 The topic is the blogging in a blogging country. So it's very, when we talk about blog and why the blog has a social change impact, we should come back to the arranger of the blog. Why blog can make a very big impact to the social change and democracy? It's just because two reasons. The first, you should have an election because if you have elections, so public opinion does matter. So that's why the blogger can become a, blog can become a mobilization tour for the election. And also for social change party, for example, the NGO part, blog does matter because so you can use it as a lobby, lobby tour. That means you can use the blogger to present the voice of the people and use the voice of the people to lobby the organization, or give the government. But these two very important reasons in China, it does not exist. That we have no election, we have no any lobby cases. So that why blogger, blog matters in China. So they changed China in totally different way. And the way it's not familiar with Western peoples. So when we discuss of that, we should, to, if you look at, we have another media project here to monitor the internet news and internet comment. For example, the Global Voice Online, the Chinese part. And for example, the other, the UCLA is, the China Media Project and the Hong Kong University's project. All the project want to gather the very sharp news from the internet, Chinese internet. But most important thing I want you to pay attention is that in the year of 2004 to 2005, these two years, most of the sharp news from Chinese internet is from bloggers. But after that, most of the news is from chat rooms. That means it's very, you know, because you, the people, you the people in the States, you see the English translation of the blog. You don't know what's the original from. But we can tell the from. I mean, before the year of two, I mean, June the year 2004 to 2005, these two years, golden years, bloggers dominate the news gathering, especially very sharp news, dissenting news. So that's why all the foreign media should cover the bloggers, Chinese bloggers, to get the news. But it's ended. What's the big game? The big game with the Mu Zimei is sex diary. Mu Zimei is a woman. He always, he writes sex diary blogger. In all the bloggers, you know, how many men they have sex with, about 70, seven men. It's the early months of the 2004. But and with the case of my case, my Microsoft blog was shut down by the government. After that, you can see the government can know every detail, how to control the content of the blog. They set up the keyword system. They use the firewall. They use the self censorship. Anyway, they know how to control that. That means after the golden years of 2004 and 2005, the blogger golden years, we come back to the old years of the chatroom years. Chatroom does exist in China. It's about since 1998. That means about 10 years life, life. Very long time. We still use chatroom together in very sharp news. That's very important things. When we talk about web 2.0, why this just happened in China? We come back to the past, not go on. Why blogging just the end? But we come back to the chatroom. Chatroom is very web, one point old things, very old things. We never, to see very important role in this in a state. But in China, it's still very important because, and not only the chatroom, but also the email. Email is older, much older things. Was introduced in China since 1996. Yeah, maybe around that years. That means about 12 years life in China. But it's all very important to elate networking. For example, sharing very secret information, very important information about politics, about the religious, about the social, academic. They threw the mailing list. They just go through the mailing list. That means we, China, what we use now to make the social change is using the web 1.0, 1.0 things. For example, the mailing list, for example, the chatroom. We don't use the web 2.0. Why? Because when we talk about web 2.0, we mention this very two important function. First is democracy, nice, sorry, democracy, nice. Democratization. Democratization. Okay, okay. Got me all right. That's an awarding. New world. And the other thing is decentralization. Decentralization is a very important function of the web 2.0. That means because of decentralization, so people can speak a voice. People matters because people can use many, many parts of the people's voice, can organize, become blogs via voice, can become public opinion. But it only happens in the democratic countries because the government, we review the blog very carefully. We found blog, it's not really decentralized things because they need the servers, central servers. Every blog, for example, blogger.com, for example, web, wordpast.com, they have servers. Thousands and millions of users to use one blog BSP, blog survey provider at their base. So it is easy for the government to control and easy to blog to firewall auto censorship. But in the state, we don't control that because it's about freedom of speech. Even the Bush administrator is so conservative but they don't care about, because it's the human right of the American people. They have, the right is born to, it's a born right. But in China, I don't think that, I think the Chinese government does not have no hesitate to control that because it's not so decentralized. But if we look at the email and you look at the chatroom, it's not so centralized like blog. It's very decentralized because of course they can find the chatrooms and block it. But every server can have a chatroom. It's very hard for the government to find any chatroom overseas. It's very hard for them. For email, email use, not use the web function. They use the POP protocol. I think of course it's easy to control but it will become very impact to the common communication between us. For example, everybody use Gmail. Can you block Gmail? No, because even the business guy, even the government guy can use the Gmail too. So it's very hard for, so that's why we still use Gmail, email and the chatroom to express our freedom of speech, something like this. But blogger, no, the happy time is just the end. So how about, I don't want to use some kind of new media theory to describe that because in China it's not new media. Blog is not kind of the new media but it's an all media thing because before the internet, we have no media. We have propaganda. Propaganda means one direction. The party want to speak their voice. You just listen. But when we face the internet, it's a two direction. That means the party, all the media can express