Many of us visit forums like Tianya or Mop to read the hottest topics and get a feel of what is trending on the Chinese internet. However, we don’t usually take an actively role, at least I had never tried posting before. This experience with Michael has taught me a few things about how these forums work, and in particular one of the biggest, Tianya. I know many people out there are interested in this, so here are the points I noted for your info:

1- There are around 200,000 people at any given time on Tianya, a big part of them looking at the front page of the most popular discussion boards, “entertainment” and “mixed comments”. I posted on “mixed comments”, because some regulars told me that this section usually appreciates 原创 (original creation) posts.

2- The key to attracting readers is to have your post on the front page for as long as possible. New posts start on top and slide down as other posts or comments appear. Usually the site is so busy that 1 or 2 minutes is enough to sweep you off the front page. Every post goes to the top again when someone posts a comment on it, even if it is the author.

3- Therefore, the best way to reach the millions of reads is by creating a snowball effect: ie. attracting a discussion that ensures that every minute someone will post a comment, thereby making the post remain in front page. This can be better kickstarted if you have some Tianya friends that support you in the beginning, but it can also be done by re-commenting yourself (there seems to be no limit on the number of self-comments, I took advantage of this to shamelessly promote Michael).

4- To create this snowball effect, the posts that work best contain controversial statements that spark discussion among significant groups, ideally men vs women, or Shanghainese vs outsiders, or conservatives vs modern, whatever. An example: A story explaining why a woman should allow her husband to cheat on her hit the millions of readers, attracting obvious flames from both sides.

5- In spite of all the crazy things we read about the Chinese BBS, the people at Tianya are mostly civil. I didn’t get any racist or xenophobic remark, just one 20 yo who asked me *please* to not take a Chinese girlfriend because they don’t have so many girls here for them.  In fact, there is far less racism, flames, trolls, in Tianya than in similar large forums I have seen in the West. Most people commented sincerely and some even took the trouble to give me detailed advice on language.

6- In the end my post stabilized at around 5000 views and 70 comments, a fair part of them mine. I guess one reason why Michael didn’t fly is that I was too honest. I never hid it was fiction and I asked for advice on language. I am pretty sure it would have been more successful if I tried to post it as a true story. One of the main buzz generating subjects is the true/fake assessment in posts, but I gave myself away there.

7- Another interesting thing in Tianya BBS (and many other big BBS as well) is that it is an almost purely raw content website. There is no place for design or web 2.0 gimmicks, the posts allow no HTTP and no revisions. The site itself is almost entirely raw text except for the adverts and the simple logo of Tianya shown above. Some part of me really, really likes this concept.

In conclusion, I have no idea how this translates into useful business purposes, but what I am sure is that it is quite feasible to get a post rolling into top Tianya hits if you design it for that.  I am not particularly interested in the business perspective myself,  but perhaps this is useful for those of you who are.

As for me, I found the experience really good fun, and I am grateful to the kind readers of Tianya for their support. I think I will repeat it soon with a more viral story, see you all in the BBS!

A little update on the Oriental Morning Post. I know nobody is interested because nobody actually reads this paper (not even its editors), but for the sake of consistency I have to inform of their new exploits. Follow me in this new chapter of their fascinating spiral to hell.

The weekend’s Oriental had the following breakthroughs:

A front page headline stating that the “200,000 people at the EXPO opening day were all high”. I have no idea why they wrote that “high” in English, but it looks like a silly eye-catcher in the wake of the English Letters debate. I suspect the editor didn’t intend any double meaning, in spite of the photograph.

A 150% front page advert. When we thought the 100% front page advert was unbeatable, the Oriental strikes again. The Saturday edition had a full page advert on the front page, which turned out to be a FAKE FRONT PAGE and behind it there was the real front page with another advert of a different company. Genius!!

The May 1st edition had 18 pages, but apart from the advertisements there were 4 articles in total, all of them about the opening of the EXPO, and half of them copied from Xinhua. I am confident 1 writer/editor could have done this issue single-handedly in one afternoon.

Some Thoughts on Chinese papers

I am fed up of this Oriental Toilet Paper that comes covered in ads, and I plan to stop writing about it soon. But before I do that, let me share some thoughts that came to my mind tonight, as I went for dinner with a journalist friend:

The only real function of the Oriental is as advert-holder. The business is clearly not about journalism, but about stuffing the distribution channels with papers that go unsold, and then showing these distribution numbers to some PR agency that recommends the Oriental to advertisers as one of the mainstream papers in Shanghai.

The only possible reason why this business model works is that there are such big barriers to entry in the printed media business – mostly related to authorities permits – that nobody else takes the place of Oriental and Shanghai Morning Post. In parallel, there is a general lack of transparency, which means that nobody questions whether it is a good idea to pay money to put ads on the Oriental. I wonder how much longer this can last.

