The Great Firewall of China
Posted on October 25, 2009 at 9:39 pm by kyliu
Tags: censorship, china, politics, propaganda, sinophobia
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It’s a common theme for Westerners and pro-Western Chinese (especially elite intellectuals) to argue that the Great Firewall of China (GFW) is destructive both to the freedom of the Internet as a whole and to the promotion of freedom and democratization in China.
“The GFW keeps the Chinese from knowing what the outside world is like,” goes the argument. “This allows them to be fooled by Communist propaganda. If they could see, through the Internet, what the outside world really is like and what the Western world says about China, they will push for reforms and maybe topple the Communist government.”
Despite the simplicity of its appeal, I do not think this argument has much to recommend it.
There are several problems with this critique and the suggested solution. First, I question the goal. It is far from clear that a revolution toppling the Communist government is in the best interest of the country’s 1.3 billion people and their long-term freedom (or really the interest of the world as a whole).
China has not, in the past two centuries, enjoyed an extended period of peace to pursue economic and cultural development. The closest thing to such a peace occurred in the last thirty years. Certainly the reforms have led to a great deal of corruption and resulted in many abuses, but they also, by any objective measurement, raised the standard of living for the vast majority of the country’s population.
Actually, let me rephrase that. “Raise the standard of living” doesn’t quite capture how momentous the change has been. No country in history has been able to lift so many people out of starvation and poverty into relative security in such a short period of time. Yes, thirty years ago, it was possible for people to starve in China. Today that doesn’t happen. This is not an accomplishment to be sneezed at.
Despite the indiscriminate barrage of China-bashing, the government today is far more responsive, tolerant, and restrained than any previous Chinese government in the last 400 years of China’s history. The fact that there is still a long ways to go should not blind us to how much the current government is an improvement over the Manchu Dynasty or the Cultural Revolution.
But despite these accomplishments, China is still extremely weak and fragile, and is nowhere near ready for massive decentralization of power. What China needs rights now is more peaceful development, not violent political upheaval. A revolution that topples the Communist government now will result in civil war and a great deal of killing — almost certainly the Han population in Xinjiang and Tibet will be slaughtered by the millions via ethnic cleansing (and perhaps also the Uighur and Tibetan populations in reprisals), for example — and hundreds of millions will lose the little wealth they have accumulated (remember that property rights are the foundation of liberty, so such a loss will destroy the foundation of hope for genuine freedom in China). China is not comparable to the Soviet Union in the late 1980s: the country is far more unstable and the infrastructure far too fragile to tolerate such a shock.
Perhaps the elite will be able to escape by emigrating from China — but I would not be willing to condemn the vast majority of the country’s population to such a future. And it is pretty unlikely that what emerges from the chaos will be anything like stable, democratic regimes. More likely, warlordism will reign and/or colonial occupation and conquest by Russia, India, and other neighbors will be the result. A broken China may be a good result from a selfish Western perspective if the goal is to prevent the rise of a strong China, but it’s hardly a good result from the point of view of promoting human rights in general and fundamental principles of Western civilization.
There is no question that in the long term, the Communist government’s monopoly on power cannot be sustained, and if China is to move forward towards democracy, the Party will have to be cast off. But a violent revolution right now is neither the right method nor the right time. China is simply too weak and disunited for that to occur right now. This step has to wait. A wrong revolution can lead to hundreds of years of instability and many deaths, as China’s experience with revolutions has shown.
Second, I question the premise. It is far from clear that the GFW is all that effective. As a preliminary matter, the GFW doesn’t block that many sites — though they tend to be high-profile ones — plenty of sites offering the Western perspective are not blocked. As well, sites that are blocked don’t tend to stay blocked permanently, so sometimes the restrictions are only temporary (experience shows that this is almost always done by the government to manage the emotional impact of certain news and to blunt the energy of Chinese nationalism against the West — unclear to me that the West’s interest isn’t aligned with the government’s in this instance). Furthermore, almost anybody in China who wants to already knows how to circumvent it (you can see some evidence of this by observing the level of Chinese participation on Youtube, a site blocked by the GFW). And yet, such access has not exactly led to the formation of revolutionary forces in China.
This is because the real problem with Chinese censorship is not so much the lack of freedom of speech, but the lack of freedom of association. People in China are generally free to express their thoughts to each other in private, but they are not free to form into civic organizations or assemble together to achieve political goals. Getting rid of the GFW will not change that.
Very few educated people who are interested in politics in China are unaware of the Western perspective and Western media reports — in fact, I think most such people in China are far more knowledgeable about the Western world than Westerners are about China, and the Chinese are far more analytical, critical, and insightful when it comes to evaluating the media and detecting propaganda as well. It’s a joke to think that they are fooled by government propaganda because of the GFW.
(It also doesn’t mean that all those who leap the GFW agree with what they see of Western commentary about China — in part because, well, the West is often wrong. More on this in a minute.)
But that still leaves the part of the Chinese population who are not all that interested in politics and who don’t bother to try to circumvent the GFW. If they were aware of what’s outside the GFW, wouldn’t they push for positive change?
This brings me to my third point, which is that if this part of the population were to be made aware of everything that the GFW keeps out, the result may be very different from what Westerners expect. (Unless, of course, ulterior motives are involved. More on this later.)
