Looking for Information on Korean Internet Development

September 4th, 2008

As many of you already know, there are areas where the development of the Internet in South Korea has been influential in China, especially online gaming, which was really born there. Compared to China today though, the Internet in South Korea has much deeper penetration and is much more pervasive than in China. For most South Koreans, it would be unthinkable to live without the Internet and their mobile phones. Penetration across generations is much higher than in China.

Part of this is because the South Korean government in the late nineties decided to open up a huge amount of bandwidth and make it available to all South Koreans. Compare that to the US, China and most other countries, where the amount of bandwidth is much lower.

When this started in the late nineties, the Internet was still considered a young person’s thing, and most adult South Koreans still did not trust it for content, advertising and information. This is no longer the case.

I am looking for information on:

  • What changes made the South Korean go from not trusting the Internet to gradually trusting the Internet? Were they laws, applications or events?
  • Were there certain laws, applications or events which made the attitudes of certain generations of South Koreans change? What were they?
  • Would any of these changes have been possible if the South Korean government did not open up bandwidth?
  • How has the Internet and cheap, high-availability broadband fundamentally changed the society?

Look forward to hearing from you.

Thank you.

The Value of Independent Statistics for Online Media in China

August 8th, 2008

Victor Koo, CEO of Youku, recently wrote an article, Internet Measurement in China: How to Get Out of the Dark Ages, where he highlighted the major challenge for Internet companies in China: the lack of reliable metrics for performance measurement.

In the article he talks about how even some VCs in China still rely on Alexa for very basic measurement stats, when in fact, Alexa is not considered reliable.

Many American service providers do not measure audiences from Internet cafes, which as I have pointed out, are a major source of traffic from China. Since American software companies are not familiar with the audience profiles of what is now the largest national audience in the world, they do not break out Internet cafes into a separate category, which underlines how American software providers are out of touch with this very important market. (This Internet cafe trend may change as broadband becomes more available in households, but it definitely should be counted as a major separate category in any report which claims to cover the Chinese market.)

The situation is not helped by government-supported “big picture” reports by CNNIC which give too broad numbers on a national basis and support a government agenda, but do not provide any business insights. They are great grist for press releases and the politically-charged Chinese and western media, but that is about the only value they have.

What Victor Koo does not mention is that the lack of reliable independent statistics has a very real debilitating effect on the healthy growth of the Internet as a sector in China, and the revenue outlook for Internet startups. This is because independent metrics, statistics, standards and definitions are requirements for the global media business. In order for media buyers to make good media buys for their advertising clients, they need standard definitions and metrics on the quantitative side so that they can make better overall qualitative recommendations and decisions.

It’s a testament to the robustness and attraction of China’s economy that the Internet has been able to grow as fast and as far as it has without these independent numbers and stats, but it is also a tragedy that many dollars have not made it to China because of the comparative opacity of the market.

If this systemic bottleneck problem can be addressed, the volume of ad money which would go to Chinese online publishers would go up dramatically.

My Wish List For The CNNIC Report

July 26th, 2008

The biannual China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) report covering the first half of 2008 has been released (in Chinese) and is now available. The Ogilvy China Digital Watch website has provided an excellent job of capturing the main points in English. The most salient point of the report is that China now has 253 million Internet users, pushing China into first place worldwide, surpassing the US.

The CNNIC is the main official source of information for the state of the Internet in China, and is the most frequently quoted report on China Internet statistics. For more detailed information, especially ecommerce numbers, etc., there are a number of market research firms in China which provide services, including custom reports for paying clients.

I would like see some changes and improvement to the CNNIC report. Here are some of them:

  1. Outline the methodology used. Explain how the data is collected and by what authorities. Also explain how the audience is chosen. Make the whole process transparent as possible.
  2. Show the questionnaire used, and let people provide feedback about what questions are used so that they can be improved in future versions of the report.
  3. Use the same questionnaire nationwide so that there is a level basis for comparison.
  4. Current data is weighed too much towards national and tier one cities in China. This information is too broad and not granular enough. Break out the information by province.
  5. Provide the names of the government officials who collect the data on the national, municipal and provincial levels along with their email contact information so that we know who is responsible for collecting what data on what level.
  6. Provide a forum so that these same people can answer questions about the CNNIC report and reply to suggestions. Engage the audience in a continuous dialogue to improve the CNNIC report.
  7. Keep the primary data in a data warehouse, and consider making it accessible to researchers so that they can write their own queries and generate reports for a one-time fee or on a long-term basis for a subscription fee.