In the end of the day, this case that I treat as a joke is in fact a tragedy. The 50,000 Euros approx that advertisers pay the Oriental for one single front page are going straight to the pocket of a businessman who doesn’t give a damn for journalism. That money should be going to some much needed young journalists with principles and with true ideals. There are so many people writing better things on the internet for free, the whole thing is a racket diverting resources that should go to them.

Damn it, this is the last post I write about this. It is getting old, like Chinglish, except that the Oriental is not even funny.

This is a brand new sculpture called “communication”, just arrived from the US to Shanghai to commemorate the 30 years of the opening of relations between the two countries. It is a great initiative, following the old tradition initiated in Troy and continued with the Statue of Liberty…

Except that, wait a second! Who are these guys? Do they represent Nixon and Mao? And why are they dressed up as two grannies getting ready for tea? Perverts!

OK, I see, this represents  the intimate relations built up in the last 30 years. The lady on the left is becoming a bit deaf, and her friend keeps repeating herself, saying the same things a thousand times, she is saying something about currency devaluation…

Whatever. What I find most amazing of all this is that in a city of 20 million I am the only one that finds this funny. The article on the Oriental is just a rehash of the press release, and they lost a great chance to poke some fun at the thing. And if there is one thing I do not forgive is missing a chance to have fun. Oriental, this was your last chance, you are fired!

This little piece by historian Hong Zhenkuai has been taken down from the Southern Metropolis, but it has managed to escape the censors on some other sites. I liked the subtle way Hong criticizes the reigning CCP dynasty, and the cool Chinese rendering of “L’Etat c’est moi” as “朕即国家“.

Since I don’t have the time for Language Thursdays today, I have done this bit of translation work:

The French Bourbon king Louis XIV reportedly said “L’etat c’est moi” [1]. Even if all the World’s sovereigns love autocracy, few of them would say it so openly. Louis XIV ruled from 1643 to 1715, the same period as China’s Kangxi. Kangxi’s thought was probably not unlike “L’etat c’est moi”, but clearly he had more “wisdom with Chinese characteristics” than Louis XIV – he did a lot of “humane actions”, thus earning a reputation of humane Lord while still ruling as a dictator.

In the ideas of the Sovereign People, the sovereignty belongs to the people and it is not “L’Etat c’est moi” but rather “L’Etat is us“. Of course this kind of ideas only appeared after Louis XIV’s death. In his age there were not many in the World who could tell the difference between the notions of sovereign, government and State. In China, even if the pre-Qin philosopher Mencius said: “first the people, then the State then the  monarch”, in fact in the 2000+ years since the Qin and the Han, Patriotism has meant Loyalty to the Monarch, and these two concepts are muddled.

Only after the Western ideas arrived, some Chinese people started little by little to acquire a modern understanding of the notions of government, country and monarch. Among them Liang Qichao was first. He arrived to these conclusions during his experience in exile after the failure of the 1898 reforms.

Liang said that China was accumulating weakness, one of the causes being that the Chinese people could not distinguish between State and Dynasty, to the point that the patriotic spirit was not aimed at the right target[...] China has a long history, the Tang, Yu, Xia, Shang, Zhou, Qin, Han, Wei, Jin, Song, Qi, Liang, Chen, Sui, Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing [2] are “all names of dynasties, not of States”. From the Yin named Shang, to the Ji named Zhou, to the Ying named Qin, to the Liu named Han, to the Li named Tang, to the Zhao named Song, to the Zhu named Ming, [3]; and also the Mongol Yuan and the Manchu Qing; all of them were family clans, not proper States. They were private operations run by a family clan and not a common asset of all the Chinese people. And yet the Chinese people frequently confuse Dynasty with State, as Liang Qichao said, and this is their big weakness.

Of the bad consequences of not differentiating between State and Dynasty, the most obvious is that Patriotism becomes Love for a Dynasty, or even Love for the Leader. Liang Qichao said: “Our long history shows, the famous officials and generals [...] [4].” Those characters in our long history, they killed people for one family clan, they did their hard efforts to acquire position and wealth, this has nothing to do with patriotism. But it was raised as a model of “patriotism” by each of the dynasties, and the people, since they cannot distinguish dynasty from State, they continue to praise and respect them. Truly lamentable.

