Science, Society, Sociology.

Today, amongst all of the Rapture-related drabble in the news, a single event stood out. Fang Binxing, the chief architect of the Great Firewall of China, was assaulted by a barrage of eggs and shoes – or rather, angry students initiating such barrages – while visiting Wuhan University in Hubei. What’s interesting about this is not so much that the man was attacked. It’s no surprise, and seeing that most of the eggs reportedly missed, the Mr. Fang is undoubtedly lucky that the netizens of China chose to arm themselves with things as trivial as produce and lack the organized firepower of foreign groups such as Anonymous. Then again, the reason why China does not have similar virtual hornet nests is because spawn sites such as 4chan are blocked due to his firewall, so in a sense, he can thank himself for the lack of larger attacks. On the other hand, there probably wouldn’t be such protests in the first place if there wasn’t a firewall. What can be seen here is the dilemma that the PRC is facing with censorship today.

You see, compared to other governments around the world, the PRC is rather unique. Its job is to control a country with a population that exceeds a billion, a population that accomplishes monumental tasks that would be undreamt of in other countries through sheer volume of manpower alone. It’s been said that the Yellow River is the source of China’s sorrow and its prosperity, and the same holds true for China’s immense population. A deluge of humans working in tandem can be just as powerful as a flooding river, and the Communist Party, which owes its origins to this fact, knows it just too well. (Well enough, as it seems, to have tried to dam the population in more ways than one.) The current government was formed out of the ashes of a decade of war a little more than 60 years ago – many citizens are still alive who can remember the Liberation. Because of this relatively juvenile state of things, almost everyone in China is aware of just how powerful revolutions and rebellions can be, and inversely, just how frail governments are. Here in America, we may joke about Texas secession and militia uprisings leading to a collapse of governance, but it never goes beyond that. The jokes remain jokes. In China, the past is still very fresh in the minds of those in the upper echelons. To them, such whisperings are not jokes at all, but instead valid threats to the legitimacy of the current government. Although the widespread paranoia of the Cultural Revolution has long subsided, the specter of mistrust still haunts those in power, who fear that they, like so many emperors and leaders before them, may too become victims of the fickle populace. China, with a rich history of relatively minor rebellions blossoming into nationwide crises, obviously doesn’t want to take any chances, which is why draconian devices such as the Great Firewall have been erected. Overall, one may say that such methods have been effective. The Jasmine Uprisings of this year have come and gone, and China remained absolutely untouched. However, under the surface lies a complex issue. The firewall and other guards “of a harmonious society”, too often instigate what they seek to prevent: protests. When this happens, the PRC usually takes one of two courses of action, either they: if the event is small, like the one we’ve seen today, ignore it and hope it goes away, or: crack down on all the associated dissidents. Neither way helps. Due to the Broken Windows Effect, when small crimes go unpunished, they trigger increased frequencies of similar petty transgressions, until the transgressions are no longer petty and instead become of genuine concern. Heavyhandedly cracking down on protestors or heightening levels of censorship on the other hand merely exacerbates the issue in a more direct manner by unsurprisingly causing more resentment and rebellion, and China, with an average of around 100,000 strikes and other such disturbances a year, already has its hands full. When force is used, it causes protests. When force isn’t used, more people protest. It’s a Catch-22. You almost feel sorry for the poor guys who are in charge of this.

So how will things turn out? It’s most likely that as the years pass and the older officials are phased out and replaced with ones who grew up in the digital age, censorship and human rights infringements are likely to become less and less prevalent and associated with China. After all, modern China is a pretty good example of what America was like during the Age of the Robber Barons, filthy air and all. For now, the Great Firewall and other Orwellian antics will remain, and maybe that’s a good thing, compared to the many forms of anarchy that the Chinese have witnessed in preceding governments. Perhaps humans are indeed just another resource that needs to be subjugated and moderated. Only time will validate this assumption.

P.S. Darn it, I was just going to use this as a little anecdote and instead write about the U.S. and the 1^st Amendment, but it ran out of control. Oh well, what the hell.