Apple and China: The American Media Ignorance Continues

July 26th, 2008

Over the past year, the tone of coverage of many China-related topics in the US has improved. For the most part, writers covering China have tried to look past the generally-accepted stereotypes, and have tried to get a deeper understanding of what is going on in China.

But occasionally something finds its way through the cracks.

This article is really exemplary; it seems like the writer has taken all the stereotypes about Apple and China, and thrown them all together in one basket. Judging from the tone of the article, and what he professes to be truth, it seems like he has never set foot in China. Otherwise, how could be believe some of the things he writes?

Let’s take a look at some of the choice statements:

Apple has less than 8 percent market share in China for media players, and far less than 1 percent of either PC or cell phone market share.

Yes, so? I wonder if the writer has walked into any cafe in Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen, and looked around? Or has he taken any of the subways in any of those three cities and looked around for the signature white earbuds? The question should not be the percentage market share. It should be the trend, and whether it is tracking up or down.

Apple’s second biggest hit in China, the iPhone, isn’t authorized. One Chinese analyst estimates that some 1 million Apple iPhones are currently operating on just one Chinese carrier — China Mobile — with a smaller number on other carriers. Most Apple “Authorized Resellers” in China sell black-market iPhones, and many even offer illegal cracking services — a process that reportedly takes less time than activating an iPhone 3G in California.

Apple makes money off of every iPhone sold, whether it is through authorized or unauthorized channels. Sure, Apple would like to have a carrier agreement in China, but having a group of fans, even though it is relatively small percentage-wise, which is very enthusiastic about Apple products, is a good thing. Besides, there are a lot of people in China who pay even more for more expensive feature-packed mobile phones in China. In fact, the iPhone is not the most expensive phone in the market. Ask Nokia.

Apple succeeds because customers love the products and the brand. But in China, brands mean little to most potential customers, and hardware even less. Chinese consumers prize value above all.

This quote is a true gem and qualifies as one of the most ignorant sweeping statements about China for 2008, even though we are only halfway through the year. Obviously the writer has not been to China and walked in the downtown of any major city. Here is an article about the runup to the recent opening of the Sanlitun store in Beijing and another story about Chinese youth camping out in front of the Beijing Apple store, where they were behaving just like American Apple fans.
I guess that’s why there are no Mercedes Benzes, BMWs, and Chinese women don’t care about the labels they wear? Maybe he thinks that they still wear Mao suits?

The rest of the world’s love of the Apple brand has enabled Apple to get favorable terms with carriers around the world. But this hasn’t helped much in China. Apple initially demanded a big two-digit percentage of carriers’ wireless revenue as a condition for granting its coveted exclusivity deal, according to reports (one company says Apple demanded 30%). The Chinese carriers were apparently unimpressed by the value of Apple’s brand compared with the value to Apple of access to Chinese consumers. They appear to have forced Apple to drop its demand for any share of wireless revenues.

The reason Apple has not been able to get an agreement with China Mobile is because they are both big companies with very big egos who want to control everything. I would say that Apple and the carriers have trouble reaching an agreement because they are so much alike, and don’t believe in compromise.

One-party rule in China actually affects product quality. One example is that Apple will probably be required to disable the iPhone’s Wi-Fi feature in order to comply with the Communist Party’s strict Internet control and censorship rules.

The relationship between one-party rule and product quality is an arguable point. But if it is that simple, then why are ALL of Apple’s products made in China? As for the disabling of Wi-Fi on phones sold in China, that is a China Mobile requirement, not a State Council requirement. (If you think that the rulers of China don’t have better things to worry about than whether mobile phones in China have Wi-Fi functionality, you don’t know anything about the country and how it’s ruled.) Besides, with the recent re-arrangement of the Chinese telcos, it’s not as if China Mobile is able to control Wi-Fi as much as it would like.

China is number one in intellectual property theft

Apple’s whole business model is based on creating value through exquisite design, superior branding and the sale of creative intellectual property (IP) — then defending its rights against the IP thieves, pirates and counterfeiters.

How will this formula succeed if China doesn’t enforce intellectual property laws?

