This Internet flame between Google and China is interesting because the question has been posed previously:

·      CAN THE NATION STATE SURVIVE THE WEB?( http://www.bbc.co.uk/digitalrevolution/makingofprog2.shtml )

And the Google situation is possibly the first example of an influential Web co taking on the power of a nation state, China.

Well, it’s probably helpful to keep apace of the story and online threads to-date so here are some links:

·      http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-china.html

·      http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-01/25/content_9368402.htm

·      http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60L1DK20100125?type=politicsNews

·      http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8478005.stm

·      http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/092d5ab6-08fc-11df-ba88-00144feabdc0.html

·      http://news.cnet.com/Evidence-found-of-Chinese-attack-on-Google/2100-7349_3-6250413.html

·      http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/12/google’s-china-stance-more-about-business-than-thwarting-evil/

Plus here’s some context on Google’s interactions with the People’s Daily site and the current situation with Chinese authors and Google Book’s alleged infringement of their copyright:

·      http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2009/10/27/banned-by-google-peoples-daily-web-site-claims/tab/article/

·      http://english1.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90782/6813963.html

Oh and let’s include how the “Iranian Cyber Army,” who got a reputation for disabling Twitter on 17/18 December 2009, was said to be responsible for attacking Baidu this January with trojans. Baidu is China’s top search site with two-thirds of the market share and Google’s direct competitor:

·      http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jan/12/iranian-hackers-chinese-search-engine

So…………..it’s interesting that Google complained of an alleged security breach by CHINA-IP-ADDRESS-USING hackers on the same day (12 Jan 2010) that the Chinese’s top search site was also supposedly subjected to an attack by the “Iranian Cyber Army”.

Of course, none of the media or tech commentators have put this together yet so readers of @T are the first to even be made aware of this “oddity of coincidence”.

Could it be that there are black hat hackers (also known as “crackers” and let’s remember the word associations with “crackpots” and “crazies”) who are NEITHER American nor Chinese — or maybe include both nationalities plus some other countries — playing the US and China off each other?

Readers will note that I use the term “CHINA-IP-ADDRESS-USING HACKERS” rather than “Chinese hackers”. Just because the source address of Google’s hackers originated from a China-based server does not necessarily mean that Chinese hackers were involved. Let’s make the distinctions clear.

Ditto just because a hacking team call themselves the “Iranian Cyber Army” it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re Iranians.

After all, some people online are not who they seem: they use all sorts of pseudonyms and false information. Some might even claim their names are “Snow White”, they live in Russia and they work for the KGB or that they’re a Nigerian and have US$1 million in prize money waiting for you in a Swiss bank account that you can access if you’ll only provide all your bank details or that they can make you sexier than Casanova himself. In reality, their name is probably Ted or Ting Ting, they live in Mississippi or Manchuria and they’re a 300lb postman or housewife.

Anyway, it would be a lot more conducive if the likes of Senator Clinton and Google’s strategy team adopted a SMARTER AND MORE EXPERIENCED DIPLOMATIC approach to resolving the current scenario with China. Direct challenges about how China operates its policies on freedom of information, censorship and cyber-security are probably going to be counterproductive for resolution.

From my perspective, there are clearly language and cultural philosophy issues involved. The US government definitions of “freedom”, “censorship” and “security” aren’t the same as the Chinese government’s. Neither definitions are the absolute nor the best, imo.

Sometimes, some governments’ definitions of these three words are not even the same as its own electorate’s. For example, it’s said that censorship and anything against freedom of information doesn’t happen in Western democracies. Hmmn……….then news items like these appear:

·      http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1245599/David-Kelly-post-mortem-kept-secret-70-years-doctors-accuse-Lord-Hutton-concealing-vital-information.html

·      http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/6735670/Dr-David-Kelly-doctors-start-legal-action-for-new-inquest.html

Even between American technology aficionados there’s an array of definitions on “freedom, censorship and security”. When a US social network decides to close a user group or remove their content that’s also an infringement of the principle of free flows of information; censorship like this happens and it’s rarely reported upon by the media.

Moreover, any form of editorialism (whether self and voluntary, imposed by journalistic regulatory associations with industry standard practices or a reflection of political affiliations) is a form of censorship.

Now another interesting perspective is that, sometimes, some Western democracies levy the “It’s government propaganda!” against other states — as if the Western democracies don’t and have never used the media for their own purposes (e.g., winning elections, concealing information from their people and pushing through policies).

Okay, here’s the thing: if there was no propaganda (or to use its preferred euphemism “PR / spin in the national or public interest”), there’d have been no wars……….EVER. PERIOD. No Crusades, no Hastings, no Alamo, no Trafalgar, no 1812, no Indochine, no World Wars, no Israel vs Palestine, no Cold War, no Iraq War, no Afghanistan, no trade wars, no etcetera etcetera.

