I’ll sift through my notes for more substantive observations later, but in the meantime, here are a few of the more surprising/noteworthy statistics that surfaced in the presentations:

80: Percentage of Chinese Internet users who think the Internet should be managed or controlled. (From survey cited by Deborah Fallows of Pew Internet Research)

85: Percentage of above who think government should do the controlling.

300 or so: The number of Chinese blogs in a sample of more than 500 that carried content critical of the government, corporations, social phenomena, etc. (From Ashley Esarey, assistant professor, Middlebury College).

Midnight to 4am: Time during which majority of politically critical blog posts in China are written. (A. Esarey)

43: Percentage of Americans who answered “yes” to the question “Do you think China will inevitably change with the Internet?” (From Zogby Poll, January 2007, cited by Lokman Tsui)

1: Hangzhou’s position in ranking of 30 major Chinese cities based on percentage of people who blog (from China Media Monitoring study cited by ESWN blogger Roland Soong.)

What to make of all this? It’s anyone’s guess. If there’s a singe line to summarize the findings presented at the conference, it’s this: China’s Internet is a schizophrenic and slippery–and, therefore, as unpredictable–as the country itself.

To get a fuller sense of the confusion, see the official CIRC blog (heroically compiled in real time by John from Global Voices and Dave from Mutant Palm) as well as coverage from Kai Pan at CN Reviews here and here.

[Image: CIRC 2008 group photo, courtesy of RConversation]

Can’t remember off the top of my head if Atlantic hides its content behind a pay-wall. Go read the piece quickly just in case. In the meantime, here’s a taste:

Next is the perilous “connect” phase. If the DNS has looked up and provided the right IP address, your computer sends a signal requesting a connection with that remote site. While your signal is going out, and as the other system is sending a reply, the surveillance computers within China are looking over your request, which has been mirrored to them. They quickly check a list of forbidden IP sites. If you’re trying to reach one on that blacklist, the Chinese international-gateway servers will interrupt the transmission by sending an Internet “Reset” command both to your computer and to the one you’re trying to reach. Reset is a perfectly routine Internet function, which is used to repair connections that have become unsynchronized. But in this case it’s equivalent to forcing the phones on each end of a conversation to hang up. Instead of the site you want, you usually see an onscreen message beginning “The connection has been reset”; sometimes instead you get “Site not found.” Annoyingly, blogs hosted by the popular system Blogspot are on this IP blacklist. For a typical Google-type search, many of the links shown on the results page are from Wikipedia or one of these main blog sites. You will see these links when you search from inside China, but if you click on them, you won’t get what you want.

The full article is available, for the time being, here.

The Atlantic website also has an interview with Fallows on how he did the reporting for the article that illustrates nicely how sensitive-topic reporting is done over here. The interview was conducted by Abby Cutler, with whom, incidentally, I am scheduled to meet for drinks tonight. I’ll let you know if that encounter produces any additional insights.

中文网志年会2007： My first blogger conference and my first try at real-time blogging. I feel so 2.0, my attention so divided I’m incapable of sustaining a single thought for longer than it takes to say “wireless.”

The drill seems to go something like this: Grab seat, take out camera (preferably one embedded in your phone), plug in computer, bring up Firefox and IM software, commence taking photos and posting them on Flickr, chatting with friends, checking email, writing on personal blog, checking email, monitoring others’ blogs, checking email, and, occasionally (if there are any nerve cells in your brain not already firing like the pistons of a neon-equipped rice rocket) listening to what the speaker of the moment is saying.

To make it all worse, a Chinese website called Jiwai.de has set up a real-time micro-blog message board, projected onto a screen next to the main stage. The screen provides an endless and engrossing stream of shout outs and smart ass comments beamed in wirelessly from laptops in the crowd. [Jeremy Goldkorn, founder of Danwei and the foreign face of China's blog world, has spent nearly every moment with eyes locked on this screen, paying little to no attention to what's happening on stage.]

Of the events I’ve actually managed to concentrate on, so far the most noteworthy panel (for foreigners at least) has been a debate, moderated by Rebecca MacKinnon, on the relationship between blogging and traditional media. An old topic, yes. But still relevant in China, where blogs count as virtually the only independent source of news. Talk quickly turned from whether bloggers are journalists to blogs as guardians of free speech arrayed against a soul-snuffing government, whereupon the Jiwai.de message board lit up: “Why get talk about such sensitive things?” “Chaos on the stage!” “Is bloggers’ responsibility really so grand?” Most interesting bit came when someone in the audience questioned whether bloggers, who use pen names, don’t manage to evade responsibility for what they write. The answer came from Bei Feng (北风 ) , a former TV journalist from Guangzhou: “Actually, a regular journalist makes a mistake, his newspaper or TV station usually takes most of the heat, or makes the problem disappear. A blogger takes the heat himself. The law makes it possible to hold people responsible for what they write online. For that reason, you’re even more careful about what you publish, you’re your standards are even higher. Bloggers have more of a sense of responsibility than regular journalists.”

A bit simplified as arguments go, but not without its merits. It’s common knowledge the Chinese news industry is nearly as corrupt as the government officials it purports to cover. Paid articles and hong bao bribes (explained away as “transportation fees”) are standard salary supplements for regular journalists. Chinese bloggers, at least at this point, don’t seem to be in it for the money.

Ah, my laptop battery warns it is about to die…

My photos from the conference are available here. Photos from others here.

And John Kennedy from Global Voices is providing an actual real-time English blog for the conference here.