Made in China: Hate-Mongering

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Wednesday, Apr. 4, 2001 Three camera crews stood ready across from the American embassy in Beijing for the better part of the day Tuesday, waiting for the rocks to fly. They didn't. There were no busloads of protesters, this time, no burning effigies of U.S. President George W. Bush, no anti-American banners. Shoppers milled about the mouth of Silk Alley next to the embassy compound, and visa applicants stood in line as they always do.

So where was all that rage and indignation?

Well, it appears to have gone where all young Chinese seem to be heading these days: on-line. From the moment word got out about Sunday's mid-air collision between an American surveillance plane and a Chinese jet fighter, chat rooms and bulletin boards on Chinese websites have been flooded with postings about the incident.

Some individuals have tried to use the forums to keep updated on the latest developments in the unfolding saga, but, for the most part, it's been patriotic jingoism and vicious anti-American invective -- with each posting trying to outdo the last in bellicosity and extremism. Some of the real plums have found their way into the Western press, where they're presented as evidence of a zealous, irrational nationalism lying just beneath the surface -- the same visceral fanaticism that reared up so unexpectedly after the American bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in May 1999.

So much for the cherished hope that the ushering in of the Internet Age in China would bring the good word of liberal democracy to young Chinese. It would seem that all the Internet revolution has done in China thus far is to give voice to the most illiberal of passions, shouting out in angry unison in defense of an undemocratic regime. But all this cyber Sturm und Drang has to be taken with a large grain of salt: chat rooms are not a reliable indicator of popular sentiment.

Journalists outside of China may be excused for their reliance on Internet sites to gauge public opinion. But they should be aware that unmoderated on-line forums, where users post anonymously and with no accountability whatsoever, invite flames, extremism and hate-mongering in any country. Discussion boards about the collision on any of the larger U.S.-based news sites abound in senseless racist diatribe too. Yes, there are plenty of yahoos posting on Yahoo!

Granted, there's a better balance of viewpoints on these English-language sites; chalk that up to a more diverse Netizenry and a tradition of pluralistic politics. China's Internet users, after all, are still overwhelmingly young urban males. That cyber zealot calling for the immediate execution of the American crew and a hacker blitz on the Pentagon is probably some pimply adolescent with a surfeit of youthful spleen to vent, as ignorant of the subtleties of bilateral relations as he is those of love.

Beijingers, who uniformly believe themselves political pundits, are talking about the incident a lot off-line, too. It's irresistibly good political fat to chew. But face to face -- not hiding behind some screen name and typing across fiber-optic cable -- they choose their words more carefully. And they are, on balance, rather nonchalant; they've seen Beijing and Washington go through this before. There will of course be angry recriminations, much blustering, maybe even some saber-rattling until, eventually, each side will find some face-saving way down from its soapbox, and this whole messy affair will be quietly forgotten.

Kaiser Kuo is the English Editor-in-Chief of ChinaNow.com