Elliot Liu

I think the university archives would play an indispensable role in searching primary source for our group’s topic, which focuses on censorship. It could be unexpectedly beneficial to research by learning from the past that offers first-hand accounts. By a historical perspective, we could learn about how people comprehend censorship in 1980s, according the link below, and compare thoughts people have at present. 

http://www.library.illinois.edu/archives/archon/index.php?p=collections/controlcard&id=1814&q=censorship

This video is awesome, even it lasts for about one hour, I finished watching it without taking a break. Beginning with introducing YouTube and Numa Numa as well as the celebration of Webcam, I think Mike Wesch’s primary research question is that how does the YouTube links people in a way that people have never been linked before. He uses YouTube as the primary,  through watching different sorts of videos on it. In addition, he and his students also did some quantitive works, like taking notes when watching vlogs, which will go to database and be analyzed. The most successful point in Wesch’s research is participating in the YouTube’s community, which is called participant observation. Instead of only watching vlogs online, they made their own vlogs, and observed how YouTubers responded. Compared to solely observing the community, I think it is more effective to understand how does the community work and live through joining the community and becoming a member in it. In the participant observation, Wesch and his students developed lots of useful questions, like the awkwardness of speaking to a webcam, and authenticity crisis. In short, his research is really effective and successful. 

So far, I really enjoy this course. Before this semester, I had been told for many times about how boring and difficult the Rhet is. However, I felt good in the past weeks. I began to enjoy the progress of writing, though it would take me a couple of hours to finish an essay. In terms of the secondary source essay, I’m really interest in my topic, Internet censorship in China, that I could bring my own experience in to writing. I had searched several relevant articles in library database, which make a great contribution to my paper. But I found, the more articles I cite, the more I compromise in essay. Because I always tried to insert all of useful points in paper,finally, it contains many articles’ views, which affects my own progress of research. Anyway, it was a good opportunity and experience to finish my first essay over 2000 words. Comes back to paper its own, I came up with other questions during searching for secondary source. For example, how the Great Firewall influenced Google to quit China’s market, what are real reasons behind it, why Google chose to compromise before and refuse to do so any more. I think I should get more readings and do more research.

This week, I continued to explore the Internet censorship in Mainland China, and I found more articles to supply and enforce the information about how Internet censorship works in China through real cases and how Chinese netizens react or express themselves under strict censorship.

In the article “ liberation technology”, the author discusses how technology is being used to bring more freedom to China. The article cites the case of the detainment of Sun Zhigang for failure to have his temporary living permit and identification on his person. After three days of detainment, Zhigang died because of beatings. Chinese newspapers and Web sites republished a report on the beating death and outrage grew among the Chinese populace. The outrage and protest eventually resulted in a change in a national regulation, conviction of 12 persons in the beating, and closure of detention centers. The article explores the role that the Internet censorship plays in the progress of uncovering the truth of Sun Zhigang’s case, reveals reasons behind why Sun’s death was published after three days of detainment. The articles also discuss cartoon creatures invented by Chinese netizens “cao ni ma” and “he xie”. The author also looks at related cases on Twitter, Google, and “ Wu Mao” case in People’s University in China.

In “A Party that smiles to the world, but tightens its grip at home”, the article presents the official document of the Chinese Central Committee which leaked to the Danish daily about restriction of the freedom of the press and political system. The document contains ways on how Chinese authorities prevented the people from knowing sensitive political information by blocking, destroying and cleansing it from the media, books and the Internet.

In “China VS Internet”, author mentioned how Chinese government revise information to make it “political correctly” and how Chinese netizens satirize it. For example, in state-media versions, the vice president’s references to individual liberties and political freedoms were omitted. When Mr. [Dick Cheney] referred to “rising prosperity and expanding political freedom” across Asia, the Chinese version only mentioned “prosperity.” Expressions like “the desire for freedom is universal” were also cut, as were references to the North Korean nuclear crisis and the Taiwan Relations Act. However, Chinese netizens hadn’t lost their sense of humor: “I don’t think the censors were thorough enough. The best thing would have been to also delete the two characters for ‘Cheney’ and replace them with an East Asian name.” Another said, “We all should have known that words like ‘political freedom’ couldn’t possibly exist in the Communist Party dictionary!” Yet another referred gamely to a famous point of discord between the U.S. and China: “This is an infringement of Cheney’s intellectual property rights.” The final comment expressed gratitude for receiving access to uncensored information. “I deeply thank [the person who posted this] for providing us with these valuable extracts.”

