China and its 'netizens'
I've been seeing quite a lot of references in the official Chinese media to what the reactions of Chinese "netizens" has been to one or another development. Most recent example: a report on the possibility of China sending a small naval task force to join the anti-piracy effort in the seas off Somalia.
It is evident that the Chinese Communist Party government pays a lot of attention to the views that Chinese citizens express on various web-based forums.
In fact, the policies Beijing pursues toward web-based discussions is much more nuanced than you'd believe if you read only the complaints of those organizations that criticize the kinds of political (as well as anti-porn) filters/shackles the authorities places on such discussions. According to the interesting discussion on media in Susan Shirk's China: Fragile Superpower, many high-ranking CCP leaders actively seek out the views of "netizens", as a way of supplementing or perhaps even replacing the mechanisms of internal, intra-party reporting that they often find provides only heavily politicized reporting of the views of citizens.
But here's another interesting aspect of this: The term "netizens" itself, which I have only ever seen used by China-based media or those (like Shirk) who follow such media closely.
For example, I did a quick Google site search on Marc Lynch's Abu Aardvark blog, which provides in-depth coverage of new-media developments in the Arab world. No mention of the term 'netizen' came up there. And I've never seen it in any other, non-China-related context, either.
Wikipedia tells us the term was coined by Columbia University's Michael Hauben. In 1995, he co-wrote a book called Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet.
But even though I've been an active "netizen" for nearly six years now, it's not a term that seems to be widely used in the real or cyberspace circles in which I move-- except those related to China.... which seems to have been the country that has done the most to invest the term with some real content and meaning.
Interesting.
Hi Helena,
It's o.k. to go shopping for books as gifts and then buy some for yourself, isn't it? Well, that's what I did the other day, and one of the books I bought is "ANC, a view from Moscow", by Vladimir Shubin. It's a great book.
Among other things, it shows the very diverse world of departments and individuals that was the Soviet Union in those days. Which is what one ought to expect, in any kind of reality-based view of the world. The Soviets and probably more so the US and British, conspired to promote the idea of monolithic homogeneity and simultaneous uniformity in the USSR. But in fact, it was more individualistic than the "West", as far as I can see.
That seems to be the case with China, as you report here. It's quite impossible that China could have developed as it has done, without a lot of very free-thinking, imaginative people, and the corresponding degree of exchange and dialogue.
Best to all.
Leave it to Helena's wide-ranging mind to bring us something positive (and un-CW) about "Red China."