The battle between censors and editors - Jeremy Goldkorn

Jeremy Goldkorn

The ongoing public tussle between government censors and editors of the Guangzhou-based Southern Weekly is a rare breakdown of the otherwise mostly hidden ways to manage China's state-owned media. Media watcher Jeremy Goldkorn explains for the BBC why the censors went too far in this case. 

The BBC:

So what happened at the Southern Weekly to spur its beleaguered journalists to finally walk off the job? 

This time, it seems that Tuo Zhen, the propaganda chief overseeing the paper, was the one who crossed the line. 

"Tuo Zhen did not stick to the protocol that people are used to," said Jeremy Goldkorn, founder of Danwei, a firm that researches Chinese media and the internet. 

The unwritten rules governing the Chinese media vary from outlet to outlet, but all journalists and editors follow the same basic system. 

Sometimes, censorship instructions come in phone calls directly from Beijing, ordering editors how to deal with sensitive stories. 

However, on a daily basis, individual journalists submit content to their editors, who are then tasked with tweaking the content to meet the needs of the local propaganda department. 

Mr Goldkorn explains that the relationship between editorial staff and propaganda officials is an important one because newspapers must stay in the good graces of the censors so that their annual licences can be renewed. Without a licence, the paper must shut down... 

"In the past, they have stopped the presses or they have pre-censored things before it has got to the stage of going to press, or there has been trouble after something has gotten printed," Mr Goldkorn said. 

He added that exact details of Mr Tuo's transgressions have yet to emerge, "but it seems unusual when the person in charge of propaganda for the province actually goes to the newspaper office and actually is in charge of ensuring the change before it goes to print"... 

Mr Goldkorn believes that even if Mr Tuo remains in his position, Southern Weekly will also continue to soldier on. 

"I don't think there's a single person in the Chinese government committed to media liberalisation, but I think there are people who recognise that there are some voices... that are useful to have around for society. It would be extreme of them to completely crush it."

More at the BBC

Jeremy Goldkorn is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

The China Weekly Hangout discussed at the end of 2012 another media struggle, the efforts of the internet censors to stifle VPN's. Attending are Sam Xu, John R. Otto, Gabriel Rueck and Fons Tuinstra

Related articles

• Liberalizing internet not on the political agenda - Jeremy Goldkorn (chinaspeakersbureau.info)
• A Rare Free-Speech Fight Erupts Over China Censors (businessweek.com)
• Hundreds protest censorship in China (sacbee.com)
• Censorship anger a test for China (edition.cnn.com)
• Southern Weekly negotiates with government amid protests - South China Morning Post (scmp.com)

Liberalizing internet not on the political agenda - Jeremy Goldkorn

Jeremy Goldkorn

Rumors on the short-term future of China's internet went into opposite directions over the past few weeks. VPN services got into trouble, others suggested the new leadership would allow more freedom. Media watcher Jeremy Goldkorn tells the VOA he does not expect either. 

The VOA:

Jeremy Goldkorn, director of Danwei.com, a site about the Chinese media and Internet, said in an interview with VOA that he doesn't foresee many changes, in either direction. 

"I just don't see that there's going to be any change. I don't see anybody in the government who's committed to liberalization of Internet policy or media policy," says Goldkorn. "But will it get much worse? That's always a possibility."

More in the VOA

Jeremy Goldkorn is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

At the China Weekly Hangout we discussed end December the problems for foreign business people to access the internet via VPN's. Is it illegal? And will the authorities push ahead banning this crucial service?
 

Related articles

• Get a European butler, the latest China trend - Rupert Hoogewerf
• Five new trends of Chinese consumers in 2013 - Helen Wang
• China protectionism looms at trade talks - Shaun Rein
• The losing battle of China's censors - Maria Korolov
• Would China kill with its drones? - Wendell Minnick

US election debates trigger polite interest - Jeremy Goldkorn

Jeremy Goldkorn

Chinese state-TV avoids the presidential debates during the US election campaigns, but internet users can watch them. It creates some excitement, although internet watcher Jeremy Goldkorn does not want to exaggerate the effect, he tells the VOA. 

