China and Social Networking

Social Networking in China? You better believe it. We know that China has strict firewalls and severely limits the free flow of information online. Compared to the United States, the internet in China is like a caged animal; it has the potential to become a huge global competitor, but within it's constrained walls, it can only grow so much. However, that growth is not to be underestimated -- it's housed in quite a large cage after all and the billions of people who inhabit China are hungry for a little online mingling of their own.

There are four major social networks in China. Renren, an almost carbon copy of facebook but with some key differences, Qzone, the nickname based social network, Pengyou and Kaixin, the two small social networks with less than 100 million active users. There's even a Chinese equivalent to the micro-blogging service, Twitter, called Sina Weibo. I found it interesting that there is such a large amount of competition in China for the social networks. And yes, I'm calling five competitors "large" because compared to the United States, where we loose competitors in major markets fairly quickly and always have one or two dominating (see the media conglomerates, the social networks, and now even the cell phone service providers with the recent merger between AT&T and T-Mobile), five social networks with hundreds of millions of users is true competition. Perhaps the reasoning behind the high number of networks is because they all serve a different demographic and need. See the below chart for a clear break down of such:

It is interesting to note that renren was actually started by a few University of Delaware students who developed this version of facebook for China. I was fascinated to learn just how closely related the social network renren is to our well-known facebook. Renren actually takes all of it's cues from facebook and includes familiar features such as "liking," "poking," the infamous relationship status, "the wall," just to name a few. However there are some differences. One I found particularly interesting is that if a company wants to have a fanpage on renren, they need to pay upwards of $90,000 for one. $90,000. And well known American companies like Nike have agreed to pay up.

It's no secret that China heavily controls the internet, but just how much is it? According to this 2005 article from the Guardian, there are over 30,000 Internet police who troll social networks, blogs, online chat rooms, text messages -- you name it -- for any disseminating language against the government, hints at organizing a political revolution, and basically anything they feel poses a threat to the powers at throne.

In 1996, China's Central government released a new set of regulations for computer information over the internet. The first, perhaps most remarkable regulation states: “No units or individuals are allowed to establish direct international connection by themselves.” (Item 6) “All direct linkage with the Internet must go through ChinaNet, GBNet, CERNET orCSTNET. A license is required for anyone to provide Internet access to users.” (Item 8) The second regulation was the Ordinance for Security Protection of Computer Information Systems. It was issued on 18 February 1994 by the State Council to give the responsibility of Internet security protection to the Ministry of Public Security, which is entitled to “supervise, inspect and guide the security protection work”, and to “investigate and prosecute illegal criminal cases." The government also backed up these new regulations with saying that "in order to strengthen the security and the protection of computer information networks and of the internet, and to preserve the social order and social stability, these regulations have been established..."

There is a laundry list of "DO NOT's" under section five of the New Internet Regulations, stating that "no unit or individual may use the internet to harm national security, disclose state secrets, harm the interests of the state, of society or of a group, the legal rights of citizens, or to take part in criminal activities."Let's just talk about what China is afraid of: (1) harming national security -- like the recent and ongoing and future revolutions we are witnessing in the Middle East, (2) harming the interests of the state -- like when Obama took to his facebook page to talk about Don't Ask Don't Tell and received a bevy of mixed replies, could this then be harming the interests of the state? (3) harming the legal rights of citizens -- I'm not even going to touch this one because I'm not quite sure what the legal rights for Chinese citizens even are, and finally (4) taking part in criminal activity -- like the thousands of craigslist hoaxes that go on yearly, like the internet scam sites that we've heard about on the nightly news, and even WikiLeaks could be considered criminal activity.

Wikileaks is interesting to look at here because it's the exact type of uprising from the people that China is working so hard to prevent. Notably, the reaction of our government to Wikileaks is eerily in line with the New Internet Regulations of China; it's almost like they took cues from it.

So then, yes, there are four or five major social networks in China, but they are heavily monitored while appearing to mimic the "freedom" of facebook and twitter in the United States (even though we know they are not that free to begin with). I know I don't really think twice about what I post on facebook besides maintaining my own moral values and staying aware of what others may or may not take offense to, but I can't imagine a reality in which the internet is not a free-flowing portal of information as it, for the most part, is in the United States and many other countries around the World.

There is obviously a plethora of information about the censoring in China and this post only scrapes the top of a large heap of material. More to come on this fascinating topic...