The music piracy rate in China is between 90 and 99 percent, depending on whom you ask. China is the global epicenter of intellectual property theft in general, and of Apple IP theft in particular — especially iPhones and iPods.

Fake iPhones, and phones that steal Apple branding; illegal iPhone unlocking services; trade in illegal movie and music files; all appear to be tolerated and even government-protected activities in China.

Oh yes, how can we talk about China without IP violations? Seriously though, this is an issue. The best way to fight IP though, is for a country to get more prosperous. As people become wealthier, they are more willing to spend money on software, music, etc. In China, it is also very important to explain the importance of IP to various government ministries, and even be flexible about how much you charge Chinese consumers. Many Chinese think that they should not have to pay as much for music as US consumers because they have a lower income and standard of living. Does that fit into any American companies’ equations? Up until four years ago, Microsoft had a very high level of illegally installed Windows licenses in China, and constantly lobbied with the US Congress to “punish” China. When Microsoft China changed tactics and chose to engage Chinese ministries, educate them, and lower the license fees (as China’s standard of living increased), first the ministries, then the schools, then the people started buying original software from Microsoft. Now Microsoft gets more revenue from China, and the relationship with the government is much less confrontational. Piracy of Microsoft software still exists, but again it’s about the trend, which is improving.

Steve Jobs is an exemplary business and marketing genius. But when it comes to learning about other markets, he is lazy. He would like nothing better than to set prices for all media products sold through iTunes himself, and he would like it to be the same all over the world. China is a major kink in his vision.

How many times has Bill Gates been to China? How many times has Steve Jobs been to China?

I rest my case.

Chinese Ecommerce And The Chinese Hockey Stick

July 18th, 2008

In an earlier post, I talked about a phenomenon called the Chinese hockey stick. The concept of the Chinese hockey stick is fairly simple: it takes a while for investment in a new sector to show results in China, but when it does, it takes off, going almost straight up like a hockey stick.

So far, the prevailing wisdom re ecommerce in China is that while the potential numbers are impressive, it’s going to be a while before the upside of the hockey stick becomes apparent. There are some reasons for this: low trust, fear of fraud, etc. So far, the only place where online commerce has performed well has been in online gaming with companies such as Shanda and Giant Interactive leading the way. The trouble with the demographics for online gamers is that it includes early adopters with low incomes who spend a considerable amount of time in China’s Internet cafes. These are people who are using the Internet for cheap entertainment, and are not likely to spend too much money on products sold in in-game ads.

Now, a new report released by the Research Institute Data Center of China Internet claims that online spending has increased to 37.5B US dollars for the first six months YOY, an increase of 58.2 percent over the same period in 2007. This is very good news, and suggests that we are beginning to see traction after many years of investment in the sector. In short, we are beginning to see the upside of the hockey stick, since according to the report, Chinese spend an average of 211.9 yuan on products/services on a monthly basis. If the trend continues there will be a double boost: the number of new spenders online will grow, and the monetary amounts spent by those already in will also go up.

This suggests that many upwardly-mobile Chinese are losing resistance to ecommerce and are overcoming fears to spending online. I believe that this represents the beginning of a secular uptrend for this sector. Within this field, companies which have a successful track record in fields such as Chinese online education will perform well. If Chinese consumers are convinced of the quality of these online companies’ products and services, it would be safe to assume that interactive advertising and Internet word of mouth will also gain greater traction.

China’s Telecom Shakeup And What It Means

May 28th, 2008

Several days ago, a different kind of earthquake happened in China in the telecoms field. Unlike the Sichuan earthquake which took so many lives and caused so much damage, this shakeup was not unexpected. It’s ramifications will be large, if not huge, and it’s worth going into some depth to get a deeper understanding of how this change will affect the development of mobile usage of the Internet in China.

Before leaving the Sichuan earthquake as a subject, I would like to point you to this excellent slideshow by CIC Data (h/t to Tangos Chan) which shows how China’s grassroots social media has helped in the disaster rescue and recovery process.

China’s New Telecom Landscape

The main points of the new joint interagency government announcement by the MII (Ministry of Information Industry), NDRC (National Development and Reform Commission) and Ministry of Finance (MOF) are phrased as an opinion and encouragement. (Note: When you get two government ministries and one super-ministry “encouraging” you this way, you do what you are encouraged to do, even if you are China Mobile and have the largest single-country number of subscribers in the world. After all, this is China, not the US, where big corporations tell Congress and the executive through lobbyists and lawyers what they want and are willing to do, and then sell it to the American people through the media as “being in the best interests of the people”.)

