When You Can’t Talk, Dodge

And pretend it didn’t happen.

Just look at the timestamp of this post to see what period of time we’re in. Propaganda briefings have dispensed with what happened decades ago and just made reference to the fact that “the sensitive time and period is nigh”. Of course, Twitter and Facebook continue to be invisible to the nation of 1.3 billion and counting unless you “reroute”, but even local equivalents like, say, Douban, are feeling the heat.

“Be sure to handle the situation correctly,” goes the superior directive. Instead of letting folks “remember”, they’ve decided to basically make sure tomorrow’s as silent as it goes. Every year around this time, folks are on edge. The “counter-revolutionary riots” 21 years ago, as the officialspeak describe it, is both invisible and visible. Visibility is extremely high on Twitter and sites outside China, where people won’t just let the day go by without muttering something about it. And yet, if you’re local, chances are your fellow locals are either too scared or too misinformed to know or talk anything about it.

When you can’t talk, dodge. Lest any kind of “e-uprising” or “e-remembrance” take place, sites in China are already in the business of silently limiting what you can do with your signature, avatar, or anything like it. Interestingly enough, they’re already shooting themselves in the foot. The misinformed (to whom what happened tomorrow years ago is supposedly unknown to them) will find out that using certain numbers, or even wearing certain colors, might land them in hot soup. And then they might know for once and for all what happened. The attempt at silencing things actually gives the game away: by being more silent, you’re making what you don’t want known all that more known.

Most likely than not, tomorrow will go by silently. Interactive sites will choose to do their yearly maintenance this time of year, which in itself is an euphemism of sorts.

Thing is, folks likely won’t forget. (At least those in the know.)

techblog86 spin: The Truth About “Freedom of Speech” and “China”…

CNN, Auntie Beeb and just about every last “western media outlet” has given China excessive hell for not living to “human rights” promises, promising “freedom of speech”, and expanding “democracy”. In fact, for Us Expats (as in not just US (as in United States) expats) based here in China, some of us see things a bit differently.

This is just a “thought post” your blogger’s doing early in the morning… he just flipped through a book on political scandals and was kind of amused to find “reactionary propaganda” against England’s King Charles about four centuries back. (Yep, the poor guy ended up in the Tower all right. Much like your present-day detention and imprisonment.) The upshot?

It’s a given — the tables will eventually turn. Just part of this whole “growing pains” thing. It’s probably not the best time right now to go out and shrieking for change. Good things come to those who wait…

techblog86 spin: Is Microblogging Taking Off in China?

Given that this is China — a place where anything “with Chinese characteristics” is big — it looks like the no-censors-included Twitter isn’t doing much to get the government’s attention — as in include tweets on a mainstream Chinese paper. Instead, what’s gracing papers such as the Beijing Evening News are tweets, if we may, from — Sina Microblog and Co. And it does appear that Hu and Wen want to tweet as well, but be assured — @HuJintao and @WenJiabao on Twitter are fakes.

Increasingly, folks are flocking to Sina Microblogs, amongst other microblogs, in China. Netease has a service, but apparently, it’s still very much an invite-only case, with those who even have an account limited in some respects from inviting others. (It’s a fair bit more restrictive of the Gmail or yesteryear.) QQ caused quite a stir some days ago, when it planned to launch its microblog — only to unexpectedly delay the launch. (Some said it was a ploy — to get 100 million users online at the same time.)

But then again, @zixia from Jiwai.de (which provided all the local tweeting at the Chinese Blogger Conference in Beijing in November 2007) may have had the last word. As one of the earliest local tweeps in the business, he’s of the opinion that, in this day and age, only those who are big and have good ties with the government in China can afford to let the tweeting continue. Startups and non-China-based tweeting machines, apparently, just won’t do.

最近開「微博」了沒? 中國大陸也逐步掀起一場「微博熱」，不過對於已經「被和諧」的推特等國外諸多微型博客服務來講，國內用戶很難上去，除非是「翻牆」過去。而與此同時，「牆內」則掀起了以新浪微博為「代表」的「境內微博浪」。前一段時間，嘰歪網的 @zixia 曾經在 Ignite 北京說道，現在如果你又「不大」又沒有與「主管機構」的「關係」的話，微博很難做大。