One of the more intriguing -- and under-reported -- developments of the week was the announcement that the British government plans to boost the teaching of Chinese in schools.
Creating the training and support infrastructure to translate this aspiration into reality will not be easy, but the idea is a very good one -- and not just because today's schoolchildren will grow up in a world dominated by Chinese economic power. They will also have to adjust to a world influenced by the "soft" (cultural) power that is the inescapable accompaniment to economic dominance.
In this context, China's approach to the Internet raises some intriguing questions. The regime has embarked on a massive social experiment: The rulers believe you can have economic liberalization without political freedom.
Conservatives of all stripes believe that this is not possible. In their view, an open society is a prerequisite for a vibrant capitalism. You can't have the latter without the former, and the Chinese Communist Party will have to accept that.
The rest of us are less sanguine. China's rulers have shown every sign of being able to have their cake and eat it -- at least as far as the Internet is concerned.
Chinese use of the network is growing like crazy, but the government has proved very adept at ensuring that the freedoms regarded by libertarians as intrinsic to cyberspace are not available to the average Chinese user. The country maintains a massive online policing operation and runs the finest firewall that money can buy. It thus provides a daily refutation of the myth that the Internet cannot be controlled by governments.
So it's not surprising that most public discussion in the West about the Internet in China has been dominated by civil liberties. But there's more to Chinese cyberspace than that, which is why the most interesting publication of the week was an essay by Deborah Fallows published by the Pew Internet and American Life project.
Entitled "China's online population explosion," it surveys what's happening behind the Great Firewall and ponders the implications both for the Chinese and for the rest of us.
First, the numbers. China has 137 million users (compared with 190 million in the US), but the online population is increasing at such a rate that in about two years there will be more Chinese than Americans on the Net.
Within China, however, there's a deep digital divide. Chinese users are overwhelmingly urban, young and male. A third are students, while a further third are business users. The deepest divide is the urban-rural one: Internet penetration among city dwellers is 20 percent, compared with only 3 percent for rural districts (the comparable US figures are 70 percent and 61 percent respectively).
Given that China's rulers see the Net as a critical enabler of development, a key policy issue for the regime is how to bridge the urban-rural gap. Fallows cites research suggesting that the two big obstacles are lack of connectivity and a huge skills deficiency. Even if rural Chinese were given Internet access, most would have no idea what to do with it. And many don't see it as having any relevance to their lives.
Fallows quotes one Shandong Province farmer: "To us farmers," he said, "a computer is no different from an aircraft carrier, because neither has a bearing on our life."
This will change. And when it does, what will happen to Chinese society? Fallows thinks that widespread Internet use will have a unifying effect on a society currently divided by many spoken languages but which has only one written one. Given that the Net deals mainly in text, she sees it having a major unifying impact in the longer term. She also sees a major impact in terms of linking the vast Chinese global diaspora with the folks back home.
What will be the impact on the rest of us? Will Chinese become the lingua franca of the Web? Hard to say, but it might be a good time to invest in online translation firms.
On a broader front, major change seems inevitable. The Internet was shaped by history and its original demographics: It came from the US and has largely been shaped by American values.
Two decades from now, its demographic profile will be radically different, which is why it makes sense to teach Chinese to our kids and Chinese culture, too.
NO-LIMITS PARTNERSHIP: ‘The bottom line’ is that if the US were to have a conflict with China or Russia it would likely open up a second front with the other, a US senator said Beijing and Moscow could cooperate in a conflict over Taiwan, the top US intelligence chief told the US Senate this week. “We see China and Russia, for the first time, exercising together in relation to Taiwan and recognizing that this is a place where China definitely wants Russia to be working with them, and we see no reason why they wouldn’t,” US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told a US Senate Committee on Armed Services hearing on Thursday. US Senator Mike Rounds asked Haines about such a potential scenario. He also asked US Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse
INSPIRING: Taiwan has been a model in the Asia-Pacific region with its democratic transition, free and fair elections and open society, the vice president-elect said Taiwan can play a leadership role in the Asia-Pacific region, vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) told a forum in Taipei yesterday, highlighting the nation’s resilience in the face of geopolitical challenges. “Not only can Taiwan help, but Taiwan can lead ... not only can Taiwan play a leadership role, but Taiwan’s leadership is important to the world,” Hsiao told the annual forum hosted by the Center for Asia-Pacific Resilience and Innovation think tank. Hsiao thanked Taiwan’s international friends for their long-term support, citing the example of US President Joe Biden last month signing into law a bill to provide aid to Taiwan,
China’s intrusive and territorial claims in the Indo-Pacific region are “illegal, coercive, aggressive and deceptive,” new US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo said on Friday, adding that he would continue working with allies and partners to keep the area free and open. Paparo made the remarks at a change-of-command ceremony at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii, where he took over the command from Admiral John Aquilino. “Our world faces a complex problem set in the troubling actions of the People’s Republic of China [PRC] and its rapid buildup of forces. We must be ready to answer the PRC’s increasingly intrusive and
STATE OF THE NATION: The legislature should invite the president to deliver an address every year, the TPP said, adding that Lai should also have to answer legislators’ questions The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday proposed inviting president-elect William Lai (賴清德) to make a historic first state of the nation address at the legislature following his inauguration on May 20. Lai is expected to face many domestic and international challenges, and should clarify his intended policies with the public’s representatives, KMT caucus secretary-general Hung Meng-kai (洪孟楷) said when making the proposal at a meeting of the legislature’s Procedure Committee. The committee voted to add the item to the agenda for Friday, along with another similar proposal put forward by the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). The invitation is in line with Article 15-2