Chinese Internet Users React to Bo Xilai Scandal

Heavy keyword censorship on Chinese microblogs didn't stop Chinese Internet users from hotly debating the deepening scandal surrounding former high-profile politician Bo Xilai, whose wife is under investigation for the murder of a British businessman.

Wednesday, searches for those taken with the case produced no results on China's most generally used microblog service, Sina Weibo.  Related searches, corresponding to for Chongqing, the town where Bo have been party secretary, prompted the response: "Consistent with Chinese rules and regulations, the subsequent results aren't being shown.”

Users circumvented the blocks by regarding the political scandal as "the foremost news.”  A Sina Weibo list of the ten most debated topics on Wednesday, widely reposted online, included three Bo Xilai-related phrases.

The founding father of Chinese media monitoring website Danwei.org, Jeremy Goldkorn, says even sophisticated government attempts to censor the net won't be able to entirely prevent information from spreading.

"If people prepare a group of words which can be normally fine, it's only a lot more difficult to trace," Goldkorn explained, "since you cannot use filtering or software to trace them. In the event that they don't mention somebody's name [or] they don't mention any of the 'bad words,' [then] the velocity of Weibo does allow this stuff to spread."

Many comments on Weibo keen on the inability of public information in China about what's really happening in the ruling Communist Party.

"The key news is solely told by officials," user "Reserved Cold" wrote on his blog stream. "Who can tell me what the genuine situation is like-”

Some expressed concern about making public comments at the matter. "Firstly i wished to assert something in regards to the major news. i've braced my nerve but still i will not find the courage,” a user from Beijing wrote, "i'm really not frightened of the nature limitation. i'm not afraid that they close my blog. What i'm really scared of is that for a word an excessive amount of i'll be detained.”

As the political scandal surrounding Bo has widened, Chinese authorities have increased efforts to suppress online rumors, but some Internet users express their thanks for info they gather online.  Beijing University economist Xia Yeliang said, "If it weren't for these rumors, how can people hope to get real news from the official media-”

Kaiser Kuo, director of international communication for Baidu.com, China's most used search engine, says Chinese Internet firms serve two masters - the govt. and consumers.

"None of those Internet companies labors under the semblance that folk prefer censored search results, but jointly, we're multiple stakeholder companies," Kuo said. "We're obliged to obey the law in China, and we're also kind of compelled to explore the pliability of our boundaries.  So, it's tough.”

Kuo says the developing Internet in China represents two opposing forces to him.

"At the one hand, you've this ratcheting up of controls, but inside the same period essentially, you've seen the net change into a whole-fledged, or mostly fully-fledged, public sphere in Chinese life. This can be unprecedented. There's never been a time in China's history where there's been a comparably large and impactful public sphere,” Kuo said.

From WhatNewsToday.net

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