0:00:00.838,0:00:05.449
In the past several days, I heard people talking about China.

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And also, I talked to friends about China and Chinese Internet.

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Something is very challenging to me.

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I want to make my friends understand:

0:00:14.927,0:00:18.495
China is complicated.

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So I always want to tell the story, like,

0:00:20.590,0:00:24.046
one hand it is that, the other hand is that.

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You can't just tell a one sided story.

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I'll give an example. China is a BRIC country.

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BRIC country means Brazil, Russia, India and China.

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This emerging economy really is helping the revival of the world economy.

0:00:41.249,0:00:44.418
But at the same time, on the other hand,

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China is a SICK country,

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the terminology coined by Facebook IPO papers -- file.

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He said the SICK country means Syria, Iran, China and North Korea.

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The four countries have no access to Facebook.

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So basically, China is a SICK BRIC country.

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(Laughter)

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Another project was built up

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to watch China and Chinese Internet.

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And now, today I want to tell you my personal

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observation in the past several years, from that wall.

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So, if you are a fan of the Game of Thrones,

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you definitely know how important a big wall is for an old kingdom.

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It prevents weird things from the north.

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Same was true for China.

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In the north, there was a great wall, Chang Cheng.

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It protected China from invaders for 2,000 years.

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But China also has a great firewall.

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That's the biggest digital boundary in the whole world.

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It's not only to defend the Chinese regime from overseas,

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from the universal values, but also to prevent

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China's own citizens to access the global free Internet,

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and even separate themselves into blocks, not united.

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So, basically the "Internet" has two Internets.

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One is the Internet, the other is the Chinanet.

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But if you think the Chinanet is something

0:02:25.569,0:02:32.091
like a deadland, wasteland, I think it's wrong.

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But we also use a very simple metaphor, the cat and the mouse game,

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to describe in the past 15 years

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the continuing fight between Chinese

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censorship, government censorship, the cat,

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and the Chinese Internet users. That means us, the mouse.

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But sometimes this kind of a metaphor is too simple.

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So today I want to upgrade it to 2.0 version.

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In China, we have 500 million Internet users.

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That's the biggest population of Netizens, Internet users, in the whole world.

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So even though China's is a totally censored Internet,

0:03:17.439,0:03:21.033
but still, Chinese Internet society is really booming.

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How to make it? It's simple.

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You have Google, we have Baidu.

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You have Twitter, we have Weibo.

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You have Facebook, we have Renren.

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You have YouTube, we have Youku and Tudou.

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The Chinese government blocked every

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single international Web 2.0 service,

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and we Chinese copycat every one.

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(Laughter)

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So, that's the kind of the thing I call smart censorship.

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That's not only to censor you.

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Sometimes this Chinese national Internet policy is very simple:

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Block and clone.

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On the one hand, he wants to satisfy people's need of a social network,

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which is very important; people really love social networking.

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But on the other hand, they want to keep the server

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in Beijing so they can access the data any time they want.

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That's also the reason Google was pulled out from China,

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because they can't accept the fact

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that Chinese government wants to keep the server.

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Sometimes the Arab dictators didn't understand these two hands.

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For example, Mubarak, he shut down the Internet.

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He wanted to prevent the Netizens [from criticizing] him.

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But once Netizens can't go online, they go in the street.

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And now the result is very simple.

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We all know Mubarak is technically dead.

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But also, Ben Ali, Tunisian president,

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didn't follow the second rule.

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That means keep the server in your hands.

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He allowed Facebook, a U.S.-based service,

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to continue to stay on inside of Tunisia.

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So he can't prevent it, his own citizens to post

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critical videos against his corruption.

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The same thing happend. He was the first

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to topple during the Arab Spring.

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But those two very smart international censorship policies

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didn't prevent Chinese social media [from] becoming a really public sphere,

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a pathway of public opinion and the nightmare of Chinese officials.

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Because we have 300 million microbloggers in China.

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It's the entire population of the United States.

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So when these 300 million people, microbloggers,

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even they block the tweet in our censored platform.

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But itself -- the Chinanet -- but itself can create

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very powerful energy, which has never happened

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in the Chinese history.

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2011, in July, two [unclear] trains crashed,

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in Wenzhou, a southern city.

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Right after the train crash,

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authorities literally wanted to cover up the train, bury the train.

