Communism Redefined: the Internet and Social Change in China

1
Communism Redefinedthe Internet and Social
Change in China

• Randy Kluver
• Confucius Institute
• Texas AM University

2
Main objectives

• Discuss Chinas recent political changes, and the
  accompanying changes in media
• Discuss the role of the Internet in social and
  political change in China
• Discuss the future of the Internet in China

3
Recent political transition

• 1980s and 90s-from politics in command to
  economics in command
• Breakdown of central government control, towards
  regional and local officials
• Dramatic changes in society and culture have made
  politics less important, to most Chinese
• Commercialization and proliferation of media have
  changed the priorities of the press.
• New media outlets have altered the dynamics of
  news production.

4
Chinas Internet Growth
5
China and the Internet 3 sets of goals

• Economic goals
• Cultural goals
• Political goals

6
Economic goals of IT

• Early 80s development of information strategies
• Goal to double IT sector by 2005
• 5 of GDP
• IT as critical element of economic integration
  into global community
• Development of E-Commerce

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Cultural goals in IT

1. Globalization of Chinese culture
2. Using new media to advance new media agenda in
   global portrayal of China
3. Internet and Advanced culture-use Internet to
   remake Chinese culture with a technological logic

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Political/Governmental goals for IT

• Inversion of traditional emphasis on politics
• economics in command
• Reinforce Party line through new propaganda
  channels
• Strengthen integrity and responsiveness of the
  Party (E-government)
• Overcome endemic corruption
• Strengthen central control
• Overcome problems of geographical dispersion
• Golden Projects
• 4. Strengthen legitimacy of CCP
• CCP as guarantor of economic growth
• Legitimation by technical achievement

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The political control of the Internet

• Direct mechanisms
• Raids on cybercafes, arrest of Internet
  dissidents.
• Kill the monkey to scare the chicken
• Indirect mechanisms, including
• Great Firewall national intranet-
• Self Censorship and regulation of ISPs
• Ambitious network of Chinese sites

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Presumptions of political change through
technology

• Giddens the spread of democracyhas been
  strongly influenced in the recent period by the
  advance of global communications.
• De Sola Pool, technologies of freedom
• Locke the Internet invents new forms of
  democratic activity
• Clinton, like nailing jello to the wall.
• Albright, It is now impossible to have a
  hermetically closed information system.

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The arguments for democratization

• free flow of information argument
• inherent characteristics argument
• Integration argument
• Civil Society/ Social sphere argument

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What have we learned about the democratization
thesis?

• Polls show that most Chinese believe that some
  governmental control over the Internet is
  necessary, and willingly accept it.
• Availability of information doesnt change basic
  predisposition towards government.
• Although Internet does make it easier for
  dissidents to spread their message, it has not
  prompted political movements.
• Entertainment superhighway, instead of
  information superhighway.

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Who is using the Internet in China?
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The Internet and education
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Internet cafés in China

• What we think they are like
• What they are really like

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The Internet and E-government

• Chinas investment in e-government is
  unprecedented among developing nations, with an
  investment of at least one trillian yuan (121
  billion US), and is growing at about 40 per
  year.
• E-gov has primarily been an outgrowth of advanced
  economies with two key purposes, improve services
  to citizenry and cost savings
• e-government is material that would aid an
  average citizen logging onto a governmental
  site, including information, services, and
  databases.

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Chinas goals in E-gov

• to add stability and order to a chaotic governing
  process and social change,
• to reestablish the control of the governing
  authorities,
• Improving the quality of surveillance and data
  gathering, and hence policy-making,
• the elimination of corruption,
• the re-legitimation of the Communist Party of
  China.

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Chinas governing context

• Governing crisis is driven by at least three
  key factors
• Renegotiation of most aspects of social and
  political life, as economic growth contributes to
  individual changes in lifestyles and loss of
  governmental regulation in many areas of life.
• Crisis of confidence in CCP due to corruption and
  ineffectiveness.
• structural disincentives for telling the truth,
• And yet, good information is absolutely critical
  in good governance.

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The promises of e-government

• China sees many of the same promises of
  e-government as other governments around the
  world.
• Linking to the citizen
• Providing citizens with important information
• Improving governmental processes

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Strengthening the government

• To strengthen the center
• To bring rationalization and normalization to
  citizen-gov interactions, where these are
  currently in disarray
• e-government shall help to transform the
  function of government, enhance its working
  efficiency and supervision effectiveness, and
  provide better services to citizens so as to
  adapt to the changes brought about by reform and
  opening-up and meet up with the newly-emerging
  requirements of modernization. Natl
  Informatization Steering group.
• Zhu Rongji to transform government in terms of
  management systems, management values, management
  patterns, and management methods

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Eliminating corruption

• High profile campaigns to eliminate corruption
  have been notoriously ineffective in eliminating
  a culture of corruption.
• Direct strategies of establishing reporting
  corruption abilities via egov.
• Indirect strategy is perhaps more effective, in
  that, it minimizes possibility of lower level
  deception.
• Golden tax project as an example of eliminating
  corruption in restaurants.
• Xinhua argues that cheating has declined, but is
  this evidence of effectiveness, or of finding
  ways around it?

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Removing ability to distort information

• Minimize the possibility of distortion of
  information up the hierarchy
• the pace of constructing an uncorrupted,
  diligent, practical and efficient government . .
  . so as to maintain the stability of economic and
  social development Natl Informatization
  Steering group
• Snellen (2003) argues that e-government
  dis-empowers street level bureaucrats, and
  takes over decision making powers
• Golden Sea Project to link up all information
  from ministries under central control, so that
  top decision makers have direct access to
  information.
• Examples include taxes, customs, etc

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The paradox of e-government

• Using technological means to address
  non-technological problems.
• Chinas governing problems are better understood
  as cultural and institutional.
• Using technological means to establish, rather
  than refine and improve, governing relations.
• Thus, untested assumptions built into the system.
• The architecture that has been designed gives
  tremendous oversight ability to the central
  authorities, but almost none to citizens.

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Conclusions

• Chinas relationship to the Internet is far more
  positive than normally assumed.
• Chinas Internet accompanies widespread social
  changes, but does not precipitate political
  unrest.
• Chinas Internet definitely links their citizens
  more closely with the outside world, but doesnt
  necessarily help the outside world better
  understand China.