on, controversial topics
at their own peril. Third, it shows that the
censorship goes far beyond text articles and
includes images, sound and video clips.
(Technically, because of the inferior capabilities
of image searching technology compared to text
search technology, the blocking of images is quite
difficult, which suggests a possible strategy for
anyone wishing to post forbidden material.)
Fourth, it is remarkably explicit about the state
policy of completely suppressing alternative
views; the "additional guidelines" make it quite
clear that as far as the Chinese government is
concerned, no Chinese person has the right to hear
Google's statements on the issue, insofar as those
views differ from the CCP's. In these guidelines,
one could easily substitute "The Dalai Lama",
"Taiwan", "Wei Jingsheng", or even "Barack Obama"
for "Google", and they would still be perfectly
applicable. Simply stated, in China, no one is
allowed to publish an opinion different from the
CCP party line; the difference from democratic
societies is quite stark, however much some might
not wish to hear this.
Humorous
aspects Historically, when a country tries
to suppress free speech, one of the most common
ways that country's citizens respond is by
disguising forbidden opinions; there are many ways
to do so, ranging from fictionalized accounts of
current events, to symbolic protests, to artwork,
to humor. One of the most remarkable phenomena on
the Chinese Internet is the use of humor,
especially homonymic puns, to vent frustration
over unpopular government policies, and the Google
affair has provided additional examples of this.
The most famous is the appearance of the
Gu Ge, or "Google Dove". The "Google Dove"
is the latest in a series of "Internet mythical
creatures"; inventing and naming such creatures as
a form of protest has become very popular among
Chinese netizens. [2] To understand the "Google
Dove", one must first know that Google's Chinese
name is pronounced "Gu Ge", but these same two
syllables (with different tonal inflection) can
also mean "old dove". To satirically protest
Google's departure, a number of Chinese netizens
began posting pictures of Gu Ge, using dove
images overlaid with a rainbow of primary colors
reminiscent of the Google logo. As the coinage
spread, an entire natural history of the
faux-species was elaborated. One such essay is
replete with sly references to government policy
and past "mythical creatures" but maintains a dry
birdwatching-guide-like narrative voice, complete
with ornithological terminology (translated by the
author with the help of Google Translate):
The "Old Dove" is currently
endangered in China. The birds originated in
North America, according to biologists, who have
found their ancestors living in the equivalent
of today's Santa Clara County, California, near
Mountain View. During the late 20th and early
21st century, the species spread all over the
world, but starting on March 23, 2010, a huge
flock suddenly began migrating along the coast
to a port in southern China, to avoid extinction
in mainland China. This has puzzled scientists.
... According to American Indian legend, this
bird has a very important habit, described in an
Indian language as "don't be evil"; translated
into Chinese, it means "afraid of River Crabs".
When the species encountered an environment with
too many river crabs, they could not survive as
well as grass-mud horses, so instead, they went
south. Some animal lovers around the world have
called this a disgrace to the biosphere. The
"Old Dove" has a gentle personality, flies fast
and has accurate navigation capabilities, sharp
vision, and a strong ability to find things ...
along with poultry, it is one of the species
most beloved by the masses, and has made an
indelible contribution to the development of
human civilization."
It may be
necessary to explain the two previous "mythical
creatures" referred to in this piece, the "River
Crab" and the "Grass Mud Horse". Since the CCP
justifies curtailed freedoms in China by invoking
the need to maintain a "harmonious society",
victims of Internet censorship are popularly said
to have been "harmonized". In Chinese "harmonized"
is pronounced "hexie"; the same syllables with
different inflection can mean "river crab". The
word for "crab", in countryside slang, can also
mean a bully who maintains power using violence.
So the "River Crab" has become a symbol for crude
censorship backed by the threat of force. "Grass
Mud Horse" is also a homonym; in this case of the
phrase cao ni ma, which can also mean "f---
your mother", depending on the tones used. The
"Grass Mud Horse" has become probably the
best-known symbol of defiance to the censors, and
its massive popularity was only enhanced by the
unprintably profane nature of the homonym.
Countless essays and blog postings were made about
the "Grass Mud Horse" (most deleted as soon as
they were found), and the creature has appeared on
T-shirts and even limited-edition plush toys.
Blogger Zhan Bin, a teacher at the Beijing
Institute of Fashion Technology, created a
brand-new Chinese character for it, using the
radicals for "grass", "mud", and "horse", and
proposed this as the 2009 "character of the year".
