Social Networking in China

[Anonymous]

The facebook we use more often in China is called renren.com. The social media is changing China in a fast and dramatic way. Yang Lan explains it better in her TED 2011 video, here is the link;

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/yang_lan.html

[Anonymous]

When I was in China last week I attempted to log on to my Facebook account in my hotel room but the page would not load and I kept getting an error message. Staying at the Holiday Inn, Beijing and thinking that I was in any regular, Western hotel, it took a minute for me to realize that, "D'oh, I'm in China!" In the U.S., like in most of the world, social media sites such as Facebook (and primarily Facebook) have so much freedom and liberty. In many ways, these types of sites have become the new market places of ideas and the clearinghouses of information. The fact that something so commonplace and mundane as Facebook (though, to be sure, it has been used to stir up passions) is censored and prohibited in China still astounds me (but doesn't at the same time). When teaching about the foundations of modern Western thought, democratic ideals, and the tenets of the American Constitution, I think that the Facebook example could be a fantastic (and fun for our students) case study on these themes and a wonderful opportunity to compare and contrast different forms of government.
edited by bdeleon on 12/6/2011

[Anonymous]

I had a similar experience trying to view news sites in China. It was an eye-opening experience to say the least. We take for granted how open our access to such information is here in the US.

[Anonymous]

To bdeleon

It would be more interesting to compare and contrast what both government sensor on their media and the difference on the subject of their sensorship.

A personal note to you as well，

Are you in the Tuesday workshop at UTLA, I would like to meet you.

Thank you.

Qin

[email protected]
Mandarin teacher at Foshay LC

[Anonymous]

When reading about the censorship in China I can not help but think about the endless passwords I need to plug into my computer as I try to access most webpages at my school whether it is used for educational purposes or not. I am not saying it is the equivalent of what all of my fellow classmates have said about China but I think it would be a great Into. question to get students to somewhat relate to what is happening in China and other places in the world. The question would be, "Do you have access to facebook, twitter, or youtube here at school", the obvious answer would be no, so I would then ask, "why not?" This would serve as the hook for students to begin our discussion on the censorship in China.

[Anonymous]

Qin,

I agree, it would be interesting to compare what the each government censors. In the end, however, it all comes down to degree and definition. If you think about the amount of material that may seem lewd, obscene, or even possibly seditious in the U.S., crossing any sort of threshold that may warrant censorship is awfully difficult. Even this last kind of material (material that may appear seditious) - arguably the kind that could be the most damaging to our national security - has to go through intense scrutiny before becoming officially censored by the government. (Whether or not material is censored by a private network, firm, or company, however, is a different story.) In China, on the other hand, it seems as though just about anything can get one censored.

Qin, I am participating in the UTLA Fall 2011 East Asia Seminar. We have met and spoken several times. I was wearing the "I [heart] Kyoto" t-shirt the day of the "Cool Japan" workshop. I'll see you on Tuesday, be sure to say hi!

-Ben
edited by bdeleon on 12/9/2011

[Anonymous]

I am surprised to learn that facebook is prohibited in China I have traveled several places in the world this past year including Japan, Spain, and Europe and have always been able to log onto Facebook and access all of its features. I think I'll have to do more research on censorship and social media in China. But then again, from your conversation it seems as if almost nothing in China is protected from censorship.

[Anonymous]

This evening (1/12/12) I heard on KPCC about an upcoming meeting in Dubai regarding the control of the internet. Countries, such as China and Russia want the internet to be controlled by the United Nations. The U.S. is against this....the belief is that the internet should be controlled by a large representations of businessess/people etc. The fear is that otherwise various governments will control the internet to their advantage. I don't even understand the internet -- it's still "magic" to me -- but think all ideas and thoughts should be accessible by all. Internet censorship is a good topic for disucssion.
Pat Lamkie

[Anonymous]

Pat, I am so glad you posted this! I heard the same news report on 89.9 KCRW a couple of days ago on my way to work. Though much of the story revolved around the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers' (ICANN) decision to expand domain suffixes/names (.whatever) - and the disagreement by many members of Congress and the Department of Commerce to become realized - a large part of the latter third of the article dealt with what Pat just mentioned. This may be a wonderful topic to cover in a Government, contemporary issues, or law class. Here is the link to the story:

http://www.npr.org/2012/01/12/145125429/who-should-control-the-internet-some-say-the-u-n

[Anonymous]

I read where twitter (or its equivalent) in China was so instrumental in exposing the duplicitous official Gov't reports about the train wreck last summer. It was a routine that the Chinese have had to put up with for years. Nothing officially goes wrong, even in this case. There was nothing particularly newsy about the piece except this: at 140 characters (a single letter), english users burn up their allotment on a twitter message fairly quick. Then it dawned on me, the Chinese character on twitter is a whole word, thereby expressing a much more detailed sentiment, or in this case, a full throated expose.

[Rob_Hugo@PortNW]

I recently read a really good article in Fast Track magazine about social networks in China. As a result of China barring foreign websites from being in China, Chinese people have created their own copycats versions of popular social media sites. Here are a few pairings for those who are interested: China's version of Yelp is called dianping.com. China's has two versions of Youtube, are called tudou.com and youku.com. China's version of Hulu is qiyi.com. The list goes on and on.
What I found the most interesting about the article is not that the Chinese came up with their own versions of popular American websites, but that these websites have been on the forefront of innovation. For example, Xiaonei added a feature that Facebook doesn't have, which is the ability to see who viewed your profile, but the major innovations have come in the field of gaming, though. An example of this is Chinese's version of the Facebook game Farmville, Happy Garden. Happy Garden began to use product placement a year before Farmville. Happy Garden has advertisement embedded in the game itself, which is something that Farmville is yet to do. For example, a person can plant seeds and squeeze juice for Lohas, a soft drink made by COFCO, China’s biggest food manufacturer. In addition, players of Happy Restaurant can earn virtual currency by hanging ads for companies on the walls of their virtual eateries.
Although these sites allow far more freedom of expression than what people can do offline, the government still burdens these popular sites with restrictions, but as always people find ways to get around these restrictions. Kaixin001 and Renren, the Facebooks of China still must comply with government derictives on content and they must censor a range of controversial topics from the Dalai Lama to Liu Xiaobo.
I have provided a link below for those of you who want to read and comment on the article.
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/152/the-socialist-n

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