their opinions but the people can comment, can feedback that. It's a real beginning of a Chinese media. So all the things now in the following discussion, I use the very old theory of the media. It's not about new media. So about, just about, I mentioned about the information flows. They use, just use the very chat rooms. They use the email to express the news, it's not blogger. And how about today's present situation about bloggers? When we talk about time pick up the you as the time people of the year. But that means you are the media but in China I'm not. It's not you are the media. It's you are the media. The meaning is common bloggers can become, common blogs can become media. But in China it's the opposite way. Media become blogs. That means very important to happen in 2006, I think in 2005. Cina.com. Cina.com is a very mainstream news portal in China. Every newspaper should put the content free to the Cina.com. That means in Chinese the young people don't read newspapers. They read Cina.com because it's easy to read every newspaper, every province newspaper. They don't use, use to subscribe one newspaper because it's more expensive. But look to browse the Cina.com is easy and it's free. But this so mainstream media in 2005 they set up their blog service. After that blog service blog in China just changed from so a mature one to a very professional one. What's the dominant part of the Cina bloggers? They are celebrities. They are professors. They are journalists. That means they are VIPs. We call the Mingren book of VIP bloggers. Blogging in China become very mainstream. That means why are we just like something just a Huffington post, you know Huffington post. It's just to invite the very famous guy to become the writers of the, this kind of blog is not really blog. It's a kind of column. Because in China we have, we lack, we China lacks two things. Very important, very critical to the media society. The first thing is the Hollywood style of the reporting. Because the celebrities want to some kind of public relation, you know, announcement, they need the news. But in China we have no agency or some kind of business to run for that. So when the Cina blog happened, all the celebrities, all the very famous entertainment guys find a way to do some public relationship. That means they use that to do some kind of club announcement. So every paparazzi of the tabloid in China every day update and refresh the Cina.com bloggers. They found that every entertainment news and the celebrity news follow these ways. And China also lack of the syndicate of the column. You know, column is very popular in the US media. So Tom's freedom and, you know, very important. And but China we have no syndicate. That means you can only write for one newspaper. That means one newspaper means one province, you lack of the readership. But this kind of blog, Cina.com blog, can give column very much readership, of course free, but very much readership. Because of the readership, they can, you know, add their cost of the money. Well, they, you know, negotiate with the media. So that's very, very good way. And also the newspaper use the Cina.com blog to find which, who is the new column? It's a way of the recruit the new bloc, the columns. That means when we talk about the blog, so happened in Cina.com, it's not about blogger, the real blogger, real revolution of blogger in China. It's about very old things. Column, Hollywood style, paparazzi. And it's about, talk about celebrities. How about journalists? Journalists is very funny things. You know, in the world, only two countries have very strong, the journalists that dominate, sorry, dominate, sorry, the journalists that dominate the famous bloggers. Only two countries have, this thing happened. First is China, the other is Iran. Iran also have the situation that we, I can, now I cannot imagine a New York time staff writer can become a very famous blogger. No, never happened, because the blogger is just to be against them. It's a kind of, you know, competition. You are the mainstream media, I'm against you. I'm against you, I oppose you. This is the two sides of the media. But in China, no. Most very important, very famous journalists, the editor, they have bloggers. They are famous bloggers. I mean, they are together. Mainstream medias and liberal blogger, they are together. Why this happened in China? It's because we come back to the story of the 2000 years. You know, I said before that, in the 1980s, we are no media, we are only propaganda machines. But in the 1990s, the media group want to become very, you know, market, we call it marketization. Marketization, market. Sorry, they become a part of the market, okay? So that means that news group, they organized and united, become very, very big news group. For example, the Southern news group, Shanghai news group. And the Beijing news news group, very big ones. It's much bigger than that. Become a new, real news corporations. But the problem happened, it's about the shortage of the label hood. That means we have no workers, staff workers. We have no reporters. We have no enough reporter to feed up all the kind of the expansion of the media. So that's why the reason, since the 2000 years, since the year of 2000, hundreds of the G-School just funded in China. Now, in China, we have about 1,000 G-School in China, so much. But it's very quick, you can trust them. So the graduate school, the student from the G-School are very stupid because education are very stupid. The media can't trust them, so how can they do? They just turn to the media, to the internet. Because just I said, from the year of 1998, to the chat room, become very famous. So there is a male famous, we call it famous netizen. Famous netizen, that means you are very good at writing the commentary on the internet. I'm myself as an example of their very famous netizens. Before that, I'm only a hotel receptionist. Every day I just, welcome to my hotel. It's just such a thing. But when internet things happened in 1998, I write the commentary on the internet. I was hired by a news media in 2001, become chief correspondent of the media without any experience of just things happened. It's very funny, just like it's a miracle many, many hundreds and thousands of the young people have no background of the political education and the journalism education, social education. My college, my major is computer, without any knowledge about politics and the social and the writing. But I was hired by the media, become very, I get a very high salary, very high salary, from zero to middle