This is China! blog

The Net Nannies – as Westerners who live in China and who frequent the Internet call Chinese government censors equipped with their website-snuffling software kits – are nothing if not adaptable. They are also quick studies. From the time of the uprising in Tibet last year and last month’s protests in Iran, the Net Nannies have proven they have been studious .

Actually, according to a well-written and concise guide to internet censorship in China on the blog Chinayouren, the authorities essentially use three methods to expunge unwanted information and perspective from domestic internet pages: The Great Firewall, Search Engine Manipulation and the Net Nanny. Add to that Disruption of Service attacks, and a government has a crude but effective arsenal with which to warp any reality.

The powers that be hit the panic button this past Sunday with an all-out Disruption of Service onslaught that brought down the websites of the Urumqi city and Xinjiang regional governments, according to Reuters. The Chinese government quickly moved to end service to all mobile phones in Urumqi, to keep portable cameras and video recorders from beaming out to the world images of the protests and the government’s dramatic response.

The Great Firewall of China (GFW) blocked the Twitter service, so observers and participants in what had quickly become a battle zone between Uighur citizens and Han migrants from being commented about in the public domain. National level censors also blocked the popular social networking site Facebook, which supports its own email service as well as posts on “walls” for invitees to read and to comment on. (Didn’t need the New York Times to tell us that here in China, but here is the reference anyway).

The popular YouTube service continued to be blocked during the urumqi uprising, initially shut down during the Tibetan riots of the year before. During the riots Tibetan protesters were taking advantage of the spotlight the coming Beijing Olympics had brought to China to air the same issues their Muslim neighbors to the north – the Uighurs – would take to the streets in protest. The Tibetans were able to transmit images outside their borders the violence of the crackdown against the protests by taking digital photos and film of the police action and posting the drama on Youtube, virtually as it was happening.

The GFW also blocked the Chinese version of Youtube, Fanfou, just after the Urumqi Incident, presumably because users were able to post politically objectionable videos about the uprising on its video display service. The Great Firewall is what (mostly) Westerners call the software that seeks out and blocks websites that promote material the Communist Party finds objectionable: websites by or about the Falun Gong – the spiritual group -ejected from China in 1999; websites or web pages dedicated to the remembrance of Tiananmen Square; pornography websites overtly labeled, sites admiring and promoting the Dalai Lama or Tibetan independence are especially targeted by the Great Firewall.

Interestingly, even during the explosive events in Urumqi, major newspapers with online articles about the protests and ensuing violence remained accessible in China. The New York Times, the Financial Times, the Economist Magazine, and outlets like Reuters and the BBC remained open for viewing. Likely, they considered the absolute number of readers in China who could read and appreciate what English-language media outlets were writing too small to consider dangerous to the message the government wanted to spin. However, the Great Firewall did not release its blocks from long-time censored blogspot.com, nor from bloglines.com, a news and blog aggregator that likely provided a channel for anti-government blogs from outside China to make their way in to a readership inside China.

The government also deployed a second line of defense against disseminating information that ran counter to its policies about Xinjiang – or simply embarrassed government diktat – called Search Engine Manipulation (SEM). SEM involves the government filtering a list of search results based on the most probable key words techno-chiks (that is, technology-inclined apparatchiks) believe interested readers are most likely to query. Popular Chinese sites like Baidu, Sina.com, Google.com and Google.cn had posted government-approved results-lists of the uprising in Urumqi, with a high density of articles from Xinhua and the People’s Daily, mouthpieces of the Chinese government. Few major international news outlets like Reuters, the BBC, the New York Times et al had results listed on the pages for searches such as “Urumqi” and “Urumqi protests.”

However, it’s the Net Nanny that is probably most effective at ensuring Chinese cybernauts cleave to the government’s point of view on this and other sensitive issues. The Net Nanny simply eliminates content it doesn’t like, wipes complete entries from servers. As Chinayouren cites in his blog entry, “China Internet Censorship Explained,” “The Nanny’s power comes from the menace of closing down a page, taking away the business license or directly imposing “stern punishment” on offenders.”

Hence, the internet in China hosts very little in the way of debate about the Urumqi issue. Mostly, surviving blog posts by Chinese nationals have nicely fallen in line with party policy. Reuters reported one hyper-politically correct blogger posted on Sina.com.cn, “Resolutely smash the splitist forces and terrorists!” Certainly got me to thinking deeply. The same Reuters article cited another thoughtful cybernut who wrote, “Destroy the conspiracy, strike hard against these saboteurs, and strike even more fiercely than before,” on sina.com.cn.

And then there’s one of my favorites, straight out of a 1950s Party film, “The blood debt will be repaid. Han compatriots unite and rise up,” found on www.baidu.com (Reuters).

