A difference of opinion

A recent blogging conflict between Western media and young people in China who displayed intense anger at how the West was evaluating China provided the catalyst for this book. The development of tension between Chinese bloggers and Western media has highlighted a major difference in the understanding of the natures of nationalism and censorship between China and the West. The notion of “the West”, too, is open to interpretation. The term has specific reference in the blogging conflict featured in this book. By it, Chinese Internet users mean the UK and USA mainly. The reasons are historical and linguistic. These two countries were the leading countries of the Eight Power Allied Forces that invaded China on 7 September 1901. The other six were France, Germany, Japan, Russia, Austria and Italy, non-English speaking nations whose languages do not operate as world languages on the Internet. In this book, I follow the bloggers' understanding of ‘Western’ while understanding that the term has other broader meanings.

By the time of the blogging conflict, China had already captured global attention owing to its recent accelerated pace of market-based economic reform and accompanying high rates of economic growth. Discussion of political reforms that might follow the economic development paralleled the commentaries on the historic economic changes. These discussions converged with debates about the increasing use of the Internet in China, because growth in the use of these new media and communication technologies has depended upon both economic and political change.