Virtual China Forum

BY 2010 THERE WILL BE MORE PEOPLE ON THE INTERNET IN CHINA THAN IN THE UNITED STATES. HOW HAS, OR WILL, THE INTERNET CHANGE CHINA AND ITS RELATIONS WITH THE REST OF THE WORLD? HOW MIGHT THE CHINESE CHANGE THE INTERNET ITSELF?

(click contributors name for complete answer)

"The Internet will draw many Chinese people closer to the rest of the world, not into a global village but into communities of botanists, music-lovers, fans of George Orwell, stamp collectors, hemophiliacs."
Esther Dyson
Author, Release 2.0: A Design for Living in the Digital Age
Chairman, EDventure Holdings

"Americans of prominence can expect to be deluged with requests for information from thousands of Chinese in the years ahead."
Michael Oksenberg
Senior Fellow and Professor
Stanford University, Asia/Pacific Research Center

"My bet is that China's nationalist impulse will compel them to encourage a Chinese-exclusive enclave of the Web. They have the institutional/bureaucratic tools to make a go of this."
Andy Neusner
Content Producer, Office.com

"The Internet will undoubtedly hasten the global predominance of Chinese capitalism."
Jan Morris
Author, Hong Kong: Epilogue to an Empire

"The shadowy Central Propaganda Department of the Communist Party has pragmatically recognized that its days as official arbiter of virtually all information that enters the PRC are over."
Scott Savitt
Founder and Publisher, Beijing Scene, Beijing

"People in China now take Internet development as a fundamental measure of modernity."
Edward Steinfeld
Professor of Economics, MIT
Visiting Scholar, Beijing University, China Center for Economic Research

"The question will become, as always: 'Will the Internet organize itself in some political way?'"
Jonathan Pollack
Senior China Analyst, RAND Corporation

"We tend to let what we think is an economically backward and politically oppressive country get in the way of our imagining what's possible in China."
George Koo
Deputy Director, Pacific Rim Services, Deloitte & Touche
Editor, The Committee of 100 Newsletter

"I do not believe the Internet will lead to radical changes in the concepts of nationhood and sovereignty. The spread of the Internet could well enhance such concepts, in China as elsewhere."
Josephine Khu
Author, Hong Kong Diary
Editor, Cultural Curiosity: Retracing the Chinese Diaspora

"The Internet will facilitate more direct commerce between Chinese and foreign buyers and sellers, reducing middleman costs and increasing business opportunities."
John Holden
President, National Committee on U.S. China Relations
Former CEO of Cargill, China

"Users of the Internet from the academic realm will not be at the forefront of its development in China and internationally."
Leslie Stone
Program Director, Lingnan Foundation

"Internet commerce will allow smaller and nimble upstarts to unseat the entrenched positions of the state-owned firms at the top of the pecking order."
Yasheng Huang
Associate Professor, Harvard University, Graduate School of Business Administration
Author, Inflation and Investment Controls in China

"The Internet will enable Chinese people to enjoy the effects of lower barriers -- barriers to the mind, and barriers to trade."
Nick Driver
Director, Clear Thinking, The Economist Intelligence Unit, Beijing

"The state can shut out Radio Free Asia, but it cannot control the ability of individuals to get access to information online."
Doug Guthrie
Professor of Sociology, New York University
Author, Dragon in a Three-piece Suit: The Emergence of Capitalism in China

 

 

Esther Dyson
Author, Release 2.0: A Design for Living in the Digital Age
Chairman, EDventure Holdings

The amazing thing about the Internet is that it is not so much a melting pot as a collection pot. Thus, the advent of so many Chinese people on the Internet will not change what the rest of us see or do, so much as it will add a whole new sector to the Net. For better or worse, while the Internet overcomes geographical boundaries, it leaves language and cultural barriers in place. By 2015, there will probably be much better translation technology, which will be widely used by commerce sites trying to reach Chinese customers and suppliers. But content sites will probably still be fragmented by language, as just one more feature of any interest group.

At the same time, the Internet will draw many Chinese people closer to the rest of the world, not into a global village, but into communities of botanists, music-lovers, fans of George Orwell, stamp collectors, hemophiliacs, and the alumni of any particular university or other institution. In other words, the world will continue to be fragmented, but most of those fragments will now include Chinese members. Chinese culture and assumptions will subtly influence each of these fragments, adding new perspectives and attitudes. Some things, particularly consumer items, will become more homogenized, but the world will retain its diversity even as it embraces and is enriched by its huge Chinese population.

On the other hand, the Internet is likely to accelerate change in China dramatically. It will foster free expression in a way that will surely be troubling to the establishment, especially when the Net becomes a tool used by the masses. It will also make it much easier for people to start their own businesses and to control their own lives without "help" from the authorities, which will foster a more independent-minded population. The consequences of that I leave for you to judge.