The main points are:

  • China Telecom is “encouraged” to acquire the CDMA business of China Unicom
  • China Unicom and China Netcom are encouraged to merge
  • The basic telecom service of China Satellite should be merged into China Telecom
  • China Tietong (part of the railways infrastructure and the third fixed line operator after China Unicom and China Netcom) is to become a wholly-owned subsidiary of China Mobile

All six operators (China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, China Netcom, China Satellite and China Tietong) have been asked to separately submit their implementation plans to the relevant ministries where they will be encouraged (again) to reconcile their different plans and agree on a schedule. Once this is completed, the Chinese government will then announce the granting of the three 3G licenses and which operators they will go to.

Following the reorganization, there will be three companies left, which meshes perfectly with the number of 3G licenses to be granted by the government. There will be one license granted for each of the new 3G technologies: TD-SCDMA (China’s natively-developed standard), CDMA2000 and WCDMA. Current opinion is that China Mobile will get the TD-SCDMA license, with China Unicom and China Telecom getting the other two foreign technology licenses.

Reaction

The immediate reaction on the HKSE, where China Mobile, China Unicom, China Netcom and China Telecom are listed was unfavorable to China Mobile, the giant in the mobile sector in China. Goldman Sachs issued a sell rating on China Mobile.

You can bet that the six companies will be burning the midnight oil to complete and submit their implementation plans so that they can get the 3G licenses as soon as possible, which should be sometime within the next 3-6 months. Most likely it will not happen before the Beijing Olympics, even though the network infrastructure is there, simply because there is a lot of training and testing to be done.

My Take

This change marks the end of the first stage of the rollout of mobile phone services in China. While China has the largest single-country number of mobile subscribers, most people use mobile overwhelmingly only for voice and SMS services. From a business standpoint, China’s telecom industry has been in a wait-and-see mode for the past two years.

This second generation, or next stage of mobile services will be about a renewed rollout and introduction of more data services, and the more important metric for the operators will be ARPU (average revenue per user) instead of number of subscribers. So please, let’s stop talking about number of subscribers, and let’s talk about ARPU instead from now on.

ARPU will be the real metric to measure the performance of the three operators. I say “It’s about time!”

This change opens crack and opportunities for investment and new players, and gives more choices to Chinese consumers. China Mobile, the industry leader in mobile services, has continued to expand the number of subscribers, having the world’s largest number of subscribers in one country, with more than 500M. China Unicom has been playing catchup because it started as a CDMA service provider (as opposed to China Mobile’s GSM) and although it also later entered the GSM field. The small independent mobile operators such as Tom.com, Linktone and KongZhong have all languished because China Mobile was seen as the dominant player which wanted to completely dominate the platform and application-level services. While it would be a real challenge for those companies to claw their way back to health, venture capital and private equity firms can now look more favorably at the next generation of mobile services, which will no longer be as dependent on a single mobile provider, since there are now three choices available, and they will differentiate on the basis of how they cooperate with service providers and services they offer to Chinese consumers.

In order for Chinese startups to survive and prosper, they will increasingly differentiate themselves on their business and execution skills instead of just technology. Good management will be key.

It goes without saying that Apple’s iPhone will be the most high-profile beneficiary of the change, since it will have two other mobile operators to talk to besides just China Mobile. Instead of just having a loyal base of hacked iPhone users in China, Apple will have a chance to test its vision of the mobile Internet with Chinese users.

The major handset makers such as Nokia, Sony-Ericsson and Samsung will also want to test their application services among Chinese users, and will have greater chance of reaching them.

There are many opportunities in search and display advertising, and subscription-based services. Most of these opportunities are not infrastructure-related, but service- and tool-related. I will talk about some of these opportunities in the future.

While this is a short-term setback for China Mobile, it will ultimately help the company because instead of becoming a lazy monopolist offering bad services, it will have to compete on service. This will make the company more competitive when China starts planning seriously for 4G.

I give the plan an enthusiastic “thumbs-up”!

This is a good example of central planning working to help competitiveness, and in favor of consumers.

It would be nice if, ahem, other countries with large consumer markets, took a closer look at this move and how it helps competitiveness.

