The Chinese government has removed the University of Calgary from its list of accredited institutions — a move school officials fear is linked to the Dalai Lama’s visit last fall. The university hosted the Tibetan spiritual leader and awarded him an honorary degree when he visited the city last September. In December, university officials learned that China’s education ministry had removed the school from its website. Now the university is trying to determine what impact that decision will have on Chinese nationals who have obtained a degree or are working toward one from the institution.
Last Sunday, January 31, 2010, John Pomfret in the Washington Post published his analysis China’s strident tone raises concerns among Western governments, analysts, which includes a brief listing of China’s latest international effronteries causing concern throughout the international community.
In a case in point, one senior U.S. official termed as unusual China’s behavior at the December climate conference, during which China publicly reprimanded White House envoy Todd Stern, dispatched a Foreign Ministry functionary to an event for state leaders and fought strenuously against fixed targets for emission cuts in the developed world.
Another issue is Internet freedom and cyber security, highlighted by Google’s recent threat to leave China unless the country stops its Web censorship. At China’s request, that topic was left off the table at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Josef Ackermann, chief executive of Deutsche Bank and co-chairman of the event, told Bloomberg News.
Analysts say a combination of hubris and insecurity appears to be driving China’s mood. On one hand, Beijing thinks that the relative ease with which it skated over the global financial crisis underscores the superiority of its system and that China is not only rising but has arrived on the global stage — much faster than anyone could have predicted. On the other, recent uprisings in the western regions of Tibet and Xinjiang have fed Chinese leaders’ insecurity about their one-party state. As such, any perceived threat to their power is met with a backlash.
Yesterday, UK’s Telegraph ran the following story: China censors Oscar nominations. Official Chinese wrath is focused on the HBO documentary, China’s Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province, which deals uncompromisingly with the well-documented “tofu construction” of schools in earthquake ravaged Sichuan province that collapsed in a few seconds killing as many as 10,000 children and has yet to be adequately addressed by the Chinese government at any level. The obvious corruption in the schools’ construction processes has been widely reported, though it has been dismissed by official China. Several activists have been beaten and jailed for trying to reveal the truth. The film has been nominated for an Oscar in the best short documentary category. This is just the latest official action regarding Chinese films. In July 2009 the Melbourne International Film Festival was vigorously hacked for the screening of a documentary about a leader of Muslim Uighurs in the Xinjiang region of northwest China, and most recently at the Palm Springs International Film Festival two Chinese films were withdrawn from its program in protest of the scheduled screening of a documentary about Tibet and the Dalai Lama.
The loss of accreditation by the University of Calgary presents an opportunity for university students and institutions throughout the world to use their educational push and bully pulpits to confront China, much as was done in the late 80s and early 90s to confront South African apartheid. If the world’s best universities – much sought after by China’s best and brightest, and which have been built upon the notion of open information – were more proactive in bringing in speakers and screening films that deal with Chinese problems honestly and forthrightly in ways that so obviously frighten the Chinese government, they could meet this growing censorship problem head-on, at this time when China, seemingly flush with money and world power, is so aggressively extending its authoritarian reach across borders.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has gift wrapped and delivered the most unifying campus cause that has come along in decades. How worldwide institutions respond to the University of Calgary’s loss of accreditation and their new pariah status within the official fold will be curious to watch. Will schools that have large Chinese enrollments allow themselves to be bullied into step by the CCP censors, or will students throughout the world pick up the banners and push back? Imagine if Yale, Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge and MIT, to name just a few of the most desired destinations for Chinese graduate school candidates, were to be more proactive in supporting freedom of speech in regard to China’s most recent shove? But students can’t wait for the administrations of these institutions to come forward and suggest a policy of confrontation. This will be something that will have to come from the student/faculty grassroots. The long arm of Chinese censorship may soon be coming to a campus near you. Time to speak up for the Chinese people, for the 10,000 dead children in Sichuan who are still waiting to have someone help them and their muzzled families find their voices. If it is left to official China, there will be nothing but more threatening, pervasive silence. The CCP’s actions are not the the actions of a responsible superpower. This is insecurity and fear, pure and simple, the muscled overlords afraid of their people. And they want to bring that fear to you. What are you going to do about that?