The VOA:

Jeremy Goldkorn, the editor of Danwei.com, a website about Chinese media and Internet, explaines it is natural that many Chinese are paying more attention to the U.S. presidential campaign, given the rising influence of the Internet. 

"The rise of social media and in particular Weibo, which has made it very easy for people to follow the debates in real time, has certainly generated some excitement of some Chinese who are active on the Internet," says Goldkorn. 

Goldkorn says it is mainly young, tech-savvy people who are watching the debates online, since they are not shown on Chinese television. But as to whether those watching like what they see and want it to come to their country, Goldkorn says it is difficult to tell. 

"People don't necessarily say that because China doesn't have an electoral democracy like the United States it's worse, or that China should mimic the United States," says Goldkorn. "There are people who say that. But there are also plenty and plenty of people who may find the United States' democracy attractive but nonetheless don't think it will work in China."

More at the VOA. Jeremy Goldkorn is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

Related articles

• Top-5 stories for August 2012 (chinaspeakersbureau.info)

Top-5 most-read stories for August 2012

Europe is preparing for the hottest day since 1944, so what better to do than retreat in my cool study and look back. Today we resume our top-5 of most-read stories and some of our top-speakers feature here: Shaun Rein and his book "The End of Cheap China", and the "healthy" image of McDonald's in China, Tom Doctoroff and his grim outlook on China's innovative capacities, Zhang Lijia and the conspiracy theories on the London Olympic Games, and of course Jeremy Goldkorn on Weibo. 

This is also a good spot to announce our China Weekly Hangout. On this website we mostly focus on stories from our speakers, picked up by mainstream media, or published on their weblogs. You can follow our announcements on this dedicated webpage, or on my personal Google+ account. We will use our YouTube account for broadcasting, and you can sign up here too. 

Calling our China Weekly Hangout a TV-show is probably a bit over the hill, but technology offers the opportunity to bring together people from different continents for an exchange of thoughts, an opportunity we cannot let go. We have been setting op a small China Weekly Hangout team, and will use Google+ for future exchanges. 

What we want to do is taking the daily news a step further. We will bring China experts - sometimes or speakers, but not only them - in debates that add a bit more value to those daily messages. Take for example the debate on China's innovative capacities. Some of our speakers, like Bill Dodson and Tom Doctoroff have a pretty grim outlook on the copy-and-paste talents in China. 

And while IMD professor Bill Fischer is not really optimistic about China's recent developments on innovation, but he has a very different way of defining innovation, for example in his book  The Idea Hunter. Bringing together some of these conflicting ideas seems a useful plan, and it allows it to do a little bit more than just follow the daily publications in other media. 

In August we will do a few more tests, as the new applications and other features on the Google+ hangouts are coming in on a weekly basis, and make the usage of this new broadcast technology pretty exiting. Please let me know, if you are interested in joining in any capacity, as audience, expert, panelist or otherwise. 

Now back to our top-5 stories for August:

1. Shaun Rein, Why China is not cheap anymore
2. Tom Doctoroff, On innovation Chinese won't deliver
3. Shaun Rein, McDonald's healthy image in China
4. Zhang Lijia, The conspiracy against China at the London Olympics
5. Jeremy Goldkorn, The genuine debate on Weibo

Related articles

• My meeting with Chen Guangcheng in NY - Zhang Lijia (chinaspeakersbureau.info)
• Consumers are willing to pay a premium - Tom Doctoroff (chinaspeakersbureau.info)
• In China, dark is ugly - Zhang Lijia (chinaspeakersbureau.info)
• The high ambitions of China's consumers - Tom Doctoroff (chinaspeakersbureau.info)
• The insult of shengnu, leftover women - Zhang Lijia (chinaspeakersbureau.info)

Business as usual after Beijing flooding - Jeremy Goldkorn

Jeremy Goldkorn

The Beijing mayor and a vice-mayor lost their jobs, Weibo is rife with rumors about a high number of causalities, but - unlike what some US newspapers suggest - the city does not face a confidence crisis, explains Beijing watcher Jeremy Goldkorn on his weblog.

