Futures of Learning

I began this blog series by noting the widespread transformations that have been taking place in China over the last 30 years. Though news reports about China most often highlight the country’s stunning economic growth, the government’s policy of reform and opening has not only been about adopting certain market mechanisms and streamlining production. China’s original quest to “link tracks with the rest of the world” (yu shijie jiegui) encompassed a desire to join the market economy as well as broader goals of cultural exchange and technological development. These latter objectives underpin the first email message sent in China in September 1987 by a university professor: “Beyond the Great Wall, Joining the World (yueguo changcheng, zouxiang shijie)” (cited in Qiu, 2004, p. 99). Clearly, the expansion of telecommunications in China, especially the Internet and mobile phones, has given Chinese citizens, particularly Chinese youth, access to new ideas, lifestyles, and forms of leisure that are both local and global, and an opportunity, even if not utilized, to connect with others – Chinese and non-Chinese – around the world.

In examining new media practices in China, we must pay attention to how these emerge within distinct social, political, and economic constraints and contradictions that vary for different populations of users. For example, for China’s young adult migrant population, who, compared to their urban counterparts, face disparate access to social and economic resources and a highly circumscribed social world, the significance of the connectivity provided through the mobile phone should not be underestimated, nor should the way it is used by migrant women to challenge traditional arrangements of power and authority in establishing intimate relationships. For China’s gamers, the online realm offers a world of fun, fantasy, and escape, or, if one is a gold farmer, a life of extreme competition for minimal reward and quite a bit of drudgery. China’s political bloggers, on the other hand, struggle not for gold coins or other virtual loot, but are instead engaged in a delicate game of cat and mouse as they push the conventional limits on freedom of expression and undermine the government’s discursive authority. In this way, they are involved in a Gramscian “war of position,” a protracted struggle, with both wins and losses, advancements and setbacks, for a more politically open China.

In addition to being the year that commemorates three decades of reform, 2009 will mark the anniversaries of other significant events in China’s recent history: the 1919 May Fourth student movement, the 1959 Tibetan uprising, the 1989 Tiananmen demonstrations, and the 1999 NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. As the nation’s economy faces serious challenges – the lowest economic growth rate in 10 years, 20 million migrant workers laid-off, and millions of college graduates who cannot find work – each of these anniversaries carries with it the potential for sparking social unrest, particularly among disenfranchised youth. (http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China_Business/KB05Cb01.html). If such demonstrations do occur, certainly the Internet and mobile phones will be involved. Seen in this light, and along with Charter 08, the current Internet crackdown mentioned in part four might be just the beginning. On the other hand, most of China’s digital youth will continue to use new media technologies the way other youth around the world do – to listen to music, chat with friends, express intimate feelings, play games, poke fun, and browse news, among other things. And in engaging in these forms of personal expression, they will feel, in one young migrant woman’s words, that their lives are “much richer.” To discover this richness, future research should provide further insights into youth uses of new media in various contexts: among urban youth; among rural youth experiencing mobile telephony for the first time; among returned migrants, particularly women who have gained certain skills and a degree of autonomy through their migration experience; and within various learning environments. By examining the new media practices of different groups of users and reflecting on how these emerge within particular circumstances and discourses, we will gain a deeper understanding of the larger societal transformations taking place in China and about the role of new media in these.

References
Qiu, J. L. (2004). The Internet in China: Technologies of freedom in a statist society. In M. Castells (Ed.), The network society: A cross-cultural perspective (pp. 99-124). Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar.

Due to the nature of China’s Internet development and because only recently have technologies like webcams, inexpensive video recorders, and software editing become widely available, new media production in China is a relatively new trend. For this reason, much of the information on user practices comes from the popular media, in particular Chinese blogs, video-sharing sites, and Internet forums where such media projects are circulated. When these either generate controversy or become a widespread phenomenon, as is sometimes the case, it is also possible to find news and commentaries in official media outlets, both Chinese and foreign.

The most common form of new media production in China is e’gao, a combination of the words “evil” and “to make fun of” that now signifies a multimedia expression that pokes fun at an original work (Jiao, 2007). The term has its roots in Japanese kuso, a subculture associated with both gaming and satire. In China, e’gao is closely linked to tech-savvy, digital youth and has become hugely popular: a search with the word in Chinese Google brings up over 12,000,000 hits. Over the past few years e’gao has become an umbrella term used to cover an array of practices including photo-shopping images, creating lip synching videos or parodies of famous films, and imitating celebrities in a humorous way. While some view e’gao as having no agenda or logic, others see in these types of productions small forms of protest against the cultural and political establishment, as a few examples below will illustrate.

