POREG VIEW: Didi Kirsten Tatlow report in The New York Times highlights the threats internet users face in a country that aspires to be recognised as the World’s No One power. When a writer, Xia Shang, wanted to commemorate the deaths of 58 people in an apartment building fire in Shanghai last week, he turned to the Internet for help. His offer to buy flowers for the victims, posted on his microblog, was taken up by thousands of netizens. But the country’s Internet police hauled him literally on coals. First they deleted his post. Then they took him away for questioning for two hours.
As the New York Times says Xia Shang’s experience is a striking illustration of how freedom and repression are spreading simultaneously in China even as the Communist party leadership sees in the Internet and cell phone-based communications a challenge to its authoritarian ways.
Today China has some 420 million internet users. An estimated 50,000 plus uniformed and non-uniformed government employees, keep tabs on them, deleting posts, and tracking offenders. This is in addition to the “Great Chinese Firewall” that blocks large amounts of information from entering the country.
This communication revolution is coinciding with a generational shift in the ruling elite of the country. Like the first, the second change also works against the systems the Communist leadership has carefully put in place as they steered the country from the gory days of Cultural Revolution.
In a manner of speaking, there is no parallel to the paradox China is witnessing today with cracks in the Party-State edifice visible to the naked eye. Openness and controls cannot go hand-in-hand at any time. China is no exception.
One danger of the emerging crisis is China sinking deep into authoritarianism and more authoritarianism, with no pretensions whatsoever. Such a turn could push the world to another cold war.
But it is also possible that the young leadership, who are moving to the centre stage, may steer the country towards a new dawn since they have benefitted from the reforms and have a stake in the reforms that have created Deng (Xiaoping) Capitalism in place of Mao Communism. They will not like to give up their private lives, private properties, and all the private good things that come with them.