Jeremy Goldkorn:

“Living in China has always meant having to learn to tolerate a certain amount of mendacity on the part of the government. This is nothing new.”... 

One reason for the lower levels of outrage may be that the flood was caused by an observable natural phenomenon — anyone in Beijing on July 21 will have seen and probably been soaked by the torrential rains. There may have been underinvestment in rainwater drainage systems, but this is perhaps understandable in a city as dry as Beijing — sitting on the edge of northern deserts and with no river running through it. 

Personally, I don’t see how such disasters can be avoided if China’s continues it breakneck urban development. Beijing had a population of around ten million people and almost no private cars in 1990. There are now around twenty million people, maybe more, in the greater Beijing area, and they are all driving around on brand new roads, lined by brand new skyscrapers as well as shoddily constructed buildings that are just biding their time before demolition. Despite the economic gloom of the last two years, construction continues apace in Beijing. It’s just too fast for it all to be safe. 

I do not expect the disaster of the 2012 Beijing flood to be investigated thoroughly. After all there has not yet been an open, public investigation of the Wenzhou high speed train crash.

More on Jeremy Goldkorn's weblog.

Jeremy Goldkorn is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

Related articles

• Weibo, a force in the public debate - Jeremy Goldkorn (chinaspeakersbureau.info)
• The genuine debate on Weibo - Jeremy Goldkorn (chinaspeakersbureau.info)
• Blocking US consulate's weibo account "no technical glitch" - Jeremy Goldkorn (chinaspeakersbureau.info)
• "Foreigner hunt" nothing new - Jeremy Goldkorn (chinaspeakersbureau.info)

The genuine debate on Weibo - Jeremy Goldkorn

Add caption

China's lively micro-blogging services might have to face internet controls, but that does not mean the national and local debate is curtailed, explains internet watcher Jeremy Goldkorn  to Australia's ABC.

ABC:

Jeremy Goldkorn is another avid follower of Weibo and other Chinese social media sites. 

He was the founding director of Danwei.com and is a respected Beijing-based researcher of the Chinese internet. 

JEREMY GOLDKORN: Social media has, perhaps for the first time in Chinese history, given every citizen a space where they can express themselves that really never used to exist in any institutionalised format. China's never had a very uncensored letters to the editors pages in its newspapers etc. and social media has given people a place to express themselves that is just unprecedented. 

STEPHEN MCDONELL: And on Weibo can you just talk about anything, or are there certain subjects completely off limits, or where are the lines? 

JEREMY GOLDKORN: People do try to talk about absolutely anything on Weibo but there are lots of subjects that you can't talk about. And most of the subjects that you can't talk about if you do start talking about them your postings get deleted and if you continue to talk about them your account may possibly be deleted. And this censorship is done by Sina, the company that controls Weibo, because they have to because their business licence is dependent on government approval of them, and the government expects them to make sure that the content is clean. But it is nonetheless remarkable, despite the censorship what a wide and vibrant range of discussion there is on Weibo about every issue imaginable of concern to the Chinese people.   

STEPHEN MCDONELL: So it's not just people chatting about their love lives and stuff like that; there is genuine discussion about serious issues in China? 

JEREMY GOLDKORN: Oh absolutely, there's genuine discussion. There's a lot of quite bitter name calling and feuding between different intellectual camps and different writers and bloggers and tweeters but it ranges the gamut from people uploading pictures of their kitties to serious political discussion.

More at ABC.


Jeremy Goldkorn is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

Related articles

• Weibo: Twitter on crack - Tricia Wang

  ---

• "Foreigner hunt" nothing new - Jeremy Goldkorn

  ---

• Weibo, a force in the public debate - Jeremy Goldkorn

  ---

• Blocking US consulate's weibo account "no technical glitch" Jeremy Goldkorn

  ---

Blocking US consulate's weibo account "no technical glitch" Jeremy Goldkorn

Jeremy Goldkorn

When earlier in the week the Sina Weibo account of the US consulate in Shanghai was blocked, theories varied. Was it a mistake by Sina? Was it a political provocation by the Chinese authorities? It was certainly not technical glitch, says internet watcher Jeremy Goldkorn in VOA.