There is a very good review by Emily Yeh, assistant professor of geography at the University of Colorado, Boulder, at China Dialogue entitled Restoring the grasslands? concerning the Chinese program “retire livestock and restore grassland” (tuimu huancao). Introduced in 2003 the program called for “grazing removal in order to halt and reverse severe grassland degradation.”
I have written here and here about the resettlement of nomadic pastoralists on the Qinghai Tibetans Plateau, so it is a subject that I am somewhat familiar with. Ms. Yeh’s review of the program is a much more thorough and studied approach to the problem. Highly recommended.
Studies to date of those who have been resettled through ecological migration also suggest that the benefits of resettlement for improving the livelihoods of herders are overstated. Some who have voluntarily resettled have expressed regrets about doing so, saying they did not realise the extent to which everything in their new town-based lives must be purchased with cash. For many families, government compensation has been inadequate, especially as inflation drives up costs while subsidies remain the same. In one study conducted in Golok, the annual income of those resettled in towns was reportedly lower than their earlier subsistence income, while expenditures were higher; those interviewed also stated that their health conditions had declined after resettlement, because of changes in living conditions as well as diet.
Curious article in the Shanghai Daily today (h/t @niubi on Twitter), reporting on a Beijing News article regarding repairs to the TVCC building, the burned and lesser brother/neighbor of the iconic CCTV Bldg. This has been expected since Rem Koolhaas stated in a WSJ piece The Sky’s No Longer the Limit back in May 2009 that “they are simply rebuilding it as it was, because there was no structural damage.” I also wondered about this a few days after the fire, and wrote about it here and, later, here. Three days after the fire I suggested that
There is now an odd mojo-y smoky shadow hanging over the place that will not interpret well though the Chinese filter. Can you imagine a great rush to book into a hotel with 44 floors that has been through what appears on endless videos as a barely contained eruption of Hell, even though the containment might have everything to do with the superior engineering of the construction.
While the rebuilding (”repairs”) is not a surprise, the Shanghai Daily is also reporting that it will still be a five-star hotel.
After repairs, the building will retain the original look, according to Beijing Urban Construction Group. It will accommodate a five-star hotel, a 1,500-seat theatre and other support facilities as designed. The futuristic-looking 5-billion-yuan (US$735 million) CCTV complex features a pair of enormous, leaning buildings of black glass and steel. The fire in February engulfed an adjacent 159-meter, 44-story building that was to house a luxury Mandarin Oriental Hotel, which was only weeks away from opening.
What is noteworthy in the Shanghai Daily piece is that the Mandarin Oriental Hotel (MO) is referred to in the past tense. Does this mean that the MO has managed to back out of the deal, and that there will be another hotel company stepping in? I cannot imagine that the MO would still be involved with this project, seeing as how the partner/owner, China Central Television, was responsible for its destruction. In February 2009 Mandarin Oriental employees, along with their families who had moved to Beijing, were nearing the opening day when everything went up in fire and smoke. Subsequently the families moved out of Beijing.
It will be interesting to see who ends up with their name on the side of this one. If it is still the Mandarin Oriental I would be surprised. With the images of the building so publicly and wildly exploding still vivid, and with so many videos of the conflagration posted on the internet, I don’t see people queuing up to reserve rooms. If I were to bet, I’d put my money on a state-run five-star hotel. Besides the obvious jinx factor, what international company in their right mind would want to partner up with CCTV on this one? But if it ends up still being the Mandarin Oriental, you can bet they cut a sweet deal, since CCTV would probably do anything not to have this look as bad as it is.
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Another curious bit in the Shanghai Daily article:
More than 20 people have been arrested over the accident, including staff from CCTV, the fireworks company, the building’s designer, builder, supervisor and suppliers.
They will be tried in two groups, with the first batch due to go to trial before mid February and the rest around March, according to earlier reports.
