Blogs » Politics » Photo: Nong Tang #132, Shangqiu, Henan, by Mark Hobbs

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• Photo: Nong Tang #132, Shangqiu, Henan, by Mark Hobbs
• Chinese Activist Web Users Take Aim at Water Pollution, and Censors Strike Back
• Chinese Social Media’s Guerrilla War Against Army Privileges
• China Piracy and the “Like It? Buy It!” Model
• U.S.-China Tensions: What Must Kerry Do?

Photo: Nong Tang #132, Shangqiu, Henan, by Mark Hobbs Posted: 16 Feb 2013 04:06 PM PST Nong Tang #132, Shangqiu, Henan © Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: mark Hobbs Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Chinese Activist Web Users Take Aim at Water Pollution, and Censors Strike Back Posted: 16 Feb 2013 10:44 AM PST An earlier image of red water pollution in Lukang river. (Changhua Coast Conservation Action/Flickr Smog isn't the only kind of pollution making headlines in China. Environmental activist Deng Fei recently encouraged users of Sina Weibo, China's Twitter, to share pictures of polluted rivers from their hometowns, taking on local issues in a national campaign. While the aesthetic aspect of this pollution has been a source of great dissatisfaction, news of intentional waste dumping by Chinese factories has also aroused widespread anger, becoming the number-one trending topic on Sina Weibo. News broke on social media that not only were companies polluting the water, but were intentionally pumping wastewater into the ground through high-pressure pipes in order to avoid complying with regulations. The polluted water has caused cancer in many nearby residents, according to reports, and affected the development of local children. A company in Weifang, Shandong was implicated when a journalist travelled there to cover the story. This image of severe pollution has been widely shared during the ongoing online campaign. (Via Weibo) In a post deleted by censors on Sina Weibo, a lawyer named Gan Yuanchun described how officials from Weifang, Shandong sent some of their subordinates to Beijing to prevent media from breaking the news. China Central Television (CCTV)'s coverage of the story was shelved. and the journalist who traveled to Weifang is still being held there involuntarily. Gan Yuanchun wrote in a follow-up post, "Weifang: You think that by harmonizing [censoring] CCTV, you can cover up the truth about #UndergroundWaterPollution? And you're still trying to help this kind of soulless company complete its IPO? You must be dreaming!!" Though CCTV has not reported on the issue, party-line paper the People's Daily posted on Weibo: "Many regions have reported smog, and now there are tragic reports of underground water pollution. 'Dumping wastewater underground,' is an evil act; is it any different from killing future generations? We may be keeping silent for our own sake, and unable to say, for our children's and grandchildren's sake: let the skies be clear again, let our earth and water be pure once more, tighten regulations, do not delay, for there is no time to waste; make great changes now, and there will be hope for the future. We can't talk about a beautiful China without doing something to make China beautiful; we look forward to a wave of environmentalist action. Goodnight." Many posts by news organizations and independent journalists on the pollution and its cover-up drew hundreds of comments, most by netizens urging them to continue to speak out. With ongoing discontent over air pollution in China, as well as fears about whether radiation from North Korea's nuclear tests will affect the country, news of the government covering up intentional pollution by companies is especially provocative. The anti-pollution campaign orchestrated by Deng Fei and increasing demand online for stricter environmental regulations mark yet another instance of social media users identifying institutional problems by sharing individual observations. Recently, Weibo users tackled corruption in the military by crowdsourcing pictures of luxury vehicles driven by members of China's People's Liberation Army.  Now that the groundwater pollution story has broken on Weibo, despite Shandong officials' attempts to hush it up, it's the government's turn to respond. It remains to be seen whether those reporting on the pollution or those causing it will be on the receiving end of the crackdown.