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So it angered the Chinese Netizens.

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The first five days after the train crash,

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there were 10 million criticisms of the posting

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on social media, which never happened in Chinese history.

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And later this year, the rail minister

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was sacked and sentenced to jail for 10 years.

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And also, recently, very funny debate between

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the Beijing Environment Ministry

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and the American Embassy in Beijing

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because the Ministry blamed

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the American Embassy for intervening in

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Chinese internal politics by disclosing

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the air quality data of Beijing.

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So, the up is the Embassy data, the PM 2.5.

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He showed 148, they showed it's dangerous for the sensitive group.

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So a suggestion, it's not good to go outside.

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But that is the Ministry's data. He shows 50.

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He says it's good. It's good to go outside.

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But 99 percent of Chinese microbloggers

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stand firmly on the Embassy's side.

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I live in Beijing. Every day, I just watch

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the American Embassy's data to decide whether I should open my window.

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Why is Chinese social networking, even within the censorship,

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so booming? Part of the reason is Chinese languages.

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You know, Twitter and Twitter clones have a kind of

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a limitation of 140 characters.

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But in English it's 20 words or a sentence with a short link.

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Maybe in Germany, in German language, it may be just "Aha!"

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(Laughter)

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But in Chinese language, it's really about 140 characters,

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means a paragraph, a story.

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You can almost have all the journalistic elements there.

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For example, this is Hamlet, of Shakespeare.

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It's the same content. One, you can see exactly

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one Chinese tweet is equal to 3.5 English tweets.

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Chinese is always cheating, right?

0:08:54.693,0:08:58.606
So because of this, the Chinese really regard this

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microblogging as a media, not only a headline to media.

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And also, the clone, Sina company is

0:09:07.398,0:09:09.485
the guy who cloned Twitter.

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It even has its own name, with Weibo.

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"Weibo" is the Chinese translation for "microblog".

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It has its own innovation.

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At the commenting area, [it makes] the Chinese Weibo

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more like Facebook, rather than the original Twitter.

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So these innovations and clones, as the Weibo and microblogging,

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when it came to China in 2009,

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it immediately became a media platform itself.

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It became the media platform of 300 million readers.

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It became the media.

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Anything not mentioned in Weibo,

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it does not appear to exist for the Chinese public.

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But also, Chinese social media is

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really changing Chinese mindsets and Chinese life.

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For example, they give the voiceless people

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a channel to make your voice heard.

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We had a petition system. It's a remedy outside the judicial system,

0:10:06.704,0:10:09.781
because the Chinese central government wants to keep a myth:

0:10:09.781,0:10:14.407
The emperor is good. The old local officials are thugs.

0:10:14.407,0:10:17.798
So that's why the petitioner, the victims, the peasants,

0:10:17.798,0:10:21.429
want to take the train to Beijing to petition to the central government,

0:10:21.429,0:10:24.224
they want the emperor to settle the problem.

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But when more and more people go to Beijing,

0:10:27.063,0:10:30.586
they also cause the risk of a revolution.

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So they send them back in recent years.

0:10:33.458,0:10:37.025
And even some of them were put into black jails.

0:10:37.025,0:10:40.626
But now we have Weibo, so I call it the Weibo petition.

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People just use their cell phones to tweet.

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So your sad stories, by some chance your story

0:10:47.042,0:10:50.683
will be picked up by reporters, professors or celebrities.

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One of them is Yao Chen,

0:10:52.596,0:10:55.985
she is the most popular microblogger in China,

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who has about 21 million followers.

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They're almost like a national TV station.

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If you -- so a sad story will be picked up by her.

0:11:06.802,0:11:11.250
So this Weibo social media, even in the censorship,

0:11:11.250,0:11:16.990
still gave the Chinese a real chance for 300 million people

0:11:16.990,0:11:20.314
every day chatting together, talking together.

0:11:20.314,0:11:23.220
It's like a big TED, right?

0:11:23.220,0:11:27.068
But also, it is like the first time a public sphere

0:11:27.068,0:11:28.772
happened in China.

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Chinese people start to learn how to negotiate

0:11:31.987,0:11:35.172
and talk to people.

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But also, the cat, the censorship, is not sleeping.

0:11:38.876,0:11:43.122
It's so hard to post some sensitive words on the Chinese Weibo.

