Targetting Chinese Women: constructing a female cyberspace

Anne McLaren, Melbourne Institute of Asian Languages Societies, University of Melbourne

For presentation at the “Women, Information and Communication Technology in India and China” Forum. 5-7 November 2003

The Hawke Research Institute, University of South Australia, with the Institute of International Studies at the University of Technology.

Not for citation without permission.

Targetting Chinese Women: constructing a female cyberspace

Anne E. McLaren, University of Melbourne

One of the most striking trends in the early twenty-first century in China is the dramatic growth of women as internet users. By January 2002, women comprised 40% of all internet users in China.[1] This is just short of the 44.5% figure for female web users in Japan (Onosaka 2003:9) and on a par with the 40% of female net users in the developed world by the end of the 1990s (Slevin 2000:42). In the early phase of internet use, women users lagged behind men, but it appears that over the past five years the ‘digital divide’, common in the less developed countries of Asia, has closed rapidly in the case of China.

In this paper I will explore the extent to which the internet has opened up new opportunities for women in China. Comparatively little research has been done in the West on the impact of the internet in non-English speaking societies.[2] In the case of China, we know little about the web practices of a typical female web user. To what extent do Chinese women participate in the interactive potential of the internet to express their views, exchange information, and build up new networks? Do Chinese women use the internet for activism? I will focus particularly on Chinese-language websites in mainland China designed for women. These fall into two main categories: those provided by the state, especially those affiliated with the All-China Woman’s Federation (ACWF), and those provided by commercial sponsors. Non-governmental and private activist groups are much harder to locate and may well be few in number, for reasons that will be explored below.

This study will begin with an overview of the development of the internet in China, with a focus on the role of the Chinese state in both promoting and controlling internet usage. The intention here is to set the context for an understanding of Chinese “cyberculture” or the characteristics of internet communication within Chinese society. I adopt here the definition of “cyberculture” offered by Nanette Gottlieb and Mark McLelland in their study of the use of the internet in Japan. They define “cyberculture” as a situation where “like-minded individuals meet online in order to pursue a common interest or goal irrespective of whether the ‘community’ that develops through this interaction maintains an offline presence” (Gottlieb McLelland 2003:1). Implicit in the notion of a “cyberculture” is the idea that internet practices are not governed by technological determinism and do not have universal consequences, but are rather shaped by individual cultures and socio-political systems.[3] As I will discuss here, Chinese “cyberculture” is distinctly different from that of Japan and Western countries. One can only properly assess Chinese women’s use of the internet within the context of the particular “cyberculture” of China.

The internet and the state in China

As many commentators have noted, from around 1994 the Chinese state has made a massive investment in digital technology and new media (Bi 2002, Deibert 2002, Lawrence 2002). Keeping up with the latest in new technology has become a key plank in the state’s aspiration to attain the status of an advanced economic power. Fundamental to this goal is the push towards a service-led economy as distinct from one based on the traditional agricultural and manufacturing sectors (Bi 2002:24).

As well as the role of new media technology in promoting a ‘new economy’ in China, the state has also shown itself to be well aware of the potential of the internet for education and knowledge conservation. Thousands of Chinese books are now available on the web through the state-funded Chinese Digital Library Project (Bi 2002; Lawrence 2002:48). According to Amanda Lawrence, the goal of the Chinese state is “to establish China as the largest digital service market in the world” (2002:48-9). The CDL project plans to use broadband network and satellite transmission to reach even remote areas of the country (Chinaonline, “National Library” 2000).

State policy has been two-pronged. On the one hand, the state has been quick to grasp the potential of the internet for educational services, digital libraries and promoting e-commerce and economic growth in general. On the other, it has sought to control and regulate the inflow of information and data, particularly from the West or the Chinese diaspora, which could destabilize the party-state.

By the late 1990s the Chinese-language internet in China looked significantly different from the English-language web that we are familiar with in Australia and the West. The reasons for this lie predominantly in the role of the state in intervening in and regulating internet use in China. First, internet access is channelled through a limited number of state-controlled companies or “backbone networks” sponsored by various ministries and government agencies (Kalthil Boas 2003:12). This is in direct contradiction to the original design structure of internet usage in the West, which, in the words of Deibert, was “a distributed network with no central node or hierarchy” (2002:144). The majority of Chinese web users log on through controlled web portals such as Sina.com, Sohu.com, Net Ease and Chinese Yahoo! (given in order of popularity, see “Portal Personification” 2001). Wary about possible loss of sovereignty in cyberspace, the government prefers its own operating systems over Microsoft and is attempting to develop “an online landscape with ‘Chinese characteristics’ ” (Kalthil Boas 2003:16).

Second, the Chinese state has set up a “large national intranet” which allows for a variety of controlling “firewall” technologies to be implemented (Deibert 2002:149). Other forms of control include registration of network accounts and internet providers with the Public Service Bureau, strict regulations regarding allowable content, censorship of material considered inappropriate or subversive, monitoring of email traffic and the arrest and detention of violators (Deibert 2002, Whorf 2002).[4] To monitor the inflow of information, the government set up a Surveillance Center for National Information Security (Xiao 2003:71). In recent years, internet providers, including some western ones, have agreed to sign self-discipline protocols, which amount to a form of self-censorship.[5] According to Xiao Qiang, Director of a Chinese diasporic organisation based in the US called Human Rights in China, “More than 30,000 state security employees are currently conducting surveillance of web pages, chat rooms, and private email messages” (Xiao 2003:71).