Chinese Social Media’s Guerrilla War Against Army Privileges Posted: 16 Feb 2013 08:34 AM PST All drivers in China probably have had the experience at least once. While one waits dutifully in front of a red light or gets in line to pay a toll, another car bearing a special white license plate marking its status as a vehicle belonging to the People's Liberation Army (PLA) or the Armed Police cruises by and brazenly breaks all traffic rules. Police overlook the transgressions. Toll collectors open a designated lane. Fellow drivers fume. China's Internet users have begun to wage guerrilla warfare against the PLA's vehicular privileges on social media. Answering a call by Yu Jianrong, a sociology professor and advocate, users of Sina Weibo, China's Twitter, have sent him photos of cars with PLA license plates. A number of examples are below. These cars tend to be the expensive kind. Range Rover, BMW and Audi seem to be the mainstay. Ultra-luxurious brands like Bentley and Maserati make appearances as well. While many Internet users jump to the conclusion that some servicemen in the PLA use taxpayer money to get nice rides for themselves, others have pointed out that it is not necessarily the case. Many wealthy businessmen pull connections to finagle PLA license plates for their cars to take advantage of the privileges on the road. Fake PLA plates also have a large market. Nonetheless, the campaign is another attempt by China's Internet users to chip away the privileges and mystique enjoyed by the PLA in Chinese society. [Cover image by Steve Webel via Flickr]

China Piracy and the “Like It? Buy It!” Model Posted: 16 Feb 2013 01:29 AM PST One of the many IP topics we've discussed on this blog concerns the varying strategies employed by owners to combat piracy by changing the behavior of consumers. Many years ago, if you recall, everyone was talking about Microsoft's China pricing strategy and whether its sky-high retail price for Windows was driving Chinese users into the arms of the copyright scofflaws. There are many different subsets of this area. In addition to pricing, or perhaps the extreme pricing option, there is the idea that if a content owner gives away a certain amount of product for free, this will "hook" the consumer, who will be willing to pay for future works 'cause, you know, they can't go without. This model came up during a recent Businessweek interview with Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes, who had this to say about China and copyright piracy: If you go to Asia, we're probably not getting paid for 95 percent of our movies. People like our stuff but they're not paying us to watch it. Look at the papers. The Chinese government is hacking newspeople if you even suggest things that they know to be true. I spoke to the president about piracy. We even tried a little thing: "How about you can give all our stuff to your people for free, but how about you don't reship it to every country around the region?" That didn't work. It's a concern. A couple things here. First, I have no idea what that sentence about "hacking newspeople" is doing in there. No relevance at all to IP infringement that I can see, but if the goal was merely to make China look like a scary place, then mission accomplished. Second, I don't know who the "you" is in the sentence about giving away free content. Since he follows it with "your people," it sounds sort of like the "you" is "China." This is bizarre and only makes sense if you are one of those ignorant folks who thinks China is a totalitarian Communist state where the government is responsible for all media content creation and distribution. Sure, media is highly regulated here, but c'mon, there's more here than CCTV and People's Daily. This guy sounds like he has absolutely no clue about modern China at all, which is scary for the CEO of Time Warner. As to the merits, what if Time Warner did in fact give away all their content here on the condition that it would not be "reshipped" to other nations? Again, my first reaction is to wonder if this guy has been hiding under a rock or something. Is he still thinking along the lines of vinyl records and CDs? Has he ever heard about digital media? How did this guy get his job, anyway? Countries can implement rules that cut down on copyright piracy, including online digital media. But this is not so easy these days. It doesn't take much for individuals to "reship" digital files across borders, and even DVD printing shops are incredibly mobile, with pirate gangs operating across borders. I would be suspicious of any commitment to content owners regarding redistribution by any country, particularly China. If China could actually shut down all redistribution, would it then make sense for Time Warner to make such a free content deal? Maybe, assuming competitors in Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe didn't jump in to pick up the slack. But hey, the hypothetical is so unrealistic, it's almost not worth contemplating. I'm not the only one who found Bewkes' comments unconvincing. Jeff Bercovici, writing in Forbes, had this to say: It's hard to understand how Bewkes's "little thing" could actually make sense on an