China Says US Uses Facebook To Spread Political Unrest 274
crimeandpunishment writes "A Chinese government-backed think tank says the US and other western governments use Facebook and other social networking sites to spread political unrest. Their report says, 'We must pay attention to the potential risks and threats to state security as the popularity of social-networking sites continues to grow,' and calls for increased scrutiny of the sites."
The Americans are tampering with our internet! (Score:5, Interesting)
Your Farms Belong to Us (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:True but not necessarily a bad thing (Score:5, Interesting)
Another point that needs to be taken into consideration is that the Chinese power structure is not all based in the national government. Just as in the US there is a constant struggle between state power and federal power, in China there is a struggle between the national government and regional governments. One method the national government has as a power lever is manipulation of the people; they are capable of fomenting unrest when they want to foment it (as during the Correfour riots [japantoday.com]. Some have speculated that the riots were aimed not at the French, but at the city governments to remind them who is in control).
Re:Radio (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm just deeply unconvinced that something like Facebook, or any Facebook-esque clone, is a particularly effective medium for the US to spread political unrest in China(now, I can see a much stronger case for the US encouraging the spread of Facebook, ideally the real thing just so that we can make a buck on the side, or Facebook-esque sites within China, on the theory that they will magnify the effects of existing Chinese governmental problems).
Something like Voice of America, whether it is effective or not, is relatively easy for the government to set up. Some radio hardware in the nearest friendly or at least not hostile location, just enough native language speakers to translate the programs, and a friendly news desk to churn out the message. Getting the same effect from a social networking site is harder. Or, rather, getting a precise analog of that effect is pretty easy: just set up a VOA fan page/RSS feed/twitter whatever that people can choose to follow(and the state can probably block, in many cases). Using the social network more subtly and effectively is hard. Even the most sympathetic Chinese are going to be pissed if they are getting machine-generated spam from CIA fronts; because everyone hates machine generated spam. And it isn't bloody likely that we have anywhere near enough analysts who speak reasonably idiomatic Chinese and don't have better things to do to actually infiltrate social networks on a personal level and do message shaping.
Here is my guess: China, despite the authoritarian pretensions of its central government, has a great deal of trouble with corruption and mismanagement at the local level. When you combine that with a somewhat wild-west quasi-capitalist expansion, you get a recipe for a nearly constant stream of stories of abuses that would get all but the most dogmatically statist Chinese citizens upset. People's land basically being stolen by thugs with the connivance of local officials, blatantly illegal pollution poisoning people, fake baby formula with no actual nutritional content killing a few hundred babies by slow starvation, that sort of thing. The state doesn't generally approve of this sort of thing, often executing the perps; but it also generally does not approve of any spread of broader popular discontent about it. Some local anger is unavoidable; but censorship is frequently employed to slow the broader spread of the message until damage control and spin can be done. These are the sorts of situations where social networking tools could really make that task more difficult. Everybody is linked to their school buddies from back home, and their college buddies from wherever, and their work people from where they are now. Some nasty provincial scandal occurs back home, your highschool friend who stayed local tells you about it, you get upset and tell your college and work friends...
If that is the sense in which China believes that the US is "using Facebook to spread political unrest", they may well be right. I'm sure the Feds aren't exactly crying bitter tears over that effect, and they may even be taking more direct actions in its favor(overt and covert cooperation between strategic corporations and nation states is neither new nor exclusive to the US...). If, on the other hand, they are suggesting that facebook is full of CIA agents pretending to be popular schoolgirls or something, they are either lying or dreaming. The CIA might wish that that were so; but there just is no way that they have enough Chinese-speaking agents to have any real effect on Chinese areas of facebook, and everybody hates spam, so simply bombarding Chinese users with machine messages would be counterproductive.
Re:The Americans are tampering with our internet! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The Americans are tampering with our internet! (Score:2, Interesting)
> Americans use Facebook to spread political unrest, do they?
Sure... Teabaggers and Dittoheads.
By Chinese standards, Rush Limbaugh is no less of a problem than some CIA backed troll. Just being free to speak your mind constitutes "spreading political unrest".
Free speech: The US's most powerful weapon (Score:5, Interesting)
This goes to something I've been saying for years now. The U.S. has some pretty impressive military power, but that's not what scares the world's dictators, religious zealots, and oppressive regimes. What do they fear about us? Rock 'n' roll, short skirts, blue jeans, and *especially* cell phones, e-mail, and Facebook.
The U.S. does a lot of things poorly, including, lately, waging ground wars. But one thing we're still very very good at: coming up with new ways for the world's young people to mock and ridicule authority figures, and for adults to talk to each other freely without government interference.