Westerners are probably unaware of (or, if they are aware, don’t care about) the amount of bias, racism, and sinophobia that predominate the Western discourse about China these days. It’s hard to see the trend when China-bashing has become a pervasive part of everyday discourse (which is actually an insidious form of propaganda itself).
Almost all contemporary Western reports about China center on China as a threat, and denigrate, disregard, or otherwise disparage legitimate Chinese aspirations for equality with the West, reasonable Chinese demands for Western aid and concessions, and legitimate grievances against the West (historical or contemporary). Moreover, the outright hostility towards China has caused the West to behave in ways that are quite at odds with the West’s own professed ideals. For example, while the West’s official position emphasizes that violence and terrorism are not legitimate means to resolve ethnic conflicts, Western media reports on recent anti-Han riots by the Tibetans and Uighurs, in which large numbers of innocent Han civilians have been slaughtered in acts of terrorism, have almost always tended to justify the killers and their reliance on violence and terror to achieve political goals. And I am focused mainly on the American media. European reports are even more extreme and unreasonable.
This should not be taken to mean that there is no useful coverage of China in the West. Neither should it be taken to mean that there is nothing to criticize in China. I’m solely focused on the bulk of the reporting and commentary that is not, in fact, focused on criticism intended to improve the lives of the common Chinese people, but devoted to China’s alleged threat to the existing Western world order. Let me also make it clear that efforts to label me as anti-West are doomed to fail, as I am firmly a believer in Western civilization and the contribution it has made and can make to the universal human condition.
Even misinformed, hostile, and agenda-driven reporting can still yield useful insights, especially when reporting — official, commercial, and grass-roots — from China, Europe, and the United States are all surveyed and combined to cancel out each other’s blind spots and intentional distortions. The most informed and critical readers in China do this as a matter of course, but few Western commentators on China bother with the hard work of being truly informed and challenging their own opinions and assumptions. In addition, it cannot be denied that there is also much excellent reporting done on China by certain publications, such as the New Yorker, that ought to be the model for all writers in all languages for how really informed and analytical reporting ought to be done.
Segments of the Chinese population not interested in leaping the GFW are likely unaware of the degree of Western hostility towards China. The official Chinese government position has been to portray the Western nations as generally friendly towards China. If the GFW were not in place, and the truth of Western hostility towards China were known by everyone in China, it is quite likely that the result will be an immediate surge in Chinese nationalism, and the overall feeling among the people will likely be one of anger, fear, confusion, and disgust at Western hypocrisy and sinophobia. It is quite easy to imagine that the swelling anti-Western sentiments will severely restrict the freedom of the Chinese government in giving in to Western demands and limit the ability of the Chinese government to make compromises towards the West. This, in turn, will reduce the ability of Western governments to push for meaningful change in China.
Most Chinese governments in modern history — the Qing, various warlords, the Republic — fell because they were weak (or perceived as weak) towards encroaching Western demands and invasions that jeopardized Chinese national interests. The Communist government cannot afford to appear to kowtow towards the West (more than they already are perceived as doing so). If the GFW were not in place, the amount of pressure placed on the government will be much higher than it is now, and will lead to a far more militant diplomatic stance by China, leading to general instability in East Asia.
Also, increased anti-Western sentiments will lead to radicalized xenophobic movements in China — much like the Boxer Rebellion of the 19th century. If that were to occur, the result will be overreaction by the West and military intervention, and a great many people will die in China, and China will be pushed back another 200 years into its past.
I do not want to see that happen, and neither should anybody who truly believes in universal human rights and the ideals of Western civilization. Of course, certain Westerners, motivated by selfish reasons, would want to see a xenophobic China drawing down the destructive firepower of the Western nations — much as occurred in the 19th century — and thus remain forever subjugated to Western domination. But this is at odds with the universal ideals which inform our moral judgments.
Viewed a certain way, the GFW actually promotes the growth of freedom and democratization in China. It is just easy enough to leap over that the Chinese who are interested in the outside world have no trouble jumping it, and yet it keeps the more vitriolic anti-Chinese sentiments away from enough of the Chinese population that the result isn’t a huge surge of anti-West reaction. If this delicate balance can be maintained for some time, there will be enough room for everyone to maneuver, so that the West can gradually tone down the anti-Chinese rhetoric and rein in the sinophobic sentiments, and China can gradually develop the native institutions and social foundations for a truly democratic society that is prosperous, self-confident, strong, united, as well as free.
Of course, I’m probably wildly optimistic about this future, as it relies both on the wisdom of China’s leaders and the moral generosity of the Western elites, which are both in short supply. But the alternative, an uncertain future of “freedom” for the elite at the cost of the possible slaughter mainly borne by the vast majority of China’s people, the poor, the uneducated, the rural and urban common men and women, is not something I’m willing to contemplate.
The GFW, ironically, is really aimed at keeping the ugliness of Western sinophobia away from the Chinese, and by doing so, prevent the Chinese population from become too anti-West. I believe that the only real solution to this stand-off is to gradually strengthen China, promote the growth of native democratic forces, resolve Western anxiety, and get the Western nations to gradually learn to live with the idea of a China that is the equal of the Western nations. When and if that day arrives, the GFW will fall because there will no longer be anything to fear.
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