If staff from the” building’s designer” have been arrested, does this mean someone (or more) from OMA is going to be on trial shortly? Anyone know anything about this?
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Update: January 26, 2010, 8:45 PM (+8 UTC)
The article in the Shanghai Daily stated that staff from the “building’s designer” were involved in the upcoming trials. A spokesman for the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) has assured me that no personnel from OMA or ECADI are involved in the upcoming trials related to the TVCC fire last February.
This post began as a response to a comment in an earlier blog post, where my friend Paul recommended that I read the following link: Google vs China: capitalist model, virtual wall, which I have done, and which initiated this entry.
What I see at this point as possibly the most important aspect in this digital horn-locking battle is the fog surrounding “the ostensible reason for Google’s change of posture.” It is not clear what really happened and why things have unfolded as they have. Here in China it is being spun as a timing issue: Google going public to whip up world sentiment and support in the lead-up to SecState’s Clinton’s ‘”internet freedom” speech, and now she is being portrayed, in effect, as Google’s Foreign Minister. There were interactions between Google and State before Google went public, which is being seen as collusive. What those discussions were in regard to is unclear and open for a variety of interpretations.
Was the hack a national security concern or was it a private company vs a foreign government issue? If it was the former, then it’s a whole different ball game than the latter. As I’ve pointed out before, at the New America FoundationAuthority, Meet Technology: Will China’s Great Firewall Hold?, the day before SecState Clinton’s “internet freedom” speech, State Dept. Senior Advisor for Innovation and one of the architect’s the speech, Alec Ross, claimed that they were dealing with the Google/China dispute as a private company vs foreign government problem, which seems to say that it was not a national security issue. He also said that the State Department was not Google’s foreign policy wing, or something to that effect. Not only do I find that line unconvincing, but I am also not willing to go the “my country right or wrong” route on this one (or any issue, really, since I believe that the level of controls China holds on its internet China is one that that the Bush/Cheney administration would have been quite happy with), which is to say that I think Ross’ veracity is suspect, hardly the first time I’ve questioned the statements of a public official. There is a lot of slippery slope stuff going on here, and everyone’s trying their best to not let anything spill for fear that the whole mountainside may slide off into the sea.
But who are the parties at the table? Well, Google and China, obviously, but what about the State Department? I think it’s fair to assume that they are chin-deep in the thick of it all. The US Embassy has had at least two sessions with bloggers at the Embassy: one the day before Clinton’s speech, for foreign bloggers (and no, they didn’t invite me), and another the day after the speech with Chinese bloggers. They are quite obviously trying their best to get the right spin on this pitch – especially in the wake of the speech – to get this one over the plate. Knuckleball? Too soon to tell.
There is much at stake here that goes far beyond the immediate flare-up, which obviously makes this more than a private company vs foreign country clash. If there were not, as Ross implied, a national security component to the murky hack, then why do they appear to be so deep in the middle of this? Well, for a variety of reasons, one of them clearly being national security, which makes them major stakeholders in the outcome. This is fundamentally a clash between dueling ‘capitalisms’, with the U.S. becoming more open and aggressive aligning with and protecting corporate interests (privacy information and intellectual property), since national security is, has been, or may possibly be compromised by aggressive states, i.e, China, engaging in cyber attacks on private companies that do business with the federal government. Google is one of those companies. Let’s also not forget that a lot of state-run companies in China are owned by the military, since the military is part of the “get rich is glorious” free market system scheme. Many of the Chinese businessmen who sit at the dealing tables around the world have strings that reach back to people who also happen to command armies. This is about a lot more than blocked internet sites. Amazingly China is still spinning it as a pornography issue on local radios, which speaks to the utter bottomlessness of their domestic deceit.
Until we know more, it is not possible to make an informed decision, which is quite ironic, since the argument is about information freedom, though neither side is forthcoming with any. The Chinese authorities have a history of being uninformative, so at least they are remaining consistent. Google, on the other hand, has staked out a moral high ground based on the open access ideal (which is not as open as they are currently permitted to be in China), but they have done nothing but tease in this issue while remaining silent and “in discussions” with Chinese authorities. And where is the State Dept. in all of this, if it is, as Ross insinuated, not their business? What really happened in the last two months, and what is currently happening? Good questions. It would be nice to be informed. It seems to me that each day of silence works against Google, especially if they come out of it staying in the Chinese market in any form or neo-evolution.