A bit later than Liang, Chen DuXiu wrote a piece with title “Should we be patriotic or not?”, in the text it says: “To ask whether we should be patriotic or not, first we have to ask what is the State. Originally it is nothing but a group of people organized to resist the attacks of others from outside, and to harmonize the disputes of the people inside. Good people use it to defend against oppression outside and harmonize disputes inside, bad people use it to oppress the peoples both outside and inside. Therefore if someone asks: “should we be patriotic or not?” we will answer in a loud voice: “We love our country, the one that seeks happiness for the people, and not the one for which the people have to sacrifice”

The functions of a State, according to Chen DuXiu are: To defend against outside oppression, and to harmonize internal disputes. The former is towards the outside, the latter towards the inside. Harmonizing disputes is only the passive side, the State must also actively pursue public policies like preventing and providing relief against natural disasters.

The functions of a State should be performed by the government. If the government can do these functions, then the State is “seeking happiness for the people”; if not, then it becomes “the State for which the people sacrifice”. In human history the most common in practice is that the government cannot fulfill the State’s functions, or else it does them poorly. In this case it can appear that government equals no government. Or that government is even worse than no government.

Because of its geography China is a country where draughts and floods occur frequently. There are statistics that show that in the 2270 years before the Republic [pre-1911],there were 1392 officially reported draughts, and 1621 officially reported floods. It can be seen that every year there was some disaster. Because of this, one of the main functions of the Chinese government in the old times was to lead the defense against natural disasters, it can be said that this is one of the bases of the legitimacy of the government, and the emperors paid a lot of attention to these phenomena.

The emperor Qing even required the high officials in the provinces to timely inform of the rainfall, harvest, grain prices, etc. to understand the situation and so in case of a disaster to be able to offer immediate assistance and/or reduce the taxes in the affected regions. But looking at history, very often the people received no help. And in the case of large scale disasters, when the government could not offer assistance, the people had to face the risks and take action to survive. Like Li Zicheng who led the peasant revolt in the end of the Qing. His main actions where in Shaanxi and Henan, because there was a big draught there and the Ming government could not organize effective assistance. This force the victims to become roaming people, and ultimately a violent mob.

In any society there are some large tasks that involving many people, so there is no way any organization can do them other than the government. If the government cannot perform its responsibilities, the society becomes unruly, and the the public interest suffers. For example, food safety, public health, protection of the environment, this kind of affairs need to be taken charge of by the government.

In the development of human societies, this problem has been encountered for a long time: the people need the government but the government cannot live up to their expectations, protect them against outside menace or provide internal services. In many cases it even evolves into an organization that infringes on the people’s rights.

To make the government do its task diligently, the people needs to have the right to supervise the government, and the most effective way is to elect the government by voting. The people needs to understand what is common sense – that is, as Liang Qichao said, that the State is not the dynasty (government). The dynasty can be changed for the survival of the State. What the people should love is their country, and not the dynasty.

Hong Zhenkuai  Historian

1. meaning the State is me
2. it is cool how all the history of China fits in one single line of dynasties: 唐虞夏商周秦汉魏晋宋齐梁陈隋唐宋元明清, I guess we should add 国共 in the end, for the KMT and the CCP dynasties of the XX century
3. all these are the original surnames of the families that were behind each dynasty
4. follows rant against the old patriotic heroes, this is old Chinese someone help me translate: 试观二十四史所载，名臣名将，功业懿铄、声名彪炳者，舍翊助朝廷一姓之外，有所事事乎？其为我国民增一分之利益、完一分之义务乎？而全国人民顾啧啧焉称之曰：此我国之英雄也。夫以一姓之家奴走狗，而冒一国英雄之名，国家之辱，莫此甚也！乃至舍家奴走狗之外，而数千年几无可称道之人，国民之耻，更何如也！而我国四万万同胞，顾未尝以为辱焉，以为耻焉，则以误认朝廷为国家之理想，深入膏肓而不自知也。

Here is an update to yesterday’s review of Han Han, with some additional info about the Time nomination, which might be more important than it appears at first sight.

Then, if you stay till the end of this chapter, we will put on the yellow socks to analyze a bit more that terrible scourge of our times: the Ulterior Motives. This is for the benefit of all the puppet journalists and researchers who enjoy using that phrase, please pay attention.

The comments today come in the form of title-paragraphs, to allow for easy skimming:

1- The rules of the Time 100 are often misunderstood and heavily criticized, especially after internet star moot hacked the online poll last year and turned it into a joke. However, what you should keep in mind is that the internet poll only selects one of the members of the Time 100 list. That is, only the top person in the online poll makes it into the final official list, and in the position that Time editors decide. To be fair, it does make sense to include at least this one person from the poll, as it is representative of online mobilization power (when it is not hacked).

2- The fairness of the Time 100 is often put in doubt, and for good reason since ultimately it is nothing but the personal views of some magazine editors. And so what? The Peace Nobel is also an undemocratic selection by some random Norwegian wise men, and I would expect top Time magazine journalists to be better informed in World affairs than them. This is as fair as it gets for a list of influence.

