WILL IT CHANGE?

In November 2005, the group of bloggers involved with CNblog.org “organized the first-ever Chinese bloggers’ conference in Shanghai.” The gathering was not a meeting about censorship and limitations, but a celebration of new possibilities.”

Isaac Mao, founder of CNblog.org, in his opening speech, said, “In the past, you could only share information with society in the structure given to you by authorities, [but now we want] ways to share information freely” (42).

“Blogs are playing their part in creating an independent space for discourse, interaction, and collaboration. Physical distances are no longer the barrier they once were for people with common concerns and interests. All of these factors can be expected to contribute to major socio-political change in the long run” (44).

To look only at the instances where bloggers conflict with government censors is to miss the slow, but “powerful socio-political change [that] can be expected to emerge as a result of the millions of online conversations taking place daily on the Chinese Internet: conversations that manage to stay comfortably within the confines of censorship” (44).

MacKinnon, Rebecca. “Flatter world and thicker walls? Blogs, censorship and civic discourse in China.” Public Choice 134.1 (2008): 31-46.