There is so very much that is still unclear, and I have the feeling that it will remain so, at least for as long as the parties are talking. And possibly a lot longer if they reach some sort of deal. But the onus will be on Google to cough up the facts, since they are the ones claiming the high ground mandate. I cannot imagine that there will be any settlement that China will sign off on that doesn’t include some sort of non-disclosure clause. Will Google be able to live with that in the wider international community? My guess is that they will not. That would be seen as “being evil” and they have a lot invested in the “Don’t be evil” mantra. So, if there is a favorable settlement, you can bet that Google will be on the hot seat, as well they should be. There is more than a fair chance that Google may come out of this smelling like the proverbial south end of a northbound mule. In my opinion each day that goes by without any news coming from behind the closed doors, is another day that Google takes a negative hit.
When Google came to China they hopped in bed with a partner who knows quite well how to work all the positions between the sheets. There are varying opinions on their 2006 move into China. Some see it as a move from “don’t be evil” to “don’t be too evil if it makes a lot of money.” Though I won’t go that far, I do believe that they knew what they were getting into. And if they didn’t, they should have. The Google person to watch in the coming weeks is Sergey Brin, who was opposed to the move into China. If there is any compromising crack in Google’s shiny armor in their negotiations with the Chinese government I suspect that there would be some sort of action or movement from Brin. And you can bet that China knows this. If anything, their “5,000 years” has honed their skills at “divide and conquer,” which I would imagine is what they are trying to do here. A few days ago a re-tweet of an original GE_Anderson tweet showed up on my Twitter page: “China loves the concept of win-win: it means they get to win twice.” Indeed it does.
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Update: January 25, 920 AM (+8 UTC)
I recommend that you have a look at this from CNN (h/t @evgenymorozov on Twitter): U.S. enables Chinese hacking of Google. “In order to comply with government search warrants on user data, Google created a backdoor access system into Gmail accounts. This feature is what the Chinese hackers exploited to gain access.” It’s beginning to sound like a little more than just a private company vs. foreign government fluff-up. Maybe it’s even a national security issue. A secret entrance created by Google to assist info mining of Google users by US security agencies. I’m … abashed! And which also allowed Chinese hackers – or any hackers for that matter – to gain access to sensitive data, the very sort of data that Google says was hacked? If this is actually the case, Google’s going to have to change their unofficial motto to “Let’s try not to be too stupid.”
In the aftermath of Google’s announcement, some members of Congress are reviving a bill banning U.S. tech companies from working with governments that digitally spy on their citizens. Presumably, those legislators don’t understand that their own government is on the list.
This might explain the continuing silence coming from who knows how many camps. Could it be as simple as Google leaving a side door open thinking that it would remain a secret?
This is looking more like the whining child in the backseat on long, long trip scenario:
“Are we there yet, Papa?”
“No, kid, but we’re getting closer.”
“How much loooonger?”
“Pretty soon, kid. Pretty soon.”
I have slept “on the speech” and I must be frank, nothing more came to me that I didn’t go to bed with. Perhaps, you might think, reading Samuel Beckett’s Molloy as I nodded off didn’t help, but I’d argue that anything Beckett is required for preparing for the discussion of any topic that is described by an abstract noun modified by the buzzworded adjective “21stCentury,” and this definitely includes “statecraft.” (For further abuses of this particular adjective, read almost anything that has been written in the last fifteen years that outlines any institutional vision in the education field, from mission statements to PR flyers.)
As the assessments are rolling in, it is curious that almost all of them, even those praising the speech, can’t really lay a finger on what it really means. Perhaps that’s the nature of “major foreign policy” speeches announcing what I naively assume would be clear policy shifts, and, if not shifts then clarifications of policy fuzziness. I stepped away from the audio feed last night shaking my head – a head, I might add, that is still shaking.
