山寨金葛/Ge Jin's Miu Log

Squeezed Middle Class in China

How strong is China's middle class? This is a topic in vogue inside and outside of China these days. On one hand, there are optimists who believe the increasing consumption power of China's middle class will keep propelling China's economic growth till it becomes a super power, some even think that China's middle class will be a force that facilitates the political reform of China. On the other hand, the pessimists are saying that middle class income will diminish along with the hard landing of China's economy and middle class discontent may even breed social instability. Even my friends and I, considering ourselves part of China's middle class, often swing between extreme optimism and pessimism about the outlook of our career, life quality and the stability of Chinese society. As a media researcher, I have also been tracking what people say about China's middle class on social media, again I found a lot of confusion and anxiety.

What does being middle class mean in China?

There is no clear-cut definition of Chinese middle class. Various institutions, from the Chinese government to the World Bank to market research firms have proposed different standards of middle class in China, but the meaning of middle class is multi-layered to the public. The most commonly used criteria is income, for example, Goldman Sachs in one of its reports set the bar for Chinese middle class at 9000 USD per year, while in 2005 an official report from the Chinese government said that anyone making 60,000 yuan to 500,000 yuan per year should be considered middle class (By either standard, less than 10 percent of the Chinese population fit in). But in my research I find most people think being middle class means much more than a certain level of income. Unfortunately many of the Chinese people who meet the income criteria don’t think of themselves as middle class, because they feel that the burdens of life are so heavy that they are still surviving rather than enjoying life, they lack sense of security and they are pessimistic about upward social mobility in our society.

The major concerns of Chinese Middle Class:

First of all, living cost is rising fast in China. In big cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, typical middle class consumer products, from Starbucks coffee to Levis Jeans to iPad, are usually at least 30% more expensive than those in the US. Even IMAX movie tickets are about the same as those in the US. So obviously not many Chinese can afford the Western-standard middle class life style, as the average income of Chinese white-collar workers is only one sixth of that of their American peers.

Enough has been said about the high prices of apartments in China's big cities. In my city Shanghai, an average apartment costs more than 20,000 yuan per square meter (the downtown area costs several times more), while an average white-collar worker here makes less than 10,000 yuan a month. But not many people can choose not buy an apartment. As I have written before, home ownership is not only the primary store of wealth, but also a spiritual needs, an ends in itself and the ultimate pursuit in today’s Chinese society. Owning an apartment, however tiny, is the foundation of love and the premise of marriage. Disputes over property are also breaking up many relationships and families. For Chinese young people, choosing not to buy an apartment involves being seen as a loser, an untrustworthy, unstable and even unloved person.

But once you buy an apartment, you and even your whole family probably will become "the slave of the apartment". With all your savings gone and heavy loans to pay back every month, you can hardly afford to spend or play.

What makes you feel worse is the perception that even if you work hard and keep improving yourself, you will have little chance to move upwards. That is the sentiment I often observe in many Chinese young people. They call this the age of "father competition" (拼爹), meaning that only those from the right families can succeed. I don't think it's too pessimistic to say that the uninhibited marriage between power and wealth has almost eliminated fair competition in our society, for example, many companies I know prefer to hire children of government officials, you know why.

Sometimes the basic sense of security is missing even in the young professionals of China. Most of my peers are now in their thirties and already have a good career, financially they are much more secure than the new college graduates who can hardly find jobs, but they are worried about health care and the care-taking cost of their aging parents. The parents of us "single child generation" are getting old, in a few years most of them will retire, that means each young couple of "single child generation" will have to take care of four parents. With the miserable health care and social safety net in China, how dare the young middle class consume rather than save?

Reasons to be Optimistic

The main reason that I still see hope of a growing Chinese middle class is that the conditions cannot get any worse. Consumption's share in China's GDP has been decreasing in the past ten years, it is as low as 35% right now (while in the US it is around 70%). Wage's share in GDP has also been decreasing in the past ten years, it is standing at around 40%, much lower than the 50% 10 years ago. These things cannot go any lower.