VOA:

Consulate officials say they do not know why the account has been removed and that they are working to find out how the service can be restored. 

But Jeremy Goldkorn, the editor of Danwei.com – a website about Chinese media and Internet – told VOA the incident is “almost certainly” more than just a technical glitch. 

“This is very common. Sina, sometimes at the request of governments, and sometimes on their own initiative, to avoid getting in trouble with the government, shuts down accounts and deletes tweets (posts) – they do all kinds of censorship. So almost certainly this is what happened.” 

It would not be the first dispute between American embassy or consular officials and the government of China, which employs a massive team of web censors to remove material deemed objectionable. 

Last month, a senior Chinese environmental official slammed the U.S. Embassy in Beijing's Twitter account for regularly posting air quality readings that are much worse than the government's official figures. 

Goldkorn says Beijing is likely even more unhappy with posts that appear in the Chinese language on locally hosted services, such as Weibo. But he says he does not know of any instances of government censors completely shutting down a U.S. government-controlled account. 

“They have deleted tweets from the U.S. government's Weibo accounts in the past, so in that sense it's not new. But I think this may be the first time that they have completely removed or disabled an account, on Weibo at least.”

More in VOA

Jeremy Goldkorn is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

Related articles

• "Foreigner hunt" nothing new - Jeremy Goldkorn

  ---

• US social media account in China disappears

  ---

• Why Sina Weibo is a winner, despite rules - Jeremy Goldkorn

  ---

• Weibo, a force in the public debate - Jeremy Goldkorn

  ---

Weibo, a force in the public debate - Jeremy Goldkorn

Jeremy Goldkorn

Weibo, China's twitter-like microblog, is changing the public debate very fast, tells internet watcher Jeremy Goldkorn in The National. Even authorities have problems in taming the digital beast, he says.

The National:

This was seen clearly after two high-speed trains collided in July last year near Wenzhou, a city close to Shanghai. Much of the information about the incident, which claimed 40 lives, spread on Weibo and there was little the authorities could do to control it. 

Such unofficial information dissemination, and the use of the Weibo sites by those keen to express views on politics, means the authorities are "very concerned" about the medium, according to Jeremy Goldkorn, the founder of Danwei, a Beijing media website and research company. 

"Weibo is the most powerful tool for public expression China has ever had. It's a very real force that's changing public debate," he said. 

The authorities try to restrict discussion, insisting on real-name registration and deleting controversial material or preventing it from being posted in the first place. 

Users who breach rules, by spreading rumours for example, now risk having their accounts deactivated. Yet the sites remains a potent medium, allowing views to spread. 

"It's certainly a force that's pushing China toward a more pluralistic environment in terms of the public expression of opinions and debates," said Mr Goldkorn. 

Yet as well as allowing more diverse opinions to be aired, online discussion can also magnify hardline views. 

In particular, extreme nationalism can dominate discussions when there are disputes with other countries, such as the recent spat between Beijing and Manila over the South China Sea. 

"There was a lot of very angry nationalism on Weibo," Mr Goldkorn said. This is a potential concern given that a 2010 report, New Foreign Policy Actors in China, published by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, warned nationalism was "a dangerous tool" that could harm the government if it is not tough enough with foreign countries.

More in The National.

Jeremy Goldkorn is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

"Foreigner hunt" nothing new - Jeremy Goldkorn

Jeremy Goldkorn

China's capital Beijing has set off a hunt against illegal, jobless foreigners. Actually, nothing really new, says Beijing veteran Jeremy Goldkorn, who has seen it all before, he tells the Wall Street Journal. 

The Wall Street Journal:

Beijing has conducted one city-wide sweep of illegal foreigners before, just ahead of the 2008 Olympics. Prior to that, Beijing police have been known to crack down on a district level. 

“The online reaction is a little scary, but what the police are doing isn’t particularly new,” said Jeremy Goldkorn, founder of the Chinese media-tracking website Danwei and a resident of Beijing since 1995, adding that he thought the crackdown was most likely a response to the controversy over the video. 