There has been much written on China, the internet and Google’s “we’re not going to take it anymore” wavy line in the sand. I wonder how long it will be before it gets a bit more straightened out? I have been paying particular attention to three people who have long-established credibility and knowledge of the issues involved in China and/or global political issues concerning the internet: Rebecca MacKinnon, James Fallows and Evgeny Morozov. Though Morozov is not as intimately familiar with China as MacKinnon and Fallows, he has been heavily involved with issues affecting the “Internet’s impact on global politics.”) Each of them were involved in the New American Foundation’s discussion Authority, Meet Technology: Will China’s Great Firewall Hold? the day before SecState Clinton delivered her speech, which I wrote about here. As expected, each of them has already weighed in on Clinton’s speech, though I expect that they will address it again:
Fallows: A momentous 40 hours, leading to Clinton/China/Internet; (updated) More on Hillary’s speech
MacKinnon: Clinton speaks on Internet freedom
Morozov: Is Hillary Clinton launching a cyber Cold War?
I am not going to get into a critique of their initial takes on the speech, but I do encourage you to read them. I wrote yesterday here: “I am not hopeful of anything but ‘more of the same,’ but I also hope I am very wrong. If I am, I am quite willing to say so here tomorrow.” Well, I am not willing to say that yesterday’s prognostication was wrong. Again, it is too soon to make any judgment, since both specific solutions and realistically projected outcomes were lacking in the speech. I said last night at the conclusion of the speech that it felt like a lot of big and very fluffy pillows being thrown around, and my view has not changed over the last 12 hours. I feel solidly in Morozov’s corner, and if you read his post you’ll understand why I do not see this speech as much more than what we’ve seen before: a political show of hope that is, at this point, toothless. From Morozov: “Overall, I was disappointed with the speech — it lacked depth. I didn’t sense any coherent intellectual vision underpinning the State Department’s digital strategy.”
Regarding China: Fallows mentions that “Tunisia, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Egypt — this is not the grouping of countries that the Chinese government, in its recent sense of rise to superpower status, is used to being lumped with.” Good point, but not, at this point, news. That it is coming from the U.S. SecState in a high profile, public speech is, or better yet, was, since this statement could not have caught Zhongnanhai by surprise, especially after the week they’ve just had. If Google had not pulled the rug from under their feet last week, I think they would be spinning at the moment, but it’s fair to say that they were steeled for this.
One last point: NGO, for better or worse, connotes “good work, low pay, planet/people love, etc.” It’s a term that conjures up “the good fight.” For anyone whose eyes still water when they hear the term, I would like you to know that the Chinese government is on to this, and they have done their very best to not only de-fang foreign NGOs within their borders – especially in the contentious Tibetan areas – but they’ve also learned that the term equates to money. Over the last several years there has been a dramatic rise in domestic, homespun NGOs within China, most of which have been corralled into obeisance by “unofficial’ oversight. When there is money involved, you can rest assured that the government controls the gate to anyone who wants to swim in that pool. (For a look at how a clean drinking water project in Qinghai province was capitalized upon by the local government, have a look here.) Each time SecState Clinton mentioned NGOs last night I rolled my eyes. I kept imagining Chinese locals in the countryside with mobile devices digitally assessing the CCP in collective village meetings where everyone’s grading codes would be checked as they pushed the ‘enter’ button. And all under the watchful eye of Chinese NGOs.
It’s midnight here in China, and I’ve just finished listening to Secretary of State Clinton’s “major foreign policy speech,” though I must say that I am really unsure what just happened. I am tired and about to go to bed, but my assessment is that it felt like a lot of big and very fluffy pillows being thrown around. Someone on Twitter described it as “anodyne,” and I have to agree. Obviously if this was the delivery of a major foreign policy pitch, the details are somewhere down the road. Yes, there were shots at China, Tunisia and Uzbekistan, to name a few, but there were very few specific points to grab and hold onto.”We’ll be talking with them,” is what I took away, which is nothing that I hadn’t already expected. There was talk of funding mobile devices that would be able to rate governmental performance within a host country, but I’m not seeing a lot of air under those wings.