Photo-shopping images and circulating them on the Internet is most closely associated with “Little Fatty” (Xiao Pang), a Shanghai teenager (real name Qian Zhijun) whose photo was snapped by someone during a training at a gas station and then uploaded to the Internet in 2003. His round face with his slightly hesitant sideways glance somehow captured the imagination of a slew of photo-shoppers, and his image was soon replacing the visage of everyone from the Mona Lisa to Jackie Chan to Johnny Depp, as in the image above (in English, see http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/the-new-cultural-revolution-how-little-fatty-made-it-big-424469.html; in Chinese with images, see (http://www.gs.xinhuanet.com/jiaodianwt/2004-05/20/content_2160773.htm). Explanations for why Little Fatty’s face generated such a craze abound, but perhaps most interesting is how the phenomenon demonstrates a newfound means of creative expression and satire in China. It also reveals new channels for stardom and success: apparently as a result of his Internet fame Little Fatty garnered a movie deal with New Line Cinema, to star – most appropriately – in a film based on a popular online novel (http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2007-07/03/content_908628.htm). 

Perhaps the most famous e’gao video production is Hu Ge’s “The Bloody Case Caused by a Steamed Bun,” (Yige Mantou Yinfa de Xue’an). The 20-minute film, widely available on YouTube and Chinese video-sharing sites such as Tudou, is a parody of Chen Kaige’s 2005 The Promise, one of the most expensive films ever made in China at 350 million yuan (US $4.2 million), and one that was largely panned by critics and the public alike. In contrast, Hu’s video cost virtually nothing and soon became a viral sensation. As noted by the Shanghai Daily (an official English publication) in an article titled, “Director Gets his Nose Properly Rubbed in it,” Hu’s film was not “just a victory of grassroots wisdom over a film guru’s mediocrity. It’s the hallmark of a new era in China, when small potatoes are free to satire public figures in a way that’s short of actual malice…. it has won the hearts of tens of millions of netizens, who share its author’s joy in undoing that pompous film” (http://www.shanghaidaily.com/art_print/242736.htm). The short film gained even more notoriety when Chen Kaige decided to sue Hu Ge for copyright violation. When online forums exploded with commentary and support for Hu, the case was eventually dropped.

In the wake of Hu’s success, several other grassroots artists have gone viral, most notably the Backdorm Boys (Houshe Nansheng), two art students from Guangzhou whose lip-synching and face-making catapulted them first into fame as viral stars and now as celebrities with a multi-year contract. As Meng (forthcoming) states, e’gao is a significant form of cultural expression in China because as a decentralized form of communication, it challenges both “the established mechanisms of media production and distribution as well as the officially sanctioned norms of media content in China.” She further notes that its carnivalesque and iconoclastic attitude towards “mainstream” and “officialdom” are a means for ordinary Chinese to express criticism and dissatisfaction in a media environment that is heavily censored. Well aware of this side of the e’gao phenomenon, the Chinese government has taken steps to control its dissemination. For example, in 2007 the government declared that all music that was changed from its original form first had to be submitted for approval before being uploaded. In 2008, new regulations limited the broadcasting of videos to websites of state-controlled companies. How rigorously enforced these laws are is not entirely clear.

While most e’gao videos are only indirectly political, images containing visual mashups with political meanings have also become a trend. One example, shown below, is the “river crab wearing three watches,” which appeared in 2007 in the Chinese blogosphere. Because the current Chinese government has enacted a variety of policies and made numerous public announcements regarding the need to build a “harmonious society” (hexie shehui), when blog or Internet forum posts containing “sensitive” material are deleted by censors or when a website is blocked, it is common for the one censored to say he or she has been “harmonized.” As MacKinnon (2007) notes, the river crab meme emerged as a play on the Chinese words for “harmony” and “river crab,” both homophones that use different Chinese characters. Because the word for harmony or harmonious is so frequently used sarcastically online, it is often censored, and thus those who are discussing censorship use the characters for river crab. Because a well-known political blogger, Wang Xiaofeng, writes under the name Dai sange biao, or “wear three watches,” itself a play on the government policy of the “three represents,” eventually someone photo-shopped a crab wearing three watches:

Regardless of whether it has a political content and despite its popularity, e’gao, like many practices in the realm of Chinese cyberspace, has not necessarily been wholeheartedly embraced by the general public. Its irreverent humor and “nothing’s sacred” attitude have generated concerns that it degrades the common culture. As with online gaming, youth have been viewed as especially vulnerable to its corrupting influence. In addition, issues regarding copyright and intellectual property have also raised, as with the Hu Ge case. Nonetheless, the e’gao phenomenon shows no signs of abating and it and the range of production practices associated with it are likely to continue as a vehicle for creative expression and counter-hegemonic voices.