The wealth and power of China's middle class might not have increased as that of the oligarchy and crony capitalists, but their knowledge and skills have increased tremendously thanks to their integration into the global workforce and new sources of information online. I don't see any skill gap between China's young professionals and their Western peers, yes sometimes they don't seem very creative, but it's usually due to the environment rather than their lack of creativity. Precisely because I observe how China's middle class struggled in an extremely extractive economic system in the past several years, I'm optimistic about their ability to adapt to the tough years ahead and make things better.

 

Shanzhai State of Mind

The literal meaning of Shanzhai (山寨) in Chinese is "stockade village on the mountain", many factories of Shanzhai products indeed started as small underground workshops in marginalized areas. But Shanzhai has evolved from the synonym of low quality copycat to a mode of production so efficient that even the global tech giants have to take it seriously. Culturally Shanzhai is no longer just a symbol of the inferior and laughable, it often refers to anti-establishment parody, creative remix, sometimes even the “Ugly Duckling".

Recently I came across an article reporting that the best selling phone in India is actually a Chinese Shanzhai brand called GFIVE (基伍). I had no idea that the "stockade village on the mountain" has gone so global! According to this article, in 2010 GFIVE has a 21% market share in India, selling around 35million phones a year. The company that has the second largest market share in India is Nokia, but it only has 13%.

One of GFIVE's biggest hits in India and in the Middle East is a phone that features super-sized speakers. I was quite impressed by the story of how Mr. Zhang Wenxue's (张文学), the founder of GFIVE, came up with this idea of "phone+large speakers", no matter it is true or not. According to Zhang, when he was doing research in Dubai, he joined the local's barbecue parties in the desert, but he observed there was no good device that can play music for the parties in the desert where an electricity outlet is hard to find. That was where Zhang got his inspiration. GFIVE is a good example of Shanzhai manufacturers, who are known for their quick response to local demands and the diverse line-up of their products. But this story also reminded me that the Shanzhai phone is more a toy than a tool for its users.

Some of my lawyer friends still use Nokia and Blackberry because they need to make calls and check emails. But for the working class young people I interviewed, phones are more often used for text messages and QQ. Besides, the mobile phone is probably the only toy that they can afford to carry and play in their busy and fluid lives. They also want to appear cool and fun in front of their friends, that is why phones like the following have became legends:

I know such phones seem a little silly, but their fans are certainly aware of it. These phones are called jiong/囧 phones: phones that cause “mixed feeling” in people. And in reviews they are often associated with the comic style of Stephen Chou （周星驰), the king of parody and spoof in Chinese cinema.

Certainly not all the irony of Shanzhai phones is intentional. In those wicked TV commercials for Shanzhai phones, sellers are seriously trying to mislead people when they throw the phone hard onto the ground or drive trucks over it to prove its tenacity.  But the whole trample-your-phone gig is now a favorite move in all the theaters of the absurd online and offline.

The Shanzhai producers often confuse originality with ever more excessive functions, like cameras, flashlights, multiple batteries or sim cards, but when this excess is pushed to such an extreme, it is again great material for humor. Look at these fictional Shanzhai phones that netizens made up:

The term Shanzhai is used to describe not only products but also cultural content. Now parodies, spoofs and mischiefs are also called Shanzhai. Some manufacturers have already realized that such cultural association is actually a good way to distinguish themselves, which even give them some edge over the established brands. So here is a Shanzhai phone’s ad slogan:"You have to sell your kidney to get an iPhone? You can get our phone by being a prostitute just once". (Referring to the true story that a young man sold his kidney to buy an iPhone. Being a prostitute? For each set of sexual service, sex workers in China typically earn 500 yuan, the price of many Shanzhai phones).

Shanzhai, stockade village on the mountain, actually has another layer of meaning in Chinese literature. It is where the heroic outlaws in ancient China lived, where the Chinese "Robin Hoods" had their adventure and fun. I know I must be over-romanticizing the culture of Shanzhai. But I am in the Shanzhai state of mind right now, I cannot help fancying a phone that can run Symbian, Windows, IOS, android and porn all at the same time!

 

The IPO Farce of People's Daily: Washing People's Brain with People's Money

The website of People's Daily, the mouthpiece of the CCP, is now a listed company in the Shanghai Stock Exchange. The company raised 1.4 billion yuan (US$222.2 million) in its IPO, nearly three times the amount it hoped for. On the first day of its trading, its stock price surged 76%. Before People's Daily's IPO, some pro-democracy activists said that no citizen would buy the stock of a propaganda machine whose profit comes solely from government subsidy. But they couldn't be more wrong.

