Information Control in Modern Chinese Society

Information Control in Modern Chinese Society
Name
Institution
Information Control in Modern Chinese Society
Introduction
An elderly professor once said that the Freedom of speech does not exist in China when he asked Chinese students about Chinese politics 20 years ago. None of the students dared to say anything bad about the Chinese government. However, he said that in the recent years, most Chinese students he taught would talk about their personal understanding of Chinese politics and be able to point out the problems. Some people believe that Information control should be resisted, but information control is necessary in China because it stabilizes the society. Many Chinese students dare and are willing to discuss Chinese government but that does not mean Chinese government will relent over its control on information, but the technique of controlling information is becoming better. The purpose of this article is to elucidate about the information control in the modern Chinese society.
There was a Chinese student who made a speech at the University of Maryland which and mentioned about the environment problems and the political environment in China (Horwitz, 2017). Her ideas have been criticized by many Chinese internet users. The University of Maryland supported her views after the incident drew attention because the University faculty hopes that many people can listen to different opinions and accept them. The event has proved that the speech was contrary to Chinese main values and should be pointed out that it was a little exaggerated, which is the reasons why she was scolded. But the main reason the speech became so controversial was the government's control of information on social media in China. Another reason why the speech become controversial was the information control the Chinese government has achieved through social media.
Media workers play major roles in information control as they disseminate state ideology to strengthen the ruling of the Communist Party of China. Serena Liu who is a scholar from the University of Essex had a research about the structure of information control in China. When she talked about media workers in China, she said that most of them tend to “subscribe the stability rule” which means follow the state ideology (Liu, 2011). She said that many people will be trained to learn what the state ideology of China and how to prevent it from those sensitive topics. At the same time, they need to spread Chinese main values to the general public to consolidate the leadership of the communist party of China (2011). Speeches like the “Fresh air of free speech” are great opportunities for the media to get ratings while being completely "politically correct." Media workers will not miss this opportunity to increase views of their websites.
But such a control over information will not completely block the voice of society and make China a sealed country. Serena Liu takes the relationship between the media and the Chinese government as a rubber band. The rule is the elasticity of rubber band, and journalists will be required to pull the rubber band as far as possible to write a good article without offending the state elites. As media workers, they still have the obligation to report according to the facts. Meanwhile, by flooding the public with this idea through social media, one can subtly change one's mind (Liu, 2011). Because of this kind of ideology transmission through social media, 56 ethnic groups in China with different traditions and cultures can organize together without big conflicts between them. For instance, the conflict between whites and blacks has become a huge problem in America but in the Chinese society, it is rare to hear of conflicts between different ethnic groups. Chinese government's policies on ethnic minorities help a lot to reduce such conflicts but sensitization of the media cannot be underestimated. In the network, many emergencies cannot be blocked. At this time, it is necessary for mainstream media to guide public opinion in a favorable direction to stabilize the society. In fact, there are many conflicts between different ethnic groups. There are lots of conflicts between people from different ethnic groups and sometimes its consequence is very serious. There was one incident on July 2009 when a peaceful protests by Uighur students turned into a massacre and 197 people were killed and about 1,600 injured. Among those killed were 134 Han Chinese. There was not much media coverage of the incident and this is exactly what is needed to maintain social stability (Liu, 2011). The lack of media coverage of such events and the mention of "56 ethnic groups are from one big family" has prevented much social unrest. Meanwhile, censorship plays an important role in this situation.
As an important part of information control, the system of censorship is very complex. Some cases, censorship may cause some bad effects that Chinese government do not what to see. Part of it is keyword retrieval, which blocks all information about keywords. The other part is operated by people to deal with emergencies and situations that are difficult for machines to judge (Hobbs, 2018). Chinese firewall mainly blocks foreign social media. However, in many cases, the research result shows that censorship fails to achieve the effect that Chinese government wants. There are two effects that will cause the opposite effect on censorship; they are the Streisand effect and the Gateway effect.
The term Streisand effect refers to the fact that ...