References

Jiao, W. (2007, January 22). E’gao: Popular art criticism or just plain evil?” China Daily.

MacKinnon, R. (2007, September 12). “Eating ‘river crab’ at the harmonious forum. Retrieved November 22, 2008, from http://rconversation.blogs.com/rconversation/2007/09/eating-river-cr.html.

Meng, B. (forthcoming). Regulating egao: Futile efforts of recentralization. In X. Zhang and Y. Zheng (eds.), China’s information and communications technology revolution: Social changes and state responses. New York: Routledge.

As mentioned in my introductory blog post on new media practices in China, the diffusion of the Internet in China has been extremely rapid, with the nation now having the largest number of Internet users on the planet, many of them with broadband access. According to CNNIC, as of June 2008 the top ten Internet activities in China were: listening to or downloading music, reading news, instant messaging, watching videos, using a search engine, emailing, gaming, using a blog or personal space, participating in a BBS or forum, and shopping (http://www.cinnic.com). Though Chinese use the Internet to read news, according to Guo (2007), much of this news is “infotainment” (e.g., about celebrities) and thus, as mentioned earlier, Chinese cyberspace is mainly perceived as an entertainment medium. Because of the rapid growth of the Internet in China and the particular socio-cultural-political context in which it has emerged, much has been written on the topic in both Chinese and English. A focus that seems to be more prevalent in the Chinese literature is gender differences in Internet usage (Bu, 2002; Yang, Wang, Chen & Wang, 2004; Zhou, 2005). In what follows I will not attempt an exhaustive overview of the Chinese Internet but instead will highlight practices that are especially interesting within the Chinese context. These include the use of blogs, BBS (online forums), and, increasingly, social networking sites. All of these virtual spaces provide an arena where ordinary citizens are able not only to enjoy themselves, but also to express opinions (particularly those that might not be sanctioned in real life), vent frustrations, engage in fantasy, and mobilize for collective action (within limits).

The first blog went online in China in 2002, and since then the number of bloggers has increased dramatically every year.  In 2006, there were 33 million blog spaces in China and in 2007 this number had risen to 40 million. By June 2008 the figure had increased to 107 million, with more than 42 percent of those online in China stating that they had their own blog (http://www.cinnic.com). According to CNNIC’s latest report, by the end of 2008 China had 162 million bloggers (http://www.cnnic.cn/uploadfiles/pdf/2009/1/13/92458.pdf). Popular blog hosting sites in China include Sina.com, Sohu.com, Bokee, Blogbus, and MSN Spaces. Of course, not all of China’s millions of blogs are active, nor are they political. Like their western counterparts, most are personal narratives written by young people, usually college students, about their daily lives (MacKinnon, 2008a). Still, one analysis of global blog-posting over a 24-hour period found the activity of Chinese netizens on MSN Spaces to be three times that of any other country (Hurst, cited in MacKinnon, 2008b). 

Though the Chinese blogosphere has become an important source of information outside official (state) media channels for many of China’s netizens, the most popular blogs in China are those written by celebrities, including movie stars, authors, athletes, and successful entrepreneurs (Nie & Li, 2006). During one point in 2006, the blog of Chinese actress Xu Jinglei even displaced Boing Boing as the number one visited blog in the world, according to Technorati. As elsewhere, celebrities in China capture the public’s attention because of their larger than life personas and the fantasies projected by their lifestyles. What first catapulted blogging into popular consciousness in China, however, was the sex diary of Mu Zimei (real name Li Li), a young woman in Guangzhou (in southern China) who stirred up controversy in 2003 when she began blogging about her active sex life (often quite explicitly), her multiple sex partners (some of whom she publicly named), and her rejection of conventional notions of romantic love. For example, she told one western reporter, “I do not oppose love, but I oppose loyalty. If love has to be based on loyalty, I will not choose love” (Yardley, 2003). As James Farrer (2007) notes, the “Mu Zimei phenomenon” brought the issue of sexual politics into the Internet age in China. After a notorious post about a one-night stand with a Chinese rock star, Mu Zimei’s blog became the number one blog in China for a time, gained substantial attention from numerous media outlets, and invoked admiration as well as scorn from journalists and netizens alike who wrote articles and posted comments in online forums. Although her blog was eventually shut down, she was fired from her job, and her book was banned, she continues to make headlines through, for example, uploading podcasts of her sexual encounters. She has also gained the admiration of many young Chinese women and has inspired numerous imitators, the most famous being Furong Jiejie (Sister Hibiscus) and Liumang Yan (Hooligan Yan). Archived versions of her blog are available online (http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.wenxue.com/T3/?q=blog/353), and she even has her own entry in Wikipedia’s English version (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muzi_Mei).