Hu Xijin (胡锡进), the Chief Editor of Global Times and a shareholder of People's Daily, proclaimed victoriously, "The strong performance of People's Daily on the stock market clearly showed that the majority of Chinese people support our political system. People have voted with their own money." Meanwhile, pro-democracy blogger Wu Yue San Ke (五岳散客) sadly reflected: "In our society most people are still willing to exchange democracy for monetary gains."

I do find the retail investors’ enthusiasm over People's Daily unnerving, only because it confirms my pessimistic view that many people are not against a repressive system as long as they have a chance to join the repressor side. But from an investor's perspective, People's Daily's success is no surprise. The single most important lesson Chinese investors learned in the past several years is that you have to "Follow the Government". People are buying People's Daily only because they believe the government will not let it fail even if it means showering taxpayer money on it.

A Webpage of People.com.cn

Here are some facts about the website of People's Daily that have been discovered by netizens so far:

• It has certain monopolistic advantages in the heavily controlled news industry. For example, a Chinese journalist can only be acknowledged as a "professional journalist" after they received a "journalist license" from the government. Any journalistic investigation might be considered illegal if the journalist does not have the "journalist license". None of the other Internet news portal has any journalist licenses, while People's Daily has more than 120 ones.
• The other Internet news portals, from Sina, Sohu to Tencent, are required to buy and publish news from People's Daily. How many companies have such power over their competitors?
• The biggest clients of People's Daily are all government institutions who are not price sensitive at all.
• It can generate profit even without income. For example, the People's Search Engine, which is set up to compete with Google, has not been monetized at all, but already has more than 30 million yuan profit magically showing up in its book.
• It plans to spend part of the money it raised on office equipment, namely iPhones and iPads, at the price of 10000 yuan each, several times the market price.

The successful IPO of the website of People's Daily is a testament to the success of state capitalism in China. The bureaucrats working for People's Daily must be celebrating: Who said the Internet or the market will undermine state authority? Now we have more money to buy luxury goods such as iPhones and LV or to fly first class to the US for business tour. And if we have some money left, we can spend it on educating people that democratic values are just Western imperialist ideology.

Related article: Red Pad, a Pad Tailor-Made for Government Officials

 

 

Squeezed Middle Class in China

I wrote an article for China Economic Review's March issue on China's income tax reform. In the article I emphasized that the voices of middle class discontent on the Internet have led to some efforts by the government to alleviate the tax burden of the middle class and improve the transparency of how taxpayer money is spent. But I increasingly feel that maybe I have over-estimated the power of the middle class in China. More and more evidence is showing that China is a very polarized countries, with over 80% of the total wealth concentrated in the hands of the top 10%, and the middle class is actually very small since the majority of people remain in the low income class. That helps to explain why luxury brands from BMW to LV are doing well here while overall the share of consumption in GDP remains unprecedentedly low.

In my article on income tax, I left out some crucial numbers because I didn't know what to make of them at that time. According to our Ministry of Finance, when the threshold of taxable income was raised from 2500 yuan per month to 3500 yuan per month, the number of people who have to pay income tax was reduced from 84 million to 24 million. I was shocked by that number, so we only have 24 million wage earners who make over 3500 yuan (around 558 USD) a month? And 60 million people who we used to consider middle class are only making 2500-3500 yuan a month, which can barely pay for basic living needs in major cities? Of course this number does not tell us how much capital income and grey income that rich people are getting, but it is a sobering fact for those who are counting on the ever-growing demands of China's new middle class.

How much influence do the middle class have on policy makers? I am becoming less and less optimistic. As Bloomberg pointed out during this year's National People's Congress Meeting, the so-called people's national congress is made up of billionaires whose wealth"make capital hill look like pauper". Only in a system of state capitalism can you see such a marriage of capital power and political power. And you expect these billionaires to represent the voices of the middle class?