3- The importance of the List: Like the Nobel, the list is important only because people give it importance. When it comes out it is read and commented by millions around the World. Many in America know Rain, the Korean star, just because he was voted high in the Time poll by a concentrated base of Korean fans. Now Rain is an international figure, what will happen if Han gets the same status? His independent view of China may be heard outside, and a full generation of Chinese people will have a channel to the World. This is a bit optimistic, I know, but there is a lot of potential if Han plays it well.

4- The chances of Han Han to win are very high if he really wants to. Supposing this year Time protects the poll against hackers, the number of votes necessary to win will not be much higher than 2 million. With an average of 1 million readers for any single post he writes, Han could easily mobilize enough people to storm the list if he campaigns for it. On the other hand, I am not sure he really wants to go that way. To be elected by others for a foreign listing is one thing, but to actively promote himself for it might raise future accusations of Ulterior Motives.

The Ulterior motives

And as promised above, here is my essay on Ulterior Motives. In case you are not aware, Ulterior Motives (usually translated from the Chinese 别有用心 or 别有用意) is a stock phrase that the Party and attached mouthpiece press uses to criticize people they don’t like. It has become so pervasive that it is like a CCP meme, similar to the famous classic “hurting the feelings of the Chinese people”. Most of the times, the “Ulterior” refers to American interests, and this hideous phrase is used to mobilize nationalistic feelings and pave the way for future charges of subversion.

This phrase wouldn’t be so revolting if it was only heard from Xinhua and the People’s Daily. After all, every government uses the patriotic trick to mobilize the masses, and lying is part of the routine of most politicians. But what is really disgusting of Ulterior Motives is that it has spread widely in society, to the point that even the work of intelligent people, like Lian Si, is polluted by it. Not to mention accomplished idiots like that guy who writes for the Shanghai Daily.

The allusion in “Ulterior Motives” is sickening because of the smug, self satisfied tone used to smear the victim, but it is more than that. It  is also low and cowardly, as it doesn’t dare to speak out the words.

So dear incompetent puppets, please listen up. If you are going to accuse someone of Ulterior Motives you should at least have the guts to specify what those motives are. “Ulterior” in general is meaningless, life is a complex phenomenon and all actions have multiple motivations. You need to list them out and offer some proof so that the reader can make up his mind.

To help you understand better, find here below 2 examples of how the Ulterior Motives are treated when you have what it takes to write it out. I will give you one from each side, to be completely fair:

1- The USA sent its Army to Irak to murder thousands of great innocent people for the main ulterior motives of serving its own political/economical interests AND to satisfy a base craving for revenge in a large part of the American public.

2- The CCP leaders imprisoned people like Liu XiaoBo or Xu Zhiyong for the main ulterior motives of eliminating any potential challenge to their own personal position of power and wealth.

So you see, it is easy to do. Either you go and mention what you are speaking about, or else just STFU. Unspoken accusations stink.

• Preferably with journalism or media related experience.
• Experience in video and photography will be an advantage.

We’re looking for someone clever, active and with excellent communication skills. This person will be in charge of the press coverage of one of the most interesting pavilions in the Expo: writing press releases, covering their activities and interviewing the biggest personalities they will invite.

Interested please send your resume to natalia.tobontobon@china-files.com

CNY NOTE: This is posted as a favour for the the multi-lingual blog China-Files.  I am not paid for this ad, I agreed to publish it because it might be useful for some reader. The position is paid and I think there are perks like a press card to access the  Expo, but please contact Natalia directly for the details. Good luck.

Despite being a party newspaper, I am more a fan of the Shanghai Morning Post (新闻辰报) than the relatively less government-oriented Oriental Morning Post (东方日报). I find the Shanghai Morning Post to have more stories related to the city I live in, though the Shanghai paper sells out quicker outside my apartment building than the Oriental Morning Post, so I often have to settle for the Oriental if I make it outside past 10 a.m.

When I read this I realized why I almost never see the SMP and I am stuck with the Oriental. In the convenience store down my road it is exactly the same situation: most mornings the SMP is sold out by the time I get there, whereas the Oriental is still hanging like a stale fish when I am back from work in the evenings.

To confirm this information I sought the aid of a professional. Not the local Lawson’s store, but a proper newspaper selling stand:

Since newspapers is their core business, the ladies in the stand usually get more copies of the morning papers, which means that they have both the SMP and the Oriental available until late.

The first thing I noticed is that they clearly dislike the Oriental. They have it buried under a lot of magazines and every time I have been there they have tried to convince me to buy the SMP instead. It clearly looks like someone is not doing their homework on the distribution channels. Apart from this, here is what I found:

• Every day they sell about 3 times more copies of the SMP than the Oriental – approx 60 to 20.
• The newspapers that are not sold can be returned up to a certain number (not specified) and the rest is just thrown away.