I think I’ll go to bed and see if something comes to me in sleep, since not much is coming to me at the moment, other than Hillary looked fashionable in red (for the Chinese audience) and she spoke very well, though there is nothing new there, either.
I was fortunate enough to watch live last evening the informative roundtable discussion hosted by the New America FoundationAuthority, Meet Technology: Will China’s Great Firewall Hold? as I mentioned yesterday here. For those interested in internet freedom on the eve of Secretary of State Clinton’s speech on the subject, I’ve embedded the YouTube link of the entire discussion below. One of the panelists was Clinton’s Senior Advisor for Innovation, Alec Ross, – introduced as being “one of the architects of that speech” – who, unfortunately, had to leave early to get back to his duties, and so did not participate in any discussions with the three other panel members. He did answer two questions posed to him by the moderator, James Fallows, which only proved to me that he really needed to have stayed seated through the rest of the discussion. Thankfully, the other three members of the panel were in it for the long haul, and they provided keen insights into not only the Google v. China debacle, but also into internet freedom in general. (Timothy Wu presented filtering/blocking as a “trade barrier,” which, at least for me, casts internet censorship in an entirely – and international - light.) Those three, along with Fallows, an informed and gracious host, were
Evgeny Morozov, Contributing Editor, Foreign Policy Magazine
Yahoo! Fellow, Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Georgetown University
Rebecca MacKinnon, Fellow, Open Society Institute
Co-Founder, Global Voices Online
Tim Wu, Schwartz Fellow, New America Foundation
Professor of Law, Columbia Law School
Contributing Writer, Slate
There was too much presented for me to comment on here, so I have focused on one issue: the government’s assessment of the Google/China blow-up as an aspect (but only one aspect) of the upcoming Clinton speech as presented by Mr. Ross, and Evgeny Morozov’s take on the same issue as a national security question. I have transcribed two exchanges between each of them and Fallows. It would have been fortuitous if Mr. Ross had stayed to address the wider national security implications of the Chinese cyberattack, but perhaps that would have been too much of a hot seat for him to sit comfortably in on the eve of his boss’ speech.
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Fallows (10:28): Can you describe the thinking that goes into … in the moment of … when there is a very highly publicized standoff between an American-based company and a foreign government, what is the thinking about the role the U.S. government should or should not play in addressing that dispute?
Ross: That’s a very good question. I think it is important to emphasize the private nature of some of this. This is principally … ummm, you know … this is primarily an issue between Google and 30+ other private entities and the Chinese government, but we have responded with what I think is justifiable concern. We’ve asked for an explanation; we have had conversations over the years where we have made clear our opinions both about the freedom of expression, as well as cybersecurity. So we are taking this very seriously. But all of that said, the State Department is not the foreign policy arm of Google. Ummm… so, while we will look to the Chinese for an explanation, ummm … you know, we do need to … ummm … engage in this appropriately recognizing the primacy of the roll of the private sector actors within this.
Fallows: Right. The other question is, and thank you for that, you mentioned there are centuries’ old values in the United States, freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, those are two particular freedoms that another major government in the world explicitly denies. The Chinese government policy does not believe particularly in the freedom of assembly or the freedom of speech. In what way does the Secretary address that conflict between our values and the values of other major nations? How do you deal with this?
Ross: So, I am not going … I will answer that by principally by saying, tune in tomorrow at 9:30.
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In speaking of the wider topic of international internet freedom, Mr Ross states (13:29), “Tomorrow’s speech is not a speech about China.”
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Fallows (32:12): Tell us what is significant in the whole hacking aspect of this, as you’ve written about a number of times.