economic level. For it to succeed, you'd have to assume, for starters, that the Chinese regime is in fact capable of shutting down the production and flow of pirated DVDs within and across its borders. You'd also be assuming that counterfeiting operations wouldn't immediately sprint up in other Asian nations to fill the void. Those are some pretty questionable assumptions. Preaching to the converted. Bercovici is right — this doesn't make sense at all. But he also brings up a second issue concerning "free content" models in general: Meanwhile, you'd be undermining your own pricing structure in a huge swath of the globe, training 1.3 billion people to think of premium movies and TV shows as things that don't cost  anything — not even the dollar or so they're used to paying for counterfeit copies. Think that's an experiment that could have some unintended consequences? Maybe Bewkes should ask America's newspaper publishers how giving their content away for free on the internet worked out for them. Good example. One could also discuss the music industry's current woes. I asked my last batch of law students (last year) if any of them could remember the last time they paid for music. None of them raised their hands. If you teach your "customers" that content should be free, they will eventually feel that they have an inherent right to it. Moreover, I doubt they will think twice about redistribution. Really not the way to combat piracy. Any other brilliant ideas out there? © Stan for China Hearsay, 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: copyright infringement, digital media

U.S.-China Tensions: What Must Kerry Do? Posted: 15 Feb 2013 11:38 PM PST In the latest installment of China File's Conversations series, Elizabeth Economy, Andrew J. Nathan and Orville Schell respond to Nina Hachigian's recommendations to new U.S. secretary of state John Kerry. In a recent essay at the Center for American Progress, Hachigian looked beyond immediate issues such as the Diaoyu Islands dispute, cyber security and North Korean nuclear testing to a broader question in Sino-U.S. relations: The United States and China have no shared vision for what their future bilateral relationship could or should look like. They have not articulated a clear understanding of how they could continue to co-exist in peace a decade or two down the road, and they need to develop a shared, tangible idea for the future of the relationship. Hachigian suggests further integrating China into the international "web of laws, norms, and institutions", which it currently suspects has been spun by the West to trip it up. This approach is encapsulated in a proposed draft of Kerry's first speech in China. From the responses at China File: Elizabeth Economy: I think Nina is right to identify a lack of shared vision as a serious challenge in the U.S.-China relationship. Unfortunately, I don't think that at this point in time it is possible to have such a shared vision–beyond what we have always had, namely a stated commitment to peace and stability in the Asia Pacific and to free and open markets. I am fairly sure, for example, that part of our vision for the relationship includes a vastly reformed China (economically and politically)–probably in ways that the Chinese leadership is not interested in reforming, or at least not interested in reforming at the pace we would like. […] Andrew J. Nathan: […] To be sure, it is hard for any observer — even us, much less policy makers in Beijing — to figure out what American strategy really is. I sometimes even wonder whether it's possible for a country with two parties that alternate in power, three branches of government, fifteen fairly independent executive departments, and 535 entrepreneurial legislators, to have a coherent strategy. […] Either way, the Chinese need to know where the U.S. really stands. It's understandable that they will test the U.S. in rhetoric and in action to find out where Washington's bottom line lies. We American observers will find out the answer along with China. Orville Schell: […] Even though Party General Secretary Xi Jinping, China's next president, has said that he would like to see U.S.-China relations have a fresh start, it is unlikely that there will be a major "re-set" any time soon. Both Beijing and Washington seem far too root-bound by their own issues and inner- and inter-party politics to step out boldly into any kind of new mutual foreign policy framework. Hachigian argues that the "default prediction" in the absence of a shared vision for the future is "inevitable violent conflict." At The New York Times this week, on the other hand, Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote that "I do not believe that wars for global domination are a serious prospect in what is now the Post-Hegemonic Age." Admittedly, the historical record is dismal. Since the onset of global politics 200 years ago, four long wars (including the Cold War) were fought over the domination of Europe, each of which could have resulted in global hegemony by a sole superpower. Yet several developments over recent years have changed the equation. Nuclear weapons make hegemonic wars too destructive, and thus