Power to the people, & pee in the pool: Internet activism in China

Jun 26, 2007 08:57

"The Internet is clearly about more than sports scores and email now. It's a place where we can conduct our democracy and get very large amounts of data to very large numbers of people."--Frank James

And nowhere is there a larger number of people than in China where Internet activism is giving even the commonest of men a voice to call out not only to their countrymen, but indeed to the whole world.

Here's the latest example.

The Chinese Internet has been all abuzz recently over the Shanxi Brick Kiln affair, in which hundreds of children were taken from their families and used as slave laborers. Having nowhere else to turn, many of the families of those abducted turned to the Internet as a means of bringing this atrocity to light. They wrote a letter and posted it on Tianya forums. Here's a translated excerpt:

"The lives of our children should be taken care of immediately. Who can rescue them? With the Governments in Henan and Shanxi passing the buck to each other, whom should we ask for help? This is extremely urgent, and concerns the life and death of our children. Who can help us?" Source

As a result of this online letter, other media got involved and the story was soon the talk of the country. At that point, it was impossible to keep this scandal low-key, no matter how much the Government might have wished.

And they got results:
59 Detained in Forced Labor Scandal in Shanxi
359 Rescued from Illegal Brick Kilns in Shanxi

This incident is just the latest in a growing number of events in China that might be classified as "stuff that could have been kept quiet if not for that pesky Internet."

Are the days of burying undesirable news a thing of the past for China's ruling party? I'm sure they'll keep trying, that's for sure. But let me finish with another famous quote that puts their censorship in perspective:

"You can't take something off the Internet--it's like taking pee out of a swimming pool"

Neither is an enviable task...

For further reading, other such incidents in the news this past year have included:

Xiamen PX Chemical Plant Protest
See YouTube video (if you're outside China)
See Flickr coverage

The Nailhouse
on EastSouthWestNorth
on Danwei.org

The Nailhouse 2
on Jongo
on Global Voices

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