Evgeny Morozov (32:20): Well actually, I didn’t find the hacking aspects as fascinating as this has been presented in the media. I mean the truth is that most companies operating in China do experience cyberattacks of some kind, they do experience theft of intellectual property, and I think the most interesting thing about Google in China is that the cyberattacks are likely to continue even if Google decides to shut down the office and leave it altogether, simply because it does contain a lot of valuable information about Chinese human rights activity. People will still continue having their email inboxes hosted by Google, because you know, if Google can be hacked, it means any other service can be hacked probably even more easily. So, my difficulty was in understanding how exactly the cyberattacks, which Google decided to publicize, how they actually related to its decision to stop censoring the results and adopt a different stance, because it didn’t seem like it’s going to protect them any more.
Fallows: No, they weren’t logically related.
Morozov: They weren’t. Sure
Fallows: It was just a sign of exasperation. They’d had too much.
Morozov: Sure, but on the other hand now I see that the cyberattacks actually are making it possible to present it almost as a national security issue, because I doubt that any … well, most media in the United States would make such a fuss out of Google’s decision were it not framed as an attack by Chinese hackers on U.S. companies, stealing data and no one is secure. And if it became a completely different issue, which, of course played into Google’s hands, but I don’t think we should make something extraordinary out of that. Cyberattacks happen which is veryunfortunate, and they will continue happening whether Google is in China or is not in China. As long as it does host this data it’s still a target.
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There are a host of issues surrounding cyberattacks, not the least of which is a territoriality: how does the government view an electronic intrusion, committed by a foreign governement, of a private company’s computer system hosted within its borders? Is it a national security issue, and what is a private company’s legal responsibility to report it? Is it a national security issue or is it legally handled in the same way it would be if the attack were from foreign private hackers? Mr. Ross seems to be saying that it is a private company’s problem.
Perhaps I am being a bit jaundiced here, but my sense is that the Obama administration, via Sec. of State Clinton, will be taking a soft approach to the recent Chinese hacking job. I believe this is unfortunate. After one year in office this administration seems unable to forcefully take the hard positions it needs to be able to take in order to be seen in a positive leadership light. (Full disclosure: I have been a supporter of the Obama team, but I am losing both faith and hope as they appear to be playing more for the 2010 midterms and 2012 general election than for the wider public good. See James Fallows cover piece in the Atlantic How America Can Rise Again for an assessment of the wider broken polity mess that the U.S. seems hopelessly mired in.) If Clinton delivers more governmental boilerplate I think that we’ll be able to see which way this wind is really blowing. And so, I might add, will China. It would be a major mistake to allow China off the hook on this one, since this will empower them more. I understand the argument that the way to most effectively deal with China is via the quiet backdoor, but this is an issue that needs to be out in the public eye. That said, I am not hopeful of anything but ‘more of the same,’ but I also hope I am very wrong. If I am, I am quite willing to say so here tomorrow.
Mark this one on your calendar: Authority, Meet Technology, “…a Slate/New America Foundation event about China, Google, and Internet freedom.”
How will the China-Google skirmish shake out? What lessons or cautionary tales does China’s experience offer repressive governments and their tech-savvy opponents in places like Iran and Cuba? What, if anything, should the Obama administration do to keep the Web free, worldwide? On Thursday, Jan. 21, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is expected to outline the administration’s plans in a major address on Internet freedom.
On the eve of Clinton’s speech, Open Society Institute fellow Rebecca MacKinnon, Foreign Policy contributing editor Evgeny Morozov, Columbia Law School professor and Slate contributor Tim Wu, and Clinton’s senior adviser for innovation, Alec Ross, will discuss the issues. Atlantic Monthly correspondent and New America board member James Fallows will moderate.
In China this will be streamed at 10:30 PM tonight (Wednesday) here. Should be a lively discussion. I am hoping that the connection speed here in Tianjin will be enough to tune in live, though I am not hopeful.
I also hope that someone will address the possibility of a confrontational U.S. pavilion at the upcoming Shanghai World Expo.
What better message could the USA send to the world than to have the three standard bearers of 21st century American innovation, creativity and opportunity–Google, Facebook and Twitter–as prime sponsors of America’s presence in Shanghai?
