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/ [1].
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?
GL: Many of my colleagues in the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences used my ‘PhilNet’. But it was not based on the Internet. In January 1996, China started to provide Internet access to the public. At the same time, a friend of mine became an editor for a full page IT edition on Southern Weekend (one of the most popular newspapers in China). To help him, I started to write columns, and the first one was entitled ‘Follow me to the Internet’- all kinds of basics about the ABC’s of the Internet, like, what is the Internet, how to buy a modem, how to log on to the Internet, what is ftp, what is gopher, and how to check email.
RK: So you were popularizing the Internet in China.
GL: Yes, I didn’t think I would talk about the social and political impact. I just try to help people to use it and hoped for them to realize how great the Internet is.
RK: So that was the most attractive to you that you mentioned earlier, the ability to get the information and also the idea of expression, both of those issues. So how did you make the transition from these early days of the Internet to taking on the task you now do- the large scale survey of internet usage?
GL: I wrote four columns about the Internet, computers, and some related social issues in two-three years. And, in late 1996 a publisher wanted to publish a book series about the Internet and its impact. At that time in China, and even around the world, there were not many books talking about the social impact of the Internet. I started as an editor-in-chief of that seven books in a series sponsored by the largest network company at the time – Yinghaiwei (meaning ‘information highway’). The company does not exist now but the boss’s idea was good. She didn’t spend money asking me to write for the company. She just wanted me to edit the books to encourage more people to go online, whatever network they choose. Most of the authors didn’t really know the Internet at that time. And, I even went to their homes to help them set up access to the Internet. I thought, if you were going to write about the Internet, you should know the Internet. One book was about the Internet’s impact on media, one was about e-business, and one was about its impact on military and international relationships, one was about women and the Internet, one was about culture, and so on.
Because the book series was about Internet impact, I thought there should be a book about the Internet itself. So I decided to write a book about Internet history. That was the turning point for me. Before that, though I was an ‘Internet expert’ in China, in that I knew how to help people to access it, I didn’t really understand what the Internet is. After learning the history of the Internet, I had the idea that if I have to use one word to describe the Internet, I would say ‘openness’ — it is an open system.
Up till now, I still have the same opinion and all my research is mainly focused on this issue of ‘openness’. By using an open network, it could make people more open - that is the impact. My later survey reports are more about the descriptive research but my idea is more about the social impact of open technology.
The opportunity came in 1999 when I was invited by the US ambassador to visit the United States, sponsored by the US government. During that one-month stay, I met with many scholars, researchers and companies, and had lots of meetings, including one with Jeff Cole from UCLA. At that time, he hadn’t started the Internet survey but had an idea of some kind of research on the Internet and its social impact. The idea became the project now known as “World Internet Project” and there are 25 countries or regions in the world conducting the survey on not only how people use the Internet, but also on its social impact. At that time, I didn’t really know how to do surveys, but I decided I should do this. I cooperated with Professor Bu Wei from the Institute of Journalism and Communication in CASS, who had experience in doing surveys in China.
RK: How many surveys have you done so far?
GL: Only three. We started from 2001 when we signed a contact with a Chinese company and they supported the research financially. Then because the Internet bubble burst, the company didn’t have money anymore to sponsor the research. But I was lucky. In 2002, I got funding from the Markle Foundation. I was moved when I first talked to Zoë Baird, Chair of the Foundation. She said, ‘We support your research only because we think it is valuable. It will be your research: you design it and you conduct it. The only requirement from us is that when you publish your report, you should say that it is funded by the Markle Foundation.’ Without their support, I could not do all these surveys after 2002. The funding was sufficient in the first year, so I not only did the research in big cities, but also in small towns in China. The third one was in 2005, and thanks to the Markel Foundation, we will do the fourth one in early 2007.
RK: Your research has become probably the most cited research concerning Internet use in China, more prominent even than the research that comes from CNNIC, the Chinese Internet Network Center (http://www.cnnic.cn/ [2]). You are probably the most famous Chinese Internet researcher, and have been quoted in the Economist, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and have been interviewed on CNN and many other media in the West. You also had a role in popularizing and explaining the Internet through your writings in the Southern Weekend newspaper. This is a little bit of a different role that we normally associate with academics. How do you balance these demands, and how do you conceive of the role of the academic, whose research has relevance in social and political issues?
