脑残, nao+can, brain damaged

“Adjective, pronouced “nan“. This character is a combination of the characters for 脑残 (”naocan” brain damage).

Naocan is online lingo, used to describe someone who is not capable of thinking straight; often those whose thinking is crippled by party ideology.”

五毛, wu+mao, five cent

“Noun, pronounced “wao.”  It is the combination of 五毛 (”wumao” fifty cents) Fifty cent party is another common online lingo for government-trained and paid “commentators” who do not reveal their real identity and pretend to be ordinary netizens to spin government messages.”

diang (党中央, dang+zhong+yang, Party Central Committee)

“Noun, adjective and exclamation,  pronounced “diang”  It is a combination of 党中央 (“dangzhongyang” – CCP Central Committee). Blogger hecaitou, author of the hugely popular “Diary of the Digital Ocean (比特海日志)”, interprets the character as “the ultimate, sacred, absolutely correct, cannot be questioned; you get the shit beaten out of you but cannot say a word.” “意思是至高无上的，神圣的，绝对正确的，不容质疑的，抽你丫没商量的。” ”

Diang, man! These nan waos must be working overtime.

From this CDT article.

Ai Wei Wei 艾未未

On blogging and his presence on the internet: “To use art is not enough, to describe your view, in the old traditional forms, such as painting, sculpture… as a citizen you need to express your views, writing, blogging, giving interviews, is a part of that, otherwise you will very easily be misinterpreted, or misunderstood, by the society, by the establishment I should say. “

An article on recent censorship of Ai Weiwei, from ShanghaiEye.

SocialText’s comprehensive profile of the artist.

His latest blog, blog.aiweiwei.com, is not working…

Follow Ai WeiWei (aiww) on Twitter.

Flipping off Tiananmen

On June 29, 2009, Ai Weiwei announced a new competition on his blog [broken link as of 8/17], called “10.1 – Middle Finger”. To enter the competition, participants must take photographs of themselves extending their middle finger (in a blatant, non-concealed “fuck off” gesture). They must include their personal details (name, gender, age, occupation, phone number) and a short description why and where the photo was taken. Submissions will be received from July 1 to October 1, 2009. Submissions will be judged October 10 and the results will be released October 30. The winning prize will be 10,000 RMB (approximately $1,500 USD) and the runner-up prize will be 1,000 RMB (approximately $150 USD).

An internet meme was created in mid-July when somebody posted the phrase “Jia Junpeng, your mother is calling you home for dinner!” (”贾君鹏, 你妈妈喊你回家吃饭!”) to the WoW forum on Baidu. A couple days after posting, it had been viewed over 8 million times. It eventually reached the forum’s maximum number of comments; commenters shared their versions of the fictitious Jia Junpeng’s story, among other whimsies.

It’s hard, for me anyway, to say why this little phrase prompted such a response from the forum. There’s no real pun here, no subversion to parse out. It’s quite literally what a friend would say to alert a kid named Jia Junpeng that his mom is calling him. The phrase bears a simple sentiment, perhaps more poignant to diehard WoW players spending a lot of time at the computer and neglecting simpler human interaction. An article in People’s Daily Online attempts an explanation via a Nanjing University professor at the College of Journalism and Communications, who says internet addicts’ feelings of guilt about their families prompted the huge response.

So ok, the meme is born. Cut to Fujian Province, where a young woman named Yan Xiaoling was allegedly gang-raped and murdered, allegedly by a man with some connection to local officials. A few well-known bloggers, including one Guo Baofeng, or Peter Guo (Twitter: amoiist), smelled corruption and wrote about it online. Officials dismissed the allegations, saying complications from an ectopic pregnancy caused Ms. Yan’s death. Seven of the bloggers were arrested and put in jail.

Following his arrest, Tweeters were all over it, making this call to action: send a postcard to the prison, with the words, “Guo Baofeng, your mother is calling you home to dinner!” and post a picture of the card before mailing it.

Guo Baofeng, your mother is calling you home to dinner!

The stamp commemorates the Chinese constitution

You can see a multitude of postcards culled together by China Digital Times here.