victory meaningless. One-sided national economic triumphs cannot be achieved in the increasingly interwoven global economy without precipitating calamitous consequences for everyone. Further, the populations of the world have awakened politically and are not so easily subdued, even by the most powerful. Last but not least, neither the United States nor China is driven by hostile ideologies. Moreover, despite our very different political systems, both our societies are, in different ways, open. That, too, offsets pressure from within each respective society toward animus and hostility. More than 100,000 Chinese are students at American universities, and thousands of young Americans study and work in China or participate in special study or travel programs. Unlike in the former Soviet Union, millions of Chinese regularly travel abroad. And millions of young Chinese are in daily touch with the world through the Internet. All this contrasts greatly with the societal self-isolation of the 19th- and 20th-century contestants for global power, which intensified grievances, escalated hostility and made it easier to demonize the one another. Brzezinski's prescription of "vital and robust" institutionalized cooperation, though, is similar to Hachigian's. Contemplating the less arguable inevitability of "foolish, impetuous, or incompetent leaders in one capital or the other, or maybe even both", Stephen M. Walt suggested what aspects of this cooperation might look like. From Foreign Policy last month: The bottom line is that Washington and Beijing have an obvious interest in taking steps now that might make their relationship easier to manage in the future. In particular, establishing rules of the road for naval activity (similar to the earlier Incidents at Sea agreement) might reduce the danger of an unintended clash on the high seas. Reaching an understanding on the use of unmanned drones or cyberattacks would help too. Military-to-military contacts and other forms of elite exchange would be a good idea as well, so that elites in both societies know the people with whom they are dealing personally and are less likely to misread or misinterpret what they may do while in official positions. None of these steps makes rivalry disappear, but together they could help keep it from boiling over. And that just might be the greatest contribution that these two states could make to international peace and security over the next 25 years. Efforts to establish an institutional "web" are likely to provoke some suspicion in China. An op-ed in the overseas edition of People's Daily last July articulated a bleaker view of developing relations between the two powers: Over the next 5-10 years, the difference in Sino-US power will make a great leap towards transformation from a difference in quantity to a difference in quality. Authoritative international organizations have already roughly estimated that the Chinese economy will overtake the US in total size by around 2020 or so. During this period, China's military strength and sci-tech capacities will also continue to rise. The US strategic community is currently debating three basic questions with respect to China's rise: How to respond to the challenging resource, energy, and economic demands of a great power with 1.3 to 1.5 billion people? How to respond to the challenges posed by the political system, development model, and cultural values of a socialist great power? And how to respond to the military security challenges of a great power that has not yet settled all of its issues of sovereignty and territorial integrity? During this period, the US is likely to use non-military methods to envelop China or seek to perturb its rise, to win strategic gains, to bring about a revival of national power, and to ensure its hegemonic status. [… T]hrough an approach premised on strengthening alliance relationships, upgrading cooperative partnerships, and by splitting apart China's ties to North Korea, Pakistan, and Myanmar while seeking to rebuild Russo-American relations, and other steps, they will seek to put China in a passive position in its foreign affairs, complicate China's external environment, and constrict the strategic space for China's rise; and through the development of dialogues and commonly-accepted definitions of what the Americans call the 'global commons' of sea, air, space and cyber, they will seek to substantially weaken China's ability to compete with or strategically challenge the United States. The article achieved online notoriety for its suggestion that the U.S. would use groups such as rights lawyers and dissidents to undermine China's political system. See also coverage of Kerry's comments on China at his Senate confirmation hearing last month, via CDT. © Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: Andrew Nathan, China's rise, Cold War, Elizabeth Economy, global economy, international norms, international order, international relations, john kerry, nuclear weapons, Orville Schell, State Department, students abroad, U.S. relations, United States, war, Xi Jinping Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

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