Michel Oksenberg
Senior Fellow and Professor
Stanford University, Asia/Pacific Research Center

The spread of the Internet and e-mail in China is inevitable and likely to be more rapid than anyone currently anticipates. China will be transformed in the process. Knowledge that was previously kept within the ruling circles will soon be available to the public, with profound implications for the Chinese political system. E-commerce will not be far behind. Americans of prominence can expect to be deluged with requests for information from thousands of Chinese in the years ahead, and the desire of many Chinese to partake of world culture will be greatly eased in the process.

Andy Neusner
Producer, Office.com

Unless China makes the unlikely move of embracing the English language at all levels, a significant portion of the Internet access of its citizens will be in Chinese. This will drive a trend toward linguistically-driven Web factionalism. China will encourage this to retain barriers between its populace and the free flow of information. While cracks in these barriers will be significant, there will be no World Wide Web for many Chinese-speaking Internet users; they will experience a Walled Chinese Web.

There's a big difference between studying a language and being prepared to run an e-commerce site in it, especially when you are relying on your readers/customers to be at a similar level of English literacy. My bet is that China's nationalist impulse will compel them to encourage a Chinese-exclusive enclave of the Web, and they have the institutional/bureaucratic tools to make a go of this. They have already (see the blocked websites of the Falun Gong for example) begun to show their willingness to restrict Web freedom using whatever tools are available.

What can I say? I'm a pessimist.

Jan Morris
Author, Hong Kong: Epilogue to an Empire

In my view the opening up of China to the full blast of the Internet will be at once a blessing and a curse. For the Chinese it will be like the demolition of a Great Wall, finally releasing them into the intimate acquaintance of the rest of us. For everyone else it will, with luck, end the dominance of American capitalism in cyber-space, at present so irritating and so debilitating to many of us who inhabit other cultures. On the other hand it will undoubtedly hasten the global predominance of Chinese capitalism, the irresistible successor to Chinese Communism which will almost certainly, during the 21st century, become the governing ideology of the world. Thank God I shall by then have moved on to virtual eternity.

Scott Savitt
Founder and Publisher, Beijing Scene, Beijing

The shadowy Central Propaganda Department of the Communist Party has pragmatically recognized that its days as official arbiter of virtually all information that enters the PRC are over. Indeed, a high-ranking Communist Party official allows in a recent interview: "The Internet tolls the eventual death knell of one-party rule as it is now practiced in China. It is in fact tacitly accounted for, at least by more reform-minded elements in the Chinese leadership. Our conviction is that in another generation economic-and equally importantly 'middle class' cultural institutions-will have emerged in society. As even Marx said: 'Economic infrastructure determines political superstructure.' Economic pluralism is already a fact in China. Increased popular participation in politics cannot lag too far behind." This development is certain to have--indeed is already having--a profound impact on the ideas and lives of China's citizens.

Edward Steinfeld
Professor of Economics, MIT
Visiting Scholar, Beijing University, China Center for Economic Research

The Internet has entered the Chinese collective psyche. Whether in government, business, academia, or even simply on the street, people in China now take Internet development as a fundamental measure of modernity. It is no surprise, therefore, that the country is investing aggressively to build an IT infrastructure that is not just "world class," but "world leading." The China that many of us have known in the past is gone. In its place, something utterly new, confusing, and undoubtedly exhilarating is emerging.

Jonathan Pollack
Senior China Analyst, RAND Corporation

The rapidity of Internet usage in China is phenomenal, although not unprecedented, considering how quickly we have become dependent on it here. What's different is that there, the state is trying to assure that the Internet maintains the single face of the Party. Over time we will see the Internet in China emerge as a thought-outlet, but it is not clear how it will shape-up vis-à-vis political change. Highlighted will be the public versus private divide…what you will see are largely urban users from cities that are exponentially more wired. The question will become, as always: "Will the Internet organize itself in some political way?"

Yasheng Huang
Associate Professor, Harvard University, Graduate School of Business Administration
Author, Inflation and Investment Controls in China

The spread of Internet will herald not only a new age of commerce but the dawn of capitalism in China. It will bring down many of the bureaucratic, legal, and political barriers of entry that non-state firms currently face. A fundamental precept of a centrally-planned economy is to create a pecking order of firms. State-owned firms are favored, while private ones are discriminated against. Internet commerce will allow smaller and nimble upstarts to unseat the entrenched positions of the state-owned firms at the top of the pecking order.

Josephine Khu
Author, Hong Kong Diary
Editor, Cultural Curiosity: Retracing the Chinese Diaspora

The spread of the Internet in China will have a positive impact in the transformation a society currently in the midst of de-emphasizing the state and collective, and promoting the private.

China is undergoing many painful transitions. The Internet will accelerate many of these transitions by facilitating popular desires for higher living standards, greater social freedoms, and greater political accountability. China is still playing catch-up with the West and Japan, but with the aid of the Internet it could well become a true technological and cultural leader and innovator within a couple of decades.