The cell phone, the 18" satellite dish, and the Internet are the most terrifying weapons against autocratic states the world has ever known. Is Facebook a threat to oppressive regimes? HELL YES, and we should be proud of that.
U.S. foreign policy should recognize this fact, and use it to its advantage. Rather than planning air strikes against Iranian and North Korean nuclear sites, we should be flying over and dropping cell phones, laptops, and MP3 players loaded with Rage Against the Machine and Ani diFranco.
Re:The obvious solution (Score:0, Interesting)
the US WOULD push social networking in China if they thought it would help bring freedom of speech to China.
[emphasis mine]
That's an incredibly naive way of looking at US foreign policy. It should be -
The US WOULD push social networking in China if they thought it would advance the interest of the US ruling class. And it would not matter to them a bit if any resulting social unrest would harm or kill thousands of innocent Chinese, or turn China into an even more oppressive dictatorship, as long as it toe the US line.
Anyone who don't believe this just need to look at examples as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the various democratically elected governments in South America (and around the world) overthrown by the US in the past century to see how US foreign policy works.
Re:True but not necessarily a bad thing (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm still wondering how that is going to play out especially with the coming water shortages China is getting itself into.
Re:The Americans are tampering with our internet! (Score:2, Interesting)
Like there aren't restive jackasses on the left.
Keith Olbermann, Bill Maher the anti-vaxer or my favorites...MEChA
Let a thousand flowers bloom? (Score:3, Interesting)
I wonder if the Chinese gov't (or other regimes) have thought of just using Facebook to track down the networks of friends and acquaintences of dissidents, instead of banning it.
During the Cultural Revolution, they said "Let a thousand flowers bloom", meaning they let dissident and anti-regime opinions flow unrestricted, suddenly free of censorship. But instead of listening to those ideas and implementing them, after a short period of freedom they cracked down and jailed those who had raised 'bad' opinions after they had revealed themselves. The promise of free speech had been a trap. I wonder if the same sort of thing could happen with online social media?
People in the west talk about privacy violations of Facebook, but imagine if a bad gov't got its hands on all that data and data mined it...
Re:The Americans are tampering with our internet! (Score:4, Interesting)
(That said, I respectfully note both parent and GP 4-digit IDs and defer to your old-timey judgement)
Re:The Americans are tampering with our internet! (Score:1, Interesting)
The irony here is that Chinese wages are increasing, due to the chinese one child policy and their aging population; eventually it'll become far more expensive to play this sort of censorship game.
I just heard an NPR piece the other day on other effects of the one child policy,
Fewer children (especially boys) to help with farming. Consequent exodus to cities, leaving farms even worse off, maybe failing.
Finally, due to selective births of boys, there are now 1.25 (IIRC) boys per girl. So 20 percent of boys may end up producing no grandchildren to support either themselves or the grandparents.
Re:Oh really? (Score:5, Interesting)
Clearly they have yet to realize that political unrest spreads itself. Facebook just makes it faster.
In fact, the US Mk II - with a difference (Score:4, Interesting)
Now to make a serious point. One of the biggest problems of the US today stems from that time in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It's backward religions. Pioneers equipped with nothing but the Bible and no educated teachers went on to invent ridiculous religions - such as Mormonism and the wilder extremes of Southern Baptists - that continue to hold the US back socially and culturally today. (The same thing happened in South Africa, where the Dutch Reformed Church arose from semi-literate Boerdom.) The backward religions, just like fundamentalist Islam and settler-friendly perversions of Judaism, are well funded to gain support via the Internet.
The Chinese actually need to use the Internet to stop the same thing happening there. The Internet can spread a wider view of the world. My guess is that the Chinese government is well aware of the argument I've outlined above, in far greater depth, and their policy is simply based around the traditional Chinese policy of using the media to spread cultural homogeneity, but with an eye to the undeveloped part of China rather than the developed part. This is far from stupid. Freedom of speech is all very well in a pluralistic Western society where you can look out of the window and see that people are lying, but much less effective for isolated agrarian communities with no standards of comparison.
Re:The Americans are tampering with our internet! (Score:5, Interesting)
Average American Income: $43,762 (US Census Bureau)
Average Chinese Income: $2,025 (WorldBank)
Average US Life Expectancy: 75 / 80 (m / f) (WHO)
Average Chinese Life Expectancy: 72 / 75 (m / f) (WHO)
Probability of dying under 5 yrs old, US: 8 per 1000 (WHO)
Probability of dying under 5 yrs old, China: 24 per 1000 (WHO)
GNI per capita, US: $47,240 (World Bank)
GNI per capita, China: $3,620 (World Bank)
Re:Oh really? (Score:3, Interesting)
'The purpose of government is to serve society in a way that keeps it from destroying itself.'
