中欧社会论坛 - China Europa ForumUnder Their Influence
MOST INFLUENTIAL GROUP : China’s Netizens
Extract from ” TALK Webzine“
URL: shanghai.talkmagazines.cn/issue/2009-12/under-their-influence?page=5
Time Magazine made ‘you’ its person of the year in 2006 for the web 2.0 contributions of ordinary people. In 2009 we thought you expats did just fine, but Chinese Netizens made a major impact.
Chinese web users started 2009 in top form, delighting in the “grass mud horse,” which first appeared online in January. A video featuring the alpaca-ish creature, whose name (when said aloud in Chinese) puns on an obscenity, gained millions of views. It was a small triumph that expanded the expressive power of the Sinonet.
Netizens also helped hold off the “Green Dam Youth Escort,” an internet censorship program that was to be installed on all computers sold from July this year. By mid-August, public complaints saw those plans permanently put on hold.
The influence of Chinese internet users isn’t always positive, however. Anonymous, online vigilantes – often characterized as patriotic but jobless and disenchanted – can be as senseless as a Simpsons mob.
An anonymous internet posting claiming that six Uighur men had raped two Han Chinese women led to a brawl at a Guangdong toy factory’s dorms. Two Uighur men were fatally wounded and 120 others were injured. The incident also led to violent unrest in Xinjiang in July.