class. It's just a very jump, it's a big jump. This big jump just happened in the 2000 and 2003, these three years. Thousands of the very famous netizens become journalists. That means if you look up now the media, newspapers, the TV station, especially, even their central TV station, they're very official. You were found very famous and very important journalists inside them, they are come from internet. So why, so that's the reason why the 2004, the blogger era come, the guys in the media because they have internet heart. Even outside the surface is very conservative and under the propaganda control, the media, old media fashion. But they inside them, they are internet heart. So they welcome the bloggers, blocks and become the dominant power of the bloggers. That's why the reason in China, the bloggers and the journalists, they are together, they are not disappointed, they party like America. So that's the journalist's part. But after the golden years, you know, still because censorship is, they just, they found it because bloggers are so personal. They write, you write a blog, that means it's your blog. If you write very sensitive, okay, your blog, your shadow blog, easily the shadow blog. So after 2004, 2005, even the journalists themselves, they can't post very sensitive blogs. They just, you know, to turn to the chatroom, very old one, turn to the old years. Okay, so when we talk about that, so you found very important thing in Chinese blog sphere. It's not about new media. It's about recruitment, the humans resource of the old media. That means the internet during the year of 1998 to 2003. It's about four years, five years, the internet changed the inside of the Chinese media. That means it's very funny thing for the state, then the people in the state, you can't understand. The guy censored my blogs. We are friends. We, every week, we just have the chat, we eat. We have, we're close friends. We says, I'm sorry, I should shadow your blog. Of course I understand, no problem. How about we meet together this weekend or kayaking, something like this. So we are very close friends. That means the censor, the guy was censored and the guy censored, we are together. That means we come back to the Chinese philosophy. We are lack of the religion. We are no religion. We didn't trust in God. That means we can live in two phases. One phase is very, very walking phases. That means I'm sorry, it's my job. I know you are right, but it's my job. I should do that, but you can't understand because we can exchange. When you get the job of me, you can do the same thing to me. I can understand too, of course. But inside, they are very liberal, very, very liberal because they live in the era of internet and the market because we know which is the right thing, but it's a different thing. So, and another blog is about a copycat of the American blog is IT gigs. We have IT gigs. Every detail is a copycat of every detail of American web 2.0, web 2.0 applications. For example, you have Twitter, we have Twitter. But to be the true, to tell the true, I don't think Twitter can become very popular in China because it's so centralized, the server. Everything, every service, every application, if you should have some centralized service, you can't go there in China because Chinese can easily control your censorship to you or block you, easy. So, if you talk about the blog sphere, okay, we should give the two version. The first is the American version. The second is the Chinese, but total difference. So, the IT gigs become very copycat of the every steps. They use the new technology, new media theory, but I will mention very important things. If you, there is some citizen journalism in China, there will be IT gigs. I don't think other, for example, the journalists or very common people can become very citizen journalists. Why? Because you need money. You need a job. Only IT gigs can easily find a job. But if you're a journalist, you need, you're not need to do some kind of anti-management citizen journalism. Citizen journalism means you're not journalist, but you do the journalist work. So, you should need a job first. Only gig can have this spare time and spare money to do that. And also, they know the technology and know how to copy the version of American applications. So, if you want to find the IT, I find the so-called citizen journalists in China, so turn to the gigs. We have a very famous guy. We call him Zola Zhou. Zola Zhou Chu Guang Zola Zhou. He's very famous. He is a real version of the copycat of the American citizen journalism. Very, you know, you can, they hide, they use the internet to get the sponsors. They, someone gives the camera. They just take camera to the site to take the every comment to the live webcast of all the situation happened. And the only problem, they get the money from the guy, from the people, this is the problem. Because citizen journalists in America didn't get the money. They don't get the money from the reporting. But this guy, the money from that. So, it's a tiny different. But only IT gigs can have the spare time to do that. Okay, we talk about censorship and inspect. So, as I've mentioned that, all the web 2.0, 2.0 application when you come to China, everything changed. Because all the web, you have the server. Chinese are easy to block your servers. So that's very funny things. Every big web 2.0 things in China, we have a Chinese version of the copycat. For example, you have Google, we have Baidu. You have the YouTube, we don't use YouTube. We use the Baidu 2.0. You have everything, we have everything in Chinese. But we don't use the original one. Why? Because it is easy for Chinese local company to accept every detailed control rule of the censorship. They can accept. Although Microsoft tried very hard to compromise on Yahoo. But they can't do enough for the Chinese government. Only local guys can do enough. For example, Baidu. So that's the reason, that means all the very good, they accepted Gmail, Gmail or not. Because Gmail, we have no copyright of Gmail. Gmail is so good. So I can't imagine something in China can take place of it. So that's very good news for us. We have Gmail, not Google. Because Google, we have Baidu. Google, you can't use your China very freely. Because sometimes if you search some very sensitive pages, it's just a block down. You can't use it within 15 minutes. So how about YouTube? YouTube thinks, for example, video blog. Video blog is very hard. It's not so popular in China. Why? Two reasons. The first reasons, the content was so sensitive. So if you do some social change