In this age of the much-ballyhooed decline of ‘America’ – a claim, by the way, that I am not ready to concede, despite the obvious uplift and glee this brings to so many throughout the world – what better way to establish the benchmark for an American Brand than to highlight how these three companies are making us rethink how we live in this world, and who now top the growing list of international sites that are being officially blocked by the Chinese government.
As Made in China continues to take it on the chin, the most recent dangerous product warning prompted this “Important Notice” from the U.S. Citizen Service office at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing three days ago (January 15, 2010): Warden Message Regarding Cadmium in Children’s Jewelry.
Since 2004, the CPSC [Consumer Product Safety Commission] has conducted recalls of more than 180 million pieces of metal jewelry because they contained a hazardous amount of lead. Recent reports indicate that producers of children’s jewelry in China are using potentially dangerous levels of the heavy metal cadmium, a known carcinogen, as a substitute. In response to these reports, Chairman Tenenbaum states that the CPSC has opened a formal investigation into the dangers of children’s metal jewelry manufactured in China.
The CPSC warns that swallowing, sucking on or chewing a metal charm or necklace could result in exposure to lead, cadmium or other heavy metals, which are known to be toxic at certain levels of exposure. CPSC further warns caregivers to protect young children from possibly being exposed to lead, cadmium or any other hazardous heavy metal by removing any items that may contain the offending metals.
Despite the long and seemingly unending line of product safety disasters (dog food, milk, drywall and now toxic children’s jewelry, to name just a few – which FYI have also been problems for Chinese consumers) there is a steady drumbeat of support accompanied by frenetic cheerleading by seemingly intelligent people – who I would think should know better – who have already conceded the next 90 years (or, at the very least, the next 40) of the century to the Chinese economic juggernaut. For the moment I will avoid laying out why I see it much differently, as many people who have been here for a long time do. But I cannot help but suggest you do a Google search on “china ant tribe” – the growing number of marginalized college degree holders who have been ghettoized at the fringe of many large Chinese cities as they desperately search for futures by working jobs that are mostly low-paying, if they can find jobs at all. From China’s ‘Ant Tribe’: Between Dreams and Reality:
“They are like ants: clever, weak and living in groups,” says Lian Si, a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for Chinese and Global Affairs of Peking University, who has studied the phenomenon. For two years, Lian led a team of more than 100 graduate students to follow the groups in university towns like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Wuhan and Xi’an.
In his book ‘Ant Tribe’, published in September 2009, Lian estimates the total population of the ‘ant community’ in major cities at one million across China, with about 100,000 found in Beijing alone.
Most of the ‘ant tribe’ are from poor rural families and take temporary and low-paying jobs as insurance agents, electronic product sales representatives and waiters. Some are either unemployed or underemployed.
Lian, also an associate professor at the Beijing-based University of International Business and Economics, predicts that an increasingly challenging job market will see the ant tribe growing further in number.
It is fair to say that these folks are not on the “team,” though this is only one of the groups of the growing disenfranchised who are being left behind by China’s much-touted command economy.
As much is being made of China as the next sun to blaze across the 21st C. sky, the fact is that China as a brand is taking a public relations beating, and even more now as they have come to believe the wagging pundits singing of future glories (while often, I might add, making good money in the process of doing it).
I’d propose that beyond merely sponsoring the USA Pavilion, that there should also be displays of their products, complete with live, interactive exhibits showing how they are changing the face of the world, rather than parceling it up into digital cantons. What better way for America, and a host of other democratically governed countries, to inform through example the openness of information. How would China respond to this sort of “taking it to the World Expo” with information that is blocked in China? Would China prevent their citizens from entering any country’s pavilion that was displaying and promoting content that the government officially blocks? Will it be a World Expo or an expo of a world with Chinese characteristics, a “One World, Two Systems” sham? Do Barack, Hillary and State have the stomach and knees for an information confrontation in Shanghai? It would be nice to believe that they do. It just might be the restorative act that the U.S. so desperately needs: a public stand against the new world’s information brute. It would be consistent with Obama’s “non-censorship” stand that he took in Shanghai. And, yes, I am already beating myself up for trying, after all these years, to remain somewhat optimistic. Apologies.
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