Kevin Wu from Pacific Epoch said “Thousands of Chinese Internet users are queuing for Gmail accounts up on a BolgChina bulletin board called “Googler.” Despite the fact Gmail users have to hang in limbo for a couple of day, the site has seen hundreds of applicants roll in. A group of Chinese Gmail account holders started the forum to spread Gmail invitations on regular basis. Users who receive invitations are then encouraged to send invitations to fellow bloggers. A number of local social networking sites, including UUzone, have also opened Gmail communities to get the ball rolling. “

After being inaccessible for about 48 hours, Wikipedia opened up to mainland Chinese users again on June 17. During the ban, Wikipedia’s founder, James Wales commented on the event to Chinatechnews with following words: “By policy, Wikipedia is not a political site in any way. We are a general reference encyclopedia with a strong neutrality policy. Articles are carefully researched and reviewed by Chinese people in Taiwan, Hong Kong, as well as mainland China. Therefore, Wikipedia is an excellent test case. When Wikipedia is blocked, it can not be claimed that only lies or propaganda are blocked, because we are neither. When we are blocked, it is information itself that is being blocked.”

Thanks to Greg Puhl for sending me this article.

Social software is spreading out in Chinese cyberspace。 But the interplay between state censorship and the free flow of information and free expression reaches far beyond just the area of technology. In an earlier post I introduced Professor Perry Link’s article on this subject: how “fear” works in China’s censorship mechanism. Another penetrating analysis on this subject is given in this essay “Changing the Subject: The “Invisible” Control Mechanism in Chinese Media”. The author is an American who works for China Central Television. “Ann Condi” is a pen name.

Despite this deep rooted fear, there are more and more Chinese who do speak the truth. Here are two examples: one is Jiao Guobiao, a journalism professor in Peking University, the other is a retired military doctor Jiang Yanyong who was the whistle blower who revealed the SARS epidemic in China.

Mike on techdirt said “it looks like the Chinese government is fed up with the idea that politically neutral content might be available online. They’ve now start blocking Wikipedia , the popular community-built online encyclopedia that is careful to enforce a policy that entries remain politically neutral. ”

More on this, please click here to see Greg Walton’s post on China Digital News.

Call it state censorship M2M model: Chinese government just launched a new website for people to report on what officials describe as illegal or unhealthy information on the internet. A China blogger called this "a crackdown that employs a public open-ended architecture" and asked "Isn’t that just inviting random, pornographic, illegal, and inappropriate comments?"

My view is actually this form of censorship can be quite powerful. This strategy is complimentary to, yet much more effective than simply controlling internet use through law and regulations, and blocking access to foreign sites. It goes together with the governments other efforts such as forcing ISPs and ICPs to show what it calls self discipline and using internet police units to monitor online activity, including people surfing in the many thousands of internet cafes.

The Chinese authorities are once again using a strategy which mixes intimidation, uncertainty, and divide and conquer techniques to create fear and distrust among people, therefore forcing internet users to censor themselves online. (If one wants to know more about how censorship works in Chinese society, you can read an excellent article written by Princeton professor Perry Link.)

However, in the long run, I am optimistic that the growing demands for free expression among Chinese netizens will ultimately topple any censorship regime, including this "M2M" type.

Mat Honan started his long piece on today's Salon.com with this sentence: "On the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown, blogs are booming in China. But are they making any difference?"

The full article is here. Read it online because it contains many hyperlinks which put the story in context. Registration is required, but non-subscribers can get a free day pass.

Ross add's Xiao's comment in the article...

Today is the fifteenth anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre, David Callaway from CBS MarketWatch wrote a op-ed piece entitled "Tiananmen hangs over China boom" Here are some quotes from his article:

"The idea that a booming economy will push the hard line government into suddenly deciding to release its grip on power in exchange for some pre-IPO shares of Google and a bunch of lifetime golf club memberships doesn't hold much sway given what's already happened to the economy in China in the last few years.

In fact, the economic excesses we've seen have probably further entrenched China's rulers. So chances are that when real political reform arrives -- which will happen -- it will come suddenly and violently rather than gradually or through some giant national party, like the collapse of the Berlin Wall. "

I hope David's prediction is not true, and the political transformation in China will go through peaceful and smooth process, instead of a violent one. Can the Net play a role in helping China create a peaceful transition to democracy? Will social software that we are discussing in this forum, and other technologies, help gradually release the political tension in Chinese society? Or will the mobile, pervasive, many-to-many communication technologies be powerful tools for the next explosive social uprising, especially if there is an economic downturn? I certainly do not have answers for all these questions. But I have no doubts that the Net is speeding up the death of the old regime in China. In the words of poet T.S. Eliot:
"This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper."

PC World reported the Chinese wikipedia story today. An informal group of Chinese volunteers has been working on this project since May 2001. According to Hong Kong Scholar Andrew Lih, the Chinese language Wikipedia (http://zh.wikipedia.org) is still relatively small, with just over 6,500 articles, and ranks as the 12th largest just behind Esperanto and Italian (as of March 1, 2004). It only recently gained attention in the Chinese press and I certainly believe that this persistent media will draw more and more participants in Chinese cyberspace.

I know c.c. function of email can be counted as "social software." What about BBS? It certainly can function as many-to-many. Anyway, the reason I say this here is because BBS is the most politically active place in Chinese cyberspace. The number of Chinese Internet users is quickly reaching 90 million. (Already surpassing the number of members of the Chinese Communist Party. ) About one-fifth of Chinese netizens regularly make use of BBS (Bulletin Board Systems). These BBSs can be run by individuals, commercial companies such as sina.com, or government agencies. At any given time, there are literally tens of thousands of users active in these BBS and forums, reading news, searching for information, and debating current affairs. Even on official Web sites such as People’s Daily, its popular BBS, Strong Nation Forum, has more than 280,000 registered members and more than 12,000 posts per day. Together with e-mail listservs, chat rooms, instant message services, wireless short text messaging, and an emerging Weblogging community, the BBSs have provided unprecedented opportunities for Chinese netizens to engage in public affairs. I chaired a round table discussion on this subject in Berkeley last month. Here is the webcast link.

Thanks for Ross' invitation for being a guest blogger here. I will start with sharing two news items I have found today. The first one is an Chinese official from the Ministry of Information Industry (MII) was quoted saying "in 2004, China would likely turn out 48 million computers, a rise of 29 percent over last year. The figure is expected to reach 90 million in 2008. " If the official is right, then China is going to be world's largest IT market in 5 years.

This is number of computers in China. What about social software? CNblog.org is a very active group weblog in Chinese cyberspace, discussing weblogs, wiki, social networking services etc... According to bloggers on CNblog, China now has more than 300,000 active bloggers. I also noticed an interesting news about a local Communist Party branch website just added on RSS function. These technologies are spreading fast in Chinese cyberspace today.