I’m wondering what other examples of activism have used the internet meme as a rallying point. The “green meme” (turning your Twitter icon green to support Iranian protestors in the presidential election that gave incumbent Ahmadinejad another term in office) is a striking visual show of solidarity, albeit doubtful as a true act of protest. Does turning a tweet into a postcard and mailing it to the prison legitimize the Guo Baofeng campaign as an act of protest?

“Sending a postcard to prisoners of conscience is an assymetrical way to protest. It will become popular because it is hard to trace back to participants, has a low cost to participate, and has an excellent online exhibition effect. It is hard for the authorities to ban, and it gives prison authorities clear pressure.” So says one netizen, in a quote taken from a Radio France International article (translation by CDT).

I rather like that some folks in China brought this internet meme back into the mix to generate awareness of the Chinese government’s undeniably harsh tactics for dealing with its critics. We can probably expect more innovations in digital activism like this one to follow.

Some sites on digital activism: Digiactive, Internet & Democracy Blog

A search for “Tiananmen” in English shows these results (click to enlarge):

A search for “天安門” (’Tiananmen’ in Traditional Chinese, used in Hong Kong and Taiwan) shows fewer ’sensitive’ results, but what it does show is still shocking:

A search for “天安门” (that’s ‘Tiananmen’ in Simplified Chinese) shows these results (click to enlarge):

The search in English shows tanks and protests from 1989; the Traditional Chinese search shows casualties of the 1989 crackdown. The Simplified Chinese search shows only majestic pictures of the Forbidden City during the day, at night and in various paintings.

So, Bing is trying to filter results that are sensitive to the Chinese government. This is nothing new. But this search, I might remind you, was made from a U.S. IP address! Decision makers at Bing have applied censorship tools not just to the Chinese in China, but to anyone using Simplified Chinese in their search terms. I’m not one to go on about eating apple pie and living the American Dream, as if that could be understood in just a few silly statements, but this is upsetting to me as as American. Is Bing allowing the Chinese government to determine how the country’s language is used, even when it’s being used outside of China? Or is this a matter of stereotype, where Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans are seen as loyal to China first, U.S. second, and therefore justifiably subject to China’s policy of censorship?

Or maybe it’s neither of those, maybe this decision came down to operational convenience. Still, convenience on the international stage shouldn’t trump our nation’s right to free speech; not everyone who lives here thinks in English. Why isn’t this more a matter of pride for Bing?

***

From the PCWorld article, “Bing Filters out Sensitive Results for Chinese Searches“. The screenshots were taken from a search performed on the day this post was published.

I recently attended a Visiting Scholar Lunchtime Talk held by the Center for China Studies at Berkeley’s Institute of East Asian Studies. (Go here for a listing of events; I really recommend them and what’s more, they’re free!)

The lecture was titled “Corporate Governance in China: An Investigation of the Interdependent Model” and was delivered by Prof. Liu Pingqing of the Department of Business Administration at the Beijing Institute of Technology. Professor Liu had taken case studies of over one hundred State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) and over one thousand Private Enterprises (PEs) whose owners are from Mainland China.

He mapped out the specific nature of the interdependence between local, mid-level and federal government and the SOEs and PEs — the kind of resource support (or lack thereof) the different businesses receive, negotiation of legislative or policy enforcement issues, and so on. All in all, it was fairly dry stuff (in my opinion, anyway).

I perked up, however, when he began to talk about management structures. Firstly, he noted that, in a major change from the danwei or communal enterprises of the 1960s, most of the major SOE and PE players were being operated by one person and his or her ‘family’ — both in the literal sense, through nepotism, and figuratively, as through a large social network. Establishing a Board of Directors requires special permission from the government, and has only been granted to a handful of companies since the start of economic reforms.

By tracking the career paths of some of the leading SOE and PE ‘owners’, Liu finds that many of these elite businessmen bounce back and forth between positions of leadership in the private, state-owned AND governmental sectors. According to Liu’s research, it is not uncommon for these key influencers to hold official Party and SOE or PE posts at the same time. This trend puts economic innovation and power into the hands of a relative few; it also creates a huge potential for corruption.

