Case Study #6 China PDF

Group Work: Case Study # 6 China ~Dictatorship-Communism~ After reading the article and watching the video, discuss the following questions with your group and write your...

Group Work: Case Study # 6 China ~Dictatorship-Communism~ After reading the article and watching the video, discuss the following questions with your group and write your responses below: What are some aspects of life in China that are What new insights did the articles give you about life under a communist different from life in the USA? government? What new insights did the video give you What effect does the form of government about life under a communist government? used in China have on its citizens? Discuss  The Rise of China as a Digital Totalitarian State by Xiao Qiang (Washington Post) Page 1 Xiao Qiang is an adjunct professor at the School of Information, University of California at Berkeley. He is also the founder and chief editor of China Digital Times. Born in China, he has been living in exile in the U.S. for 28 years. During its recent Lunar New Year gala show, state-run Chinese Central Television spotlighted a 93-year-old engineer who participated in China’s first nuclear submarine program. The program, which broadcasts to an audience of over 1 billion national and overseas viewers, lauded this guest of honor for dedicating his life to top-secret government work and for making huge sacrifices for the Communist Party. “For 30 years, he made no contact with his family for fear of giving away his knowledge and only told his father what he did for a living when the older man was on his deathbed,” the state report declared. Zhuo Baowei, a former lawyer in Shandong province, watched the broadcast and was disgusted by what he viewed as blatant propaganda. Using the Chinese social media platform Weibo, Zhou wrote that the nuclear engineer was “shameless” for having “not contacted his parents for 30 years.” Three days later, Zhuo was detained by local police. He was held for 10 days and fined 500 yuan, or about $79, for his public criticism of the celebrated state hero. His verified social media account was deleted by Sina, the tech company behind Weibo Zhou’s story is the latest example of how much stricter state control has become across the Chinese Internet, especially social media platforms. In China, censorship and propaganda go hand in hand, backed by the use of physical force, including police visits, arrests and attacks by state media on people who have expressed controversial political opinions online. Ever since he came to power in 2012, President Xi Jinping has attempted to bolster the authority of the Communist Party in part by imposing wide-ranging policies to gain ideological and informational control over the media and Internet. In 2017, the country’s first cybersecurity law came into effect; it requires Internet companies to allow even more surveillance of their networks, submit to mandated security reviews of their equipment and provide data to government investigators when requested, among other regulations. The University of Toronto-based Citizen Lab has identified various surveillance mechanisms used to monitor social media platforms such as WeChat, which can leave people with the sense that they have a surveillance weapon in their pockets. The Rise of China as a Digital Totalitarian State Page 2 What’s more, these mechanisms remain in effect when individuals leave the country, as do large number of Chinese students who study abroad. Another major development is the Chinese government’s creation of an army of Internet commentators, collectively known as the “50 Cent Army.” These commentators are organized and often paid by the government to publish online content favoring government policies, defaming public intellectuals, boosting Xi’s image and generally monitoring netizens’ activities, often using fake identities. In 2015, an anonymous user leaked onto social media various email correspondences between propaganda officials, shedding light on the secretive work of the Fifty Cent Party. These archives include photos, directories of Internet commentators, and summaries of records of individuals’ online activities, dating to 2002. From those leaked documents, it is clear that the Chinese government has mobilized over 10 million college students through its Communist Youth League organization to take on various “online public opinion struggle” tasks. As a critical component of the government’s information control infrastructure, the so-called “Great Firewall of China” has also been constantly updated in order to restrict transnational Internet networks and block “potentially subversive sites.” A research project of mine tracks 1,382 of the websites blocked in China, including YouTube, Google, Facebook, Flickr, Twitter and Instagram. Starting in early 2017, China stepped up its campaign against unauthorized Internet connections, including virtual private network (VPN) services that enable Internet users to bypass the Great Firewall. All VPN services not licensed by the government will be blocked starting in March 2018. But beneath the surface of these constantly intensifying control measures, there are millions of Chinese grassroots voices, public opinion leaders and an insurgent community of circumvention practitioners who constantly push to expand the free flow of information in Chinese society. Digital activism has been and remains a vital driver of change in Chinese society. So yes, we are witnessing China rise as a digital totalitarian state. But it may be the case that eventually resistance and critical thinking will become stronger than compliance and acceptance. And if that happens, the government’s repressive efforts on social media will be unsustainable. This was produced by The WorldPost, a partnership of the Berggruen Institute and The Washington Post.  China shifts from a one-child policy to two: Will families? Video Background Notes: Read prior to viewing….. After more than 30 years, China’s government has abandoned its one-child policy. China introduced the one-child policy in 1979 as a way to control its surging population, now 1.4 billion people, in an attempt to off-set potential economic problems. Now fears of a labor shortage, a gender imbalance — families in rural areas favored boys for manual work — and an aging population loom large over the country. The policy change may have come too late for China, according to author Mei Fong. Currently, China’s population is 1.4 billion people. For every elderly retiree in China, there are about five working adults, but in 20 years, that number will shrink to 1.6 for every retired person in China, Fong said. In an interview with PBS NewsHour, Fong expressed concern that there are not going to be enough people to pay for all the retirement programs needed to support such a large aging population. The Chinese government has come under fire from the international community since it adopted the one-child policy decades ago, particularly for the harsh way authorities dealt with families who had a second child. “They call them heihaizi, black children, because they don’t exist. They’re non-people,” Fong said. There are about 13 to 15 million of these children, some of whom are now adults. “But for all intents and purposes, they just don’t exist in China. They can’t register to buy a house. They can’t go to school,” Fong said. She told PBS that she was not optimistic that the government’s new two-child policy would include rights for the heihazi. So will families in China choose to have more kids? It’s doubtful, Fong said. Almost no country has succeeded in convincing families to have more babies after it created a population control program. Source: PBS.ORG