Of course, China does have its share of bloggers who focus on social or political issues rather than pleasure and entertainment. The degree of freedom they have to address sensitive political topics (anything from corruption to individual rights) seems to ebb and flow with the political winds of Beijing. While many noticed a somewhat relaxed atmosphere in the period leading up to and during the Olympics, the current crackdown on websites deemed vulgar or pornographic seems motivated as much by a desire to limit social and political commentary as it does to clean up “harmful” sexual content. This seems particularly true in the wake of Charter 08 – a document posted on the Internet in December of last year calling for greater democratic and legal reforms, and thus far carrying over 8,000 signatures (for a link to a translation and articles about Charter 08 see http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2008/12/china-detains-prominent-dissident-ahead-of-human-rights-day/). This situation has led to a long-term debate about the potential of the Chinese Internet (the blogosphere as well as online forums, discussed below) to serve as a public sphere in China (Damm & Thomas, 2006; Esarey & Xiao, 2008Giese, 2006).

Although blogs are a relatively new addition to China’s Internet environment, online forums and “bulletin board systems” (or BBS) have been popular in China since the late 90s, and they continue to be a virtual space where people feel comparatively free to post news and opinions. This is largely due to the fact that their “free-for-all structure” allows for more anonymity even though many are more closely regulated now than they were in the past (MacKinnon, 2008b). Another reason is that there seem to be as many online forums as there are available topics. Online forums have given rise to various forms of mobilization related to everything from environmental protests to exposing government lies about tainted products. They have also been the arena for what many regard as distasteful forms of “Chinese cyber nationalism” (Xu, 2007). For example, China’s “angry youth” (fenqing) have used BBS and online forums to voice outrage, some of it quite violent, at what are perceived as affronts to China’s national sovereignty or dignity, as evidenced in the anti-Japan protests of 2005 (Liu, 2006) and most recently during the controversies surrounding the March 2008 uprising in Tibet and the 2008 Olympic Torch relay.

These sites have also become the location for a peculiar form of cyber vigilantism known as the “human flesh search engine” (ren rou sou suo), basically an Internet mob that tracks down real individuals for alleged crimes, posts their private information online, and heaps verbal abuse upon them (Liu, 2008). The most notorious case involved a woman, who, after posting the details of her husband’s extra-marital affair online, jumped from a window to her death. After her “death-blog” spread online, netizens took it upon themselves to find the “cheating husband,” (named Wang Fei) provide his personal information for all to see, and then harass him in real life. Other targets have been a woman who smashed a kitten’s head with her high-heeled pumps and a Chinese student at Duke University who had tried to mediate between pro-Tibet and pro-Chinese protestors during the Olympic Torch relay. Many attribute this form of mob behavior to Mao-era customs of “people’s war” and “struggle” or to a “herd mentality” (http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=964203448cbf700c9640912bf9012e05). A recent survey conducted by the China Youth Daily online found that 80 percent of those polled agreed that human flesh search engines should be regulated in some manner (http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/ 2008-06/30/content_8462156.htm). Most recently, Wang Fei (the harassed husband) won a law suit against the web site that posted his deceased wife’s blog (http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-12/18/content_10525436.htm).

The practice of the human flesh search engine originated through an entertainment website called mop.com in 2001 with a game where participants were supposed to gather trivia about films, songs, and books and post clues on the website’s “human flesh search engine” area in order to win “mop money.” Mop.com is now a sort of Chinese MySpace and it represents the growing popularity of social networking sites in China. Because most of these sites are relatively new, like many of the practices discussed in this section, there is very little academic research on Chinese SNS. However, although online forums and blogging continue to be extremely popular (for example, the Fourth Chinese Bloggers Conference was held in Guangzhou from November 15-16, 2008), social networking has begun taking off in China. This has caused some such as blogger Maitian to suggest that blogging has run its course in China, particularly since QQ (an online chat platform) and social networking sites are more interactive (http://maitian.blog.techweb.com.cn/archives/233). China now has its own version of Facebook, called Xiaonei (see the image above), with 30 million users, and 51.com, another social networking site, has 100 million (Yu, Zhang, & Li, 2008). As these gain popularity and as more SNS emerge, they are becoming fertile ground for research on digital youth in China.

