Where do the pipes lead?
It’s been over a year since crotchety Alaska Senator, Ted Stevens famously explained that the Internet was not a truck, as might be assumed, but rather a series of tubes. Few others have been able to define what the Internet is so eloquently, several months ago, China’s leading Internet experts met in Beijing to discuss what the Internet will become.
The conference, Under the Digital Influence, was sponsored by the American Chamber of Commerce to promote its new blog (http://www.amchamchinadaily.com/) and featured two panels comprised of a virtual who’s who of the China Internet world (pun credited to Josh Gartner of chinaexpat.com). Organized by AmCham’s Jim Boyce, an accomplished blogger in his own right (do not commit yourself to a life of drinking in the Chinese capital without first immersing yourself in the beijingboyce.com), the conference began with a panel discussion on what trends will shape the Internet in China. It was followed by a second panel, moderated by Danwei.org’s Jeremy Goldkorn, on the business of blogging in the Middle Kingdom.
The first panel, Decoding China’s Internet Scene, addressed two of the most critical issues to the Chinese Internet today – access to online portals and what sites are accessible once a connection is made. Addressing the former, David Wolf, CEO of Wolf Group Asia said that China is in the final stages of upgrading its Internet access from dial-up to broadband, but that over the next five years wireless will displace wireline access. Wolf predicted that this wireless access would consist of a combination of “access via cellular networks, access via the growing number of publicly accessible Wi-Fi, and via the quietly emerging WiMax wide-area wireless broadband.” Despite the massive population of netizens in China, 8 out of 9 Chinese have not yet crossed the digital divide. Wolf believes that this divide will ultimately be addressed through the use of mobile technology. “Given the success of the mobile phone industry in driving the costs of handsets down to a few tens of dollars, the easiest footbridge across the divide is clearly going to be the mobile handset.”
The second discussion topic – what sites are at a risk of being shutdown – produced more valuable insights from the panelists. Andrew Lih, a new media academic who is authoring a book about online collaboration, said that the tools the Chinese government uses to block certain websites are getting stronger and more precise. While the trend is disturbing at some levels, he argued that increased precision is actually a good thing. Following up on his blog, Silicon Hutong, David Wolf stressed that the term “Great Firewall of China” is really no longer applicable. “The expression originated when China’s government was attempting to create an alternate Internet that was walled off from the rest of the world… Today, however, the Internet in China is largely integrated into that of the rest of the world, with specific, increasingly pinpointed sites and services wall off from access… It would be far more accurate to talk about “Checkpoint China”.” Jeremy Goldkorn said that websites that feature user-generated content are the most likely to be shut down. “Sites like Wikipedia, blog host providers, Youtube, and any forum or BBS are at risk,” says Goldkorn. While the thought of living in China without Youtube is a terrifying one, Goldkorn believes that most individual bloggers, especially those posting in English, have little to worry about. “It’s very hard to get a blog blocked if it’s in English. It’s keyword based. They really don’t spend a lot of time monitoring English blogs.”
The Role of the Chinese Blogosphere
The second half of the conference focused on blogging in China, with a panel of blogging heavyweights that included Danwei’s Jeremy Goldkorn, China-briefing.com’s Chris Devonshire-Ellis, China Law Blog’s Dan Harris, and the Image Thief himself, Will Moss. Devonshire-Ellis, Moss and Harris talked about the ways in which their blogs serve as cheap promotional tools to display their expertise to potential clients. Devonshire-Ellis, senior partner of Dezan Shira & Associates, said that people who blog about their businesses should do what they can to measure what the return on investment is. Even those who decide to blog regardless of what they find should understand how their blogging fits into an integrated marketing scheme. Moss and Harris discussed the potential pitfalls of blogging in an arena where potential clients become readers. While both admitted that there is a risk of offending potential clients, they thought that the opportunity to build chemistry with clients outweighed the risk of chasing business away. Harris, founding member of the law firm Harris and Moure, said that his company is small enough that even if his blog offended half the world, there would still be another half full of potential clients.”
Goldkorn is in a different position than the other panelists because his blog is his primary occupation rather than a means of marketing a company or personal brand. He said that he blogs for the simple reason that China has lots of stories but very little information. “China is not even understood by its own citizens, but that misunderstanding is much more acute in the English-speaking world. People continue to have some very strange perceptions of what China is around the world. Obviously, I believe China is important. I think like the United States, China is reaching a point where if something goes wrong it will hurt everyone else in the world. Being able to provide information about this country to people in the English-speaking world makes Danwei an interesting project." Goldkorn believes that even more than in the United States, where traditional media often presents itself as in opposition to the blogosphere, China benefits from a strong blogging culture. “In China, blogs offer young journalists much more freedom and flexibility than they would have in mainstream publications. In China, stories tend to break on the Internet and later reach the traditional media. Blogs have broken stories in the US, but not to the same degree as in China."
Blogs’ central role in the exchange of information obviously means that bloggers have a great responsibility to the public at large. “(Whatever the forum) if you say something in public, you have a responsibility to do good work. That means you shouldn’t libel others, you shouldn’t lie, and you shouldn’t persecute people. There really are no basic differences in that regard between bloggers and journalists.” Still, Goldkorn allows that, while bloggers should feel compelled to produce quality material, subject matter is not an issue. “Some people keep diary’s of their cat’s eating habits, and that’s okay too.”