In China, accurately assessing public opinion on a given issue is more or less a hopelessly difficult task. With China’s huge population, the diversity of Chinese society, regional differences, lack of reliable public polling, etc., it is difficult to estimate with any certitude just how many people hold a certain belief. Anecdotal evidence and the work of a few bloggers and brave investigative journalists well-known among China hands are often the West’s best means of gaining a window onto the variety of Chinese opinions on specific issues. The numbers remain a guessing game.
But interestingly enough, Google’s threat to withdraw from China is a bit different because internet use statistics provide hard numbers for us to peruse.
Google apparently has 40-50 million dedicated users who, according to analysts, tend to be among the most educated and open-minded Chinese (this jibes with my understanding of Google’s users in other countries too, actually). Some reports have said more like 80 million Chinese use Google, but I imagine the extra people are less “dedicated” users.
About 1 million people use AnchorFree Hotspot Shield to escape the censors from within China, apparently, and private VPN services have been expanding quickly as well. At the risk of falling into the epistemological trap discussed above, I’d venture that there are maybe about 5 or maybe even 10 million people who fanqiang, or scale the Great Firewall, as it’s known.
Then there are about 300 or more internet users in China, so we’re told, which puts into sobering perspective just how many people within China probably actually care about Google or feel strongly about internet freedom. For a large portion of everyone else, they were probably quite influenced by the ever-patriotic Global Times’ framing of the situation, which cited a poll asking the question “Do you think the Chinese government should give into Google’s demands to change its laws?” Unsurprisingly, respondents overwhelmingly supported the government’s stance.
Elsewhere, to the extent the Google story received coverage at all, most people probably received the impression Google left because it was bitter about being stuck as the junior member of a search engine duopoly with Baidu (never mind that reports came out showing that in the last quarter Google’s share of searches went up to 35% while Baidu’s went down). I would guess this version of the story will be quite popular evem with many educated Chinese, as makes for a comforting narrative about a Chinese homegrown company defeating an arrogant American giant.
For the segment of the population that uses Google regularly, the company’s announcement may well be a bittersweet moment, despite the overjoyed response from some in China’s activist and blogger community coloring the coverage in the MSM. Whatever chain of events is set off by the symbolic power of Google’s move, there doesn’t seem to be any dispute that Google’s withdrawal will harm the development of the Chinese internet in the long run, and perhaps even condemn it to second-world status.
Google’s importance as a driver of web innovation and a link to the outside world apparently cannot be overstated. As an IT industry commentator Yang Xiewen put it, without Google the Chinese internet may well “slowly devolve back to the Stone Age.” An editorial in the Southern Metropolis Daily pondered other dimensions of China’s loss:
If Google exits China, this will be a setback for Google’s business. It will also be a setback for the development of the Internet in China. This would mean not just the withdrawal of capital but the withdrawal of a brand, the withdrawal of a culture. This would impact not only people’s use of the Internet but would also mean, taking a longer view, their alienation from the mainstream international culture of the Internet. (h/t China Media Project)
Google does a great deal to drive forward our open-source future, and it was doing the same thing in China. Recently, Google had been leading the Internet pack in its development of the mobile internet in China, one of those Next Big Things we keep hearing about.
Google’s departure must be particularly dispiriting for many of China’s internet activists, as it comes right as the government’s control over the web seems to be getting steadily tighter and more aggressive. David Bandurski of the excellent China Media Project has been all over this story, citing journalist and blogger Tan Yifei’s characterization of the current moment as a most “bitter winter of [of censorship regulations and controls]” for China’s internet.
Last, the novelist, former race-car driver and blogging sensation Han Han, just named Asia Weekly’s person of the year for 2009, has some scathing and hilarious satire summing up the state of the internet and government control in China. His January 17 post “I’m just guessing” (我只在猜想) riffs on Google’s departure, the 50 cent Party (people paid to post pro-government comments in online forums) and a host of other recent internet memes, and alludes to Cultural Revolution-era logic and slogans. I’ll leave off with it because parts are pretty funny [sorry if the translation isn’t perfect in places]:
2010 – China begins internet control activities with the motto “三天不打， 上房揭瓦”. [not sure what this means]
2010 – Relevant government departments expands the banned words list, the word “档” [file] and the English letter “D” disappear from the mainland.
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June 2010– The government launches the “Protect the Children” program whereby Children’s Day is now at the time when National Day is usually celebrated and strict restrictions are put in place against all information harmful to the healthy development of children….The government clearly states all things related to the color yellow must be censored, as yellow represents lust and feudalism. After the hearts of elementary students are moved by this, they all take to the streets and express opposition to all yellow things.
July 2010– The Elementary Students’ Patriotic Committee discovers that because the national flag has five stars which are yellow, it does not conform to the advanced thought of the era. After this issue is studied, relevant government departments decide to make the five stars red.
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2010 – The government puts forward a wholly new internet Great Wall, this Great Wall system brings together the wisdom of countless Chinese experts from all industries. They all work together at a military base. When viewed from a satellite, their work is misinterpreted as the construction of an aircraft carrier.
2011 – The government has a new economic stimulus plan to give 100 billion yuan to internet commentators, who are paid one yuan for their every 50 cent Party online comment. The target for 2011 is 100 billion politically correct comment postings….
2011 – Southern Metropolis and Southern Weekend [two quality newspapers pushing the boundaries of censorship in China] are renamed “Male Metropolis” and “Male Weekend” [play on homophonic Chinese characters], and their content is reorganized as “wedding introduction”-type papers [sic; perhaps like personals]. By this time, government-hired commentators outnumber actual internet users by 9 to 1.
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2012 – Elementary school students using Sina [a popular web portal] access a picture of someone whose erect nipples can be seen through a shirt. Sina is shut down and rectified.
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2014 – QQ, MSN and other internet chat applications are shut down, as are blogs and other social media, but there are still lawbreakers using technological methods to transmit personal thoughts and communications. This gives the government a major headache.
2016 – China’s web users are reduced to one million and all websites are merged into one. If you enter in any web address it will take you to this one, where the web content is refreshed with the content from that day’s The People’s Daily. This year China’s internet industry disappears, leading directly to the unemployment of nearly five million people. Besides the people who are able to find employment with the newly invigorated postal service (e-mail no longer works), there are still 4.9 million people facing employment troubles. At the same time, nearly one million 50 cent Party contributors go unemployed. Fifty-cent Party contributors say with a sigh, “you become a cow, a horse, a pig (you do what others tell you to do) for half your life, and you’re not even left with a pension.”
2016– The People’s Daily runs the essay “An Industry is Sacrificed to Gain National Stability. This is Worth It.”