I would rephrase that as: The purpose of government is to serve people in a way that keeps them from destroying each other; in that any social institutions should be present for the benefit of people.
Otherwise, it's just replacement of government with society as the raison d'etre for tyranny.
Re:The Americans are tampering with our internet! (Score:3, Interesting)
See if we judged politicians on them misspeaking it goes both ways.. How about you blame Obama for something hes done.. not something hes said. Cause if we are going to judge politicians on stupid shit they say, Bush, Cheney, Palin, and McCain are all gonna be on the top of the list. (albeit Biden, and other democrats will be up there too lol) Im just saying its a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
Things McCain said:
"I think she's most qualified of any that has run recently for vice president, tell you the truth." --on Sarah Palin, interview with Don Imus, Oct. 22, 2008
"[Sarah Palin] knows more about energy than probably anyone else in the United States of America. ... And, uh, she also happens to represent, be governor of a state that's right next to Russia." --after being asked about Sarah Palin's foreign policy experience, interview with WCSH-6, Portland, OR, Sept. 12, 2008
"I have had a strong and a long relationship on national security, I've been involved in every national crisis that this nation has faced since Beirut, I understand the issues, I understand and appreciate the enormity of the challenge we face from radical Islamic extremism. I am prepared. I am prepared. I need no on-the-job training. I wasn't a mayor for a short period of time. I wasn't a governor for a short period of time." --explaining at an Oct. 2007 debate why Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney are not qualified to be president
"I think if you're just talking about income, how about $5 million?" --after being asked by Rev. Rick Warren to define "rich," Lake Forest, California, Aug. 16, 2008
"Well, basically, it's a Google." --on how he's conducting his VP search, Richmond, Virginia, June 9, 2008
"We should be able to deliver bottled hot water to dehydrated babies." --Kenner, Louisiana, June 3, 2008
"Make it a hundred...That would be fine with me." -to a questioner who asked if he supported President Bush's vision for keeping U.S. troops in Iraq for 50 years
"I'm going to be honest: I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues. I still need to be educated."
"The issue of economics is not something I've understood as well as I should. I've got Greenspan's book."
Re:The Americans are tampering with our internet! (Score:1, Interesting)
http://2007-08.archives.ebudget.ca.gov/BudgetSummary/SUM/1249561.html [ca.gov]
California spends 10,000,000,000 dollars or so a year for prisons
http://nicic.gov/Library/021777 [nicic.gov]
Says 20% of males are in prison for drug related offences, 30% of females but as im rounding the hell outta some numbers im not going to include them as women only account for 7% of the overall population in prison
20% of 10 billion? 2 billion
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1884956,00.html [time.com]
Says California's Pot Crop is worth around 14 billion
The estimate the tax will bring in another 1.3 billion per year
3.3 billion
The current budget deficit in california is 19.1 billion
So legalizing weed could see an impact as much as 1/6 of the deficit.
That doesnt take into account that all of those prisoners will be consuming, working, and paying taxes.
Or it could help with the litigation expenses for the prison overcrowding lawsuits that the state is paying for.. all the way to the supreme court
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2010/0614/Supreme-Court-to-hear-California-prison-overcrowding-case [csmonitor.com]
People sitting in jail are a BIG reason that California is having difficulty.. I mean 150,000 people sitting in facilites designed for 80,000 people costs alot of money.. guards.. food.. clothing.. electricity.. medical.. mental health.. dental.. courts.. parole boards.. probation officers.. electronic monitoring.. they all cost money..
Re:At the risk of being labelled flamebait. (Score:2, Interesting)
What would you say about America, if they removed the right to bear arms, and then the murder rate shot up from 42.8 / 1,000,000 to 200 / 1,000,000? I'd really like you to think through it, and then share your thoughts with me. I don't think that it is fair to compare them the way that you did.
Also, in places with Sharia law, most deaths are most likely attributed to natural deaths, deaths due to holy wars, and justice. If I want to kill you, and I have a law to protect me, then it won't be attributed to murder. This goes the same way in other countries. I've nothing against blacks and whites, but I do want to use them just for the sake of illustration. If a white master kills a black slave, then do you think that it would be murder, *legally* speaking? Legally speaking, it probably won't be, but you and I can look in with a clearer mind, and say that it murder, pragmatically speaking.
Also, another thing to bear in mind is how we deal with dead bodies that are unaccounted for. If a body turned up in a river, then would it first be classified as a murder, an accident, or what? I wouldn't be surprised if some cultures would just assume that it might have been just an accident, while others might initially classify it as murder.
You gave disclaimers for those statistics, and I respect that, but I think that you shouldn't have brought those into the discussion. They just cloud the issue.