These are just anecdotal observations, but all seems to indicate that a good part of the 400,000 copies posted by the Oriental end up right in the rubbish bin, or else used as toilet paper in the nearby construction site.

Incidentally, the Oriental today opens again with the full page Mont Blanc watch. A jolly nice picture I have to say, but not very satisfying because those dark colors tend to leave stains when used on damp places.

Without any more preambles, let me introduce you to the Oriental Morning Post, one of the two big morning papers in Shanghai. Here are some of their front pages this week:

Look at these front pages carefully, have you noticed there are adverts? Yes. I buy this paper every morning and I was very excited to see they have found an innovative way to face the crisis: just get rid of the news and replace them with ads. Gray Lady, Mr. Murdoch, are you paying attention? Herein lies perchance the salvation of the press.

Seriously. Let me tell you a funny story about the death of a newspaper.

Like New York, Shanghai has two main morning papers that are in fierce competition with each other, the Oriental Morning Post and the Shanghai Morning Post. The former is a young paper that belongs to the large media group Wenhui, owner of the English language Shanghai Daily. The latter is part of the Jiefang Group, a historic paper controlled by the Shanghai committee of the Communist Party

The struggle between these newspapers reflects a story that is happening all over China, where relatively independent [2] groups are competing with the party media, and editors on both sides are led to push the thin line of information control in order to attract more readers. The party media has the advantage of established old reader bases and closer political coverage, so it is the “independent” media that is usually more vulnerable to attacks.

In the last few years, just like in the West, the menace of the freebies both online and offline has been a nightmare for these companies. Only in Shanghai the Metro Express reportedly has more readers (~1 million) than the two Posts together, and the internet continues to attract users by the millions.

Some have argued that the key for the survival of the big papers is reference columnists and quality, independent reporting. In a country where being an opinion leader can lead you straight to prison, and most of the news are directly copy/pasted from the Xinhua press agency, it hardly make sense to pay for the morning paper. The Metro has the same news, and the only way to get commentary on any important matter is surfing the internet fast enough to get there before the censors.

Today I asked my Shanghainese friend Mary Fu why she thinks the Oriental is better than the Metro Express, and she answered, literally: “they are similar, but the Oriental has less adverts“.

The Great Leap Forward

But let’s get to the point now, namely: I have strong reasons to suspect that the Oriental is playing a “Great Leap Forward” on its advertisers. In other words, it is reporting completely unrealistic numbers of readers. I have various reasons to believe this, mainly:

• They have been reporting the same figures (400,000) at least since 2008, while the conditions have severely worsened since then.

• They are playing desperate tactics, like the above front pages. In fact, in their table of prices for advertisers the “whole front page ad” is not even an option.

• If I know the Shanghainese well, they are not the kind of people to get ripped off 1 RMB every morning for something they can get for free.

I know it is ugly to accuse without proof, but frankly: doesn’t it look like the guys are struggling to pay the bills, and they have managed to find two wealthy foreign companies confused enough to part with half a million RMB? And perhaps they even cooked it up with an advertisement agency who has some good guanxi [3] in the group?

Pure speculation. Forget it, don’t listen to me. I recommend everyone to continue buying the Oriental Piaget Post. And I wish all the luck in the World to those 300 employees who are seriously going to need it.

Leading the Way for the Demise of the Newspapers

And now, for the desperate media leaders who are willing to try the new Chinese model, here are some some illustrative examples of the zombie life led by the long deceased Chinese journalism. Most of my examples are taken from Danwei, the best newspapers watching site I know.

Exhibit 1: Classic example of an advert disguised as news in a front page in the Oriental Guardian of Nanjing. With a characteristic lack of ethical principles learned from the censoring authorities, a large part of Chinese mainland newspapers routinely sell news space to advertisers or post adverts without any indication of their real nature.

Exhibit 2: From our very own Shanghai Oriental last week. On that day “Mont Blanc” must have smelled a rat, and the Post had to actually do a front page. In a desperate move to attract some eyes they pasted an unrelated photo of the sexiest woman in China. No article to go with it.

Exhibit 3: This is the kind of clever detail that makes me go back to Danwei all the time. Chongqing journalists are smarter than Shanghainese ones, it seems. See how they use their prime minister Wen to sell reading glasses on the front page. Pure genius!

Exhibit 4: See this Oriental Post from a few weeks ago, where the front page reports on the market price of an alpaca. This is a lame attempt to get back young readers lost to the internet, using an aging meme that is quickly becoming unfunny. Another innovation by the Post editors.