Water Army, Your Personal Online Mercenary

The water army refers to paid posters who can be hired to flood a web space with articles, comments or links that their clients desire. It is estimated that there are hundreds of thousands people in China who are making money as soldiers of the water army. They are usually paid under 50 cents a post (yes less than the government sponsored 50-cent party), and they can be college students, housewives or migrant workers hanging out at Internet cafes. They are usually hired and organized by "Internet PR companies" that bring them assignment from clients, the PR companies usually get 60% of the client's payment while they only get 40%.

Water Army Company (Courtesy of shuijunshiwan.com)

The services that the water army offer include: distorting the result of online polls, increase your followers on your microblog, pump up your posts in online forums, increase the hits of your video shared online, and even increase the download record of your products in App store or iTunes store.

Water Army Services (Courtesy of shuijunshiwan.com)

In my research I talked with many "soldiers" of the water army. Here are somethings I took note of:

• Although they are often asked to just copy and paste what is assigned to them, they cannot help think about what they are posting. Sometimes if it is something that conflict with their own values, such as ads of fake drug or financial scams or libel against an innocent person, they often struggle with the dilemma between fulfilling their job like a digital robot and acting according to their own feelings.
• To enter different websites, they need to created multiple online IDs. Sometimes they take these online IDs as simple masks, which embolden them to do things that they wouldn't dare to do under their real name. But some develop a relationship with the fabricated identities, particularly if it is in a forum with personal interactions, they would feel bad if their job assignment leads to the notoriety of their IDs.
• They often need to paste hundreds of posts a day, which left them no time for real life interactions. Working all day on the Internet, and often not able to explain to their family or friends what their job is, made many of them feel detached from the real world. Sometimes they even see themselves as outsiders of the society. This is very common among all kinds of cyber workers I interviewed.
• They still would like to be a little creative in their online work. For example, a water-army soldier once told me that he like to use many web slangs in his posts, and sometimes his clients like it, because it will make his posts seem more real.
• The fact that they are being paid for posting online does change their experience of participating in online discussions. Many of them told me that they are now more skeptical of what people say on the Internet, because they know how many water armies are out there, and they tend to think people are more vulnerable on the Internet than they realize. But they are not entirely cynical about the Internet, most of them still enjoy all kinds of online interactions and often find the job of paid posting a better choice than other alternatives they have.

Star Microblogger Making Impact and Money on Weibo

Although Sina Weibo （微博）, China's top microblog network, is still not making any profit, the trend setters who have a large number of followers on Weibo already found some ways to monetize their online influence. Many celebrities on Weibo, from film stars to athletes to public intellectuals who already had many fans before they started microblogging, find Weibo a powerful site for self-promotion; but I am mainly studying the people whose social capital mostly comes from their work of microblogging itself.

My favorite example is Lao Rong (老榕), an experienced writer and Internet entrepreneur who has been active in China's online forums, e-commerce sites and blogosphere since the late 90s. But what made him a superstar of microblogging in 2011 was his live reports on the Libya revolution. During the Libya revolution, Chinese netizens found that the stories they got from official media such as CCTV or Global Times were quite different from those from International news websites, and many of them were curious about what was really going on. Lao Rong actually went to Libya on his own expense as a citizen journalist and immersed himself in the rebelling Libyans in Benghazi. Netizens found the videos, photos and first-hand account on Lao Rong's microblog much more trustworthy and lively than the reports from tradition media. So more than 3 million people started to follow Lao Rong on Sina Weibo.

Now Lao Rong is writing about the Syria crisis, but he is also making his microblog into a site of e-commerce. He is an expert of jade, so he posts pictures of jade collectibles and promote them to his followers. Since the value of a piece of jade is very difficult to determine even if it's closely examined by an expert, only the mutual trust between Lao Rong and his virtual followers, which Lao Rong earned through his citizen journalism, can make it possible to trade jade on microblog. Lao Rong is also running a social enterprise, through which he helps poor communities in Xinjiang Uighur area to sell their agricultural products to residents in big cities. Without the promotion on his microblog, these agricultural products would have been left rotten in the field without ever reaching the urban customers.