0:11:43.122,0:11:46.329
For example, you can't post the name of the president,

0:11:46.329,0:11:51.907
Hu Jintao, and also you can't post the city of Chongqing, the name,

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and until recently, you can't search the surname of top leaders.

0:11:56.641,0:12:00.974
So, the Chinese are very good at these puns

0:12:00.974,0:12:04.646
and alternative wording and even memes.

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They even name themselves -- you know,

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use the name of this world-changing

0:12:09.386,0:12:13.357
battle between the grass-mud horse and the river crab.

0:12:13.357,0:12:15.366
The grass-mud horse is caoníma,

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is the phonogram for motherfucker,

0:12:18.320,0:12:24.536
the Netizens call themselves.

0:12:24.536,0:12:27.153
River crab is héxiè, is the phonogram for

0:12:27.153,0:12:30.047
harmonization, for censorship.

0:12:30.047,0:12:35.167
So that's kind of a caoníma versus the héxiè, that's very good.

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So, when some very political, exciting moments happened,

0:12:41.144,0:12:46.725
you can see on Weibo, you see a lot of very weird stories happened.

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Weird phrases and words, even if you have a PhD

0:12:51.557,0:12:55.024
of Chinese language, you can't understand them.

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But you can't even expand more, no, because

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Chinese Sina Weibo, when it was founded

0:13:00.770,0:13:05.906
was exactly one month after the official blocking of Twitter.com.

0:13:05.906,0:13:08.002
That means from the very beginning,

0:13:08.002,0:13:12.194
Weibo has already convinced the Chinese government,

0:13:12.194,0:13:14.938
we will not become the stage for

0:13:14.938,0:13:17.530
any kind of a threat to the regime.

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For example, anything you want to post,

0:13:19.730,0:13:22.625
like "get together" or "meet up" or "walk,"

0:13:22.625,0:13:26.818
it is automatically recorded and data mined

0:13:26.818,0:13:33.346
and reported to a poll for further political analyzing.

0:13:33.346,0:13:35.346
Even if you want to have some gathering,

0:13:35.346,0:13:39.026
before you go there, the police are already waiting for you.

0:13:39.026,0:13:40.834
Why? Because they have the data.

0:13:40.834,0:13:43.026
They have everything in their hands.

0:13:43.026,0:13:49.250
So they can use the 1984 scenario data mining of the dissident.

0:13:49.250,0:13:52.849
So the crackdown is very serious.

0:13:52.849,0:13:55.390
But I want you to notice a very funny thing

0:13:55.390,0:13:58.278
during the process of the cat-and-mouse.

0:13:58.278,0:14:02.503
The cat is the censorship, but Chinese is not only one cat,

0:14:02.503,0:14:06.131
but also has local cats. Central cat and local cats.

0:14:06.131,0:14:08.057
(Laughter)

0:14:08.057,0:14:11.131
You know, the server is in the [central] cats' hands,

0:14:11.131,0:14:15.753
so even that -- when the Netizens criticize the local government,

0:14:15.753,0:14:20.391
the local government has not any access to the data in Beijing.

0:14:20.391,0:14:22.279
Without bribing the central cats,

0:14:22.279,0:14:25.705
he can do nothing, only apologize.

0:14:25.705,0:14:28.433
So these three years, in the past three years,

0:14:28.433,0:14:31.079
social movements about microblogging

0:14:31.079,0:14:33.440
really changed local government,

0:14:33.440,0:14:35.696
became more and more transparent,

0:14:35.696,0:14:38.544
because they can't access the data.

0:14:38.544,0:14:42.157
The server is in Beijing.

0:14:42.157,0:14:43.627
The story about the train crash,

0:14:43.627,0:14:46.834
maybe the question is not about why 10 million

0:14:46.834,0:14:51.080
criticisms in five days, but why the Chinese central government

0:14:51.080,0:14:54.304
allowed the five days of freedom of speech online.

0:14:54.304,0:14:56.213
It's never happened before.

0:14:56.213,0:14:59.664
And so it's very simple, because even the top leaders

0:14:59.664,0:15:03.185
were fed up with this guy, this independent kingdom.

0:15:03.185,0:15:04.855
So they want an excuse --

0:15:04.855,0:15:08.312
public opinion is a very good excuse to punish him.

0:15:08.312,0:15:11.282
But also, the Bo Xilai case recently, very big news,

0:15:11.282,0:15:12.613
he's a princeling.

