Internet Culture in China

Internet is probably one of the most important inventions since slice of bread (or steam rice in my case). I got my first 386 PC in 1992. In 1997, I went back to China for the first time after moving to Canada. No one in China has ever heard of or have seem the Internet, even though China was already online since 1994 which also was the same year I registered for my very own hotmail account and became addicted to chat rooms (before it was a dangerous and creepy internet corner for a 15 year old).

During my visit in 2003, although people knew what internet was, it was still not wildly used. Only 68 million users. That is about 5% of the population. And then it seems like it just explored over night. Today China has well over 420 million internet users (32% of the population) and it is growing at an almost double digit rate annually. Every half of a block you can easily find an Internet cafe. The cafes are usually not just a couple of rows of computers instead they are at least 10 by 10 rows and dozens of private rooms you can book at a sight higher rate. In the evenings, they will be full of students and young people playing online games, watching movies and chatting away. (photo courtesy of www.msn.com)

Chinese Internet community is obsessed with "Human Flesh Search" which is an internet phenomenon of massive researching using blogs and forums for the purpose of identifying and exposing individuals to the public. The search can be about passing around pictures of beautiful people with ordinary lives, expressing Chinese nationalistic sentiment, or breaking the Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China. Stars can be born over night and lives can be destroyed in an instant in the Chinese cyber world. A young woman was caught on camera taking off her red jacket during one of President Obama's town hall meetings in Shanghai. More than 6.9 million results showed up on the Internet search engine Google over the "Obama Girl in the Red Coat", with countless other discussion forums on the woman. She was offered many opportunities for commercials and modeling gigs through her crazy 15 minute of fame.

Can't talk about China's internet world without the mention of the "Great Fire Wall" of China. Internet censorship is very real, very much alive and thriving. The central government has a very tight control over the flow of information on the internet and they are not apologizing for it. In fact, no one in China can read this blog! And if Chinese net citizens are allowed to access Facebook, its users would double to almost 1 billion users. Most popular social network websites are banned in China. Instead they cloned their own facebook called xiaonei.com or Chinese Twitter called fanfou.com.

In general, the Chinese is still very reserved or even guarded due to its culture and political climate. Even with censorship, Internet still gives them a certain amount of freedom to speak their mind and blow off steam with anonymity more than ever. It is no wonder Internet has gain tremendous popularity in China in a such short period of time that is reminiscent of the dot com bubble era. But I think this bubble is not bursting anytime soon.