I could go on for ages with examples, I didn’t even spend 10 minutes looking for these. But enough is enough. Now I want to take you back to the West and try to picture the future in your mind.

Do you imagine what will happen when the New York Times follows the downward road pioneered by the Shanghai press?

Tell me, does the future look so bad?

Welcome to the Future of the Paper Media.

.
CLARIFICATION: There are still many proud Chinese journalists who do their job honestly and the best they can under very difficult conditions. It goes without saying that the criticism here does not apply to them.

1. Yes, intranet, from now on I refuse to refer to this joke as the internet until the retards controlling the GFW understand the meaning of World Wide Web
2. By independent I mean companies not nominally controlled by the party, although obviously they are not really independent from the government directives given to all the press
3. Guanxi means relations, often – but not necessarily –  implying a shady exchange of favours. If you are going to be reading about China you better learn this word now

Well, for those who doubted, here you have the proof. Get the solid worldwide reputation of Google Inc. for non-evilness, add an American president that enjoys public support in almost every corner of the World, and you can assemble a Megaton soft bomb with the power to break through all the conventions of international politics. That is exactly what Google’s actions represent today, and for the time being they are obtaining the expected support outside of China.

While at first some observers interpreted the Hong Kong move as a face saving one, I think after Brin’s appeal to Obama today there is little doubt that this was not the case. What is probably even worse from the CCP’s perspective is the direct link set up today on Google HK to Drummond’s blog post in Chinese. Up to now only a few Chinese activists had bothered to read the message, now every single Google.cn user is sent there. Google is attempting to speak directly to the people of China, bypassing the channels of the government, how is that for a detonator?
This is the kind of action that only a company like Google could risk, and only a government like Obama’s could support without lifting suspicions all around the World. It is a completely new approach to international politics where a company now is not only pushing for political goals, but even addressing peoples and governments directly as an equal. Any company in the World acting like this would get a severe rebuke from its own government, but I doubt that this will be the case for Google.

It does not work like this

I have been quite negative about Google’s actions ever since this “New Approach” started in January. Unlike other critics, I don’t doubt the sincerity of Google’s leaders or the goodness of their objective. On the contrary, I am convinced that this is a deliberate personal move by Google’s leaders to do their real significant bit while they are still in time, before they lose full control of the corporation. With the growth of Google this is bound to happen soon, and both Page and Brin have announced the sale of a good chunk of their shares this year.

But my reasons to be against Google’s plan are much more simple than that. It is just that I think it will not work.

I readily admit that I might be wrong, indeed I hope so, this is a completely new approach and nobody has all the certainty. But from my observation of China in the last few years, I can’t see how the plan might work. The government will try to avoid a scene, and it is possible that for a while Google will remain unblocked. But sooner or later the CCP is going to have them pay for this, the door has been left wide open for another call to patriotism, and the consequences will be bad for the Chinese and for the internet.

A problem of principles

In fact, even if the outcome turns out to be good, I am not comfortable with the principle of Google’s actions. It is a principle of moral superiority, the old story of Western people going to different continents and killing as many as they could to save them from the wrong faith. It is based on the boundless Western hypocrisy that allows us even today to commit some of the worst crimes in the World while proudly walking under the banner of human rights.

Granted, Google’s bomb is a soft one and it does not kill people, my parallel only goes so far. But if we look at the recent history of China, we will see that the Chinese today are far better off than they were at any other time of  the last century, including when the West had power over them. And surprisingly enough, whatever freedom and progress the Chinese have today was not achieved through ultimatums or moralizing stances. On the contrary, it was achieved by the patient work of millions of Chinese who sincerely care about their country.

And those people didn’t manage it alone, together with them there are also thousands of foreigners like me who have been working here for years, helping China develop its technologies, teaching English to the Chinese, dealing with the authorities and getting our hands “dirty” with things like the Olympics or the Expo. Events that the righteous minds in the West thought they should have never been given to the Chinese, because they don’t share our true faith.

I am convinced that this is the right way to develop China and the rest of the World, helping them out on the daily hard work, and avoiding righteous heroes that take us nowhere. And in spite of all the times I have had to swallow my pride and take what came from the Chinese authorities, when I speak with most of the Chinese around me I don’t see suffering and oppression, but hope in the future. That is the best sign that we are doing it right. Let’s be patient.

Like usual, most of the commentators our there got it all wrong. This is not about Google offering an open service to the Chinese from outside. If Google wanted to do that, they would quietly close down Google.cn and continue with their HK search site as they were already doing before. There is nothing new on this Google HK except the translation of the interface to simplified mandarin, a simple tweak that has little impact on usability for mainland netizens.

If Google really wanted the Chinese to enjoy free search, they could have tried to give some face to the Chinese government, instead of literally forcing it to retaliation.