A number of videos, including mock
documentaries, also appeared; the most notorious
of these, a "Song of Grass Mud Horse" music video
with deliriously obscene lyrics and a children's
song-like refrain, supposedly received 1.4 million
hits. [3] As Song Han described it, the somber
atmosphere when he and other sympathetic Chinese
delivered flowers to Google's Beijing office ended
on an upbeat note when one young man led the group
in a rousing chorus of the "Song of Grass Mud
Horse". More than just discontent over Internet
policy, the "mythical creatures" phenomenon
represented a kind of generalized rage at the
state of the nation amongst younger Chinese,
strikingly reminiscent of the punk-rock movement
in the West. To the extent that the UK in the
1970s was also a money-obsessed society in moral
crisis, swept by disturbing social changes, the
comparison may be quite apt.
Westerners
also milked the Google/China confrontation for
humor, especially on April 1, when a piece
appeared on the eSarcasm website asserting that
the entire dispute was "a hoax" and quoted Brin as
supposedly saying: "Really, we're just kidding.
Did you honestly believe we'd abandon a market
with 1.3 billion people in it for Falun Gong and
the Dalai Lama? I don't think so. As of April 2 we
are relaunching our Google.cn site, with full
content-filtering in place ... Boy did we have you
guys fooled." The same day, a Jeremy Goldkorn
piece on danwei.org claimed that Google planned to
redirect the energies of its entire staff towards
the development of geothermal energy technology.
Another relevant eSarcasm contribution was
entitled "Sweet China o' Mine", parodying the 80s
hit Sweet Child o' Mine by Guns N' Roses. A
short sample:
They've got some smiles that it
seems to me Are there for the sake of the
tyranny That tells them they can't look at
Internet porn, oh my
Now that Sergey's
expressed disgrace The rest of the world is
so keen to embrace Google sayin' so
long And waving Jintao bye-bye
Oh, oh
oh oh, sweet China o' mine Oh, oh, oh, oh,
sweet commies of mine
China and the
Western left Quite possibly, the most
lasting consequence of the China/Google dispute
may be to deepen a breach between the Chinese
government and the political left in the West.
Grumbling about CCP rule on the left side of the
aisle has been evident for some time, but the
chorus seems to be growing louder in the last few
years.
Historically, Western progressives
were sympathetic to the Chinese government because
of its officially socialist alignment, which
included support for many leftist positions such
as equal rights for women, supporting workers over
"bosses", protecting minority cultures
(supposedly), and so on. However, there is an
increasing awareness that in modern China as it
actually exists, these positions are being heavily
eroded.
Women's rights advocates have
uncomfortably noted the return of rampant
prostitution and concubinage, with CCP officials
among the most prominent perpetrators. Labor
groups have noticed that not only does Beijing
instantly crush any attempt to form a labor group
independent of the government, but also, since the
introduction of former president and general
secretary Jiang Zemin's "Three Represents"
political philosophy in the early 2000s, it has
even accepted businessmen as Party members. Since
the Party already has a vise-like grip on economic
opportunities due to its control of land and
commercial financing, this measure has had the
effect, in the real world, of creating an
incestuous class of untouchable kleptocrats,
within which there is little distinction between
capitalist exploitation and CCP-cadre
exploitation.
As for the protection of
minorities, it hardly needs to be said that for
Uyghurs, Tibetans, and others, such policies have
long since been revealed as a cruel joke masking
the reality of Han domination. One symbolic
example occurred during this year's Chinese New
Year celebration gala, when a government-approved
group of Uyghur folk singers joylessly praised CCP
rule with lyrics like "The Party's policies are
yakexi" (yakexi is the Uyghur word for
"good"). The song's inanity quickly became the
object of derision among Chinese netizens; Han
Han's response was to suggest that yakexi
could become the new Internet meme of 2010,
replacing "Grass Mud Horse". He then organized a
contest to suggest snarky replacement lyrics for
the song, with cash prizes for the winners.
In the eyes of the left, however, the most
damning argument against Beijing may be the
increasingly close relationship between it and
large Western corporations, who adore China's huge
population of docile, intimidated workers. The
involvement of these firms in China has grown so
much so quickly that even today, after years of
articles about China's imminent rise, very few
Westerners realize the vast size and range of
corporate investments in China. The Google case
might be seen as evidence against this thesis, but
in reality, it is the exception that proves the
rule: Google left precisely because it is an
atypical US corporation, one that takes liberal
principles far more seriously than most. The list
of multinationals with no such scruples is very,
very long.
As if to underline the point, a
few days ago, singer Bob Dylan, an icon of the
1960s counterculture, was denied permission to
perform in China. Most observers attributed this
to a new suspicion of foreign artists that arose
two years ago, when Icelandic singer Bjork shouted
support for Tibet at a concert in Shanghai. But an
incident that more starkly revealed the vast gap
in basic beliefs between the Western left and the
CCP government would be hard to imagine; for
Beijing, protest songs are fine - but only when
they are directed against what it sees as its
foreign adversaries.
Note: 1. to
read one posting of the document, click here 2. An example of Gu
Ge as illustrated in Chongqing Evening
News 3. Song
of The Grass-Mud Horse
John
Parker is a China-based freelance writer.
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