There were two very different snowstorms that blanketed China in the run-up to Lunar New Year. The first, reported by the state media, was a natural disaster heroically battled by half a million troops and Communist Youth League volunteers. It left 5.8 million people stranded, but the people ultimately prevailed.
The second, reflected through the prism of Internet cynics, was a calamity exacerbated by official incompetence, indolence and optimistic weather fore-casts. While the old media have quoted “heartwarming words” of appreciation for the government’s response and praised its own “heroic” reporters, the Internet has been abuzz with furious denunciations of state broadcasters, forecasters and officials for getting the picture wrong.
Such competing public opinions — unheard of 10 years ago — are becoming familiar in China these days as the world’s biggest censor struggles to cope with the explosive growth of the Internet. With 200,000 new netizens every day, China’s online population is on the brink of overtaking the US as the biggest in the world.
That landmark could come today, next week, or next month. According to the China Internet Network Information Center, there were 210 million Internet users at the end of last year, just 5 million behind the US. But China is adding 6 million new users a month — more than 10 times the pace of US growth.
PIRATES, HACKERS AND CYBER SPIES
In an Olympic year, and at a time of surging economic growth, the new figures are taken by some as proof of Beijing’s irresistible rise. Not everyone likes it. Free speech activists fear it will increase the influence of China’s censors in the virtual world. Foreign governments have raised concerns that the country has become a breeding ground for pirates, hackers and cyber spies.
It was not supposed to be like this. After the Internet was connected to China in 1987, civil rights campaigners hoped it would be a catalyst for political reform. But 21 years on, the Communist party is still in power and its model of a tightly controlled Internet is gaining ground, if only by force of numbers.
The world’s most popular blog? Lao Xu (老徐), written by the actor and director Xu Jinglei (徐靜蕾), which boasts 137 million visitors. The biggest distributor of online video? Tudou, which claims to have overtaken YouTube with over 1 billion megabytes of data transfers every day. Then there is Baidu (百度), which has trounced Google in the Mandarin search engine market, and Alibaba (阿里巴巴), whose boss Jack Ma (馬雲) is a national hero for humbling eBay and taking over Yahoo’s operations in China.
Language, culture and the Great Firewall of China — the state’s information shield — protect the government and big business players from competition. Instant messaging and social networking are dominated here by Tuscent’s QQ service. The game world is ruled by Shanda Entertainment and Giant Interactive rather than Nintendo and Sony. Sina and Sohu have a lock hold on the news. In every sector in China, domestic players are on top. Some are now starting to look overseas. Baidu recently launched a Japanese service.
Experts say that by overtaking the US as the world’s biggest user base, China will attract investment, commercial traffic and technology. With this will come influence.
“This is a big landmark. The US has almost reached the point where it has not much room to grow. China is the opposite. In terms of new connectivity and economic growth, China is definitely the place,” says Xiao Qiang (蕭強), the founder of the California-based China Digital Times.
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