GL: I changed my research area and entered into this area mainly because I believed this (the Internet) is great for common people. I didn’t really think how much it would contribute to academics; I just wanted to help more Chinese people to use the Internet. I am now too busy to write any columns, although more media have asked me to, since I talk about IT in a simple language that most people can easily understand. More and more people can now do this kind of work. My work is more academic now. And, because the Internet has such a strong impact on society, my research is related to policy making and research. I used to be a very ‘academic philosopher’, but even at that time I already believed the academics should contribute to a society - it is a Chinese tradition. Chinese history and Confucianism will tell you that it is a commitment for the well-educated people to contribute to the society.
RK: But it also means that you get lots of government scrutiny. Does that create a problem for your research?
GL: Up till now, it is OK. I think my survey reports are mainly descriptive, not much comments on government policy. And my purpose is to help China, and also help the government, not just be an enemy of the government. I think that attitude is important…I sometimes also criticize some government policies though, even in China. Sometimes I may not say it directly but just imply it, which is a typical Chinese way of expression.
RK: So within the role of a helper the government is less likely to be antagonistic, less likely to control you as long as you ….
GL: Now my research is going on well. I think it helped. I may not directly use my report to support the government, but I know there are several government policy researchers using my data to do their research. And so do some western media who want to understand the Internet in China. Data is data. Different people can use it for different purposes (laugh).
RK: Give us a snapshot. For those who don’t understand the Internet in China, what is happening? Who is using the Internet and how is it being used? We can download your report (http://www.wipchina.org/en/ [3]), but can you provide a glimpse of what is happening?
GL: Firstly, I would say Internet use is growing very fast in China. Currently, there are about 123 million users in China, ranking the second largest Internet country in the world after the US. Secondly, there is the issue of the digital divide, which many Western scholars are interested in. In theory, rich people and better educated people are more likely to need a computer and they can afford it. So they may access more information and may have more opportunities to get even richer. But I think the digital divide is not mainly because of digital but economy. According to my research in small towns, a lot of people don’t have to buy a computer. They just go to the Internet café for RMB 1 (US$0.12) per hour. In large cities, it’s something like RMB3 per hour. Here in Brisbane, I just saw it is 3 Australian dollars per hour in an Internet café. I once went to an Internet café near Broadway in New York and it was US$1 per 20 minutes. In an Internet café close to the University of London, it cost me 1 pound per 20 minutes in 2003. So it is quite cheap to have access to the computer in China. And that is one of the reasons for the fast growth of Internet users. But the question is that, when considering the large population in China, the users are only less than 10% of the entire population, and mainly in cities, not in rural areas.
Another problem is that in the cafés, most users are young people who mainly use the computer to play games and chat. This is quite different from the situation in the West, I think. So people suppose that the Internet is an information highway, but in China, it is more like an entertainment highway. I have a lot of data to support this conclusion. So Internet development in China is still at its early stage. The typical users are well-educated young males. The interesting thing is that in China about more than 30% Internet users don’t have an email account. Less than 30% of those who have an email account check their emails every day. It does not necessarily mean that they don’t communicate with others. They prefer instant contact by QQ, which is a Chinese version of ICQ. People used to only have address on their business cards. Then, they have phone numbers or even fax numbers. And then, they have email address. Now, many people put their QQ account number on their business cards.
RK: But that presumes you are on the Internet a large percentage of each day to reach people.
GL: On MSN, you mainly contact people you know, but on QQ, you can search for all kinds of people you want to talk to, known or unknown, and keep in touch. So you can search for, say, any male in Beijing from 18-22. Then find someone you want to talk to. You don’t have to stay online all the time. Many people use the Internet in cafes. I visited some Internet cafés in a small town last year. The computers were all equipped with video camera for online video chatting.
RK: So what you are saying is that QQ isn’t really used to talk to specific individual, like a phone call, but just as a form of chat, to find out who is on, and get to new people, and talk to them.
GL: People use QQ to talk to people both they know and they don’t know. Talking to people you know and people you don’t know are quite different. When you don’t know who they are or where they are, it is very relaxed, and you can talk about anything.