“I do think the free pass we’ve had in past years to misbehave has been taken away, but I don’t think this necessarily reflects any general rise in anti-foreigner sentiment,” he said.

More in the Wall Street Journal.

Jeremy Goldkorn is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

Related articles

• The government balancing act on the internet - Jeremy Goldkorn (chinaherald.net)
• Why Sina Weibo is a winner, despite rules - Jeremy Goldkorn (chinaspeakersbureau.info)
• China's internet "freer than ever" - Jeremy Goldkorn (chinaherald.net)
• The government balancing act on the Internet - Jeremy Goldkorn (chinaspeakersbureau.info)
• Why Facebook would not make it in China - Jeremy Goldkorn (chinaspeakersbureau.info)

Why Sina Weibo is a winner, despite rules - Jeremy Goldkorn

Jeremy Goldkorn

Despite much domestic competition, the twitter-like service Sina Weibo is technical better and offering most interesting conversations,tells internet watcher Jeremy Goldkorn in the Artman Talks. And why the 'real name registration' did not really work.

Nanny instincts from the government to register the real names of weibo users did not work, just like previous efforts for user registration. "It is an authoritarian system not being that authoritarian at all." Revenue for companies seems to be more important than real control, Goldkorn says, explaining why shutting down popular internet services is not high on the agenda.

More in the Artman Talks. Listen here for the full podcast.

Jeremy Goldkorn is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting of conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' registration form.

Related articles

• Dealing with a tsunami of information - Jeremy Goldkorn(chinaspeakersbureau.info)

  ---

• Unprecedented online chatter on Bo Xilai - Jeremy Goldkorn (chinaherald.net)
• China's internet "freer than ever" - Jeremy Goldkorn (chinaherald.net)
• How internet users avoid key word censorship - Jeremy Goldkorn (chinaspeakersbureau.info)
• China new openness in the post-Wikileaks era - Jeremy Goldkorn (chinaspeakersbureau.info)

Dealing with a tsunami of information - Jeremy Goldkorn

Jeremy Goldkorn

Over 500 million Chinese are on internet, and 300 million have a Twitter-like weibo account, causing a tsunami of information that is hard to manage, tells internet watcher Jeremy Goldkorn in the Deutsche Well. That offers the citizens an inprecedented freedom, despite censorship. 

Deutsche Welle:

Chinese censors are currently focusing most of their attention on the Internet. Their greatest annoyance has been a social media website similar to Twitter called “Weibo”. About 300 million Chinese have at least one Weibo account. 

“The Internet and options like Weibo give people the chance to express themselves more than ever before in the history of China,” said blogger Jeremy Goldkorn, who lives in China. 

A new law requires Weibo users to register with their real names. The legislation still hasn't gone into effect. 

Goldkorn has seen regulation of Internet use grow stronger through censorship in China. Aside from the Weibo-law, censorship has limited itself to traditional methods, such as shutting down websites. When a power struggle was taking place within China's Communist Party, the government disabled the comment function for three days on social media websites similar to Twitter. 

The problems stems from more than just one website or trying to control public opinion on politics. ”We're dealing with a tsunami of information that didn't exist before,” Goldkorn said.

More in Deutsche Welle

  Jeremy Goldkorn in a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

Related articles

• China's internet "freer than ever" - Jeremy Goldkorn (chinaspeakersbureau.info)
• China new openness in the post-Wikileaks era - Jeremy Goldkorn (chinaspeakersbureau.info)
• A more subtle management of the internet censorship - Jeremy Goldkorn (chinaherald.net)
• Unprecedented online chatter on Bo Xilai - Jeremy Goldkorn (chinaherald.net)

Why Facebook would not make it in China - Jeremy Goldkorn

Jeremy Goldkorn

For a few hours China's internet filters failed to block Facebook, causing some excitement. But internet watcher Jeremy Goldkorn explains in Techcrunch why the would-wide famous social network does not make much chances in the largest internet market. 