0:15:12.613,0:15:16.732
But from February to April this year,

0:15:16.732,0:15:19.435
Weibo really became a marketplace of rumors.

0:15:19.435,0:15:22.772
You can almost joke everything about these princelings,

0:15:22.772,0:15:26.172
everything! It's almost like you're living in the United States.

0:15:26.172,0:15:30.821
But if you dare to retweet or mention any fake coup

0:15:30.821,0:15:34.764
about Beijing, you definitely will be arrested.

0:15:34.764,0:15:40.687
So this kind of freedom is a targeted and precise window.

0:15:40.687,0:15:44.556
So Chinese in China, censorship is normal.

0:15:44.556,0:15:47.301
Something you find is, freedom is weird.

0:15:47.301,0:15:49.068
Something will happen behind it.

0:15:49.068,0:15:52.224
Because he was a very popular Leftist leader,

0:15:52.224,0:15:54.428
so the central government wanted to purge him,

0:15:54.428,0:15:58.510
and he was very cute, he convinced all the Chinese people,

0:15:58.510,0:16:00.340
why he is so bad.

0:16:00.340,0:16:04.118
So Weibo, the 300 million public sphere,

0:16:04.118,0:16:08.629
became a very good, convenient tool for a political fight.

0:16:08.629,0:16:10.786
But this technology is very new,

0:16:10.786,0:16:12.452
but technically is very old.

0:16:12.452,0:16:15.380
It was made famous by Chairman Mao, Mao Zedong,

0:16:15.380,0:16:18.277
because he mobilized millions of Chinese people

0:16:18.277,0:16:22.359
in the Cultural Revolution to destroy every local government.

0:16:22.359,0:16:25.229
It's very simple, because Chinese central government

0:16:25.229,0:16:27.365
doesn't need to even lead the public opinion.

0:16:27.365,0:16:31.896
They just give them a target window to not censor people.

0:16:31.896,0:16:37.805
Not censoring in China has become a political tool.

0:16:37.805,0:16:41.775
So that's the update about this game, cat-and-mouse.

0:16:41.775,0:16:43.945
Social media changed Chinese mindset.

0:16:43.945,0:16:47.455
More and more Chinese intend to embrace freedom of speech

0:16:47.455,0:16:49.615
and human rights as their birthright,

0:16:49.615,0:16:53.237
not some imported American privilege.

0:16:53.237,0:16:56.949
But also, it gave the Chinese a national public sphere

0:16:56.949,0:17:01.279
for people to, it's like a training of their citizenship,

0:17:01.279,0:17:03.850
preparing for future democracy.

0:17:03.850,0:17:06.306
But it didn't change the Chinese political system,

0:17:06.306,0:17:09.551
and also the Chinese central government utilized this

0:17:09.551,0:17:13.487
centralized server structure to strengthen its power

0:17:13.487,0:17:17.985
to counter the local government and the different factions.

0:17:17.985,0:17:20.757
So, what's the future?

0:17:20.757,0:17:22.941
After all, we are the mouse.

0:17:22.941,0:17:26.741
Whatever the future is, we should fight against the [cat].

0:17:26.741,0:17:30.732
There is not only in China, but also in the United States

0:17:30.732,0:17:35.561
there are some very small, cute but bad cats.

0:17:35.561,0:17:37.205
(Laughter)

0:17:37.205,0:17:43.943
SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, TPP and ITU.

0:17:43.943,0:17:49.298
And also, like Facebook and Google, they claim they are friends of the mouse,

0:17:49.298,0:17:53.485
but sometimes we see them dating the cats.

0:17:53.485,0:17:56.669
So my conclusion is very simple.

0:17:56.669,0:17:59.514
We Chinese fight for our freedom,

0:17:59.514,0:18:03.109
you just watch your bad cats.

0:18:03.109,0:18:06.012
Don't let them hook [up] with the Chinese cats.

0:18:06.012,0:18:08.853
Only in this way, in the future,

0:18:08.853,0:18:12.101
we will achieve the dreams of the mouse:

0:18:12.101,0:18:16.077
that we can tweet anytime, anywhere, without fear.

0:18:16.077,0:18:23.436
(Applause)

0:18:23.436,0:18:25.121
Thank you.

0:18:25.121,0:18:29.469
(Applause)