[Ir-l] "You've Got dissent" - RAND on Internet-enabled dissent in China

[Dave Bird]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

In article <200211261433.50463.mobbsey@gn.apc.org>, Paul Mobbs
<mobbsey@gn.apc.org> writes
>Hi,
>
>Found this trawling around today:
>
>You've Got Dissent! Chinese Dissident Use of the Internet and Beijing's 
>Counter-Strategies
>
>http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1543/

 As you might expect from the source, this is interesting and 
 excellently done stuff. I suffered through a few NotFounds and
 then a slow download to get the first (of two) 40 page chapters. 

>Summary:
>An analysis of the political use of the Internet by Chinese dissidents, both 
>in the PRC and abroad, and the counterstrategies that Beijing has employed to 
>prevent or minimize its impact. Although PRC officials have responded to the 
>increased use of the Internet with predominantly traditional measures, they 
>have been relatively successful. No credible challenges to the regime exist 
>at present, despite the introduction of a massive modern telecommunications 
>infrastructure. However, time may be on the side of the regime's opponents. 
>(JDL)

 Any radical social change has to make the crossing between spreading
 among radical innovators, to spreading among those who know a good
 thing when the bandwagon is already rolling, to becoming what the
 sheep see as established order.

 The Internet, in principle, opens communications at all level (there 
 is a second argument of "the digital divide" that it does not really 
 reach a mass audience).  

 What it does not do is open up the social conditions that the message
 will be understood and appreciated.  The primary effect to expect from
 it is, therefore, that innovators will reach innovators with it. 


 The perception of the conformist mass was that "they were still
 being watched" etc i.e. that the established order was still secure
 in its power and able to provide.  It would need to perceptibly flinch
 or fail in its power before most people were ready to accept and act on
 a dissenting analysis, not merely that they received the text of it:
 that is a necessary first step, but the progress to later ones is
 neither automatic not guaranteed.  

 To some extent this, as well as technical awkwardness, is what limits
 the spread of encryption. Most people simply feel the powers that be
 invade their privacy and screw their life up anyway.  They do not feel
 the spark of defiance to use effective measures which appear.  They may
 say irrationally that it "can't work" (in the sense that it must be 
 breakable anyway), but what they mean is that it "won't do them any 
 good" (they won't be allowed to maintain real privacy and independence
 so why bother with the outward forms of it).


- --                                                            .---.
  It was once believed that a million monkeys at a million   { o o } 
  keyboards would eventually type the works of Shakespeare,  _(---)_
  but the Internet has since disproved this theory.         /       \     

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGPsdk version 1.7.1

iQA/AwUBPePtGXpGxv7MBb4WEQKT1ACg4aTr8lxsPLKMQxQu3oPEB2KShZkAnRq4
5oYr6Ak4Cj/mEihwCyC1sw+v
=Wd1D
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----