“The dam is leaking all over the place,” writes Roland Soong of East South West North (ESWN) in a thoughtful analysis of the changes China’s Internet has faced over the past five years. Last weekend, China’s most important bloggers gathered in the South-Chinese city of Guangzhou at the 2008 Chinese Blogger Conference. Soong was not able to deliver his speech due to a family emergency, but fortunately found time to write it down.
Five years ago, ESWN was a leading “bridge-blog,” bridging between cultures by mostly translating important Chinese blogs and other online contributions into English. His translations were a must-read for many foreign correspondents, who thankfully used his blog — sometimes by quoting his lengthy and high-quality translations, but often by simply appropriating his work without attribution.
Getting into the foreign media was a key strategy for many kinds of Chinese activists. An ESWN translation often helped them get the changes done, they were after.
According to Soong: “If a English-language reader is intrigued by an English-language report on some ‘atrocity’ in China, he may be tempted to search for more information on the Internet. He will be able to find the full translation about the incident at my blog.
“For example, I provided in-depth coverage in early 2004 about the matter of The Chinese Peasant Study by Chen Guidi and Wu Chuntao. There are many examples in my blog archive about other social incidents under this foreign interventionist model. In 2006, a survey of foreign correspondents by Rebecca MacKinnon found that my blog was the top blog as well as an important source of information. A number of Chinese bloggers have found that they were receiving international attention through my translations of their blog posts. That was how they found out about me.”
…But in the past months ESWN has fallen silent. Soong explains how changes to China’s Internet have altered the character of the online debate in China — and his position in it. Despite their increasingly ingenious filter systems, Chinese censors cannot suppress stories arising online. Today, this tsunami of information involves over 300 million Chinese participants, which has made it impossible to kill stories. Also, China’s internet users are learning how to use the Internet to pursue their political and social agendas. Consequently, foreign media have lost prominence compared to just five years ago.
Said Soong, “This means a lot to me, because I am a bridge blogger from China to the English-only readership. My base has just been driven into insignificance. If once upon a time western media coverage (which affects the opinion of western politicians and citizens) mattered to the Chinese people, this is no longer the case.
China is changing fast — and so is its online community. Unlike many participants in the media debate, ESWN understands the context and implications of this change. More at ESWN.