video blog or join as a video blog, just to censor you. Because it's easy. The second things, you need the camera. It's money. We Chinese are poor. Because even we got richer and richer, but now we're still poor. We can't buy easily about the camera. So video blog and about YouTube. YouTube is very slow in China. Nobody go that. So what's left? If we said everything is controlled, it's censored in China, what's left? What's the hope? I think the hope is social network and organization. What's left? I talk about chatroom. Chatroom's still left because it's hard to censor that. So we can also use the chatroom to leak the news. And all about email, Gmail. Very funny, including us. I have an organization, a think tank like the International Politics Think Tank. It's about the membership of the think tanks around the world because they are students in the foreign universities, they are scholars, they are columnists. We use the Gmail group to organize them. Even they are in different countries, different time zones, but it's okay because Gmail can be easy. And we use the Gmail, emailing group, to every week to deliver their magazines. So it's not only my case, another case. For example, there's a very famous underground church magazine. They very seriously discuss the Christian, Christianity inside China. Very serious commentary and discussion. And about another case is my friend's independent book review, like a New York book review. They just want to follow that. But also use email magazines. That means in China, we just come back 10 years ago. It's not a new era, it's an old era. But still works. I think why they still work? Because it's about networking. People can use Gmail, can use messengers, MSN messengers, can use chatroom, can use g-talk, can use a short message to organize, to find people with very similar to you. That means to share the same interests. Networking, elite networking is very important rule for Chinese social changing. Because you can easily organize, use the internet. For example, I think it's a very famous protest and a demonstration happened on the street in Shaman for two days very peacefully. About 20,000 people go on street against a chemical factory in Shaman. And the government didn't intervene because why cause this demonstration? Just a very famous blogger called Nian Yue. Nian Yue is not a very amateur blogger. It's not about non-mainstream. He is almost one of the most very famous column in China, columnist in China, very famous. So his blog just triggered this protest. Why this protest can go very peacefully? Because the supporter of this blogger, including the chief of the bureau of the public security. Local public security chief readership are readers of the blog. That means even the very chief officers of the local cities are supporters of the bloggers. It's not about internet. It's about elite and elix friends. It's about elite networking. So that's why we happened in China's internet. On the other hand, side very underground is networking of elites, social elites. And the other surface is about chat room of the common people news. For example, some protests. You use the chat room. Because chat room is easy to hide your identification, your identity. Blog is not. So if we come to the conclusion that it's why the internet train China? Train China is not about the blog. It's about recruitment of the old media. It's about changing the inside of the media, inside the institution, even the propaganda machine. The propaganda machine, inside them, they are very liberal. The people are very liberal. They do very conservative work. But inside them, they're very liberal. And the change in China is also about elite networking. I think it's very important in networking, social networking, about the elite people inside China. But the other dark side, that means Chinese government very successfully control the content of the internet and push the internet to the business and entertainment one. That means you can do everything, everything's free, except politics. What is it? It's a bigger Singapore. It's not a America. It's a bigger Singapore. It's not, it's good. It's good and not bad. It's bad? No. For most of the Chinese people, it's not bad. Because you have money. You have entertainment. You are freedom. You have free to go abroad to visit Egypt, to visit Paris. But you have no freedom to do any social movement, any political movement. So that's why the Chinese government won't do. And they succeed. After years of learning the controlled content where, and most important things, they found a very good tool to adjust the public opinion. Before, they don't know the public opinion. Something just happened. For example, 1989, Tiananmen Mass, Tiananmen Movement. They don't know why they happened. For example, Falun Gong suddenly happened. But now the Chinese government know what's the reason for. They know every very early age of any movement. And in the baby era of the movement, they just killed them through the internet. Because internet is very easy to fund the sentiment of the people. So I think the Chinese authorities use this way to make the rule very more tight and more stability and more longer. So I don't see any change in China because of block. I think Chinese government gets many benefits, many advantages from the blogging, from the blogger era. But we do hope social networking and chat-on steer work for the future of China and for democracy. OK, well. So if you have a question, thank you so much. It is very quick. I was wondering, what percent of the Chinese people are involved in social movements or social networking? You go into a long bar of internet cafe in China. You see hundreds of people, but they're all playing video games. What kind of people are involved in reading blogs when they have them, reading chat? So that's the reason I say elite networking. I don't say networking. It's not networking in the states. In the states, it's common people social networking. But China now, only middle class, only the guy who had the idea of social change, they attend this moment of the networking. So I call it elite networking. Not common people. It's true that in internet cafe, most of them, 90% of them just do video games. What about QQ? QQ is just a- Have you got no networking there? Yeah, the networking is about social. It's about personal life and entertainment. QQ is because server is inside China. You record every sensitive thing. Even in the program itself, they have a DLR part. They have a very funny thing. They have a long list of the sensitive words. You will find the