The articles I read are about the Internet censorship in China, and digital resistance, online satire, by Chinese netizens. There are two main parts that I would like to discuss in my paper. One is to talk about the Internet regulation by Chinese Communist Party (CCP) dominated government. As we known, after formal establishment of People’s Republic of China (PRC), “the Chinese government promoted a more open market economy while maintaining extremely tight censorship over news media and freedom of speech”, which makes China is listed in “ Enemies of the Internet”. Moreover, after the Internet was introduced into China in 1987, it became the heaviest censored objective, and many regulation or laws were issued to strengthen CCP to “Weiwen”, which means to maintain stability of society. The other one is to explore the online satire, which includes a list of online language invented by Chinese netizens to dodge the Great Firewall, a governmental censorship system as well as expressing their opinions and thoughts online.

The first article is “A Snapshot of Internet Regulation in Contemporary China: Censorship, Profitability and Responsibility”. In this essay, the author selected two controversial issues confronting the Chinese government: news copyrights an online satire with regard to Internet regulation. The second part of this article inspired me to think about such digital resistance according to my daily life. The author focused on affluent middle class, especially young Chinese consumers, who are not especially concerned with politics, but are enthusiastic about participating in websites that give them opportunities to express thoughts and opinion regarding lifestyles and trends. Then he started from the spoofing culture, called e-gao in Mandarin, and discussed the rise of online satire in China. Using examples of Short Messages Service (SMS) and SARS crisis, the author explored the profitability and responsibility of censorship and social impacts that arouse in censorship.

The second article discusses the social and political aspects of the growth of the Internet within China. While many people have researched censorship within the nation, this paper attests that much remains to be learned about the capacity of the Internet to advance free speech, political participation, and social change. Through the specific statistic of QQ, BBS, and IM (instant messages), the author illustrates the potential power of communication technologies. In the second part, two examples of the online satire are discussed. One is the Grass Mud Horse—or cao ni ma, the homophone of a profane Chinese expression—became the de facto mascot of Chinese netizens fighting for free expression. Another is the word “to harmonize” in Chinese (hexie) is a homonym of the word for “river crab.” Two words demonstrate Chinese netizens’ cleverness on dodging Internet censorship as well as helplessness on the freedom of speech.

After these two articles, there is a rough frame of my paper appears in my mind. However, they also left a couple of questions for me. For one thing, I should explore more knowledge and information about Internet censorship in China, and to acquire a clearer image of how the Great Firewall works. For another thing, the online satire inspired to study deeper about the satire I used online in daily life. So I need to figure out more typical online language and explore the meaning behind them, and both of two questions need further information.

the Grass Mud Horse—or cao ni ma, the homophone of a profane Chinese expression.Actually this animal is called alpaca kept in Australia and South America.

The word “to harmonize” in Chinese (hexie) is a homonym of the word for “river crab.” In this picture, the crab’s claws are photoshopped into hammer and sickle to imply Chinese Communist Party.

So far, everything is going well. In terms of our group paper, which is going to talk about Internet censorship, I think we get a good start. Last week, we went to Undergraduate Library to discuss our paper and do some observation there. After came up with some more detailed ideas for our topic, our conversation turned into how to distinguish different Asians and ABC ( American-born Chinese). It is a little surprised that two American girls in my group cannot tell it when Robert and I can distinguish them immediately and correctly almost every time. Maybe American is always wondering is there any differences among these people who share the same black hair, black eyes, and yellow skin. That is really interesting. In addition, there was a boy who was always on RENREN since we sat down in the library. During our about one hour discussion, that boy even never moved his eyesight from the screen. It seems that he really enjoyed a happy time there. It is reasonable to understand how much the Social Networking influence modern people’s daily life. 

Coming back to the Internet censorship, before any observation or research on it, the first thing that I want is to be unbiased, not too personal, on this topic. Maybe you do not think it is a big deal, but you will comprehend somehow when you know I am from China, where the government censors everything before and after you post on the Internet. I asked Claire could she imagine an Internet without Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, even you have to be redirected to a server in HongKong to use Google. Obviously, the answer is negative. Chinese Internet users have to use some softwares, which will updated frequently, to pass through the Great Fire Wall that is set up by Chinese government to block foreign websites. So how could I not be angry with this crazy government? In addition, there is one thing that really astonished me when I was in senior high school. One day, I used the software to downloaded a video about Tian’anmen square massacre. After watched it, I was totally shocked. Why there is nothing record about it in my history textbook. Why my parents never tell me the truth about it? Why the government pretends that nothing happened? Do they think if they do not write in the textbook and forbid everyone talking about it, then it disappears? Maybe or maybe not. The fact is almost all of my friends in my generation have no idea about this massacre. Lies come true after one thousand time repeat. Once I discussed the Internet censorship with my professor, he asked me what about one day the Chinese government says you can not use that software anymore, or they will arrest you, what will you do? At first, I did not take it seriously, ” it is impossible.” I said. However, after thinking about it, I suppose Chinese will still live with censorship, no one will rebel in public, let alone armed uprising, so it leaves us more questions about how to treat Internet censorship. In short, I think my rich personal experience on Internet censorship will benefit a lot on our paper.