Rebecca MacKinnon

internet - Explaining China to Americans

Rebecca MacKinnon, fellow at the Berkman Center of Harvard Law School, reports about a challenging task she took upon her: trying to explain to Americans how the internet in China works. With her solid background in Beijing, partly as a reporter for CNN, she is probably one of the few people who is able to get over the rather biased way most Americans - and to a lesser degree European - are looking at the internet in China.

In 25 minutes I tried to explain the paradox of the internet in China today: On one hand, the internet has been a tremendously empowering and liberating force for many Chinese - economically and culturally. On the other hand, a business and regulatroy model is emerging that enables censorship to work in a way that is actually tolerable for most Chinese internet users (except for political dissidents who are - to put it mildly - out of luck). As a result, China's extensive system of censorship and internet controls doesn't hold businesses back when it comes to innovating and making money from products and services that enable users to create media (blogs, posdcasts, etc.)

Her entry gives more links to her other material.
It is a daunting task in a situation, where most outside observers focus on censorship, internet users getting in jail, and telling those who also want to show what enormous positive changes take place in China too thanks to the internet that they belong in the corner of those who support the Communist Party, the Chinese government and evil internet companies, depending on what the subject is.
That black-and-white approach is not helpful to create any understanding about what is really happening in China. I'm happy Rebecca took this step: it would have been so much easier to join the culturally biased black-and-white thinking outside China.