QQ program. It's easy to control. Can't, I'm sorry. Would it be possible for them to block Gmail and- What block Gmail? What do you mean, block Gmail? Well, you said that they block all these different things. Block. Why not block? Because about business. It's too important to businesses. It's too important to people in the government. Is that- No, no. I think, yeah. Because we have not a foreign countries have their employers, employees in China. Many, many others. They only use Gmail because Gmail is so good. So if they block Gmail, that means business loss. They don't. Because China is not a communist party. It's a typical capitalism party. The company, big company is the God. We think the company is very important. So we can't just block Gmail. Gmail is, I can't imagine some days- So Gmail is part of infrastructure, as it turns out. But they can control too. Because we can use Gmail to do some networking. Very freely, because they can't- So it's a safe area. It's safe. It's very safe now. It's interesting. Yeah. I would think if Google knows that, they're gonna do as much as they can not to change Gmail. Because they can't. Because the government can't. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. This guy was first. Oh, yeah, great, thank you. First of all, is the divide between urban and rural? Blogging, I'm guessing it's mostly urban and less rural. Is that actually the case? Is the divide between urban, so, bloggers and cities? Urban and rural. Oh, yeah, yeah. And the countryside is much more- I think the blogging is only happening in the city. I don't think- I can't imagine some rural area can do some blogging thing, but they just go to Internet Cafe to browse the news or do some video game. Yeah. And then I guess I was wondering, also, Shifu said, if that's a national level thing, then maybe local movements will have a better chance of taking root in the box here, because the national government, like, you aware of this going on in the local state. I think- Yes, I think it's on another side of the Internet. Internet have no relation- I have no difference between the central and the local. Because they are- They're together. We- Media, we have local media with central media, national media, but Internet, they are all national, national. It's easy to national. You talked earlier about there was a trend towards using chat rooms again as a way of spreading information. Yeah. Could you tell us a little bit how- what kind of ideas might spread through the chat rooms and how that might work, and also what kind of surveillance or countervailing efforts the government might be taking against seditious ideas or bad ideas spreading through chat rooms. I think a chat room is a kind of two- age sword. That means in the era of the anti-Japanese movement in 2005. Have you remembered that? All the anti-Japanese movement, the sentiment just spread from the chat room. Chat room is not only liberal guys like, conservative guys also like, because you can hide your identity. It's easy to hide your identity. You just use a proxy. It's easy to hide that. So I think chat room is the only way we can say freedom speech. I can use chat room very freely. I can criticize the government, criticize- to leak any news I know. And if I knew some technology to protect myself, it is okay. It's not blah. Blah can't do that, but chat room can do. So that's why now the media-modeling project in the States, what they do, they just monitor every chat room. It's not bloggers, in fact, it's chat room. Because can you imagine very sensitive news from a blogger without doing some very dangerous to the blogger himself? No, I can't imagine. So very sensitive news now, it just now leaked from the chat rooms. A quick one. Is Red Flag a knockoff of Red Hat? What? So Red Flag is the Chinese version of Linux. It's the Chinese national distribution of Linux. I'm wondering if it's a knockoff of Red Hat. You're saying that there's these copies of other familiar programs. Yeah, I think Red Flag, the government just use the Red Flag. They don't use the original market one. They use the Red Flag as the official government. They don't use the application there. Yeah, they use the copyright. But they don't trust the American version. They think they have some backdoor of that. They use it. Oh really? Of course. For example, why now Microsoft, we can't accept Microsoft as the government to use the software just because of that. They give, we code. Oh, okay. That Microsoft give code to the Chinese government. Make sure that all the parts of that, we have no backdoor of that. Of course, we have the government of that. So we can't use that. So they have the source code. They have the source code to Windows, is that it? What I mean? Yes. Is it the source code to Windows? So the Chinese government has the source code to Windows. What's the source code? Some part, very important part of the code to the government, they make sure that there is no backdoor of the software. Oh, that's interesting. Michael, you said something very, very interesting at the end of the talk. You said a lot of interesting things at the top. But one thing that really struck me was this statement that China is not America, not becoming America, becoming a very big Singapore. And one of the things that a lot of us who work in IT for development have seen is that actually, Singapore is a model that a lot of countries are following. You have modernization, but you have control. Rebecca McKinnon, who used to be a fellow here, a friend of yours, a friend of mine, speculates that the Chinese internet that we see today is so much freer than many Chinese people were 10 years ago that the vast majority are pretty satisfied with the new opportunities and the new tools they have. So what I want from you is a number. What percent of Chinese people do you think are sort of aware of the levels of restriction, the levels of censorship, and are inclined to find a way around the censorship, to find a proxy, to use a tool to get around it? Is it less than 1%? Is it 10%? What percent of people actually care about this and are willing to look for a way around the Great Firewall? I think before I answer that question, I want to tell you a funny thing. So we will talk about China. But the Chinese now, the personal life is so free. When I first came to America and Europe, I find it so conservative, because we are so conservative. It's easier in China that we have the sex before the marriage. We are no easier to have the homosexual and without the punishment and the warning. And it's easier. The Muslim