Under a portrait of Chairman Mao in Xi’an, home to the Terracotta Warriors and capital of thirteen Chinese dynasties, a revolution is taking place. Over the course of three weeks, I witnessed Chinese citizens chatting loudly over dinner and wine, the same time-tested food culture, but the topics of discussion were notably different from before. Instead of run-of-the-mill chit-chat, the citizens are talking politics, talking economy, talking corruption.
Even ten years ago, such a sight would have been unfathomable. Any spark of political activism, from the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 to local demonstrations for clean water, would have been snuffed at its start for fear of citizens challenging the Communist Party’s rule. Nobody dared to speak poorly of Party officials. Some citizens did not even have the financial means to feed their families, let alone worry about politics. So how did the new political dialogue materialize?
The answer to this question lies in the power of communication in a developing country like China. When people are given the capacity to communicate with each other, information is shared. The Chinese government’s censorship, however, places media and mass communications under constant surveillance and Orwellian control. And for a long time, the population, largely impoverished and unable to afford cellphones and computers, lacked the resources to attain their own information independent of state-run media.
Until now.
The Chinese government’s iron grasp on information has been loosened, ironically, by the success of one of the ruling Communist Party’s own policies: economic growth. Once economic reforms initiated by then-Chairman Deng Xiaoping began in earnest, China experienced one of the fastest growth rates in household spending (8.1 percent annually) and total consumption (8.5 percent annually) in the world from 1990 to 2011.
The dramatically increasing household and national wealth has greatly improved communications, the central tenet of civic engagement. For one, urban sprawl of major Chinese cities is extending mobile network coverage to rural areas and nongcun—Chinese farming villages, which historically lag behind urban cities in development. Cities are also revamping their own communications grids to satiate the citizens’ increasing appetite for the latest technology. Businesses, in an effort to provide their customers with a satisfying experience, are equipping their stores with Wi-Fi and using social media marketing, such as advertising on Tencent’s WeChat, at a level and intensity approaching that of most developed nations.
These technological advancements are supported and driven by a Chinese culture emphasizing guanxi—the connections and networks amongst friends, colleagues, and relatives. It is not uncommon for businesspeople to develop personal relationships with clients in China, where business is conducted as much according to the merits of a product as the guanxi with the client. Likewise, longstanding traditions of filial piety and strong family values necessitate communication with large extended families who are often geographically distant. These phenomena culminate in Chinese citizens equipping themselves with cellphones at an astonishingly rapid pace: mobile phone subscriptions increased from 200 million users in 2001 to over 1.2 billion in 2013, a 600 percent increase in just over a decade.
Yet little did the Chinese government anticipate that its citizens, with historic cultural traditions of maintaining close family ties and modern economic practices of wining-and-dining business partners, would employ communications for a third goal: incubating free speech.
As information began to spread on Chinese social media sites such as Weibo and WeChat, Chinese citizens became more aware of the workings of domestic affairs as well as countries overseas. In some instances, information disillusions. Citizens are realizing that under Mao Zedong’s supposedly glorious leadership, “people’s lives were in danger and bodies were everywhere,” that “the so-called rumours about [Communist Party] infighting are actually very true,” and that “strolls”, euphemisms for organized protests, are taking place around the country. Other times, information exposes: Weibo, for instance, has become a corruption-busting medium where Communist Party officials are called out for everything from abuse of power in profiting from construction projects to trivial faults such as wearing pricy watches.
Optimism abounds as the effect of an acutely aware citizenry is clearly a step towards greater freedom of speech in China. And for the first time, the monitored have become the monitors. From cellphones to corruption, strong economic growth, the pillar of Chinese government policy for the past thirty years, has ironically allowed citizens to turn a probing eye towards the Party itself. But a huge caveat exists: this massive communications network is vulnerable to abuse by those in power. State officials are able to achieve shady political goals by manipulating public opinions with smear campaigns on political opponents, framing them for corruption. And there is no telling that this stratagem has not already been employed.
Image source: The Economist