When you Google the term “Blogging China,” you get about 9,780,000 results - including Byron’s post from May of this year talking about the New York Times article that discussed China’s reaction to the growing popularity of blogging among its people.
China’s regime is steadfastly repressive. The government jails dissidents - including members of religious groups with no purported political aims - and it has a huge firewall whose purpose is to prevent people from accessing websites that the government perceives as a threat. But as Chinese Internet companies reap enough profits to begin offering overseas IPOs, China is struggling to balance the old practice of information suppression with the highly lucrative future of the Internet.
Bokee - formerly BlogChina.com - is one such company. Amid layoffs and corporate restructuring - China’s largest blogging engine is getting ready to go public on the international stage. It is widely rumored that Bokee is preparing to purchase complimentary sites and to further monetize its content by making it accessible to wireless phones. With such an information explosion about to take place, China’s current regime may have good reason to worry. Particularly when bloggers like Li Xinde, who travels around the country exposing government corruption like a Chinese Dr. Sam Beckett - only without the time travel - are on the loose.
Forbes writer Rich Karlgaard wrote (subscription required) that blogs were a new force in the battle to keep corporations honest. If it works for a corporation, why not for a government? The central thesis of Fareed Zakaria’s The Future of Freedom is that countries cannot move toward democracy without a robust middle class. In the aforementioned New York Times article, Nicholas D. Kristof surmises that blogging - and more broadly, the Internet - will move China toward that same destination.
So where is China going? I think the Internet is hastening China along the same path that South Korea, Chile and especially Taiwan pioneered. In each place, a booming economy nurtured a middle class, rising education, increased international contact and a growing squeamishness about torturing dissidents.
Blogging may not make anyone’s life simpler - but it’s been established that it’s a powerful force for change. Harnessed appropriately, it can chip away at tyranny and corporate corruption. The question is, how will the business world harness that power?
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