But you don't have to talk about international politics to become a star on Weibo; a microblog account named "Too Much Laughter will Get You Pregnant" (笑多了会怀孕）won close to 2 million followers by diligently aggregate and repost the most popular jokes, parodies, and tabloids on the Chinese Internet constantly. It introduces itself as a curator of erotic, cold, spicy and warm-hearted jokes. Meanwhile, it sends an open invitation to advertisers who are interested in purchasing promotional tweets from it. So every once a while on this microblog, in the mix of funny pictures and witty sayings, you would find a tweet giving out a coupon or promoting a product. 

Sina Weibo, despite of its 250 million registered users and its unique social influence compared to traditional media constrained by censorship, is struggling to find ways to make profit itself. Naturally it is trying to integrate the e-commerce model of Lao Rong and the advertising model of "Too Much Laughter" into its system. Sina proposed a plan to build a platform for advertisers and star microbloggers to match each other, then advertisers can purchase spaces at the main pages of the desired microblogs, and Sina will split the advertising fee with the microbloggers. Sina even suggested that the virtual currency it invented for the Weibo community, sina weibi(微币), should be used to facilitate this trade.

Wang Ran （王冉），a venture capitalist and an influential microblogger who has more than 1 million followers on Weibo, was excited about the idea and gave the following suggestion to Sina about the advertisement trading platform: “Advertisers should have multiple choices. They can choose to work with the microblogs that get millions of hits or they can choose a specific type of microblog. As a microblogger, I should also be able to choose from all the requests from different advertisers. If an advertiser only cares about the number of hits, then Sina can determine the rate. But if an advertiser is looking for a microblogger with a specific style or fan base, then Sina should give room to the free negotiation between the advertiser and the microblogger. "

Cloud Computing Turned into Real Estate Business

There have been several news reports this year that suggest cloud computing centers in China are turning into real estate development projects: local governments and financial investors used the concept to reclaim large pieces of land at low cost, obtain low-interest loans from banks and apply for government subsidy, before they have any plan for software or application. Even for a cynic like me, this sounds too bad to be true, but recently I happened to see some documents from the Chongqing government that aim to invite financial investors for its ambitious 10-square-kilometer Two River Cloud Computing Zone, and these documents appear to be invitation for financial speculation rather than technological innovation.

The first thing people should know about cloud computing in china is that it is again driven by state capitalism. Once the technocratic officials of China become aware of the concept of cloud computing, they immediately see the potential of applying their magic formula of "fixed asset investment+government subsidy+cheap loan" on it, because after all cloud computing does involve some large physical infrastructure. The story is quite similar to what happened to the concept of "Internet of Things".

In April 2011, the government of Chongqing became the first to announce its plan to invest 40 billion yuan on a cloud computing center that will be the largest in Asia. The plan is called “Yun Duan” (Top of Cloud). Then Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen and Guangzhou all followed suit. Shanghai plans to build a “Asia Pacific Cloud Computing Center”,  its plan is called “Yun Hai” (Ocean of Cloud), Beijing has a plan called “Xiang Yun” (Cloud of Blessing), Shenzhen has a plan called “Kun Yun” (Cloud of Flying Fish), Guangzhou has a plan called “Tian Yun” (Cloud of Sky), Ningbo has “Xing Yun” (Galaxy Cloud), Wuxi has “Yun Gu” (Cloud Valley), Hangzhou has “Yun Chao Shi” (Cloud Supermarket) ......

According to a report from China High Tech Herald, even poor cities like Lanzhou and Langfang joined the “cloud making carnival”. Langfang, a third tier city in Hebei province  announced its plan for a cloud storage center that is at least two times the size of the largest existing cloud storage center in the world, which is in Chicago.

Since then, investigative journalists have found evidences that suggest these projects are often launched before the officials figure out what cloud computing is about, and many of the projects consist of a lot of commercial property and few element of technology research. For example, a report from Economic Observer says that an unnamed cloud computer center has so few customers that only the staff of the front desk are receiving their salary, and its technology team has to make a living somewhere else. But it does not prevent it from being an “Image Project” which local government officials showcase to visiting colleagues. No wonder Li Deyi, academian of China Academy of Engineers, recently angrily said, “Cloud computing is a green way of calculating, it’s not a competition of scale, equipment or warehouse. Development of cloud computing cannot be turned into a game for land and capital possession!”