Techcrunch:

Jeremy Goldkorn, founding director of Danwei.com, a website and research firm that tracks Chinese media and internet, tells us that it was just a temporary bug that is getting fixed. He also adds that this is not a market where Facebook is making much headway at the moment: 

“There is nothing Facebook can do to sort itself out in China,” he said in an email exchange. “Any attempt to enter the market as Facebook itself or to sneak in using a smaller company like Instagram is doomed and will lead to world of pain — a PR nightmare in the U.S. and a huge waste of money and energy in China.” 

He adds that “the only smart thing” for Facebook to do in China is to invest in or acquire notable startups, “if they can find any.”

More in Techcrunch

Jeremy Goldkorn is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

Related articles

• China new openness in the post-Wikileaks era - Jeremy Goldkorn(chinaspeakersbureau.info)

  ---

• China's internet "freer than ever" - Jeremy Goldkorn (chinaherald.net)
• The shot across the bows of internet companies - Jeremy Goldkorn (chinaspeakersbureau.info)

China's new openness in the post-Wikileaks era - Jeremy Goldkorn

Jeremy Goldkorn

China's internet might have the most elaborated filters and blocks in the world, information is freer and flowing faster than ever, tells Internet watcher Jeremy Goldkorn to Jaime A. FlorCruz of CNN. As was illustrated by the case of the dismissal of Bo Xilai. 

Jaime A. FlorCruz:

News of Lin Biao's death[A Chinese leader involved in a coup in 1971], allegedly in a plane crash, took months to emerge. The "ever victorious general" was labeled a traitor, accused of fleeing China en route to Mongolia after a failed coup. 

Says Jeremy Goldkorn, founder of Danwei.com, a website and research firm that tracks the Chinese media and internet, "We know less about what really happened to Lin Biao than we do about the fall of Bo Xilai, and the Bo case isn't over yet." 

This time, the Chinese government is also trying to contain the crisis, but it has become too big to control in ways they have done before. 

"We live in the post Wikileaks age," says Goldkorn. "China is no different from the rest of the world, except that many parts of its government have always been excessively secretive.".. 

"With more than half a billion Internet users and websites like (Twitter-like) Weibo, information can spread nationwide in a few minutes," says Goldkorn. "These trends are irreversible, barring a complete shutdown of the Chinese internet, which may be possible but is very unlikely."...\ 

Notes Goldkorn: "A certain amount of negative commentary on Bo has been allowed to circulate on the internet and, according to some commentators, some of these gossip, stories and rumors about Bo actually originated from people inside the central government."

More about China's internet at CNN.

Jeremy Goldkorn is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

Related articles

• The government balancing act on the internet - Jeremy Goldkorn(chinaherald.net)

  ---

• China's internet "freer than ever" - Jeremy Goldkorn (chinaherald.net)
• Unprecedented online chatter on Bo Xilai - Jeremy Goldkorn (chinaspeakersbureau.info)
• A more subtle management of internet censorship - Jeremy Goldkorn (chinaspeakersbureau.info)
• New rules won't kill weibo - Jeremy Goldkorn (chinaherald.net)

A more subtle management of the internet censorship - Jeremy Goldkorn

Jeremy Goldkorn

While the government is still firm in control, the online debate in China has become more outspoken, and the authorities rather try to manage the information flow, rather than shut it up, tells internet watcher Jeremy Goldkorn in the Global Post. 

The Global Post:

Some critics see China's recent moves to regulate the sector as an attempt to exert a softer kind of control. 

“I think they are using a strategy of trying to shape and guide the conversation rather than shut it off,” said Jeremy Goldkorn, founder of Danwei, a blog about media in China. 

“[This new policy] shows the party is as serious as it’s ever been about controlling information, and that message isn’t lost on people. But I haven’t seen that any of the recent measures have had the effect of dampening the conversation."... 

In the last several years, microblogs have become a crucial outlet not only for frank political opinion, but also breaking news. In August 2011, a high-speed train crashed in Zhejiang province and killed 40 people. While the state-run media largely steered clear of it — as with other controversies — weibo users broke the news and covered it obsessively, generating 10 million messages on the crash in a single week. 

