Cyber Nationalists or Critical Netizens?

Yifan Xu reports for Policy Innovations on a survey of Chinese Internet users.

Is the Internet spreading and intensifying nationalism among the Chinese public? A nationwide opinion survey conducted in 2008 by the Research Center of Contemporary China sheds some light on the issue. Respondents were asked to indicate their level of agreement with nationalistic statements such as "the world would be a better place if people from other countries were more like the Chinese," and nationalist policies such as "China should limit the import of foreign products in order to protect its national economy."

The results show that Chinese netizens with higher education and income levels are less likely to be nationalistic and are less supportive of protectionist policies. In particular, for the statement "the world would be a better place if people from other countries were more like the Chinese," using the Internet decreases the probability of agreement by 10.7 percent; expressing oneself online reduces the probability of agreement by 10.3 percent; and using government websites reduces the probability of agreement by 17.6 percent.

This suggests that the old cyber-libertarian dream of the Internet serving as a catalyst for political reform may still have some elements of truth. At least the Chinese Communist Party must think so, given its extensive censorship of the Internet.

When Google withdrew its business from China in early 2010, Chinese netizens made a few sarcastic comments comparing the CCP's Internet censorship with the "closing door" policy of the Qing Dynasty—just like the Qing governors struggled to maintain the great Chinese Empire, the CCP is trying to create a "great Chinese Intranet." The CCP's logic is simple: the Internet makes possible negative information and news about the Party, which was previously unavailable from the traditional mass media.

In recent years, Chinese political dissidents have been actively using the Internet to reach out to ordinary people as well as foreign populations. For instance, while human rights activist Hu Jia was under house arrest, he remained active via emails and blogs, and posted a series of video diaries on YouTube. The Internet is in fact thick with opinions from nationalists and anti-nationalists alike.

The most interesting survey finding is that people who have used the Internet to access a government website—to get information, make a comment, or lodge a complaint—are even less likely to be nationalistic. This could be a spillover effect from dissatisfaction with the government.

The August 2010 Zhouqu landslide provides an interesting contrast. Generally speaking, disastrous events cause a nationalistic surge. In the 2008 survey, following the Wenchuan earthquake, respondents were more likely to agree with nationalistic statement. Yet the Zhouqu landslide has led to wide criticism of the government online. Netizens accused the government of working harder to promote a positive image of itself than to mount an effective rescue effort.

As New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof observed in 2002, nationalism in China is a double-edged sword: "it has potential not just for conferring legitimacy on the government but also for taking it away." Armed with personal computers, critical netizens are able to quickly spread anti-nationalist discourse and protests in a decentralized fashion. Should that happen in China, the cyber-libertarian dream may materialize.

[PHOTO CREDIT: March oh! (CC).]

Why Japan Doesn't Innovate in ICTs

I moderated an excellent panel last week at Japan Society on "Obama's Internet Initiative & Social Reform in the U.S. & Japan" (listen to the audio here) with Josh Fouts (Dancing Ink Productions), Kazuya Okada (NTT Data Agilenet), Kevin Werbach (Wharton business school), and Toshihiro Yoshihara (CSIS). If I had to sum up the conclusions of the panelists, it would be that "culture matters" in the spread, use, and impact of information and communications technologies in various societies.

Werbach, who has advised the Obama Administration on IT policy, emphasized the "C" in ICT--communication. Echoing senior officials in the administration such as Anne-Marie Slaughter, Werbach said that ICTs must allow people to communicate, connect, and collaborate toward achieving national ends. ICTs should allow people to connect to people, government to connect to its constituents, and the United States to connect to the rest of the world. I recalled the mantra of the administration: convene, connect, and catalyze. This sense of the United States as a credible and trustworthy convener has been a common theme I have seen in the Obama team's thinking.

Fouts similarly argued that constructive use of ICTs must be a sincere dialogue or an exchange. He reminded the audience that in reaching out to new audiences and cultures, cultural norms don't change on social networking websites. He also eased some potential worry about the Internet and social trends: The use of technology cannot replace human contact; online outreach and human contact is not a binary choice, it is a matter of integrating the two. Fouts contributed a future idea for the group--U.S.-Japan cultural exchanges through virtual worlds.