A final Internet practice worth mentioning involves the techniques that more politically-minded, savvy netizens use to get around Internet censorship. Not surprisingly, a whole body of western-based scholarship and media accounts are concerned with examining the government’s protracted efforts at controlling the Internet and censoring information through methods that are both technological (the “Great Firewall”) and human (“little sister is watching you”) (French, 2003; Zhang, 2006; Zittrain & Edelman, 2003). Despite the actual reality of censorship in China, the majority of Internet users do not seem to be as concerned about this. However, users who do want to express views the government might frown upon (or worse) have invented extremely creative methods to get their messages out, as the graphic below demonstrates.

References
Bu, W. (2002). Shehui xingbie shijiaozhong de chuanbo xinjishu yu nuxing (New communication technology and women in the gender light). Funu Yanjiu Luncong (Collection of Women’s Studies), 45(2), 37-42.

China Ministry of Information Industry, 2007 National Communications Industry Development Statistical Report (in Chinese).

Damm, J., & Thomas, S. (2006). Chinese cyberspaces: Technological changes and political effects. London: Routledge.

Esarey, A., & Xiao, Q. (2008). Political expression in the Chinese blogosphere. Asian Survey, 48(5), 752-772.

Farrer, J. (2007). China’s women sex bloggers and dialogic sexual politics on the Chinese Internet. China Aktuell: A Journal of Contemporary China, 36(4), 10-44.

French, H. (2006, May 9). “As Chinese students go online, Little Sister is watching.” New York Times. Retrieved May 10, 2006, from http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/09/world/asia/09internet.html

Giese, K. (2006, January). Challenging party hegemony: Identity work in China’s emerging virreal places. Hamburg: German Overseas Institute.

Goldkorn, J. (2005). Chinese online celebrities: From doggy style to hibiscus hag. Retrieved February 3, 2006, from http://www.danwei.org/media_and_advertising/chinese_online_celebrities_fro.php.

Guo, L. (November 2007). Surveying Internet Usage and its Impact in Seven Chinese Cities (The CASS China Internet Project Survey Report 2007): Center for Social Development, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Liu, A. X. (2008, November 2). Human flesh search engines? Niu! [Electronic Version]. The Guardian from http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/02/chinathemedia-blogging.

Liu, S.-D. (2006). China’s popular nationalism on the Internet. Report on the 2005 anti-Japan network struggles. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 7(1), 144-155.

MacKinnon, R. (2008a). Blogs and China correspondence: Lessons about global information Flows. Chinese Journal of Communication, 1(2), 242-257.

MacKinnon, R. (2008b). Flatter world and thicker walls? Blogs, censorship and civic discourse in China. Public Choice, 134(1), 31-46.

Meng, W. (2004). Wangluo hudong (Internet Interaction). Beijing: Economy and Management Publishing House.

Nie, M., & Li, J. (2006). Mingren boke de chuanbo tezheng fenxi (The communication characteristics of celebrity blogs). The Social Science Journal of South Central University 12(6), 746-751.

Xu, W. (2007). Chinese cyber nationalism: Evolution, characteristics, and implications. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Yang, Y., Wang, G., Chen, W., & Wang, J. (2004). Xingbie rentong yu jiangou de xinli kongjian (The psychological space of gender identity and structure). In X. Meng (Ed.), Zhuanxing shehuizhong de zhongguo funu (Chinese women in a changing society). Beijing: Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Publishing House.

Yardley, J. (2003). Internet sex Column thrills, and inflames, China. New York Times.

Yu, H., Zhang, Z., & Li, L. Brand experience on SNS: Personal + experiential + interactive = Enhanced emotive connection between brands and youth.” http//: chinayouthology.com/blog

Zhang, L. (2006). Behind the ‘Great Firewall’.” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 12(3). 271-91.

Zhou, Y. (2005). Nuxing yu hulianwang yanjiu xianzhuang huigu (A review of studies of the female sex and the Internet). Funu Yanjiu Luncong (Collection of Women’s Studies), 64(2), 71-76.

Zittrain, J., and Edelman, B. (2003). Empirical analysis of Internet filtering in China. Cambridge, MA: Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard Law School.