RK: There was a very famous video clip of Beijing University students who created a video of themselves singing a song of Backstreet Boys. It rapidly became one of the most famous videos around the world. So you see that is a kind of typical Chinese usage. It is about play. This is interesting, because many scholars focus upon the politics and political controls and censorship, is that really important to most Chinese users?
GL: It is important. But if you talk about overall Chinese users, I would say no. The [4] generation of Internet users is really young and they don’t really care about politics. Young people are more interested in making money and making fun.
RK: But you said the value of the Internet is that it would help to bring a more open society. But if people just log in to play, does the Internet still have the social value of ‘openness’?
GL: Even if they play they also learn something, and some of them may read news when they play. My former survey shows that the greatest user’s online activity in China is reading Chinese news. The second most popular is general browsing, and the third, fourth and fifth most popular activities are all about entertainment, downloading music, play, and so on. People also can get more information than before and have a platform to express some of their views.
RK: There is much global interest about the Internet in China, particularly on the issues of Internet control and censorship. Your own research was cited in US congressional hearings by Microsoft and Google early this year. What is the value of that debate? In the West, Nortel, Cisco, and yahoo have all been criticized for obeying the law in China. Is it helpful for Western nations, non-governmental organizations, and academics to keep pushing the Chinese government on Internet freedom? What is the most helpful approach, in your opinion?
GL: This is a sensitive topic for me as I am still working for the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, which is a government Think Tank. So this is just my personal opinion, and doesn’t represent CASS or any other Chinese organization. I think every company should obey the law in the country where they want to do business. If you don’t agree with the law, you’d better not do business there. And if other people do not agree with these companies’ decisions, they mainly do not agree with the law.
Talking about Internet control, it’s not that simple. We need to consider a lot of things. The first is ‘how’. How the government tries to control the Internet. I think that’s the most concerned topic in the western world. But this is only one of the aspects. The second is result. Does this control work? As I said before, most Internet users in China may complain abut this but they don’t really care about this. The important thing is that for many users in China who really want to get rid of these control, they may have their ways to do so. Again, the Internet is an open system. It was not designed as a controlled system. The third question is ‘why’. Why does the government try to control the Internet? Every government, anywhere in the world, always wants to have as much power as they can. The situation in China is quite complicated. I think maybe some government officers still have an old or traditional way of thinking with regard to control. But it’s not as simple as to say that these guys are evils and they only want to keep their power. We need to think in their position. I remember once you said that China must be one of the most difficult countries to manage. I agree. There are so many problems. We have talked so much about China’s government control, but what about if China got out of control? So I think the best way is to not just complain about the control, but sit down and discuss what the problems the Chinese government has to face, and if the policy, such as, Internet control, can solve the problems.
RK: Control thought and information access?
GL: The traditional media, like TV and newspapers, are easy to control, but the Internet is different. This is one of my points. Chinese culture is very different from the west. Chinese thoughts have been controlled by the ancient emperors for thousands of years. Confucius even said ‘民可使由之，不可使知之’. This was designedly interpreted by the ancient emperors as ‘a governor should let people obey instead of letting them know/have knowledge’ and exploited the interpretation as a policy of obscurantism. This principle has been in China for thousands of years.
RK: So there is a traditional mentality that leads to these sorts of things. Are there any social pressures, such as families, parents…
GL: That’s another aspect. Once when I was interviewed by CNN, I was asked what kinds of people are using the Internet in China and I said users tend to be wealthy, better educated, young males. Then I was asked why Chinese government tried to control the Internet, and why they shut down many cafés. I answered, ‘You don’t have to ask me. Just go to these cafés and see what these young kids are doing there.’ There are many different ways to control the Internet, but at least I can say, shutting the Internet cafés down has nothing to do with politics. Under the one-family-one-child policy, young kids are ‘little emperors’ of their families. All of the parents expect their child to study hard and to be somebody in the future. So they are really worried about kids wasting time on the games. There is a very strong pressure from society to control the Internet. That kind of control, though regarded or implied by many media as a political control, is really social control.
RK: Several years ago, there was a fire in an Internet café and several youths were killed and immediately the government closed down some 3000 Internet cafés. And that issue illustrated what you’ve said, that that kind of control has everything to do with social issues, not political.