My first instinct is to wonder, why these people? What about their personality makes them special and deserving? However, if we look at this phenomenon’s ideological foundation in Legalism, we wouldn’t ask that question. In the Legalist model for governance, less emphasis is given to the personal merits of the executive in power, but to the position he or she holds; therein lies the authority. Reverence is gained not through charisma and self-promotion, but by keeping a low profile and following the letter of the law. By deemphasizing personality, strengthening the influence of the job title itself and keeping those job titles spread thick among fewer people, the state asserts its authority and is better able to negotiate and appraise changes in economic policies.

This stands in almost total contrast with our interest in executives and officials as ‘personalities’. See the NYTimes Op-Ed piece on personality traits of CEOs, and countless other books (How to Win Friends and Influence People, Think and Grow Rich, How to Think Like a CEO, the list goes on…). Further evidence that formulas for success must be taken in context with one’s environment, and the best corporate and government officials will play the game differently depending on the playground.

As for China’s governance structures, future reforms are increasingly hard to predict. Professor Liu pointed to Taiwan as an economy that accepts certain aspects of the U.S. model but remains ‘consistent with its Asian heritage’, straddling both as it were. But the value of this trajectory towards the U.S. economic model is becoming obscured.

“China views the U.S. as its teacher on the economy,” he said. “What happens now, when the teacher himself is struggling?”

From an interesting interview from the TED blog on Twitter’s role in Iran’s election.

__________________________________

And an unrelated graph from meish.org illustrating the life cycle of trending topics. Plant tongue firmly in cheek.

I’m sorry but not entirely surprised to hear that he’s received death threats and hate mail for his status as a major influencer of our nation’s child vaccine program at the CDC, and for inventing a rotavirus vaccine which he developed at Merck and for which he received a substantial sum as its sole inventor. Citing a study done by a British gastroenterologist that claims a connection between autism and the MMR vaccine, certain members of the autism community remain very outspoken about their beliefs against vaccines.

And that’s just what this is about – belief, held so tightly as to wrench and twist scientific debate into a storm of emotions. Just read the comments after the article. Things get personal; the passionate language of Heroism and Villainy is tossed around. I disagree with author Jason Fagone’s highly personal portrayal of Dr. Offit as a piece of rather yellow journalism. But for some perspective, this article comes after waves of slanderous attempts from the other side to dehumanize him and blame him as a person. That Dr. Offit’s intentions as a doctor and scientist are being libeled as evil, elitist, and deliberately harmful by frustrated parents is repulsive and sad. He is not the enemy; he is an expert. The absolute worst he could be is wrong.

***

Amazon – Vaccines: What Every Parent Should Know, by Paul Offit and Louis M. Bell

As I finish reading Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, I’m still trying to unravel what Objectivism proposes. I enjoyed that she chose fiction to convey her philosophy, and I’ll admit it challenged a lot of my beliefs on ethical behavior and social good.

It was a long, complicated book; I’ll keep this post short. My only objective here is to marvel at the difference in Rand’s fictional reality, where public opinion is corruptly generated by an elite group of master critics in the form of Ellsworth Toohey; and the reality of the internet, where literally everyone can find a platform to stand on and one’s critical authority can be earned by page rankings.

I liked the book’s portrayal of Gail Wynand’s New York Banner as a kind of daily bandwagon of sensational news and opinions, everyone jumping on and off together with the tide of popularity. Wynand held its existence as proof that integrity does not exist; that money can buy anything, including one’s sense of ethics or philosophical grip. Objectivism proposes that we think and act entirely for ourselves; that our egos should not be denied in the name of altruism, but exalted as that which propels humanity forward. The internet provides a platform for individual voices to espouse opinions, debate, report on their surroundings – a multitude of perspectives on display for anyone to peruse and pick through.

Does weighing in on #buzzwords count as a pursuit of one’s interests? To put it in Rand’s language, is the internet a tool for production and prosperity, that we might deal with one another as traders of ideas and knowledge to mutually beneficial ends? Or do we sacrifice our privacy and our individuality by taking on avatars, operating within social networks and laughing at LOLcats?

On the one hand:
“Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage’s whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.” -Ayn Rand

On the other hand:
“Privacy is dead, deal with it.” -Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy

***

Here’s an interesting article on Ayn Rand from Vision magazine.

And another from WSJ by Ayn Rand Institute president and executive director Yaron Brook.