The two Japanese panelists seemed concerned about Japan's use of ICTs. As Okada put it, the reason Japan lacks innovation in ICTs is that there is a gap between its IT infrastructure and its IT literacy or attitudes. Japan is stuck in old traditions, not taking advantage of ITC's potential. For example, few people telecommute to work and few meetings are conducted virtually. In Japan, Okada said, people have a "farming attitude" in contrast to America's "hunting" mentality. The result is that Japanese people avoid disruptive change, work hard rather than work smart, and make only incremental improvements (kaizen). Okada's remarks reminded me of my graduate school thesis on U.S.-Japan negotiations; one theory that described Japanese negotiating style related to its rice farming culture. Perhaps more disturbing for Japanese innovation, Okada noted that in Japan, there is little incentive to take risks but huge disincentives to not fail. In other words, the punishments for failure outweigh the potential gains from success. Many people point to Japan's high-tech robots as areas of innovation. But Okada said Japan is automating, not innovating.

Yoshihara was slightly more optimistic but also criticized Japan's narrow use of ICT in policymaking. He said that while the U.S. approach toward establishing a broadband policy was open and inclusive, public comments through online surveys in Japan were limited. Reflecting a concern I have heard elsewhere, Yoshihara was also concerned about recent Japanese attitudes toward the Internet: In the United States, people feel the Internet is generally a healthy exchange of ideas he said while in Japan, a growing number of people feel that the Internet is a "dangerous" place, citing the vicious attacks on people in Internet forums such as 2channel. It was noted, however, that Japanese cultural "bads" present a low-hanging fruit for positive change.

To me this panel demonstrated that the Japan Society in New York City has a vital role to play in helping push for positive change in Japan--from the outside. I hope Japanese communities in New York City, a hub of innovation, will continue to exchange ideas at this historic institution and foster a stronger U.S.-Japan relationship through creativity and innovation.

Making the Internet Connection

"Innovation is possible literally anywhere that the internet is in operation," says Vint Cerf, Google's "Chief Internet Evangelist," in an interview with Andrew Edgecliff-Johnson of the Financial Times. Of the 6.5 billion people in the world, however, only 1 billion have access to and use of the internet. What does that say about the untapped potential for global innovation?

Cert highlights some of the challenges to extending internet connectivity to greater numbers of people around the globe. These range from infrastructure and capacity building (such as electricity and training) to security and privacy concerns.

"If we ever move into a regime where the providers of basic internet service have any control over what users can put on the network as an application, then I see a potential hazard to innovation. At the present time, this is still a very open system."

As Evan O'Neil points out elsewhere, there are ethical issues related to the process of extending connectivity that may not be immediately apparent. Getting laptops into the developing world is a noble venture. But what if development is not the only motive?

Craig Newmark on Digital Social Responsiblity

Craigslist Founder Craig Newmark (his blog cnewmark is here) just finished speaking on "Digital Social Responsibility: Searching for Ethics on the Internet" this afternoon at the Japan Society in New York City. Dan Rosenblum and his team at the Japan Society put together this event as part of their corporate program's Tech Epoch series. New York Times correspondent Brad Stone was moderating. Policy Innovations got to listen to Newmark's insightful comments.

Newmark's main theme was that his business has worked on the basis of shared values, specifically trust, in the U.S. society. The biggest problem at craigslist? "Misinformation gangs" spreading lies about political candidates. The reason this problem is more serious than spamming, housing scams, etc. is because billions of dollars are at stake.

I paraphrase some more of Newmark's highlights here:

• Craigslist works based on trust and universal values in the U.S.--these are based on Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Abrahamic religions). It works on the premise that most people treat people the way they would like to be treated. There are few bad guys but they are noisier than their numbers would suggest.
• The company's moral imperative is to work with the victims of scams and the police to catch the bad guys. But you have to balance this effort with the privacy rights of bad guys. Sometimes we have to operate on an internal moral compass or what "feels right."
• Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are pioneers in speaking truth to power, helping the health of our democracy. Another pioneer is blogger and writer Dan Gillmore. While craigslist is for the now, wikipedia is for the ages--it allows history to be written by all people, not just the victors of history.
• The Internet started with Johannes Gutenberg and the "blogger" Martin Luther came up with the first killer app. known as the Reformation.
• While Tim O'Reilly advocates an ethical code of conduct for bloggers, Craig agrees that bloggers should at least disclose their affiliations. (Devin says: I agree with the code that anonymous postings should be avoided. As O'Reilly puts it, "When people are anonymous, they will often let themselves say or do things that they would never do when they are identified.")
• The Web can help remind us where society is supposed to be going and it can help to expose crimes like corruption. (The Internet can help create a more ethical society.)
• Not sure what web 3.0 means but it has something to do with collaborative filtering and trustworthiness metrics. Finally, he joked despite its emergence, Craig is disappointed we still don't fly around with jet packs.