Teaching Comparative

Grannies and Sisters

Once it was the "neighborhood grannies" who floated around the hutongs and villages running little errands, minding children, taking down dried laundry, visiting homes, and talking to everyone. They kept track of what was going on and what was being talked about. And they reported to local cadres who was pregnant, who was unhappy, who was unexplainably flush this week, and who was suspicious.

Now, it's the "little sister" who hangs out in the online chat room suggesting politically correct discussion topics and reporting on politically incorrect ideas. Howard French reported for the New York Times on 9 May, As Chinese Students Go Online, Little Sister Is Watching." (This article is also posted on Howard French's Web site, A Glimpse of the World and might be available there after it is in the Times' archives.

"SHANGHAI, May 8 — To her fellow students, Hu Yingying appears to be a typical undergraduate, plain of dress, quick with a smile and perhaps possessed with a little extra spring in her step, but otherwise decidedly ordinary.

"And for Ms. Hu, a sophomore at Shanghai Normal University, coming across as ordinary is just fine, given the parallel life she leads. For several hours each week she repairs to a little-known on-campus office crammed with computers, where she logs in unsuspected by other students to help police her school's Internet forums.

"Once online, following suggestions from professors or older students, she introduces politically correct or innocuous themes for discussion...she and her fellow moderators try to steer what they consider negative conversations in a positive direction with well-placed comments of their own. Anything they deem offensive, she says, they report to the school's Web master for deletion...

"Part traffic cop, part informer, part discussion moderator — and all without the knowledge of her fellow students — Ms. Hu is a small part of a huge national effort to sanitize the Internet... Ms. Hu, one of 500 students at her university's newly bolstered, student-run Internet monitoring group... an ostensibly all-volunteer one that the Chinese government is mobilizing to help it manage the monumental task of censoring the Web.

"In April that effort was named Let the Winds of a Civilized Internet Blow, and it is part of a broader 'socialist morality' campaign, known as the Eight Honors and Disgraces, begun by the country's leadership to reinforce social and political control...

Chinese authorities say that more than two million supposedly 'unhealthy' images have already been deleted under this campaign, and more than 600 supposedly "unhealthy" Internet forums shut down...

For her part, Ms. Hu beams with pride over her contribution toward building a 'harmonious society.'

"'We don't control things, but we really don't want bad or wrong things to appear on the Web sites,' she said. 'According to our social and educational systems, we should judge what is right and wrong. And as I'm a student cadre, I need to play a pioneer role among other students, to express my opinion, to make stronger my belief in Communism.'

"While the national Web censorship campaign all but requires companies to demonstrate their vigilance against what the government deems harmful information, the new censorship drive on college campuses shows greater subtlety and, some would say, greater deviousness...

"As they try to steer discussion on bulletin boards, the monitors pose as ordinary undergraduates, in a bid for greater persuasive power..."

posted by Ken Wedding @ 8:28 AM