Let’s See How Many Ways We Can Get This Wrong

May 19th, 2008

Following the Sichuan Wenchuan earthquake, it has been very interesting to watch how the Chinese government and people have reacted, and how many western observers have reacted. For the first time in Chinese history, the Chinese government has ordered that Chinese flags have to be lowered to half-staff, for three days from May 19-21. What is most significant, is that this is the first time that the flag has been lowered for ordinary civilians in Chinese history, ever.

China has always had a larger population than other countries, and the country has had very bloody periods in its history. Some 20M Chinese were killed in the 19th century during a civil war, the Taiping Rebellion, and possibly another 20M were killed in WWII, when Japan invaded China. Millions also died because of bad political policy decisions in the 1950s and 1960s, which reached their culmination in the Cultural Revolution.

Unlike in Washington DC, where you can find war monuments to Americans killed in WWII, the Korean War and the Vietnam War, there are no war memorials to Chinese soldiers or civilians killed in these wars, or to any who died as a result of bad government policy decisions. For the most part, they have just become unknown individuals who died and are now forgotten.

This is why the decision to lower the Chinese flag for ordinary civilians is so different and marks a break with the past. For the first time in its history, the Chinese government is saying that it is OK to mourn for ordinary civilians. This did not happen during the Tangshan earthquake, which killed some 450,000 civilians in 1976, or in 1989, or even so much during the SARS crisis of 2003.

For the first time, a Chinese government has embraced the idea that any human life, even that of ordinary human lives, has value. Actually, this is a very western concept, and is a very important step on the road to democracy. Is this not a valuable change in China’s reforms and opening up? This will make it that much more difficult for any Chinese government to dismiss the value of any Chinese lives which are lost in the future, whether they are due to natural disaster, or war, or for political reasons.

The Chinese government and party have activated their media, and issued an edict that entertainment websites should shut down over the next three days, entertainment programming should be curtailed, along with three minutes of mourning each day.

This move immediately attracted strong criticism from many members of the Twitterati in the US who, to put it frankly, have embarrassingly little understanding of China, and continue to see China in over-simplified black and white stereotypes, as you can see in this feed from Robert Scoble’s Friendfeed account.

When I think that the people who have Friendfeed accounts represent smart, well-educated, tech-savvy people, and they say these things, I just get depressed. The stereotypes and distrust of China just run so deep.

I get a very different view simply because I read Chinese, and I know what many Chinese say and think on the Internet, where people have much more latitude to express themselves than on TV and the print media. Sure, the government has an agenda and is spinning and exploiting this to make themselves look good. And in some ways, they are doing it in a clumsy way. But the government is now accountable to protect the lives of ordinary Chinese.

After 9/11, the US government claimed all kinds of special powers, including surveillance wiretaps, the need to kidnap and torture terror suspects, and the need to invade Iraq because the government of Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and the government needed to keep these weapons from falling into the hands of terrorists. If there is one thing we can learn from all tragedies, it is that all governments have agendas, and they will exploit every opportunity to push their agendas in the event of a tragedy.

But it does not mean that the original intent should be completely dismissed out of hand as the actions of a dictatorial regime.

Maybe I’m asking too much, but can some people, Americans especially, try to look at China through the eyes of the Chinese, and not always try to scare and frighten other Americans into asking what the “rise” of China means to the US and the west? Is it too much to think or ask that maybe, just maybe, Chinese don’t spend everyday plotting how to steal their jobs and turn America into a third-world economy? And that maybe, they are just ordinary people who are trying to get along in life, and raise their child and get him/her in a good school, and buy a house? And that the government is far from perfect, but it has allowed ordinary Chinese to have a much better standard of living than before, and is now, for the first time, beginning to care for and mourn the loss of ordinary civilian lives?

There’s a very simple rule: If you reach out and treat people like friends, they tend to act like friends, and if you treat them suspiciously, they become enemies.

In the beginning, it’s hard to reach out and trust people you don’t know well as friends because they seem so foreign and different, but it’s always works out better in the end.

UPDATE 5/20/08: I was interviewed by Christine Lu of China Business Network about this article and you can read that interview here. This article is also referenced in a blog article for the Guardian (UK).
EastSouthNorthWest has an article about how the Central Publicity Department, which is a Chinese government and party organ in charge of making sure that the official line is carried in the Chinese media, dealt with the earthquake crisis.