may have 70 men to have sex with, and she gets very famous. But we have no conservative party. We have no guard. We have no guard. The problem is why Chinese government allow we Chinese people have so much freedom about sex, about business. You know business, we are very freedom. We have no, just like capitalism is not like socialism, because we have no welfare. And it is easy. It's just like a very cruel capitalism and very easy for Chinese young people now to find a new company. It's easy. It's easy. That means if you got money, want to earn the money, just earn the money. It's easy for you. But why Chinese government allow people to have so much freedom, much more freedom than American, about personal life and a common life? Just because they want them to accept exchange of the political part of their freedom. That means I give you freedom that's much, much better than your parents. But you hang out your freedom of speech. And even you hang out your idea that your parents once have, because of our parents or me, I was born in 1975. But we now talk about the generation, the 1980s. We have some generation gap that I have the idea of a social change. I want to change China to democracy, but they are not. Because I experienced the Tiananmen mask, but they are not. So the new generation just accept exchange that we China arise. We China are rich. We have much more freedom about personal life than America. But as an exchange, you should hang out your political freedom. It's not big deal. Political is only very weird people care. It's not about you care. So I think that's the reason. So if you say the percentage, I think at least 95% of people don't care politics, don't care about the sensitive. Because it's easy for them to use QQ, use the Sena.com to find all the celebrity news and find the very paparazzi from the every good news from the internet or another on anti-Japan news. It's easy for them. But if you want to find very hard politics, it's very hard. It's a big exchange. I think in this case, China, Chinese government, succeed. They succeed very much. I can't see any hope that you can change the situation. When I talk about networking, I only talk about elite networking. But networking, there is a big gap between networking and action. Action is also very real in China. But action speaks loud. So my words, I add my words that we call it. Internet in the States is about Chigawara. But in China, it's a very harmonic ship. They can use it very beautifully, but it's good. But this is not Chigawara. To maybe reframe it, is it more that the vast majority, like you said, 95% of Chinese people are satisfied with the internet or they may be annoyed or there may be problems with getting certain information, but there's just nothing to be done about it. It's just part of the system that they live with. I think that's kind of a distinction. And also, I'm wondering in terms of issues that are not just strictly political in terms of the party or whatever that are very peripheral but still related, so financial information, all those kinds of issues that include an element of transparency, like environmental protection. You have land rights. I mean, a lot of city management, things like that, that aren't necessarily political, but do have to become political because. Yeah, I think it's just that they have some kind of line from the black to white. The white is very clean, non-politics, but black is politics. They just value the case. The case in the line is very clear. We're very close to the political one. They're just a band. So maybe we have some space in the gray one. Maybe we just live in the gray one. For example, environment. You can tell environment is social or is politics. I don't know. Some cases are social. Some cases are political. They just depend on the situation, depend on the feeling of the officials. I don't know. But some cases is a band. Some cases don't band. But this thing only happened in a gray part. That means they have no very clearly value of the non-politics or politics. But they value the internet censorship just like this way. More political thing, they get more censorship. That means they want to build up a new Singapore, a big Singapore. But of course, we have much freedom than Singapore. Of course. Can you unpack Singapore a little bit more, for us to say a big Singapore in a two or three sentences? What do you mean by that? That means you are a happy citizen without any political idea. Very happy. A city for its own sake. What's a city? A city for its own sake. I mean, it's just sittiness or what's a happy city? Happy citizen. I mean, happy citizen. Happy people. Oh, happy citizen. OK. You are happy sitting without any political ideas. The rise of Britney Spears, doc. No. I don't know. But it's just the case. That means that when we Chinese authority think, what is the real citizenship? The citizenship is you are very elite. You can earn money. You have very good position and middle class. And at the same time, you are a good boy of the party. That means you are a good citizen without any political dissenting. Very convincingly about the kind of change and from propaganda to media and the change of different kinds of technology uses for political or social discourse, what do you see as the next iteration? Where's it going to go next? What's going to happen with the 500,000 chat rooms or whatever there are in the however many blogs are claimed, 40 million or some incredible number of blogs? What's going to happen next? And where's it going to move? What's going to happen with mobile? I also want to talk about that. The first prediction is not very personal. It's not who knows the future. But the first thing is forget everything centralized. For example, Twitter. Forget it. I can't imagine Twitter can become very popular in China because the short message are more convenience and Twitter needs the server. And so forget every centralized thing. The second thing is networking of the elite become more and more popular. That means in Beijing, just like I don't know America, but in Beijing we call trends circle. Every elite have a group. If you want to enter the group, you need some permission, like a club. It's just a situation in Beijing. But the internet, the networking just to build up the virtual and the internet version of the group of the trends. That means it's very happy things. All the elite can easily organize through the internet but secretly. This is a very good situation for the changing of China because some days if the political situation changed, the next day all the media will