Nonetheless, in spite of the extraordinarily intensive efforts of the Chinese state to control the flow of information, and to channel it to ends favourable to government policies, some observers of the internet scene in China agree that the government is fighting a losing battle ( see Deibert 2002:158; Vervoorn 2002:274; Worf 2002, Xiao 2003).[6] It appears that for every tactic employed by the state, internet users and web site providers come up with a counter policy (in line with the well-known Chinese strategy of ‘those on top issue a policy and those underneath come up with a counter policy’). For example, when the government tried to ban Google, online protests forced the state to accept a modified version of this popular Western search engine (Xiao 2003:74-5). In recent years many official newspapers have been made available online. The online versions are often less stringently controlled than their print counterparts and their reporting is “often livelier and more independent” than in print media (according to Xiao 2003:72) Kalthil Boas note that traditional print media now competes with Internet portals, which have the advantages of speedy dissemination of information and of a concentration of official sources at the one site (2003:8). There is even perceived competition from international media outlets. Once a censored story has entered China through overseas Internet media or a chatroom, the official media then feel obliged to report it.[7]

Further, China’s entry into the World Trade Organisation, is forcing the government to adopt a more liberal approach. For example, China has been compelled by economic pressure to accept foreign encryption products not sanctioned by the Chinese state in order to protect the privacy and security of foreign websites engaged in e-commerce in China (Deibert 2002:153). Worf notes that Western companies provide sites such as Safeweb that can enable access to banned sites, including CNN (2002:7). Even joint foreign-China portals are now allowed. Bi Jianhai notes that a recent innovation has been the establishment of a US-based portal Meet China.com to allow Chinese companies to engage in internet trade. This is a major move because previously “Chinese companies were not allowed to make direct contact with foreign companies” (Bi 2002:31).

It appears that the Chinese party-state has been compelled to compromise its control of the internet in cases where commercial considerations are paramount. However, it is extremely reluctant to relinquish control of internet communication in non-commercial arenas. The dominance of the state is such that it must be considered as the overriding characteristic of “Chinese cyberculture”. However, this is not to say that an emerging public space, allowing expression for alternative, non-official and diverse views, is not emerging as a by product of new media technologies. My next topic will thus be the scope within “Chinese cyberculture” for a trend towards a broadening of public communicative space.

The internet and ‘public space’

It is often considered that the major social consequence of the popularisation of the internet is likely to be the emergence of a freer public space of even a ‘civil society’. Arguably this is happening in other parts of the world, see for example in the Middle East and Muslim diaspora (Eickelman Anderson 2003). Hefner argues, for example, that in Indonesia the new media offer the individual more ‘agency’ because the internet, fax and telephone allow for greater interactivity and exchange of ideas than broadcasting and print (2003:xiii).

An academic study that appeared this year in Qingnian yanjiu (Youth Studies) on the impact of the internet on the SARS crisis in China provides an interesting insight into how the internet is promoting an emerging public sphere in China (Li 2003). I will briefly discuss the study by Li Chunping here in order to highlight the potential of the internet to offer alternative circuits of information that differ significantly from the official media. Li’s article also offers an astute analysis of the implications of digital communication for the traditional virtual monopoly on control of information by the Chinese state.According to Li, the SARS epidemic in the first half of 2003 was accompanied by rush buying and panic in the most affected region, the southern province of Guangdong. The rush buying began with the purchase of cotton masks and medicine and quickly spread to daily necessities such as rice and salt. Scalpers began selling medicine and foods and hoarding foodstuffs in order to sell them at a premium. Only when the Guangdong authorities cracked down on the illegal selling and hoarding did the panic buying cease.

Li argues that the panic buying can be largely attributable to the age of information which “allowed rumour to grow wings”. During the SARS epidemic, news spread not so much by word of mouth as by mobile phone text message and the internet. S/he notes that the digital message is faster than the transmission of public media but, unlike the latter, cannot be controlled. For this reason, the new media virtually took the place of the more traditional public media transmission, forming “an alien army rushing in” and this led to a crisis in public confidence (Li 2003:16). S/he points out that the sense of panic was out of all proportion to the threat posed and only decisive action on the part of the government was able to put a stop to the rush buying. Li concludes that this “sudden collective movement” from the population must give the authorities serious pause for thought (Li 2003:17)

What is the solution? According to Li, the information age calls on the government to make information public in order to consolidate the trust of the public in the government. The proverb goes, “It is more important to stop people’s mouths than to dam up a river”.

In other words, it is impossible to stop people talking. In the past it was a case of the government putting something forward and the public accepting it but this has changed now to a case of “the government can only exert its authority if it puts forward information”.[8] The public now has many more sources of information. Mobile text messages and the internet are characterised by their ability to be used individually (gexinghua) and their uncontrollability. Everyone can create news and information (renren zhizao xinxi). This amounts to a communication revolution. Everyone is now able to both assess news events and to generate their own news (Li 2003:18).

In these changed circumstances the trend must be towards open information and open government. In the past, it has been thought that to make public certain kinds of news would lead to public concern or even panic. But the reality is that the policy of “report good news but not bad” has weakened the ability of the public to withstand bad news. On the contrary, telling the population the truth can actually build up the ability of the public to accept this news and to improve their powers of discrimination. Further, making information public builds up public trust in the government. In this way, governments can use media to demonstrate they “care for the people” (qinmin) and thus protect public confidence in the state.