Net Growth Challenges ChinaThe Country's Internet Community Expands
An angry Chinese father posted his tale of a vacation gone wrong and triggered an Internet uproar that ended last week when the government fired a tourism boss for spoiling the family's holiday.
Meanwhile, a quirky posting about a real estate dispute triggered another Internet uproar that ended Saturday when the government all but silenced discussion.
The story of how Chinese authorities handled these simultaneous cases highlights the shifting boundaries of free expression on China's fast-growing Internet.
Every day, more Chinese citizens gain access to the Web -- and each other, through instant messages, blogs and bulletin board forums. Internet expression has proved to be a potent but uncertain new pillar in Chinese civil society, and as the number of people online climbs past 137 million, the Communist Party alternately embraces and smothers the power of the Web.
A tale of 2 debates
As these cases show, what is permitted online and what is not can change by the hour, guided by sensitivities and politics. In both cases, the crux of the issue was the same: ordinary citizens using the Web to criticize the government for failing to protect individual rights. But their outcomes add contrasting chapters to the history of China's Internet.
The tourism flap began March 8 when someone identifying himself as Mr. Xu posted the story of his family of five, who visited the seashore in the island town of Sanya. After a quarrel with local vendors, they spent seven hours with local police trying to settle the dispute. Xu blasted the police for failing to "protect the safety of citizens."
By posting it to Tianya, Xu knew he would reach a large audience. Since its founding in 1999, Tianya has become one of China's most popular Web forums, reporting 10 million members and providing a home for heated discussions on everything from literature to sex.
The message first appeared on a screen at Tianya's two-story headquarters in this southeastern Chinese city, where more than 100 editors are perched at computer terminals reading thousands of messages each day. They are hunting for both good and bad: good, as in interesting items to attract more readers, and bad, as in politically sensitive language about Tibet, Tiananmen Square or any other items that will prompt Chinese authorities to close down a subject.
Editors watched as the tourism story gathered steam. More than 191,000 people had read the message and 4,500 had left comments criticizing the "evil people" responsible or vowing to avoid the city. The issue had touched a nerve in a society where abuse of power by local officials has fostered widespread frustration.
"It attracted the attention and anger of the entire country," said Hu Bin, a top editor. Hu saw it as a prime chance for the Web to show its potential to bring change.
"We try to act as a bridge to solve problems and reduce conflict," he added.
A free-speech 'barometer'
Editors at Tianya telephoned Zhao Xichen, director of the local party's Internet News Office, the man responsible for making sure that more than 6,000 Web sites in Hainan province are following Chinese law.
Zhao alerted his boss, Liang Fei, the deputy director general of the provincial publicity department, who called the city of Sanya. Days later, on March 21, Sanya announced that the local park manager and the head of the local police station had been reassigned. To local Internet czars, this was a successful -- and safe -- use of the Web.
"This is a good example of how a Web site improved the work of the government," Liang said in an interview in his office in Haikou. "Their role is irreplaceable."
But across town, another issue was evolving differently. Messages were popping up on the screens of editors at Kdnet, an influential Web forum run by just 32 staffers. Editor in Chief Xiao Zengjian prided himself on fielding some of the most vigorous debates on the Chinese Internet, a place where nationalists could rail against foreign powers and liberals could call for democracy -- just tamely enough to avoid being shut down.
"Kdnet is a barometer for free speech in China," Xiao said at their headquarters. "How much freedom of speech is there in China? You can find the answer at Kdnet."
The new flurry of messages was all focused on a David-and-Goliath tale taking shape on the opposite side of the country. A husband and wife from the western city of Chongqing were refusing to move out of their house, which was scheduled to be razed to make way for new development.
Someone had snapped a photo of the two-story holdout house perched precariously on a slender pillar of earth isolated in the center of a construction canyon. The photo crisscrossed the Web, tagged the "nail house," the Chinese term for someone who refuses to be relocated.
Like the tourism flap, the story had ignited because it spoke to a sensitive issue in contemporary China: the tenuous rights of individuals to protect their private property. Indeed, it had been barely a week since Chinese leaders passed a controversial law designed to deliver more legal protections for private entrepreneurs and middle-class home and car owners.
The new law was reassuring to many citizens but was greeted with grumbling from old-line socialists who oppose further privatization. National leaders were not eager to have a public debate on the subject.
'Nail house' united public
It was at that sensitive moment that the "nail house" hit the Web. Kdnet, just one of the Web sites featuring discussion of it, quickly racked up more than 1 million hits on the subject, with users urging the holdout to "never give up." By Saturday the "nail house" was Kdnet's lead headline, and the surge of clicks had crashed the server three times.
And then, midday Saturday, Kdnet abruptly removed all comments on the subject. So did all of China's major Internet portals. The order from Communist Party authorities to shut down further discussion had come at 1:45 p.m., according to Chinese bloggers.
To Zhao, the local Internet manager in Hainan, this was not censorship; some postings still could be found in inconspicuous places online, he said. Rather, the debate had become "irrational" and needed to be "watered down," he said.
"Too much publicity will not help to solve the issue," Zhao added.
Indeed, to analysts of China's Internet, the "nail house" had passed an opaque but crucial threshold: uniting people from across the country over a single issue. The vacation controversy had prompted barely a fraction of the public response generated by the "nail house." The latter, it seemed, had become too large to contain.
"What the central authority was afraid of was precisely the fact that this symbolic event will encourage others to follow their example," said Xiao Qiang, director of the China Internet Project at the University of California, Berkeley. "That's why they had to shut down the debate."
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