By Patricia H. Kushlis
I’ve been dubious about the efficacy of social networking
for government – or commercial – communication purposes for some time. At
least, I’m skeptical of too much reliance on social networking and the Internet
in lieu of all other forms of communication - especially in communicating with foreign audiences. The web is still no panacea. Especially
in countries like China.
OK. So call me Neanderthal.
But it’s pretty clear that an approach that works in communicating with
the citizens of one country does not necessarily have the same reverberations
or impact elsewhere.
Let’s just take President Obama’s Town Hall meeting in Shanghai on November 16
as a case in point. This turned out to
be a tame Q and A with about 400 Chinese Communist Party selected university students. Even so the Chinese government censors
limited the media coverage to local TV and Xinhua, China’s
official news agency, while blocking – among other forms of media - Facebook
and YouTube. Meanwhile Chinese bloggers
the US
had hoped to invite to the event were barred by the Chinese government from
attending and dissidents were rounded up ahead of time. Although the Soviets didn’t have to worry
about the Internet because it had yet to be born, the latter move was an all too typical Soviet
approach to restricting citizen access to high level foreign visitors from the West.
Overkill by the censors?
Seems to me the media restraints in Shanghai were overkill on the part of the
Chinese censors. This was far from their
finest hour. If anything, they simply drew
western media attention to a still uber-paranoid and stultified government “information” bureaucracy
that has not yet caught up with the new freer-wheeling international communications
environment that many young Chinese would like to be a part of.
One has to ask the question whether the US Embassy should
have recommended that the President cancel the event - given the constraints
placed upon it. Or, perhaps, Embassy staff did not know ahead of time that the Town Hall would be as restricted,
scripted and constricted as it was. Or perhaps
they did, and chose to go ahead regardless but decided to conclude with the lone question
that Ambassador Huntsman read out as the finale, a question that had been e-mailed to the US Embassy
website asking about the President’s views on Internet censorship in China. The question and response obviously caught
even the censors off-guard.
Here's the White House's answer bottom line - they did know in advance and for sensible reasons (including the large numbers of Chinese they would be reaching in any event) decided to proceed.
Communications limitations
But it does mean that the communications environment
in China – as well as a number of other countries – has limitations that need
to be worked around as best possible – and high visibility, celebrity status
Town Halls that work well as communications platforms in the US, Europe and
other democracies combined with the subsequent media spin off, may not yet be
the most effective way of communication in places like China.
Don’t get me wrong: China’s
progressed immeasurably since the Cultural Revolution’s Dark Ages and many
Chinese have never had it so good. But
the government is still authoritarian and its continued tenure rests on its ability
to provide economic betterment for its people. Yes, there are the ethnic minority problems in Tibet and
Xinjiang, but most Chinese are, well, proud to be ethnic Chinese and it’s not
as if the government and Communist Party are going to see chunks of this large
country drop off any time soon regardless of what the military does - or does not - do.
A little more federalism, however, might go a long way. However, authoritarian governments and one-party
states are usually not comfortable with this kind of decentralization of power.
Just as they are uncomfortable with
freedom of speech in the media or on the street – so these are just other examples of why the US government
needs to use as many venues as possible to reach the Chinese people – the Internet
and its social networks can’t do it alone.