GL: Even that kind of control, I think, is too much. I think Internet cafés really helped to bridge the gap between the poor and the rich to access the Internet. The fire was not due to the fact that it is an Internet café. It could be anywhere. I was told that the young kids who set the Internet café on fire were all from problem families and their parents had been in jail. Suppose these kids burnt down a hospital, should we shut down all the hospitals?
RK: That is an excellent question. When we have visited corporate officers at places like Sina, we see that these companies employ their own censors to make sure that nothing problematic goes online. Chinese companies, like Sina, Baidu, and others, don’t tend to see the problem in the same way, do they? Likewise, your own research shows that most Internet users in China think that some amount of control is necessary. What is the attitude within China about the issue of Internet control?
GL: My personal opinion is that some amount of control is necessary, but we have to make clear about two things. One is who can make such decision and where do they have the right to do so. Another is that what should be controlled, and what should not be controlled. It seems to me that up till now, all of these two things are not clear.
RK: There is a little bit of a tension here. On the one hand you think the Internet brings great openness to the society, on the other hand, your survey shows most Chinese think there should be some form of control. Do you think that a certain amount of minimal control is necessary to bring about that openness?
GL: I won’t say it is necessary because these are two different things. On the one hand, I think the Internet is an open system and it can hardly be controlled. On the other hand, my research is mainly about Internet’s social impact. We may simply ask a question: what would happen if there was no Internet in China? Will people access more information or will people have more opportunities to express their opinions? Then we can understand what Internet has brought to China.
RK: So do you think the control is primarily symbolic?
GL: I think on one hand it is symbolic. That’s why when I gave a presentation in Rand Corporation several years ago, I said this is just a ‘cat and mouse game.’ But some people really take it seriously. I can give you an example. We can access the New York Times but not CNN in China. Some websites are accessible and some are not. But it has never been the case that all websites are inaccessible in China. Again, I think the problem is not control because even if only New York Times is accessible, people already can get much information. But the question is, again, who makes the decision and why.
RK: What do you want people outside of China to really understand about the Internet in China? What is the most important thing going on that people outside of China don’t really understand about the Internet?
GL: I think not only should people understand the technology, how the technology influences the society, which is already known to most western researchers, but you also need to understand the society, its culture and tradition, i.e. the context of the technology. Only by doing so can you get a better understanding of how this technology influences this kind of society. It is not your society. It is a totally different context.
RK: So this brings us to where we started, which is your training as a philosopher: how does your background in philosophy shape how you approve your research now?
GL: I think my background helped me a lot to understand the principles and guide my research, mainly about the ‘openness’. I won’t say the Internet is philosophy but philosophy training first enables me to ask more questions and see things from different angles. That’s the tradition in philosophy. There are so many philosophers in history. Each philosopher raises a theory to answer the philosophical question. So philosophy by training helps me to see things not just from one angle but try to understand the same thing from different aspects. It also helped me to see things in a balanced way, instead of going to extremes. Secondly, there are a lot of things in the world, but how to find the most important things? And how can I find some things in common in all kinds of different things? I think my philosophical training helped me with this. Thirdly, I used to do my research on Western philosophy. Some Chinese philosophers like to compare ancient Chinese philosophers to Western philosophers. Something like comparing Confucius to Aristotle. I don’t like this kind of comparison. It doesn’t really work. But even if we do this kind of comparison, we can hardly find any philosopher in China comparable to David Hume. That is to say, Chinese traditional thinking lacks skepticism. My background of Western philosophy by training helps me keep asking why.
RK: So do you think the Internet as a part of package of things that are changing China?
GL: I think it brings very important changes in China. First, as I said before, the Internet has brought more freedom of accessing information and expression in China. Secondly, the Internet and related industries is one of the engines for Chinese economy. One of the important changes is blogging. There was almost no room for individualism in traditional Chinese culture. The country should be the first, family second, and an individual should contribute to the society and the family. Yet, according to a recent report by CNET, there are 34 million registered blog websites in China and 17 million active bloggers. They try to show their personalities and tell their own stories. In general, the Internet really changes people’s everyday life, especially in urban areas in China.
RK: Interesting. Thanks very much for your thoughts!