IDEA 20090318 Wired China Mini-Feature

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Chris Baker from wired liked The Chinapedians and asked me to put together a 1 page pitch about this essay and other surrounding issues for possible inclusion as a mini-feature in an upcoming wired magazine.

Contents

Guanxi Networks: Rise of the Chinese Internet Individual

China is a culture of relationships. One person to the next, branching sometimes, and other times developing like interconnected webs. If not handled correctly, one might get trapped in an unseen spider web. Guanxi is the simple and complex central Chinese concept of personalized networks of influence and social relationships. Understanding it is crucial to participating in all levels of Chinese political life. Understanding explains many misunderstandings about the Chinese Internet.

The "Guanxi Networks" feature investigates the rise of the Chinese Internet individual. China now has the largest population of Internet users in the world. No one, especially businesses, can ignore the raw importance that China and its nodes of the Internet play now on into the future.

This feature maps the Guanxi concepts in Chinese society in an attempt to understand why the largest internet filtering project, the Great FireWall, exists. Also, how do bloggers and Chinapedians, "The Chinese Wikipedians," thrive in a seemingly hostile political climate, especially portrayed by non-Chinese media.

Guanxi Networks then looks at Shanzhai technology culture and explains how such piracy could exist with guanxi connections, and how it is aggressive business for developing nations. The section ends with some articles explaining HOWTO increase one's guanxi, a simple guide for HOWTO tunnel through the Great Firewall, and finally a piece about visiting China for under $1000 USD. The "Guanxi Networks" concept is to provide a quick history of China, the Chinese Internet, some key guanxi networks of Individuals, and small sections spliced in so that anyone may plug into a Chinese Guanxi Network.

Technical Notes

  • Article is Creative Commons BY or BY-SA licensed
  • Articles are contributed to relevant wikis
  • IDEA: provide each article in both English and Chinese.
  • GOAL: Get the mini-feature section freely copied in Chinese magazine, and do it legally since under a CC license.


Introduction

  • 1/2 page of text about Guanxi, China, and key topics in the sections, with image spread.
  • 1 page crash course in Chinese history and Chinese Internet, compared to rest of the world, with bolded major accomplishments, linked to wikipedia articles.

Infoporn

  1. A graph showing the basic history of china (4000 years at a glance), with major social and technical developments, graphed against population.
  2. A chart of the last 100 years of global and Chinese history, since this shows the revolutionary forces in China, compared to industrialization in rest of the world mapped against GDP.
  3. Then a graph showing the breakdown of Chinese Internet history, connected to USA/global internet history, mapped against population.
  4. Finally, a chart showing global economic predicted growth over next 30 years similar to: http://rejon.org/2008/04/why-am-i-in-china/

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The Chinapedians

The Chinapedians, Jon Phillips

The Chinese Bloggers

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The story of the "Grass Mud Horse" recently snared across the blogosphere to highlight the idiosyncrasies of the Chinese Internet. Chinese bloggers were the leaders of this meme which rang around the world. As Time.com described:

One of the sharpest challenges yet to China's stifling attempts at Internet censorship comes in the form of a lowly alpaca. Actually, the alpaca-like creature starring in online videos and lining Chinese store toy shelves is a mythical "grass-mud horse" — whose name in Chinese sounds just like a vulgar expression involving a sex act and, well, your mother. Bawdy as it may seem, an Internet children's song about the animal, full of lewd homophones, has emerged as a galvanizing protest against the Communist government's efforts to ban "subversive" material — political dissent, most importantly — from the web. Purportedly a harmless fantasy, the wink-wink, giggle-giggle creation is a virtual thumb in the eye of China's unblinking censors.

Who are these Chinese bloggers? This writing looks at the Chinese bloggers, starting with the blogfather, Isaac Mao, and expands from his annual CNBloggerCon to investigate the emergent vocal wealth found all throughout China.

Shanzhai Knock-off Culture

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Shanzhai (山寨) are "Chinese knockoff and pirated brands and goods, particularly electronics. Literally "mountain village" or "mountain stronghold," the term refers to the mountain stockades of warlords or thieves, far away from official control."

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"Shanzhai Knock-off Culture" details the recently termed Shanzhai phenomena existing for some time in the irregularly IP enforced Chinese Mainland. This essay investigates the cultural origins of this term, some of the hilarity from products rapidly manufactured as knock-offs, the business implications for Shanzhai, and why they are strategically valuable for economic development, particularly for developing nations.

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Top 8 Shanzhai Tech

This will be a side-insert into the Shanzhai article to expand the type of Japanese school girl watch in wired to look at the lofi Shanzhai knockoffs which often times are high tech, other times are junk, and fill a consumer void between not having a product all the way up to the original the Shanzhai is knocking off.

Here are some example Shanzhai phones:

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Up Your Guanxi

Its essential to be a connected individual in society. In China, one must both associate and disassociate with Guanxi relationships regularly to achieve strategic and political goals. "Up Your Guanxi" is a simple guide to mapping a strategy, and increasing one's relationships reasonably.

The Great Firewall of China

The "Great Firewall" (GFW) is the first thing that comes to mind when the average media-literate Westerner pairs the terms "Internet" and "China." This complex censorship system is known in Chinese as The Golden Shield Project (Chinese: 金盾工程; pinyin: jīndùn gōngchéng). [1] In an academic context the system is known by the acronym GFC (Great Firewall of China), but GFW is the more popular term both inside and outside of China (cf. Twitter [2]).

The term is apt but misleading. Rather than acting as a firewall in the strictly technical sense, the GFW is a complex, interleaved censorship system. Apart from straightforward IP-blocking and DNS filtering, the GFW comprises a) keyword filtering, b) search engine manipulation and c) direct censorship through deletion of undesirable content. Useful studies exist of the keyword filtering mechanism[3][4] and straightforward censorship[5], the latter being perpetuated by individual ISP's (under pressure from the government). Keyword filtering is the aspect of the GFW most commonly experienced by foreigners visiting China. Search engine manipulation has been practiced by both Chinese and foreign companies. Straightforward censorship (sometimes called the "Net Nanny") is perhaps the most invidious aspect of the GFW, and has the greatest effect upon content by Chinese and hosted in China.

Tunneling through the Chinese Firewall

This is a section detailing methods for easily accessing the full ocean of the Internet when inside China or other countries where Internet traffic is filtered. The final article will be submitted to WikiHow.com

Methods of bypassing the Chinese Firewall are detailed with pointers:

  • Using a proxy server outside China
  • Companies can establish regional Web sites within China. This prevents their content from going through the Great Firewall of China; however, it requires companies to apply for local ICP licenses.
  • The Great Firewall cannot filter secure traffic, such as traffic sent over virtual private network connections.
  • Onion routing, such as Tor, can be used.
  • Software incorporating steganography.

$1K LoFi China Trip

Similar to those who descended into New Orleans to assist with technical infrastructure during and after Hurricane Katrina, this is a guide detailing how anyone can enter China from a global location and survive for two weeks and connect locally. The suggestion is to buy a plane ticket directly to Hong Kong where one might acquire a visa to enter China. Then, travel north through immigration to Guangzhou, and then onward via trains to Beijing. Finally, one should depart from Beijing back to another location, if they are ready to leave. Discussed in this quick piece are places and people to connect with in the major three locaionts related to the mini-feature section of the magazine in order to increase one's guanxi, or personal relationships.

Reading List

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