The Chinese BBS As Town Square

May 12th, 2008

Chang-Won Kim, who publishes the Web 2.0 Asia blog, recently commented on my article about China’s BBSes, and questioned whether the BBS would indeed become the future of social media in China.

Here is what Mr. Kim says:

In short, the article said:
Much of Chinese internet = BBS
Often the Chinese “group thoughts/activities”, such as the recent (rather unfortunate) “Angry Chinese” incidents, get organized on these BBSes
Chinese’ love of BBS might have come from distrust of traditional media
Outsiders have not figured this out
But the very last part of the article kind of made me scratch my head:
So, BBSes are the real social media marketing tool, and as usual, the Chinese are ahead of everyone else, but just haven’t figured out that part themselves. While the west talks about social media and Web 2.0, China has had a version of it for the past ten years. It may not be pretty, but it works.

Does the fact that BBS is so popular in China today mean a) BBS is the right platform for social media and b) BBS will remain as popular in China for the coming years? I’m not very sure about that, at least using the Korean market as a “canary in coal mine” example.

a) Is BBS the right platform for social media?

If we define “social media” as the collection of unique, diversified individual voices, I don’t think BBS is the optimal platform for social media activities – on the contrary, BBSes can often lead to group thoughts and monoculture, where the agenda is largely driven by big voices.

b) Will BBS remain popular in China for the coming years?

In Korea, we have a popular BBS/forum service in “Daum Cafe”. Three or four years ago, Daum cafe was arguably THE most popular service for Korean netizens. Today, Daum Cafes are still doing pretty okay I guess, but are definitely not the most popular daily web destination as they once used to be. Over the last several years, Daum Cafe has given much way first to minihompies, and later to blogs.

The problem of Daum Cafe as a BBS-type service was that it wasn’t as much focusing on individuals. On BBSes and forums, usually it’s difficult to keep track of the messages users left on different spaces and the subsequent comments left by other users. It’s also difficult to put one’s personal identity to the page that collects all his postings (“My page”), just like a contributor’s personal page on Wikipedia is rarely visited (many people don’t even know such pages exist). People like group activities too, but basically people are individualistic. Users want to have “their own site” where they have all their content under a specific URL which they can use as personal brands.

I would like to stress that I don’t think of the BBS as the future of social media, I can’t see that far ahead. But along with IM clients like QQ and MSN, it certainly does bring in the highest amount of traffic volume on the Internet in China. And regrettably, it is, for the most part, neglected by marketers and journalists for gathering information on what Chinese are thinking and talking about.

Mr. Kim freely admits to using the Korean market as a reference point for his conjecture about how the Chinese market may develop, talking first about how Daum was very popular as a BBS in Korea several years ago, but has now fallen off in popularity. He seems to suggest that the popularity of BBSes will eventually fall off in China; it’s just that no one quite knows what will replace it. He also suggests that BBSes are subject to “groupthink” much more than blogs, which are more about individual expression. As Chinese society becomes more open and individualistic, he suggests, then the need for BBSes will gradually fade.

I would beg to differ.

I think of BBSes as the electronic equivalent of the town square. The town square is always the place where people would go to gossip, share information, and shop. This is what most Chinese do when they go to the BBS. Sometimes they are looking for specific information about buying a home or a car, there are BBSes for this. Other times they are looking to complain about something unfair happening to them, there are BBSes for this. And so forth and so on.

Then sometimes, the BBS is the place where they turn to when they are unhappy with something, such as the recent issues with the Olympic torch relay and Tibet demonstrations in the west. When this happens, the BBS is where they turn to in order to vent their personal feelings because, for the most part, there is less Chinese government influence in the private BBSes and they can speak and organize more freely. When this happens the BBSes become the digital Tiananmen Square, places where the Chinese gathered to show their displeasure on two occasions in the 70s and 80s.

Now, instead of going to Tiananmen Square, they go to their BBSes.

China now has the largest number of blogs in the world, and blogs are the venue for personal expression. With more than 25M Chinese blogs, they are not short of opportunities for personal expression. I tend to think of social networks like Facebook and Xiaonei as social networks for people who want to meet others, but don’t have enough to say to maintain a blog. Instead, they provide a wealth of information about themselves, hoping to link up with others who may find them interesting and appealing, and to find others with shared interests.

