The Internet Is a “Contested Space” in China, for Good and for Bad

In China, and just about anywhere else, the Internet can be a two-edged sword.

Governments can find it to be a handy propaganda tool that can influence millions of users as long as only friendly voices can be heard.

And civil society forces have discovered that the Internet has opened infinite possibilities to overcome ages-old censorship.

China is perhaps the best example of this contradiction, as Chinese dissident-in-exile Xiao Qiang (above) today told a Washington audience during a forum organized by the US National Endowment for Democracy.

Xiao —currently a professor of journalism at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley— reminded the audience that China has become an Internet behemoth, with more users than the US and a 1.3-billion population with access to 573 million cell phones.

But he emphasized that this vast information highway can be traveled by both a powerful state and a rising civil society.

“Censorship is only part of the story,” he told the audience. “The Internet is a contested space."

The forum was organized by the US National Endowment for Democracy and hosted by Rep. Adam Schiff, a Democratic lawmaker from California who co-chairs the bipartisan, bicameral Congressional Caucus for the Freedom of the Press. Other members of the US Congress leading this initiative are Republicans Mike Pence and Richard Lugar, and Democrat Christopher Dodd.

Xiao, who became a democracy activist after the 1989 Tiananmen crack down and is current director of the China Internet Project, said the Internet has also created a new propaganda tool for autocratic regimes, and that this propaganda machine that can reach every corner of China.

China is a modern propaganda state, and this propaganda has allowed for a strong nationalistic movement to emerge and to be strengthened, he said.

“This is not a Marxist regime propaganda,” he warned. “It’s only red in the surface, in the color of the flag. This propaganda fosters consumerism, the drive to buy and soft-porn coverage of news.”

But Xiao, who was the executive director of Human Rights in China from 1991 to 2002, and vice-chairman of the steering committee of the World Movement for Democracy, also celebrated that the Internet in China has strengthened civil society and the other forces that make the government more accountable and are pushing for political reform.

“We have these individual heroes in China, these bloggers, who are making a difference through technology. They have earned credibility, and Internet personality. But they need our assistance,” he warned.

He offered the example of the protests that took place in several parts of China last year against environmental degradation. The protests were spread by means of text messaging among hundreds of activists.

Yet, there is a third force at play in this Internet competition in China, Xiao said, one that mostly exists in exile, those intellectuals who are most forceful in making the government more accountable.

“They are merging together through the Internet. They have been able to build a response force that reacts to questionable government actions in a matter of hours,” he said. “The Internet is a facilitator of a more transparent government and of political participation.”

Finally, he urged international organizations to offer opportunities for these opposition intellectuals in China to meet outside the country to allow them to join forces and strengthen their positions.

“We need to facilitate a cooperation between forces outside China and inside China to effect change in the country,” he said.