The importance of Chinese as a Net language will certainly increase, in pace with the volume of Chinese-language content on the Web. But this will not diminish the importance of English as an international and Net language. However rich the Chinese-language resources of the Web, China's emerging middle classes, educated and extremely ambitious, will not be content with these but will also wish to tap into the offerings of the entire world.

I do not believe, however, that this process will lead to radical changes in the concepts of nation and sovereignty, as some have claimed. The spread of the Internet could well enhance such concepts, in China as elsewhere. In a confusing, rapidly-changing, culturally more homogeneous and ever more competitive world, nationhood and sovereignty may be concepts which states may find it expedient to promote. Individuals may choose to cling to these ideas, as anchors.

George Koo
Deputy Director, Pacific Rim Services, Deloitte & Touche
Editor, The Committee of 100 Newsletter

Use of the Internet in China is far more advanced than we in the West can imagine.

I met Cherry, a Chinese-American engineer working for an American company in Shanghai, who calls her parents regularly in the U.S. How could she afford the onerous toll charges?, I asked. Not expensive at all, she said. She buys Internet access cards which charge one Renminbi per minute (about $0.12 per minute) and uses her home PC to make overseas calls.

The head of a major state-owned corporation in Beijing showed me how Internet communication can work in the reverse direction. His son, who works in Silicon Valley, has set up a live video camera feed in his living room. On his home visit, he downloaded necessary software into his father's desktop PC and showed him how to use the Internet. Now the executive can dial into the Internet at any time, see if his son is at home across the ocean, and keypunch a conversation with each other in real time. We tend to let what we think is an economically backward and politically oppressive country get in the way of our imagining what's possible in China. What I found out on this recent trip amazed even me, and I think of myself as knowledgeable about China.

John Holden
President, National Committee on U.S. China Relations
Former CEO of Cargill, China

For China, the Internet is an open, inexpensive gateway to a world of information, and an effective tool to communicate with the outside world. It will allow rapidly growing numbers of Chinese to communicate with relatively little mediation by the government, and will enrich Chinese understanding of the world and the world's understanding of China. It will facilitate more direct commerce between Chinese and foreign buyers and sellers, reducing middleman costs and increasing business opportunities. It also has an enormous potential to improve communications and commerce within China itself.

Leslie Stone
Program Director, Lingnan Foundation

Within the field of higher education, it is clear that email availability in China has had a much greater impact on academic life than the Internet. CERNET (China's Education and Research Network) is so painfully slow and expensive to use that scholars cannot rely on the web as a resource. This situation will only change when institutions of higher education are permitted to use ISP providers (government approved, of course) to connect more directly to the Internet. Once these connections are forged, the only additional barrier will be cost. Universities will continue to charge user fees that will prohibit active exploration of the web by academics. Unless these impediments are overcome, users of the Internet from the academic realm will not be at the forefront of its development in China and internationally.

Doug Guthrie
Professor of Sociology, New York University
Author, Dragon in a Three-piece Suit: The Emergence of Capitalism in China

The first issue that comes to mind regarding China and the Internet is the state's ability to control access to information -- an issue with implications for democratization and a general liberalization of Chinese society. On the one hand, the government knows it needs to develop and thrive in the area of information technology, because financial markets and other information-intensive industries are becoming increasingly dependent upon it. Yet, this very technology fundamentally undercuts the Party's ability to monitor individuals, who now have access to a whole host of ideas and issues that were previously unavailable in China. The state can shut out Radio Free Asia, but it cannot control the ability of individuals to get access to information online.

China's impact on the Internet and the rest of the world may arise through sheer numbers and volume of service and information. As this technology becomes popularized throughout the world, and as Chinese people occupy a greater and greater proportion of Internet traffic and websites, the rest of the world cannot but be influenced by the fact that Chinese people and the concerns emanating from that part of the globe. For example, inasmuch as the Internet lays the groundwork for a virtual marketplace, producers and vendors will surely start taking more direct account for this huge segment of the marketplace.

Nick Driver
Director, Clear Thinking, The Economist Intelligence Unit, Beijing

The Internet is the 21st century's leveler. It levels the playing field for businesspeople, activists, and anyone else hooked up to a television and a telephone. It also promises a more deconstructionist interpretation of "leveling": anyone with a telephone and a TV will be able to circumvent existing bureaucracies and modes of power, eventually leading to their obsolescence. Virtual corporate or community presences will wield far more power and authority than a brick and mortar government. To a certain extent, this is true for all governments. But until it becomes more transparent, the Chinese government's heretofore closed system stands to lose the most. The embrace of the Internet will eventually enable Chinese people, like their Western brethren, to enjoy the effects of lower barriers -- barriers to the mind, as well as to trade. Until the Government of China cooperates with the Internet instead of fighting it, tensions will continue between Western governments and Beijing.

 

earlier this week
Monday: Where is China?
Tuesday: The Net: Open Door to the World
Wednesday: Xu Bing: 'Twixt East and West
Thursday: The Confucian Businessman