Mr. Kim seems to suggest that since South Korea is more developed and more open as a society than China, the Chinese Internet will eventually follow developments in South Korea. While China has closely followed some South Korean trends such as online gaming and in mobile devices, there are some areas where it is still very different.

For one thing, South Koreans seem much more willing to reveal their true names and identities online than Chinese. Cyworld, a fantasy world where virtual tools can be made and sold, was a huge success in South Korea, but it failed miserably in China.

In every case, the Internet closely mirrors the values of a society, and the choices it makes. The choices made by Chinese are still very different from South Koreans. It remains to be seen whether they will more closely resemble each other, or grow further apart. I suspect that they will grow further apart as their societies develop differently.

Criticizing “China” Versus Being Critical About China

May 7th, 2008

One of the great challenges in any relationship is about establishing the right tone of dialogue. Should it be friendly, adversarial, competitive, or something else? Can the two parties be constructively critical, or will they just be critical? Can they listen to each other without becoming overly offensive and/or defensive?

Just about the only thing more difficult than setting the right tone of dialogue, is setting a new tone for a new conversation when the old tone of dialogue no longer works, if only because the underlying dynamics has changed. If there was one thing which came clear through my article criticizing the Economist’s Angry Chinese article, it was that this was something which needed to be examined more closely and discussed more openly, if only because the article attracted a large number of readers and comments (34 at the time of writing).

At the heart of the problem is how to break through outdated stereotypes about China. I, for one, believe that its time to get past criticizing “China” and to start being critical about China. Many western media experts and journalists tend to think that Chinese need to be separated from the Chinese government, and become more outspoken about the shortcomings of the Chinese government, believing that only when this happens, will China become a more open society. If they speak out in support of Chinese government policy over Tibet for example, they are quickly dismissed as government-supported actions, or being not aware of Chinese government-sanctioned policies in Tibet. In fact, it is far more likely that the positions of most of the Chinese population will harden in the face of criticism from the west and the western media. Instead of making it easier to reach a compromise, it actually makes it more difficult.

The fact is that the official Chinese media, even though it is state-controlled and monitored, frequently is very open in its criticisms of some government policies. There is a huge number of magazines and newspapers, and all of them now have to attract readers in order to justify their existence as businesses. If you are not reading it already, you should read Danwei just to get an idea of how much Chinese society has changed. Just keep in mind that what Danwei is able to cover is just a small snapshot of what is happening in modern Chinese society.

This is not to say you can say anything in the Chinese press. There are limits, and the Chinese frequently talk about “stepping on the red line” for violating government ground rules. Part of the role of those working in the media is to know exactly where that red line is, because it sometimes moves.

A very interesting development is the rise of the Chinese Internet, as increasingly large portions of the population depend on it for information, trusting it more than the traditional media. Sometimes this means that some of the wildest rumors spread much faster in China than in the west. It is possible to make the case that there is free speech in China, and that it exists in parts of the Internet. But often this free speech is closer to the analogy of the man who falsely shouts “fire” in a packed movie theater. This kind of free speech is unfortunately, more than unproductive, and is sometimes used to whip people into a frenzy. This happened with recent coverage of western media coverage of the Tibetan situation. When the Chinese became angry, many in the western media were taken aback at the scale of the reaction.

Part of this can be ascribed to the power of the Internet and mobile networks in spreading information and rumors.

Welcome to the power of the Chinese Internet.

The problem many western editors make is that they seem to want Chinese to cross the red line, then when it happens, they can use hold it high as an example of how authoritarian China is. This is an overly simplistic view of Chinese society which tries to reduce everything to black and white terms. In an increasingly complicated world, it’s not enough to reduce important relationships to overly simplistic terms, this will only make things worse and set the stage for future misunderstandings which may have tragic consequences for everyone.

Fortunately, there is some dialogue going on, and there are some very smart people who are devoting themselves to discussing these very real and important issues, and are setting the groundwork for a new and more constructive dialogue.

On the English-language side, some of the more interesting websites are:

  • EastSouthWestNorth
  • Danwei(for coverage of the contemporary Chinese media scene, complete with constant updates on moving red lines)
  • The China Business Network(mainly covers business but also includes cultural issues
  • James Fallows (I also enjoy his coverage of technology
  • The Washington Note(This website proves that something intelligent can come from the global capital of spin

    • If you want to keep on top of developments in China, these sites will keep you informed.

    And of course, there is the China Vortex. You are always welcome here.