The odd domestic voice does squeak through the bristles of the Net Nanny’s broom. For instance, Reuters cited one blog entry that said, “If your family members have no rights, no power, are discriminated against and made fun of, not only will your family collapse, you will already have sown the seeds of hatred.”

However, media observers have noted the Net Nanny has come down hard on some domestic web sites, simply expunging content. For instance, the bulletin board on the Shanghai site pchome.net had numerous comments about the unrest, but they all vanished a few hours later, replaced with the line: “This posting does not exist.”

Question Authority.

I’m not a fan of Facebook, but I have greatly appreciated it has been a medium through which old (old) old friends from University (upstate New York) and High School (Florida and Alaska) and even Junior High School (Alaska) could track me down in China and say, “Hey, what happened to your hair?” Really, with each regained connection life becomes a bit cheerier, a bit more human.

The Net Nanny’s recent blockage of Facebook really seems more to flag just how out of control the powers that be seem than how powerful they’d like to present they really are. It’s like rounding up the kids on the playground, putting tape over their mouths and telling them not to say anything about the most recent school shooting. Of course everyone already knows about it! Why amplify the echo of the shotgun blasts with greater ham-fistedness?

Now, as far as I can tell, Facebook joins the ranks of the blocked with Youtube, Bloglines, and Twitter. The New York Times reports:

“… a Chinese equivalent [of Twitter], Fanfou, was running, … but [west-] related searches were blocked.

“Chinese search engines no longer give replies for searches related to the violence. Results of a Google search on Monday … [about events out west] turned up many links that had already been deleted on such well-trafficked Chinese Internet forums as Mop and Tianya.”

Certainly, the Net Nanny learns quickly; it’s watched how much information leaked out from Iran during the recent unrest via mobile phone by way of photos, footage and tweets, and has simply chosen to shut off all service in Urumuqi. Even Danwei.org, the China media commentator, has been blocked.

Of course, this gives me a great deal of confidence that one day, because the powers that be have yet again mishandled social commentary, that I won’t even be able to phone home I’ll be late because I’m having another couple rounds with the lads; or be even be able to contact the police because I might need an ambulance to help a Chinese citizen (loved one or not) who has been critically injured.

Then again, at least I won’t be plagued any longer by trying to remember the name and the photo of the once-pretty girl from thirty odd years ago who’s trying to make contact with me again through Facebook.

I recently met a young Chinese writer who was keen on writing for Western audiences in China. She’s a bright, charming young lady, fluent in English language. She was under the impression there were a lot of us Westerners here and that we’d be interested in what she had to say about the lifestyle scene in China. She also figured she’d be able to make some money off her efforts.

I sagely advised her there’s probably 30% to 50% fewer Westerners in China than there were two years ago, at least. Also, a lot of the expats who were sent here by companies on emperor-sized expat packages have had the packages severely curtailed; that is, they don’t have the spending power they used to.

Instead, I suggested, the folks who increasingly have the ways and means and desire to know more about lifestyle are bright, charming, young Chinese professionals – people just like her! “They’re the ones buying the Starbucks coffees (see my previous post), the KFC chicken bits and the Burger King burgers.” And, as a Danish friend reminded me a couple days ago, “It’s the Chinese that own the Starbucks, the KFCs and the Burger Kings!”

I said to the budding writer, “Write what you know! You see all these cool things happening and you’re in a prime position and opportunity to translate those trends for people who are hungry to know. Westerners in China,” I added, “aren’t hungry anymore. They’re jaded. They’re comfortable and maybe even a little bored with China’s modernization.

“Young Chinese professionals, especially in the smaller cities like Suzhou, are dying to know everything from what’s the latest trendy nightclub to how to dress for success in a Western company to how young women can put on make up for best effect.

“Don’t write for a shrinking audience,” I finished, “Write for one’s that’s growing!”

She nodded, and stared out the window of the cafe in which we were sitting. I felt as though she could see China’s future right before her, unfolding. And she was clearly a part of it.

I love eating hot pot. Not just the food, the tasty morsels dipped in boiling broth until cooked through – meats, vegetables, dumplings, coagulated blood. Mmmm, coagulated blood. I also love the festive atmosphere of hot pot establishments. They’re noisy, tumultuous, riotous, even, with children walking between tables, friends catching up on old times, sons and daughters spooning out cooked morsels and offering them to their elders.

I also love cafes. The quiet, the safety, even the stylish decor, sometimes. A cup of coffee. A cup of tea. A considered chat with a friend or mate. The world slows. I find myself at the center of the universe, the axis, where everything – worry, planning, preoccupations – all dissolve in a languorous Now.

A recent visit to two stylish and trendy watering holes for the herds of China’s new middle class gave me a parallax view of just how far the middle class  and service providers have to go before they figure out the difference between a venue that serves boiled pig’s brain and one that serves up an espresso.

