Middle East Revolutions: The View from China by Perry Link | NYRBlog | The New York Rev... - 5 views
www.nybooks.com/...le-east-revolutions-view-china
middle_east china revolution protest #jan25 authoritarianism mubarak filtering social_media
shared by Ed Webb on 15 Apr 11
- No Cached
-
hus, while Chinese censors have declared the word Mubarak (along with “Egypt” and others) to be “sensitive” and have set up filters to delete any message that contains it, Chinese Web users, in their usual cat-and-mouse game, have invented witty substitutes. These include “Mu Xiaoping” and “Mu Jintao”—which, by playing on the names of China’s own autocrats, get around the censors and up the ante at the same time.
-
gweyman on 15 Apr 11The contest is at the level of the word - imitates the growth of search and of Twitter hashtags.
-
-
The Egyptian uprising is an awkward fact for China’s rulers because it undermines one of their favorite arguments.
-
Is control at the level of the argument? What impact do arguments have in authoritarian countries?
-
Even authoritarian regimes require consent at some level, even the consent of silence. This is why the role of dissenter is so important in such societies. Repression alone is too expensive - ideological hegemony is more efficient. So argument/dissent matters. -
Agreed repression is expensive and often only causes more dissent. But the issue is whether ideological hegemony is actually about substantive arguments or a kind of rhetoric which citizens cannot break down, but know is false.
-
If you haven't read Lisa Wedeen's Ambiguities of Domination, you should! Great stuff on the power of absurd arguments.
-
Absolutely what I was thinking of. This book was quite influential for me. Thanks Ed. (ps back in the day I tried to take forward some of those arguments for Syria here http://users.ox.ac.uk/~metheses/WeymanThesis.htm)
-
-
-
The example of Tunisia raises a related question, equally awkward. For China’s rulers, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the ousted dictator, would have been seen as following their own approach—the so-called “Chinese model” of economic growth combined with political repression—and having much success with it, or so it was assumed for many years. But the Tunisian people took to the streets to overthrow him. Did the people want something more than the Chinese model? How could that be?
-
- ...5 more annotations...
-
The uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt could not have happened without Facebook and Twitter.
-
Over stated. How would the author explain Yemen where Facebook has a 1.6% penetration?
-
-
For five days at the height of the protests, Mubarak’s people were able to shut down the Internet and, for a time, cell phone networks as well.
-
Shutting the internet down was in effect the Egyptian government admitting to its own weakness in the face of growing internet use that it could not control.
-
-
Chinese sources have revealed that the government spends over 500 billion yuan ($76 billion) a year on domestic “stability maintenance.”
-
What is the relationship between what an authoritarian regime spends on maintaining its power and the fact of its continued power? Are these resources well spent?
-
-
On February 15, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton delivered a speech on Internet freedom in which she said the US is committed to helping people in China and elsewhere “get around filters, stay one step ahead of the censors,” and in other ways join a free and open Internet. She said the US plans to award $25 million this year in competitive grants to “technologists and activists working at the cutting edge of the fight against Internet repression.”
-
US credibility in internet censorship is somewhat undermined by its response to Wikileaks.
-
-
And which method—fighting Internet repression or fighting wars—seems more likely actually to bring democracy?
-
cf clay shirky on US policies on tackling internet repression. He argues it is not a particularly useful strategy.
-