2008 Weng'an Riot - Role of Chinese Bloggers

Role of Chinese Bloggers

• Zhou Shuguang, a self-claimed citizen journalist also known as "Zola" in the Chinese blogosphere, went to Weng'an to conduct a personal interview with Li Shufen's family, using all the Internet communication tools like MSN, QQ, and Twitter, plus his own cell phone, posting to his personal web page unofficial reports along with photos and pleas from the family of the Li Shufen. It was believed that this was the first time Twitter had ever been used to report a mass Chinese protest.

Zhou, as well as many other like-minded Chinese netizens, provide on-the-scene information on events like this, is a means to give voice to ordinary Chinese whose stories get overlooked in a country where all the media is under the control of China's Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee.

• Tianya.cn, a social networking website (owned by Hainan Tianya Online Networking Technology Co.) that offers various chat rooms for bloggers to discuss social issues, played an indispensable role in the supporting of the students' actions during the riot. As reported by Jonathan Ansfield on blog.newsweek.com/July 2, 2008:

All night and morning, I was clicking on posts about it. First it was there. Then it was gone. Then it was there again. Then gone. Every few minutes it was being deleted, sometimes every few seconds. The site had orders to block it. That was obvious. But they couldn't keep up. Every time they did, we Netizens got angrier and angrier.”

Roland Soong of East South West North, a well known website that does Chinese-to-English translations, wrote:

"For example, the first item says that oveseas media are paying a great deal of attention to the lives of people living in the plateau of the Yunnan-Guizhou area. The second item says that the people of X'an (Guizhou) are lighting an extra large sacred flame to celebrate the Beijing Olympics. The third item just says, "Delete this!! Your mother's c*nt!" The fourth item says that "when the army arrives in southwestern China, I think something big will happen! I believe that our troops(人民子弟兵) have conscience." The fifth item says that the anti-American(反美) posts from the anti-American warriors(反美鬥士) have all met death -- the revolution has not yet succeeded and our comrades need to keep working(革命尚未成功,同志尚須努力, a famous quotation from Sun Yat-sen). What was that last one? The term "American" is being used for "Chinese government"!"

• Xinhua, the official central government news agency, played an unusual role in this incident, simply by keeping open a chat room for bloggers to voice their anger towards the local bunkering and incompetent officials. By June 29, there had been more than 200,000 hits on the 2,000 remarks left in the chatroom of the only uncensored official Xinhua website, mostly in strong condemnation of the way the police mishandled the girl’s death and the popular protest.

• At several other popular forums or chat sites, including Kdnet (猫眼看人), Maopu (猫撲), Strong Nation (强國), Sina.com, Netese (网易), and QQ, most of the users voiced their support for the Weng'an rioters, and they all supply their own versions of information (including text, photos, and sometimes video files), different, or sometimes opposite to the versions supplied by the Guizhou police.