So…………..this all leads us back to one of our pet subjects: IT’S ALL SEMANTICS, RAGAZZI.

Now begins the journey towards language, standards and conduct that’s more conducive to cyber coexistence.

Today seems to have been something of a China day. My good friend GC called to say he’s back in Europe after a trip to China so I cannot wait for our catch-up later this week. Then I watched an interview on the FT’s ‘View From the Top’ with Michael Pettis, a Professor of Finance at Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management:

* http://video.aol.co.uk/video-detail/sep-21-michael-pettis-on-future-of-us-china-trade-relations/2761175781

* http://www.ft.com/cms/893ac9c8-757e-11dc-b7cb-0000779fd2ac.html?_i_referralObject=9810652&fromSearch=n

Afterwards I went to check whether there was further analysis (particularly charts) on his views of China’s economy and I read that he seemed to be having issues with his blog technology, so — being a helpful person — I decided to send him an email to troubleshoot it.

Later still, I read an article in which negotiators involved in the climate change agreements say they’re expecting the Chinese Premier, Hu Jintao, to make some landmark policies on how China will control its CO2 emissions and actually be ahead of American counterparts (who are currently preoccupied with or diverted towards domestic healthcare issues):

* http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/150bf6f2-a6ec-11de-bd14-00144feabdc0.html

LOTS of current affairs to discuss with GC then! Not to mention the slight pick-up in transaction activity (Kraft-Cadburys, Dell-Perot and the odd media buy). Activity like this always switches my brain on even more, particularly since Perot Systems was once in the tech portfolio I was co-responsible for!

Today there are reports from Xinhua, the Chinese state media agency, that at least 140 people have been killed and over 800 injured in clashes between the Uighurs (also spelt Uyghurs) and the Hans in the Xinjiang region of Western China. This news is being picked up and commented on by Western media:

· http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-07/06/content_11662490.htm

· http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8135203.stm

· http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/05/muslim-minority-riots-eru_n_225978.html

· http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/05/china-uighur-riots-xianjing

· http://en.timeturk.com/china-blames-exiles-for-uighur-riot–21996-haberi.html

What the unfortunate incident shows is that contrary to global perceptions that China is home to 1.3 billion Chinese people, it is actually home to 50+ different ethnic minorities of different religions who collectively make up China. In other words, it’s a diverse (if not entirely democratic) country and it faces similar challenges as Western democracies when it comes to ethnic and religious integration. The Han comprise about 1.1 billion of the population.

Of course, whilst no bloodshed can be condoned we also need to remember that the formations and revolutions of Western-style republics, democracies and constitutions were bloody (Protestants vs. Catholics, blacks vs. whites, landed gentry vs. peasants, and continue to be bloody as per the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan).

Personally, I believe violence is fuelled by hatred, misunderstanding, dogma, ignorance and propaganda rather than perspective.

In the interests of decreasing ignorance, please let’s inform ourselves more about what’s happening and its root causes:

· http://www.uyghurcongress.org/En/home.asp

· http://www.cfr.org/publication/16870/

· http://sousuo.gov.cn/search?searchword=SEARCHVALUE%3D%24%5E%7Euighurs%24%5E%7E&channelid=6001&prepage=20&keyword=uighurs&imageField.x=0&imageField.y=0&imageField=search

Now, each municipal office of China has an ethnic affairs unit dedicated to the social integration of the various ethnic groups, for example Beijing’s:

· http://www.ebeijing.gov.cn/Government/Departments/t930029.htm

Xinjiang like other regions is known as a Special Autonomous Region which means the ethnic minority has power and influence over how the region is run. This is important because central government is logistically too far away and it puts the responsibilities into the hands of the indigenous people of the region. Still, as we can see from the riots, it’s not ideal and the system faces challenges of internal power struggles.

Will our species ever reach a state of being where we collaborate — whether it’s creating a Global Brain or building future colonies on Mars — instead of continue with our egotistical, antagonistic, nihilistic and ignorance tendencies? Who knows?

Individually, as ants, we can choose: participation in and fostering of bloodshed or education and constructivism.

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In case anyone’s interested I am a Han. My family surname, 刘, can be traced to the founder of the Han dynasty. The 刘 family number 66 Chinese emperors in Chinese history and the surname dates back to 2357 BC.

The Han dynasty is noted for its technological, education and economic advances (e.g., the invention of paper and porcelain and Silk Route trading) as well as Confucian ideals of government wherein intellectual, literary and artistic endeavors flourished and fiefdom cliques were crushed. The power was put back into the hands of the people since Liu Bang, the first Emperor of the Han Dynasty, was from the peasant class.