“Weibo is absolutely key to understanding the Chinese media landscape,” Goldkorn said. "Everyone in the media in China is on weibo. Your taxi driver who doesn’t get online will eventually hear about news because it’s broken there first.” This power to drive the news explains the Communist Party's urgent concern about microblogs — especially in a once-a-decade election year. This fall, seven new members will be nominated to the nine-man clique that rules China, the Politboro Standing Committee.

More in The Global Post.

Jeremy Goldkorn is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.  

Related articles

• The government balancing act on the Internet - Jeremy Goldkorn(chinaspeakersbureau.info)

  ---

• Unprecedented online chatter on Bo Xilai - Jeremy Goldkorn(chinaspeakersbureau.info)

  ---

• China's internet "freer than ever" - Jeremy Goldkorn (chinaspeakersbureau.info)
• The shot across the bow of internet companies - Jeremy Goldkorn (chinaherald.net)

The government balancing act on the internet - Jeremy Goldkorn

Jeremy Goldkorn

It took China's internet censors weeks to crack down on the internet after the rumors surrounding the now disposed leader Bo Xilai started to make their rounds. But that should not be seen as a trend towards liberalization, tells internet watcher Jeremy Goldkorn Bloomberg.

Bloomberg:

Even as Beijing once again asserts its heavy hand over the Chinese net, many are wondering why it waited so long. Indeed, more notable than the latest crackdown has been the surprising openness allowed over the last month. That’s not to say there has been any liberalization trend however, argues Jeremy Goldkorn, founding director of Beijing-based Danwei, a China Internet and media research firm that publishes at danwei.com. He points to the new rule that bloggers must use their real names to register, only partially enforced to date, as proof of a counter, tightening trend. 

Rather the relative looseness seen recently is due to the substantial challenge Beijing authorities face in monitoring the world’s largest Internet population. China has 485 million Internet users and 300 million registered microbloggers, according to Zhang Xinsheng, an official from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, as reported by Xinhua news agency late last year. “This is more because it has become a Sisyphean task to monitor the Internet,” says Danwei’s Goldkorn, pointing to how difficult it is for censors and software to keep up with the evasive tactics, such as the regular use of puns and homonyms by China’s netizens... 

At the same time, it appears the Internet has become a battleground for different factions within China, or more specifically, for those wishing to bring down Bo during the unfolding scandal. “It is true they did not clamp down on the Wang Lijun and Bo Xilai rumors at first. Some of the stuff that was spread online seemed to be allowed in order to blacken Bo Xilai’s name,” says Goldkorn. “I think Bo’s enemies have used the Internet to hasten his downfall.”

More in Bloomberg.

Jeremy Goldkorn is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

Related articles

• China's internet "freer than ever" - Jeremy Goldkorn(chinaspeakersbureau.info)

  ---

• How internet users avoid key word filters - Jeremy Goldkorn (chinaherald.net)
• The shot across the bows of internet companies - Jeremy Goldkorn (chinaspeakersbureau.info)
• Unprecedented online chatter on Bo Xilai - Jeremy Goldkorn (chinaherald.net)
• New rules won't kill weibo - Jeremy Goldkorn (chinaherald.net)

China's internet "freer than ever" - Jeremy Goldkorn

Jeremy Goldkorn

The internet in China might face yet another clampdown by the authorities, internet veteran Jeremy Goldkorn points out in USA Today that despite those actions, China's internet is freer than ever, although microblog services of Tencent and Sina had to hold commenting temporary.

USA Today:

The clampdown on Sina and Tencent is "not an extreme act of censorship but reminds everybody of who is in charge; it sends a signal to the Internet companies and users that the government is watching you," said Jeremy Goldkorn, director of Danwei.com, a website focused on Chinese media and Internet. 

China's Internet today "is the freest platform of public expression ever, but there is also a constant effort by the government to rein it in," Goldkorn said.

More in USA Today.

Jeremy Goldkorn is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

Related articles

• Unprecedented online chatter on Bo Xilai - Jeremy Goldkorn(chinaherald.net)

  ---

• New rules won't kill weibo - Jeremy Goldkorn(chinaherald.net)

  ---

• How internet users avoid key word censorship - Jeremy Goldkorn(chinaspeakersbureau.info)

  ---