become liberal. All the guy will face, will embrace the democracy. No any conservative left. Because everyone can say, no, it's only my job. Because inside them is very liberal. So I think with the networking, social elite networking build up, it is very good for Chinese to avoid some kind of chaos. Because if something happened, for example, the central government just collapsed because of banking system, what happened? You should need some organization. But the organization, on the ground, you can't exist because party don't allow you to do that. But internet, we still have some kind of organization, virtual one, secretly, but very effective. So it is a good side in the future of five years. We will see the trend that elite networking become stronger and stronger. That means very important because they can change the inside of China. But so the third one is, who can change China? Only party themselves can change China. Party members can change China. Because even the party members who control the internet, they are liberal too. They only live in the different life. But inside them, they are liberal. They are internet guy. So I'm very confident about the future of China just because we are born in the internet. Because the old guy will die. The new generation of the internet will dominate all the society. This is the future of China. Michael, are those people getting involved with the party? Are they getting involved with politics? Some of them. I know that, for instance, it's become very popular to pass around the sort of essays that you have to use to gain party membership or gain party promotion, that you can go onto the internet and you can download an essay that's very likely to get you passed by the local party committee. Like the US Army? Is that a sign that the people who, as you say, have internet in their hearts are becoming influential within the party? I think it's a good example, but not a very good example. Because this thing happened more typical in Iran. In Iran, even the president himself is a very famous blogger. But we officials in China seldom do blogging. I don't know, because we don't need election. So we don't need blogging. Blogging is a show. It's not an easy thing. But inside them is the internet. Because from now on, all the news, even including the party members, they're getting the news from the internet. For example, the president himself, they have an office. Every day gathering the internet news from the chat rooms. Because before we used the Xinhua news agency from the local places, we were all correspondent to get the news to the central government to very secretly, very report every detail about the officials. But now they use the internet to gather in the very intelligent, very secret news of the local movement of the case. That means even the president himself, even the prime minister himself, they know internet is good. They know blog is good. OK, what's the definition of blog? Who cares? But blog is good. It's the direction. Yeah, it means, of course, we are not good. But we are not so bad. We still know internet and blog is good. Of course, we change the name. For example, with Chinese, all know democracy is good. But we don't use the Westernized democracy. We use the Chinese democracy as a party control democracy. But at least we think democracy is good. They just have an internet. Internet is good, but American internet is not good. Chinese internet is good. We should borrow it. What if anything is left with the old Mao era communist ideology besides the name and the color of the flag? I don't know. But in China, name is very important. Confucius means the communist party name. The name is very important. We call it in Chinese philosophy, name is everything. If you get a name, you get everything. Who cares inside? The name is very important. The party will never change the name. Because since they change the name, everything will be changed. Because now, they only left the name, left the propaganda system, left the control to the media and control to the military. But about ideology, they just lost. They are totally embraced capitalism. It's much more capital than France. France is so social. I will tell the truth. This time I traveled in Paris. They strikes. So I can only stay in the hotel. Chinese cannot imagine what is strike, because we are so capitalism. Well, but Doc, you've got the same thing in this country. Is it the same Republican Party under Lincoln as it is under Bush? No, it's not. But I was just wondering what it was. It's just interesting to me that that had been around for as long as it was. What might remain of it? And you just answered it. It's the control of the military, the propaganda machine. The rest of it. And the thing you said about name is really interesting and important, I think. Not something we perceive here, because there's nothing analogous to it. Yeah, because I think the party. It's just branding. Retreat. We don't understand it. Retreat from the main part of the life of the person, the people's life. Because before, in the country revolutionary, the party control everything, just like Iran, just like Vietnam. But now, after the fear of the country revolutionary, the Deng Xiaoping realized that we can only kept the name, kept the military, propaganda, and the personnel control. Everything that I just hand out to the market, to the people. I don't care. Because those things are very important, very critical to power. Power is most important. Who will care about the inside? I don't know. So maybe in the future, the party just chain, chain, chain, chain to a party was very similar to the European party. We can't directly tell the difference between them and this. Maybe this, we are beginning of the Chinese democracy. It just happened not one day. It happened about 10 years, very gradually. I don't know. So if somehow, magically, truly trustworthy, anonymous logging were able to get the infrastructure there and people felt that they could blog safely without fear of reprisal, would it only be the elite that would do it? Do you think there would be any movement, any enlarging of the? It will be the problem. We want to talk about politics. Politics with power in the politics is with the name. That means if you want to devote yourself to the politics, it's all about name. Only name can change the political situation. If you have no name in the internet, who cares about you? This is a problem. If you want to have a name, you will be faced a danger of the censorship, of the control. So of course, it is a very idea of things. It will be