But facing more and more critical views from experts and media upon large cloud computing zones with expensive infrastructure but little content, the government is putting more emphasis on making the cloud computing centers useful. Many technology companies were given priority and subsidy for entering the cloud computing zones. But even that is not enough for optimism, as many technology companies might use it as an opportunity to obtain cheap property and profit from property investment. Many technology companies in China are already doing real estate business, for example, Lenovo generated 60% of its profit in 2010 from real estate development. (please see my other article: Everyone is in the Real Estate Business)

Coming back to the Chongqing government documents I mentioned, what I got is that,  as long as you invest in projects in the Two River Cloud Computing Zone, it does not matter whether it has anything to do with technology, the local government will help you get around the central government’s control on hot money inflow and facilitate the foreign currency traffic involved.

This kind of local policies should not be a surprise to people familiar with how the development zones work in China. It is true that this mechanism of attracting foreign direct investment and the approach of “build-first-the-rest-will-come” worked wonder for China’s urbanization process, created an unprecedented property bubble, enriched the government and some interest groups, and most importantly, lifted GDP number, but it gave incentive to speculators rather than people who are truly interested in innovation.

In my usual pessimistic mood I tend to think most industries in China are just different sectors of real estate business, while the rest are in IPO business or shadow banking business. But after drinking several cups of coffee, I try to persuade myself that some of these preempted infrastructure might prove to be useful, and whatever corruption happened in the process can also be an incentive for the officials to develop things fast, but I just hope the resources in our poor country are spent more thoughtfully to produce true technological innovation and improve people’s living standard.

Chinese Netizens' "Occupy Obama Movement" on Google Plus

Last night I heard from friends on Sina Weibo that Google Plus was unblocked and there is a Chinese carnival on Barack Obama's G+ page, where we can do our favorite online activities such as 抢沙发 （"occupying sofa"－being the first in the comment roll ), and刷屏 （"swiping screen"-creating a sea of comments that flood the whole page). I immediately went to my G+ account, which I haven't used since I opened it last year, and added Obama to my circle of "family". Wow, under the first post I saw on Obama's page dated Feb.24, 90% of the 500 comments are in Chinese, and a significant amount of the rest are in Chinglish. I have not seen a virtual party so wild since the April of 2010 when we climbed over the Great Firewall to follow the twitter of Aoi Sola (Japanese AV star).

BBC actually reported on this phenomenon already, but its misinterpretation of the Chinese comments has itself become a source of amusement for Chinese netizens. The BBC article says, "they talked about occupying the furniture and bringing snacks and soft drinks." Obviously the reporters had no idea what "occupying sofa" means in Chinese Internet Language, which is the frontier of linguistic innovation. The folks at China Internet Watch tried to help out and explained:“occupying sofa” is a common behavior often in online forums trying to be the first to leave a comment or reply. Imagine many friends visit you at your house, the first ones arrived can take the sofa (which is more comfortable), those who are a bit late have to take the chairs, and the ones come last have only the floor to sit on".

But most of my friends found the misunderstanding so funny that they excitedly gathered more people to occupy the Obama page and say more nonsense to further confuse the poor translators of Western media.

Anyway I feel that some of the Chinese comments are so good that they deserve good English translation. Here are some of my favorite comments:

－Good afternoon Mr. President, I just come here to chill.

－Don't fight with me, this is the last available space! Advertisers interested in renting this space please contact me.

－How to tell if a girl is a virgin by looking at her thigh…

－The one above me is a very very bad person.

－People behind me, keep your line straight!

－For Sale, Canon 60D+17-55mm f2.8 Lense...

－Tour group from Huadong University blowing by.

－This is such a historical moment! Have you guys had dinner?

－Mr. President, I'd like to order some food. The people behind me will pay.

I was so inspired that I decided to take advantage of the publicity there and promote my own business. I wrote, 办证刻章 13658579367（you probably saw my ads before on street-corners, just helping people make diplomas, identity cards and official seals.)

There are serious political comments also. Some netizens requested Obama to talk to our president Mr. Hu about giving up Internet censorship and releasing dissidents, some warned the US not to mess up with China in Southern China Sea, some demanded that the US pay back the debt it owed to China (referring to the US treasure bonds that China is holding). Some argued with each other about whether democracy is good for China. Some were picking fights with 五毛党 （“50-cent-party”, used by pro-democracy netizens to call people who they think are serving the authoritarian government) or 带路党 ("invasion-guide-party", used by nationalistic netizens to call people who they think would be the local guide for western invaders).