But Google HK is obviously not a sustainable plan, it is just a gesture, an open challenge to the authority of the CCP. The redirection to this site and the welcoming message in simplified is clear enough in this respect: “welcome to the New page of Google search in China”. Take that, Beijing, we don’t give a damn what you say, anti-democratic freak.

One clarification in case someone gets me wrong: I have been one of the harshest critics of  Google when it collaborated with the Chinese censors, and I support any action that could lead the Chinese government to stop censoring the internet. The problem is, I don’t see Google’s actions are conductive to this result, but quite the opposite.

It is all in the form. Even if Google is right to stop censoring (and I think it is), you cannot deal with a country like they are dealing with China. Google leaders are trying to do their significant bit, but they know nothing of diplomacy and they have messed this one up from the beginning. International politics is not business, the stakes are much higher, and form is essential. In this field, righteous accusations and challenges normally lead nowhere but to more entrenched positions, and ultimately it is always the people that foots the bill.

So now that Google has made its best efforts to get all its services blocked, it looks very likely that it will succeed. The people of China will not be able to use Gmail or the promising GBuzz anymore. The voices within the CCP that struggle for more openness are left defenseless, and the internet will be even more divided than it was before. A bad move for business, bad for the Chinese, and bad for a free World Wide Web.

In fact, other than the deals with advertisers (the revenue-generating part of the business), there is little of Google.cn that is really in China. The data collected by Google.cn is a valuable asset for the company and it is kept in the US databanks, together with all the other Google countries indexes. Among other reasons, because Google.cn is nothing more than Google.com translated and censored for the Chinese.

This made me think of a possible outcome I hadn’t thought of before: that Google.cn may uncensor its content completely and continue to function normally served from the US, hosted under a different domain (since .cn extensions are controlled by China). From a practical point of view this wouldn’t make any big difference, as it would just be a copy of Google.com in simplified Chinese. But from a political and “face” perspective, it could be extremely damaging for Google relations with China, and probably lead to GFW of all Google services.

I sincerely hope this does not happen, and I hope that Google leaders will give due face to the Chinese government. One thing is to be consequent and decide to stop censoring content, a position that I respect. But a very different thing is to slam the door and slap the face of a government that is representing a whole country, whether we like it or not. That kind of arrogance would be completely unwarranted from any corporation, especially one with strong ties to a government that is not precisely an international model of respect of human rights.

I guess we’ll know the answer to this very soon. In the meantime, someone has an explanation for this “hosted in China” thing? I am puzzled, because Google.cn does behave like a site hosted in China (ie, no Reset Connection blocks), but unlike Baidu, the IP is outside. This is the only such case I have seen of outside IP not triggering RC terms, I guess it is part of  G’s deal with the government.

PS .For explanations on the technical stuff see the related posts below.

PSS. Another new thing on Google.cn that has been around for a few weeks is the advert that shows up once in a while on top of the searches: 小提示：”G.cn，值得信任” — 通过 G.cn 上谷歌. (announcement: you can trust G.cn–visit Google through G.cn). Ironic that this message has replaced the “censored results” notification that used to be on top of the search results.

And really, the sooner we close this the better. The media are getting bored of the wait, and they are filling it with a wave of horror stories about cyberwar, all of which may be hurting Google, hurting US-China relations, and generally insulting the intelligence of netizens.

There have been reports of all kinds regarding the cyberwars, from the crazy wingnut ones to the relatively relaxed. All follow in the line of a completely muddled Google message and subsequent speech by Hillary Clinton. This article by the the “liberal” Wapo was one of the first to come out, and right from the opening paragraph it sets the mood for all the other cyberwar press that followed.

THE INTERNET has produced a vast expansion of free speech and access to information around the world. But for China and Russia, it has also become a means for waging a covert war against other nations, including the United States — a brazen effort to steal secrets and plant malware. For those countries and for a host of other authoritarian regimes, Internet freedom is a threat, to be countered by censorship, the imprisonment of bloggers and domestic spying.

As I said from the beginning, we are mixing at least 3 completely different issues, each of them caused (if at all) by different persons, and bundling it all together into the ready made Washington formula of the war for Democracy and Freedom. Let’s see the main points in the article:

“Waging a covert war”

I will pass over the obvious objection that is never too clear in Washington: war kills people, the internet does not. More crucially, there is one side missing to this war, at least until it is proven that China was attacking Americans on the internet.

But who in the People’s Liberation Army are conducting this hi-tech war, the same geniuses that were unable to put together a decent Green Dam filtering software? Or battalions of programmers from Chinese universities, all very disciplined and loyal to the army like talented hackers are known to be? There is something here that doesn’t fit.