To those of you who would argue a Starbucks is the furthest venue from stylish and trendy conceivable, you clearly are not a newly-minted middle class Chinese in Mainland China who hasn’t traveled outside the borders of the country. If nothing else, the cost of a Starbucks coffee – easily the same as the price of a cup of the same stuff in any Chicago or San Francisco street corner Starbucks concession – would make you want to believe the place is stylish and trendy if you are new money. So why play video games on your (probably new) laptop computer at top volume? A Chinese fellow in his early 30s, pudgy, illiterate (for he clearly could not read the signs that stated ever-so-graphically NO SMOKING as he lit up his cigarette) just couldn’t get enough of his arcade game. I guess, too, he figured he didn’t need to buy or bring earphones, too. Oddly, though the staff caught him out on smoking etiquette, they overlooked the noise pollution he was creating. I opted to sit at the outdoor seating, instead.

Another time, I decided that instead of a coffee I’d like a tea. So off to the Times Square Teamate I went. A chain of Taiwanese tea restaurants, Teamates tend to be raucous anyway, booths filled with young couples chattering away, sipping cold tea and nibbling at small desserts. The Times Square Teamate, though, has an upstairs for all that, while its ground floor is smaller, with a more intimate feel. Earth tones wait patiently to comfort patrons, while chill out music permeates the environment with relaxing tunes.

I was pretty well chilled after the first five minutes of sipping on my Long Jing green tea and reading the news on my laptop computer. Hell walked onto the premises in the guise of two Chinese mothers and their little emperors – two boys about seven years old. It didn’t take long after they were seated behind me along the back wall before one of the boys began howling at a volume and frequency that fractured my skull. His companion soon chimed in. They boys scampered along the wall-length sofa, while the mothers – both in their early thirties – continued to chat in earnest, occasionally shushing the boys.

My patience frayed completely when one of the boys stood on a table and howled. His mother, of course, didn’t want him to fall, so she held him steady on the furniture while the waitress set the table next to the staged performance. My head aching from the shrill display, I asked one of the waitresses to help me outside with my tea pot and paraphernalia. One of the mothers called out to my back, “Sorry!” to which I responded under my breath, “No, I’m sorry. You don’t get to leave your kids for another 15 years.”

Again, the staff did nothing to reset the etiquette of its Chinese patrons, who have put off another patron and all the potential patrons that he talks to about his experience.

Still, it is exciting to have stylish and trendy venues to buy fine coffees and teas; a development fast in coming and hard to believe sometimes in its variety and charm in modernizing China. Even more exciting, though, will be the day when patrons and service staff alike understand and act on the realization that one doesn’t come to cafes to drink hot pot.

The Chinese girlfriend of a guy I know recently presented to my friend the uniqueness of my friend’s situation in China. She put it to him this way, “There’s going to come a day when your white face will mean very little in China. In a few years unless you’ve got very special skills and/or you speak Chinese very well, there’s not going to be much for someone like you to be able to do in China. Unless, that is, you take some very specific steps for the future and stop taking everything here [read: 'including her' -ed] for granted.” My friend is pushing 40 years old and has been the manager of a factory in Suzhou for more than 4 years, living a life he would not be able to in his home country.

Later on, over coffee, my friend told me, “You know what? She’s right. There’s not going to be much for me to do, since I’m already pretty expensive for my company. And my Chinese is s&%t. And the [Chinese] girls will likely not be as impressed, either.”

What’s a white man to do?

I first met Xiao Huang through a friend in Beijing in 2006. Then, Xiao Huang was a high-flying corporate lawyer for a Global 500 company in the consumer electronics industry. Xiao Huang was one of the first to benefit from the re-opening of the universities in China in 1978, after the disastrous Cultural Revolution. The Cultural Revolution had dashed the education and career dreams of hundreds of millions of bright, motivated Chinese from 1966 to 1976. An entire generation was unable to teach and its progeny unable to learn during that time. Xiao Huang and others who had been fortunate enough to have been born in 1961 were never exposed as completely to the insanity of the time as those born just two years before. Xiao Huang, the youngest daughter of three in a family led by an Army General who always encouraged his daughters to excel, chose to study law in Beijing. After graduation she was amongst the first group to pass the bar exam in China, a difficult and grueling test of memorization. Less than three years later she applied to and was accepted to a Masters program in law in the United States, where she lived with a host family that taught her American culture and helped her improve her English language abilities. She also later passed the bar examination for the state in which she lived.

With a fistful of degrees and not a lot of work experience, her English language reading, writing and speaking skills as well-honed as any American college graduate’s, she latched on to an opportunity as junior corporate counsel at a Global 500 company that was one of the first to enter the Chinese market in the early 1990s. She represented the company first in negotiations with Chinese joint venture partners, then with government officials at national, provincial and local levels.

