On the Soapbox

Last Wednesday, I read an article about two prominent Chinese blogs that were apparently shut down, only to re-appear a day later. The article raised the possibility that this was a prank, and today, Slashdot and the Wall Street Journal confirmed that this was indeed a prank that attempted to highlight Western overreaction and misunderstanding of Chinese politics. The WSJ:

Within hours, English-language bloggers and Western news media spread the word that the Chinese government had closed the sites. [...] French free-press group Reporters Without Borders issued a statement condemning the closure of the blogs. [...]

[The blogger] calls the Western press "irresponsible" and says that the hoax was designed "to give foreign media a lesson that Chinese affairs are not always the way you think."

"They are not just supposed to report based on their own perceptions, without understanding the circumstances in China," he says, noting that the BBC's report was exactly what he expected. [...]

"There is a knee-jerk reaction amongst journalists -- including myself -- to stories that seem to show the Chinese cracking down on freedom of expression on the Internet," [the BBC reporter] wrote in an email.

As I have noted before, there is a complexity to the Chinese political landscape that most Westerners fail to grasp, and this was certainly evident in the sort of absolutist black-and-white good-vs-evil overreaction that was seen with the Google-in-China controversy. I applaud this stunt.

One final note: As I skimmed through the comments about this posted on Slashdot, I came across this little gem: "Falun Gong is a rung away from Scientology on the crazy ladder to spiritual enlightenment." That got a laugh out of me. The West seems to keep forgetting that Falun Gong really is an eccentric quasi-religion that advocates things that are often associated with religious irrationality (e.g., refusing medical technology) and that the Chinese government's labeling of Falun Gong as a "cult" is fairly accurate. Of course, that does not mean that suppressing it is right, but many Westerners have used this wrongful suppression to validate Falun Gong's otherwise unpalatable tenets; whenever I see people sitting on the grass on a college campus promoting and practicing Falun Gong, I shake my head. If it were not for the government's suppression, Falun Gong would have remained in its place in the Hall of Crazy Ideas. I am reminded of The Economist's take on Holocaust denial: "Denying the Holocaust should certainly not be outlawed: far better to let those who deny well-documented facts expose themselves to ridicule than pose as martyrs." In hindsight, the Chinese government would have been better off had they followed such advice.