Of course the English-speaking readers were very confused. But some found it interesting to communicate with Chinese people. Ali Utlu is one of the first Western readers who used google translator to start an uneasy conversation with Chinese netizens on Obama's page. Ali Utlu has become an Internet celebrity in China overnight. He now has more than 800 Chinese friends in his circle thanks to his unintentional participation in the "Occupy Obama Movement", which he himself found hard to believe.

By the way, I think Google should grab this chance and seriously launch G+ promotion targeted at Chinese people, it can finally become the only international player in Chinese social media market, which is still not accessible for Facebook or twitter.

The first unblocking of an international platform (Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Wordpress etc. still blocked) is certainly meaningful for the Chinese Internet, which is confined by"Internet Sovereignty". But overall Chinese netizens participating in the "Occupy Obama Movement" just wanna have fun. My girlfriend and myself spent two nights browsing through those comments and could not stop giggling. Maybe we are just silly and crazy, but if in your whole life you are also always told "you are not allowed to do this to do that", or "this place is forbidden", or "this is saved for the authority", or "we have to 'stabilize' you for the sake of society", then you might understand the simple joy of being able to gather for no particular purpose and do the most nonsensical things in front of one of the most powerful figures in the world.

Throwing Shoes at "Father of Great Firewall of China"

Dr. Fang Binxing,  an academician of the China Academy of Engineering who was one of the main designers of the infamous firewall confining China’s Internet, presented his new theory on Internet Sovereignty and reiterated his view on the importance of “border control” on the Internet, at a conference called “Innovation and Development of China’s Internet Forum” on November 11th.

Dr. Fang was often called “father of China’s Great Firewall” and his unapologetic support for Internet censorship made him one of the most hated figures among pro-democracy netizens.  When he was giving a speech in Wuhan University in May this year, a student threw a shoe at him, and there was heated discussion in various pro-democracy online forums over how much damage Dr. Dang did to the Internet in China.

But this time Dr. Fang still voiced his view forcefully and presented a new theory that defines four basic components of Internet Sovereignty (full Chinese text here) The four basic components, or fundamental rights in Fang’s words, are the right of independence, the right of equality, the right of self defense and the right of jurisdiction.

Though I was quite familiar with Dr. Fang’s view, I still didn’t expect he would go so far to envision an Internet that consists solely of territories of nation-states, which can sometimes become battle fields between nation-states. In his elaboration of the right of independence, Dr. Fang envisions an Internet in China that can exist outside of the global Internet. The right of equality, as Dr. Fang describes, essentially means that the “Internets” of different nation-states can have diplomatic and business connections. In Dr. Fang’s words, “it’s just like airline traffic across borders”.

When Dr. Fang talked about the right of self-dense, his nationalistic sentiment became ever more salient. I doubt he believes in any kind of shared public interests of international communities, all he can see is a world in which nation-states compete for supremacy and self-interests. Dr. Fang compared the national rivalry of Internet to that of nuclear competition or space war, and he emphasized that we have to protect our virtual space just like what we do with our land, sea or sky territory. Dr. Fang sees so many national enemies that are just waiting for any chance to attack China’s Internet system, that he believes only an Internet of total isolation is truly capable of self defense.

Among all the mind-boggling things Dr. Fang said, what shocked me most was his explanation of the right of jurisdiction. He lamented that our Internet does not have the capability to disable a global Internet service whenever desirable. He used the example of Google and said it was a pity that although google had retreated from China but its service was still accessible in China. “It’s like the relationship between riverbed and water. Water has no nationality, but riverbeds are sovereign territories, we cannot allow polluted water from other nation-states to enter our country”, said Dr. Fang.

Dr. Fang attacking Google

I have written about how nationalism in radical forms is becoming a main obstacle for China’s opening up and political reform. When public interest can hardly justify internet censorship, nationalism becomes the foundation of a discourse of Internet sovereignty that Dr. Fang’s theory contributes to, and helps to fabricate a vision that somehow it’s in the interest of Chinese people as a nation to have an Internet that is isolated from the global Internet. I fall back into my habitual pessimism on the thought that it’s people like Dr. Fang who are in charge of constructing and supervising the Internet in China.

