Open Systems and Opening Societies: Guo Liang on China's Internet

By Randy Kluver 

Guo Liang is the deputy director at the Centre for Social Development at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and Associate Professor of the Institute of Philosophy, CASS.  In the fall of 2006, he is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the USC Annenberg Center for Communication. Professor Guo’s academic background is in Philosophy, and he is a graduate of People’s University in Beijing and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.  He is also a contributing scholar to the World Internet Project. His project website is http://www.wipchina.org/en/.

Much of the academic research on the internet in China is centred on the role of the government in censoring Internet content, or other attempts of controlling access to the Internet. This emphasis occurs to the exclusion of studies examining the ways in which the Internet is penetrating deeply into China’s social and cultural fabric. But is this the whole story?  Is the research surrounding the Internet in China overly politicized?  How can we understand the real, and yet subtle, ways in which the Internet is interacting with Chinese social life?  Professor Guo’s research on internet use in China has become the basis for much of our current understanding of how Chinese netizens use the internet, and what it means to Chinese users.  His reports have brought to light important trends in how Chinese use the net, and are largely considered to be the most authoritative analyses of the social dynamics of the Internet in China.  He has consulted with senior journalists, academics, and policymakers from around the world, providing the best glimpse to understand the uses of Internet in China and what it actually means. Professor Guo argues that the open system at the heart of the Internet will actually deeply impact Chinese society, but at the same time, that we must understand it within a Chinese context.

RK: Guo Liang, I am very happy to be with you today, and have this chance for an interview. We want to get a broad overview of your sense of the Internet in China, we want to hear about your background and your research, but I think a number of people will want to know what your thinking is about where the Internet is going in terms of China’s transformation and modernization.  Let’s begin with you. Your academic training was in philosophy, particularly Western philosophy.  But now, you are working primarily in social science, doing large-scale Internet use surveys in China. How did that transformation happen?  How did you get interested in the Internet?

GL: First, I want to thank you and the M/C Dialogue website for providing me with the opportunity to talk about my research.  I have been interviewed by the media many times, but in most cases, reporters just quote what they need! (laugh)

Well, I was trained as a philosopher. When I was writing my first book in Chinese, I found it too difficult to write and rewrite because we didn’t have a typewriter to type in Chinese. So I thought maybe I need a computer. I spent all my money to buy a computer and I might be the first person in my institute to own a computer. It was in the beginning of 1991 – it wasn’t exactly pioneering to own a computer in the West then, but in China it was very early.

RK: How much did that cost you in terms of your monthly wage?

GL: At that time my monthly wage was about 150RMB (approximately US $35) and the computer, with no hard drive, cost me 3500RMB (about US$815). The monitor was a monochrome with green characters. There was only one floppy disk drive. I had to run three floppy disks (MS DOS, Chinese DOS, and then WordStar) before being able to type. Then my colleagues asked me to help them to buy computers. I soon became a “computer expert”, both on hardware and software. I was a technical advisor for some computer companies in Beijing and developed a database software for the Library of People’s Daily and some other institutions. I even provided technical support for a computer project in CASS, sponsored by the World Bank. But I didn’t know anything about networks at the time.

The most amazing thing happened when I first visited the UK in 1995. That trip was sponsored by the British Council to do a research project on philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London, and then I taught Chinese philosophy to some doctoral students in New College, University of Oxford. That was my first experience to log on to the Internet using a nickname. I saw lots of information that was not available in China. It shocked me. I thought if everyone in China could use nicknames to log on to the Internet and see things that were not accessible before, this would change China.

I decided to contribute my later life to this. I bought some books from Blackwell’s. Among them, one was ‘Running a Perfect BBS’ and the other ‘Running a Perfect Website’.

RK: Then when you returned to China after that trip, you began to write about the Internet, right?

GL: I went back to China in early July, 1995. There was no Internet service for the public. I applied for an account available only for professors for academic usage. It was quite expensive and there was no access to the Web. I could only do FTP, Telnet, Gopher, and check emails. I started to run a dial up BBS, based on the knowledge learnt from the book I bought in Oxford. I spent about US$1000 to buy commercial BBS software named “wildcat” and some related software, and about 1600RMB to buy three telephone lines to provide online service. I spent half a year translating all the menus and help files and designing the interface in Chinese. I named it “PhilNet (Philosophy Network)” and taught people how to share the information, express their thoughts and download files, etc. The “PhilNet” became one of the earliest online services in China.

RK: So your goal was to mainly help other academics to access the Internet?