Eventually, she became general counsel for the company’s interests throughout China. Also, as she was one of the first Chinese women to capture such a high-profile position with a Western company, she was often invited to speak at presentations. Several times in the early 2000s she was presented numerous awards for her corporate achievements.

After more than ten years service to the company, Xiao Huang was fired. Her replacement was her American counterpart responsible for North American affairs. Though the American had only traveled to China only a few times before – and was assured she would not have to travel much to China in the future – she had usurped Xiao Huang’s position as well.

Xiao Huang fell into a deep depression for a year, during which she found it difficult to get out of bed in the mornings. She cast about for a next step in her life, careening between feelings of anger, betrayal and sadness. Now, as well, she was in her mid-forties, and the attributes that had distinguished her fifteen years before could be found in so many more Chinese women who were younger – and cheaper, from an investment point of view – than her. Though after some months her company asked to serve as a consultant – which she did, advising on cases and negotiations – she tossed around ideas on her next steps, all of which revolved around realizing her interests in Tibetan culture (not politics) and the environment. She also took on a greater interest in the teachings of Buddhism, before only a matter of middle class ornamentation, now a possible source of strength and direction.

Xiao Huang’s trajectory as one of the first representatives of China’s new middle class has etched a broad path of anxiety that confines and directs the attitudes and apprehensions of the generations that have followed. They all have a deep-rooted sense that the corporate party for them can end at any time, no matter how high up they are, no matter how educated or sophisticated they may be. Their apprehension makes an even deeper impression on them than their middle class counterparts in the West because there are so many more bright young things coming up the ranks so much more quickly than in more mature, more stable labor markets, especially those in Europe.  Indeed, “China now has more than 1,900 institutions of higher learning, nearly double the number in 2000. Close to 19 million students are enrolled, a sixfold jump in one decade,” according to the New York Times. This year alone nearly 7.5 million university graduates will be looking for jobs, on top of the 2 million who have yet to find jobs after graduating last year.

Graduates with masters degrees and little experience are less in demand in China than in the past as there are simply so many of them around now. The MBA degree is no longer the ticket it used to be to a new job, as it had been before, either. Just as in the United States, the industrialization of the degree program has created a glut of candidates who have theoretical frameworks but little or no experience to offer employers. Though certainly such candidates are nowhere near the caliber of a Xiao Huang, their sheer numbers have severely reduced the premium at which a Xiao Huang was valued and compensated in China.

Still, with all the new opportunities presenting themselves in fast-changing China – coupled with their intelligence and experience – I’m confident the Xiao Huangs of China will find and excel in directions Chinese society never dreamed of before. Perhaps even some that resonate with callings greater than those of any Board of Directors.

The officials of some smaller cities and towns in China make it their mission to enforce the one-child policy with zeal. Their sword is the hukou, or residence permit., which effectively ties an individual to his birthplace, even though he may work and live elsewhere in China. The hukou indicates how many children his family can have, depending on his location – basically city or countryside. Though some big city residents can buy their way into a second child, families in smaller cities and in farm country can find it onerous to try to have another child – especially if their first was already a boy (if the first was a girl, the family can try again after waiting several years). Reports are rife throughout the country of local officials and activists in neighborhood committees hunting down women who wish to have a second child and forcing them to have an abortion. Even near Shanghai in the new century, families that just cannot give up the wish of a second child must succumb to the weight of social pressure and the law.

David (not his real name) is a Kunshan native with his own small business that refurbishes factories. Kunshan is a forty-five minute drive to the northwest of Shanghai. A small, wirey local in his early thirties, he speaks English in a hurried, staccato fashion. His dream for a long time has been to emigrate to Canada.

David and his wife had already given birth to a boy, who was four years old last year, when his wife found out she was pregnant with their second child. The nurse who had performed the sonogram in the first trimester was the wife’s eldest sister. The sister agreed to keep the pregnancy a secret while David continued to pursue a visa to Canada to work. Then, their thinking went, when they emigrated to Canada they would be able to have the child without harassment from the government.

Ironically, David’s eldest brother worked in the government, in the department that monitored local citizens’ adherence to the one child policy. David believed that if indeed they were unable to get permission to emigrate before his wife showed her pregnancy, his brother would help them keep the baby – or, at least, look the other way when it came time for the birth.

Unfortunately, his brother had been branded more deeply by government policy than the bonds of brotherhood could insulate against. While David’s wife was at the clinic with her elder sister for a check up on the pregnancy, David’s elder brother appeared in the office with an order to abort the child. No amount of tears or argument could dissuade the elder brother’s purpose and duty. The forced abortion went through nevertheless.  If David’s brother had allowed David’s wife to have the baby the brother would not have been able to keep his job. At this writing, David is still working on emigrating to Canada, more intent than he ever was to move from China “so he can be free,” he says.

He and his brother are sworn enemies.