Still, the  best question has to be how exactly is China supposed to attack America. Some think tanks have a very clear answer to this: by launching a shockwave that will collapses the USA’s core IT systems. That is, the same systems where China has 2+ trillion dollars in reserves. Right.

“Steal secrets”

The issue here is not related to the military. China is a country extremely hungry for technology and with little culture of intellectual property. The problem of Data Security in China predates the internet and it is very well known to companies working here. Those of us dealing with sensitive technologies work with strict procedures to ensure all IP is contained within the project team, and even so there are leaks.

But is the risk coming from independent hackers or from the Chinese government? Nobody usually asks this question, because it is difficult to prove, and quite simply we don’t care: as long as there is someone ready to pay big bucks for your techology, there will be motivated hackers/spies to go for it. Our job is to protect the information of our clients; the Western governments’ job is to put pressure on China to act more strictly against these kind of behaviours.

Similarly, the first duty of Google is to protect the information of their users. According to their own blog post, Google have failed to guard securely this information, or even their own company’s IP. But instead of admitting failure frankly, they chose to play the political game and write sweeping and unproven accusations to a government.

“Censorship, Imprisonment of bloggers and domestic spying”

Of all the accusations making the headlines, these are the only ones for which there is solid evidence against the Chinese government. All of us who watch the Chinese internet have seen and read about these issues before. But these points, while disgusting and worthy of condemnation, have nothing to do with an attack on America or any other country, nor are they specifically online problems.

Regarding censorship, we all know that Google has been a main partner of the Chinese government for the last 5 years and continues to do it today, so there is little to say for them until something changes in G.cn.

Regarding the imprisonment and domestic spying: the Chinese government has used the same holes that Google leaves open for US  authorities to spy and imprison people without trial in the name of American security. In other words, China is doing exactly the same as the USA already does, except that it lacks the democracy and soft power, the Googles and the Hillaries, to market it nicely to the World.

The Internet is Changing?

Perhaps it is because Obama’s abilities as a speaker have enchanted the netizenry after the Bush era. Or it may be just that the internet is not so young anymore and it is quickly becoming mature. The point is that I see a degree of conformism in the Western internet that is scary. Led by a Google corporation now expert in lobbying, we are all quite happy to ingest the old soup that the Washington establishment is cooking up for us.

And it is much the same sticky soup that we have been eating offline for ages, now taken to the web. The ingredients are: big ideals like Freedom and Democracy, the own interests of US foreign policy, and the supposed priorities of “American Security”, all well passed with the blender and served with a dose of Kool Aid to cover the taste of gunpowder.

It would be silly to accuse Clinton or the Wapo of this. They are the Washington establishment and they are doing their job admirably well: defending American interests and pushing for American foreign policy goals. But what is not so obvious is that Google should be part of that game, or that the World’s netizens will continue to follow and trust Google blindly once they understand that its allegiance is to a certain country rather than to recognized universal principles.

Google’s risky bet

This is something many Americans don’t realize, but the support that Google gets in other countries is something quite unique for an American corporation. I have found myself in discussions with French and Chinese people who defended Google passionately and jumped at my throat when I mentioned “monopoly” or “the new Microsoft”. International revenues of Google are already larger than Google US, but Google’s main business, the search engine, has weak network effects. This means that unlike services like Windows or Facebook, Google needs to continuously cultivate goodwill to keep the people clicking on its sites and trusting its cloud.

By openly siding with the US government, Google is betting that the collaboration with the NSA and American defense will make its cloud look more secure to the World’s users. While Obama is there representing America this might probably work, but it is a very risky approach, and in places like Europe or Asia it can easily backfire. Sooner or later the time will come when the US shows its less amiable face, and then will all those people still be happy to put their lives in the hands of the NSA?

Another question: isn’t Data Security a core business that Google should develop internally, instead of handing it over to government agencies?

Disclosure:

My own site has been de-indexed not indexed by Google for almost three months, and two consecutive processes of reconsideration have changed nothing. Probably This is not due to the what I write, but to a previously existing (long solved) problem of duplicate content. In any case, the banning disappearing of this site from the Google search has taken away 40% of my readers and a larger portion of new followers. While I try not to let this influence my opinion of Google, the whole thing has been an enlightening experience. You need to run a website and get it banned by disappear from G to feel the power of the beast company in your own skin. I just wish this tool never falls into the wrong hands.

UPDATE: Whatever I might say of Google at a political level, I have to state clearly that it is an amazing company. How many times have you seen that you complain about a service on your blog and the customer support people come over to comment and help you out?  I solved the problem yesterday and in fact it had nothing to do with Google  (more details in the webmaster link in comments).  I apologize for even slightly implying that Google might be banning my content, and cheers to John Mueller for his help.