Let 100 Voices Speak

How the Internet is Transforming China and Changing Everything

Liz Carter

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781780769851
• eBook ISBN: 9780857739216
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

From the Occupy movement in the Western world to the Arab Spring and the role of Twitter in the Middle East, the internet and social media is changing the global landscape. China is next. Despite being a heavily-censored society, China has over 560 million active internet users, more than double that of the USA. In this book, social media expert and China-watcher Liz Carter tells the story of how the internet in China is leading to a coming together of activists, ordinary people and cultural trendsetters on a scale unknown in modern history. News about protests and natural disasters, or gossip and satirical jokes, are practically uncensorable and spread quickly through Weibo - the Chinese Twitter - and the Chinese internet underground. More than that, a grassroots, foundational shift of assumptions and expectations is taking place, as Chinese men and women cast off the communistera 'stability at all costs' mantra and find new forms of selfexpression, creativity and communication with the world.

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LIZ CARTER is the author and translator of numerous Chinese-language textbooks and the co-author of The Grass-Mud Horse Lexicon: Classic Netizen Language (2013), which explores subversive Chinese internet culture. Formerly the managing editor of the website Tea Leaf Nation, she has appeared on Al Jazeera and HuffPost Live as an expert on youth culture in China. After working as a translator in Beijing, where she studied contemporary Chinese literature at Peking University, she relocated to Washington DC, where she works as a Chinese–English translator and writer.

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“It is impossible to understand today’s China without exploring how its internet users are transforming the country. Liz Carter blends smart analysis and colorful details to provide a glimpse into this fascinating world. Let 100 Voices Speak is a valuable contribution to the literature on the internet in China.”

EMILY PARKER, author of Now I Know Who My Comrades Are: Voices From the Internet Underground

Published in 2015 by
I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd
London • New York
www.ibtauris.com

Copyright © 2015 Liz Carter

The right of Liz Carter to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

References to websites were correct at the time of writing.

ISBN: 978 1 78076 985 1
eISBN: 978 0 85773 921 6

A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available

Illustrations copyright © Rose Adders
www.rossadams.co.uk

Text design, and typesetting and eBook by Tetragon, London

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Contents

• Introduction
• 1 Cover-ups and Uncoverings
• 2 Censorship Is the Mother of Subversion
• 3 Tectonic Shifts: Counterculture Online
• 4 Not in My Backyard: From Screens to Streets
• 5 I Fought the Law
• 6 The Crackdown and the Chinese Dream
• Notes
• Recommended Reading
• Glossary

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‌Introduction

Thirty-five years ago, China’s position on the world stage was peripheral, its population largely rural, its economy small, and its attention turned inward. After a decade-long Cultural Revolution that saw bitter ideological battles and the virtual suspension of formal education, the Chinese were just beginning to pick up the pieces. Today, China is the world’s most populous country, as well as the world’s second-largest and fastest-growing economy. More than half of all Chinese live in urban areas, and more than 600 million are internet users.

China is not rising; it has already risen. We still speak of an awakening or rising China because perceptions of the country were shaped decades ago, during its initial recovery, or even earlier, during its long period of political upheaval. Panicked by the idea that this long-held assumption has become invalid, observers have hastily sought to explain China, painting it as either a threat or a savior, 1 billion foreigners poised to redeem or destroy us all.

In truth, neither narrative is realistic. Some of what the Chinese economy does will benefit other world economies, and some of it may hurt. Some of the country’s political moves may be welcome changes, and others more unpleasant. The idea that China will either save or destroy is based on two curious assumptions: first, that China has power to decide our fates, and that it will do so from its position entirely outside the West; and second, that there is a singular entity called China acting in a uniform manner based on unanimous consent.

What China is actually doing, and will continue to do, is changing us and being changed by us, until one day rhetoric catches up to reality and we no longer speak of China in terms of “us” and “them.” Chinese products are exported throughout the world, China sends more students abroad than any other country, and the Chinese diaspora is one of the largest in history. Already, such overlap undermines the idea of China as an isolated entity. Changes in China, then, are not confined within the borders of the People’s Republic.

Some of China’s most dramatic changes are not occurring within its physical territory, but the somewhat more international space of the internet. Internet access first came to China in 1987, when researchers in Beijing sent an email to Germany, writing: “Across the Great Wall we can reach every corner in the world.” Yet the most significant changes have happened more recently: For decades, the internet was used by only a tiny sub-segment of the world’s most populated country, a tool for government researchers, professors, and technical experts. It was not until 2006 that China’s internet penetration exceeded 10 percent.1

Since then, China’s internet penetration has jumped to 46.9 percent (632 million users), double what it was ten years prior and still growing.2 While Chinese internet penetration is lower than in most developed countries, there are roughly twice as many Chinese web users than there are people in the United States. If Chinese netizens formed a sovereign country, it would be the world’s third largest.

Yet the most fascinating and significant aspect of the Chinese internet is not the number of people that have used it, but the uses it has served. Not only do China’s internet users outnumber those of any other country, they are also far more social than their international counterparts. In 2012, 91 percent of Chinese internet users reported using social-media sites, compared to only 67 percent of US internet users.3

It is in China’s social-media sphere that the battles and negotiations of change are taking place. Though the Chinese government blocked major foreign social-media sites like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter in 2008 and 2009, Chinese companies have developed their own substitutes, often modeling them on their Western counterparts: Renren has been called the Chinese Facebook, Youku the Chinese YouTube, and Weibo the Chinese Twitter. These native sites have flourished by accommodating government censorship and surveillance demands as well as users’ desire for a platform to connect and share content freely. While market demands push the companies to allow as much expression as possible, government requirements limit their ability to do so. The compromise that results is a line blurred by its constant, rapid movement, as social-media users—and companies—push t...

Table of contents

• Introduction
• 1. Cover-ups and Uncoverings