very safe for me without my name I block. I never write any articles without my name anti. Because I think name is my power. Without my name, I just lost all my power. If I write an article, for example, if Tom Fridman writes an article without his name, who cares? Who cares? It's all very tiny, little articles. Only that, only names matters. If George Bush speaks without the name of George Bush, who cares? It's just a kindergarten. I say, speak of that. So how do you establish a name? Yeah, so there's a possibility in the West of creating a pseudonym. And links go in, and you get known for your pseudonym, and nobody, people may not know who you actually are, but they recognize that this is a voice that they've written before, and the name takes on some power, although no connection to the actual person. That happened there. I know. That's not a possibility, is not how it works. It only happens about the news breaking up. If you want to break up a news, you can use it this way, because a clue is very important for the following news. But the most important is not the beginning. It's the after-word. I mean, after-word, the coverage of the media. Without the coverage of the media, if only one blog, no name blog to speak out to the CBS guy, have a lie, so who cares? But now, just the other media, covered, it becomes, it matters. But Chinese things have happened. Media doesn't cover in many cases, because this thing is very sensitive. But the case you mentioned just happened in China. Some news is just because a very no-name clue from the internet. Nobody knows who spread out. But after that, the news outlets just cover that, become very important. But most important is the media. It's not the beginning, I think. But now, media is totally controlled by the party. So I can't say. I can't tell what, yeah. But I have to ask one somewhat self-serving question. So when your blog was pulled by Microsoft, this, of course, made international news. And it also, interestingly, provoked a reaction in Microsoft in their policies. So it got them to change a process by which they were pulling blogs like yours. And the letter that Stephanie referred to, your kind of reaction to the Global Online Freedom Act, basically says, great if you Americans want to do this, but this is really our problem. We need the People's Republic of China. We need our government to protect our rights to free expression. So one of the things that we're working on here is a discussion with these international internet companies, human rights groups, socially responsible investors, and others on a code of conduct on some sort of a mechanism for these companies to behave better or more responsibly in environments like China, not only China, but certainly including it. And as you noted, it's challenging. You said, I think, Microsoft and Yahoo have gotten better, but still, I think there's a long way to go. Do you have advice, recommendations, or things that you would like to see international information and communication technology companies do either in China or in any kind of regime anywhere in the world, including the US, behaviors that you would expect of them? The reason why I wrote to the Congress is that the ban to the American company who compromised to the Chinese government is not necessary and not good. It's because I give you example, Google. Google have some kind of compromise about the Chinese version of the, if the Congress said, Google, you have compromised, so just quit. Oh my god, how about Gmail? Gmail is our everything, and Microsoft. You know, Microsoft shut down my blog. So the Congress said, OK, you are very bad, so you should quit from the Chinese market. You cannot deal with the evil. OK, so how about messenger, MSMessengers? We just use that to chat with my close friend about the liberal information. So you can do that. Of course, for Congress, it's very black and white. Very moral, clean things to just quit from the evil. But it will have a very big impact to the Chinese thing. Because Chinese people, we depend on this tour to express, to communicate our information about freedom, about rights. If you just, like regarded as a package, to go out, go out together, the real cause is the Chinese freedom. It's the freedom of the Chinese people. So that's why I wrote the letter to the Congress that I think is not necessary and not good. But except Yahoo, Yahoo is a real bad thing every time you say Yahoo. Yahoo didn't do any good to China. But about that, what's my advice? My advice is give more and more positive information to the Chinese society that internet is the trend. Internet is the good. It's the good thing. That means Chinese authorities, they know. They like the trend. They like to become very mainstream. They don't want to become very, you know, like at North Korea, don't know the mainstream. They want to become a membership of the international community, become big five to communicate with, you know, the other USA, America, Russia. They become others regard themselves as a responsibility. So that's, we encourage them to do more things about the internet. And to continue to say internet is good and introduce more and more tools to Chinese people and sponsor more and more, you know, very liberal part application inside China. That's the things the outside world to do. Encourage, not only blame. Blaming, blaming game is good, it's necessary. It's very, it's necessary because we need them to blame that. But sometimes doesn't work because Chinese government, Chinese people don't like blame. It's not like American, American people like some kind of criticism is making the balance of that. We just like good words. So give them good words to tell, to say the internet is good. We give you good things. For example, we'll give you Facebook, if we go Gmail, it's good, just take it. But now say you should do that, you should not do that, they will not allow. Because they are full of nationalism and think the Chinese is very good racing in the world. Including me, I thought too. But my idea is different with the authority. I think democracy should be a value of Chinese. They don't think, agree with me. But the common ideas with me is the Chinese is very proud of them nationality. It's the case, you cannot directly blame. You should encourage, it's the direction. For example, blog, blog become very popular in China. It's just because we say blog is good. If we say blog is revolutionary to the social change, oh my god, who will have a blog in China? With that, we have to thank our guest. Thank you so much, Michael, for this great lunch.