Unfortunately power holders like Dr. Fang have already made the Internet in China one of the most censored and distorted. But Chinese netizens have that unique spirit that can turn every tragedy into a comedy and whatever darkness into chocolate. Let’s amuse ourselves by reliving the online party of irony and parody that happened before and after Dr. Fang’s speech in Wuhan University in May 2011.

Before Dr. Fang arrived in Wuhan, netizens were already discussing how to protest during his speech. Many netizens who cannot make it to Wuhan offered thoughtfully chosen prizes to whoever would throw eggs or shoes at Dr. Fang, the implication of these prizes can only by appreciated by veteran netizens. The prizes included:

Vintage DVDs of Sola Aoi 苍井空 (the Japanese AV star turned Chinese Internet Icon).
Any goods from Taobao up to 2000 RMB.
Full Service Package in the town of Dongguan in Guangzhuo (Dongguan is a center of manufacture and export industry, also the first area to apply ISO standard quality control system to sexual service).
10 VPN accounts.
Total Power Leveling Package in World of Warcraft, on Taiwan server.

There are also the less original prizes such as one-night-stand, dinner or travel package. The netizens who offered one-night-stand must have waited with anxiety before they found out the gender of the shoe-thrower.  It turned out that the only person who did throw a shoe at Dr. Fang during his speech was a boy, whose online nick name is “Coldness Leaning on You” (寒君依). Mr. Coldness was almost caught by the security guards in the lecture hall after he threw his shoes, but many students threw themselves in the way of the security guards and earned time for him to escape. Besides the netizens who did have one-night-stand with him, all we know about him is that he has big feet, judging from a photo he posted online after the shoe-throwing event.

Dr. Fang was furious at the organizers in Wuhan University. He said it was an unforgivable security mistake of Wuhan University, because obviously the discussion about shoe-throwing during his speech had been quite open and widespread before his arrival.

Shoe-throwing and Error 404

According to the live broadcast of the shoe-throwing event on weibo (microblog), netizens are disappointed that only one of the two shoes thrown by Mr. Coldness hit target, but many still offered to buy new shoes for Mr. Coldness. Among those who offered new shoes, only one was generous enough to specify that they will be Nike rather than any local Shanzhai (山寨）brand. But the most generous donor is a person whose online name is Siming Tian: Tian declared that if one day he won a lottery of 100 million, he would give Mr. Coldness 50 million. Here is a screenshot of the weibo broadcast at that time, hope you were there!

Shoe-throwing Weibo Broadcast

From Heaven Bank Notes to Ipads, Gifts to Ancestors on Spring Memorial Day

Last week is the Spring Memorial Holiday (清明节）for Chinese, it is the time for people to go sweep the tombs of ancestors and loved ones, and pay them some tribute. We Chinese believe that you can send gifts to the dead by burning the gifts in front of their tombs. Popular tributes include fake money (from fake gold and silver ingot made with foil, to US dollar bill in which the face of Franklin is replaced by that of the Chinese god in charge of Heaven), paper houses and paper servants, the luxurious liquor Moutai and other things Chinese people crave in this world.

Heaven Money and Alcohol. Photos by Tian Ma Hua Ti.

But this year the trend is you have to give your ancestors iPads and iPhones if you don't want them to be looked down upon in Heaven.

Burning Paper iPhone on Qing Ming Festival

Burning Paper iPad on Qing Ming Festival

No kidding, people are buying iPads and iPhones made with paper to burn in front of tombs. Even I myself considered buying two iPads for my grand parents, but they have never even used computers when they were alive, so I was worried that they wouldn't know how to use them, and they wouldn't be able to communicate with me via iPad anyway given the ever extending reach of the Great Firewall of China. Some of my friends are also skeptic of this trend. One was worried that his icon Steve Jobs might be bothered by too many Chinese asking him for pirate software. Another was concerned that the plugs we have in this world might not fit the outlets in Heaven.

Anyway, I am again touched by the creativity Chinese people have in reinventing rituals and our unshaken belief in materialism.

Heaven Bank Note