Rebecca MacKinnon’s empirical research on Chinese Blog Service Providers’ censorship pattern is arguably the first systematic attempt to map what I call “special speech zones”(SSZs). By special speech zones I mean areas (virtual or physical) set aside by authorities or hosts where certain speech is allowed or disallowed. While MacKinnon aims to map out which content items are allowed or disallowed in which major Chinese blog hosting sites, she has in effect initiated a “cat-chase-mouse” game of exposing the special speech zones.
“Cat-Chase-Mouse” Games
MacKinnon is cautious in not disclosing the exact names of the 15 tested blog hosting sites from “the most liberal” to “the most restrictive” based on her 108 valid tests (see the chart of what I called “speech survival distribution” ). She is right in suggesting that “those who censor less will get in trouble with the authorities”. Thus, what is implied here is a “cat-chase-mouse” game where the authorities are the cats, blog hosting sites the bigger mother mice, and individual bloggers the smaller mice. MacKinnon’s research has the potential to show which mother mice are more protective for the smaller mice and which are more responsive to the cat’s need.
Then what is the major implication of MacKinnon’s research? She has proved indirectly that the effort of censorship is indeed outsourced from the authorities to the blog hosting sites, and thus explains to some degree the different level of censorship executed by different blog hosting sites. What is next? Without the anticipation for change, especially for the positive change, the very knowledge of such mapping efforts could be problematic. With the mapping knowledge, the cats (authorities) can better discipline the big mice (hosting sites). Then if more knowledge suggests better power for the cats, why should researchers generate such knowledge? I thus believe that the knowledge MacKinnon’s research generates must in some way empower the mice (especially individual bloggers) as well.
Like all games to be playable, the power relationship of cats and mice may be temporarily and regionally reversed if only the smaller mice (bloggers) know more about the mapping than the cat (authorities).
This is also the premise that higher level of local transparency can improve better governance, which is increasingly popular in China. It is to date the most plausible explanation for some opening up in online speech in China where some speech is tolerated because it is potentially beneficial for better governance. Another plausible explanation is simply that there is no need to regulate certain message if no one in China cares. Either way, the line has been drawn between not to kill the speech that might help good governance and to censor the speech that might be too disruptive.
Indeed, the line between tolerable and intolerable speech, as self-reported by various seasoned bloggers and Wikipedians from mainland china, is somehow drawn between the speech that helps good goverance and the noisy (disruptive) opposition to the authorities. It is also consistent with China’s mainstream critique and resistance of Taiwan’s liberal democracy. Because good governance is better than democracy, China should never emulate Taiwan’s democratisation and media liberalisation.
As a Taiwanese myself, I am aware of the power of the good governance discourse of speech tolerance. Thus, it is better not to talk about free speech in the first instance, but rather to emphasize the accepted wisdom in China that higher level of local transparency can improve better governance. Thus, for MacKinnon’s research to be useful for both policy-makers (sometimes censors) and individual bloggers in this regard, it could be championed in China as part of the effort in increasing transparency for better governance. In this regards, MacKinnon’s research could be seen as an effort to increase the transparency by exposing how speech is regulated, which may in turn promote a better governance on online speech. It is highly likely that some pro-good-governance officials in China may use MacKinnon’s research to suggest less censorship on certain topics may prove more helpful than harmful, particularly if those “liberal” blog hosting sites do indeed promote better governance and have bigger market shares than those “restrictive” ones.
It would be a game-changer success if that happens. Still, it is essential to understand the difference between seeing maps and changing maps. MacKinnon’s research sees and thus potentially may modifies the map of liberal-restrictive speech zones for both better and worse. It is still the authorities that change the map. Hence, it is necessary to develop a concept that captures the dynamics without resorting to the usual terms of “self-censorship” or “Great Firewall”, which usually are too “Chinese characteristics” and thus deemed bias.
By drawing on the metaphor of “Zoning Internet Speech” proposed by legal scholars Lessig & Resnick (1999), “zoning technologies” by anthropologist Ong (2004), the widely-known “Special Economic Zones”(SEZs), and “free speech zones” in the US, I arrive at the term of “special speech zones”.
Defining Zoning Technologies
By using the term “zoning”, the first benefit is the (seemingly) neutral sense of “divide and regulate”. Lessig & Resnick (1999) provide a legal and technical working framework to discuss how the Internet can be reregulated given the Internet’s feature of universal access. First they categorise speech into three categories: (1) speech that everyone has a right to (e.g. speech about public affairs), (2) speech that no one has a right to (e.g. child porn), and (3) speech that some have a right to but others do not (e.g. adult-only porn). Then, they argue that it is particularly difficult and controversial to regulate the third category simply because the Internet’s original design generally does not discriminate senders, content and recipients:
For when viewed across jurisdictions, most controversial speech falls into category (3) – speech that is permitted to some in some places, but not to others in other places. What constitutes “political speech” in the United States (Nazi speech) is banned in Germany; what constitutes “obscene” speech in Tennessee is permitted in Holland; what constitutes porn in Japan is child porn in the United States; what is “harmful to minors” in Bavaria is Disney in New York (395).
By pragmatically acknowledging the fact that “[e]very jurisdiction controls access to some speech”, which they call “mandatory access controls”(396), they argue that any such controls would “necessity be draconian or ineffective” online (431). While their arguments are detailed and remain sensible today, the fact that Beijing has more or less successfully established such “mandatory access controls” contradicts their suggestion that governments should lessen their traditional power regarding “harmful information” (431).
Second, Beijing’s success in zoning Internet speech could be partly explained by the practice of Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in China, which anthropologist Ong (2004:70) describes as part of the “zoning technologies” strategy that Beijing deploys to “economically integrate disarticulated political entities as a detour toward eventual political integration”. Although I have my doubts in the future success of “eventual political integration,” as discussed later in this essay, it is important to understand whether such economic zoning corresponds to what I called speech zoning, which leads to the third point of “free speech zones”.
“Free speech zones” (or protest zones), according to Wikipedia, is “areas set aside in public places for political activists to exercise their right of free speech in the United States”. It is exactly the controversial nature of the term that highlights the political nature of zoning technologies, which are usually hidden behind the pure economic discourse. It is then no surprise that during the 2005 WTO Hong Kong Ministerial Conference, there were free speech zones in this Special Autonomous Region near the Special Economic Zone of Shenzhen. Though the connections between “free speech zones” and “free trade zones” might be arbitrary to untrained (or unbiased) minds, the coincidence in historical development at least testifies the emergence of the larger governance strategy using “zoning technologies”. For readers who are aware the recent protest event during Beijing’s representative Chen Yunlin’s visit in Taiwan, the tendency to enclose “free speech zones” to advance “free trade zones” is both a success for zoning technologies and failure for a young democracy.
This essay thus argues that by using the metaphor of zoning technologies, instead of the usual terms of “self-censorship” or “Great Firewall”, future research on Chinese-written Internet will be better equipped conceptually to address the issues of speech regulation. First it could be used, as in Lessig & Resnick (1999), in a neutrally analytical manner in order to highlight the actual technical and legal framework of speech regulation across regions (zones). Second, it avoids the usually unwarranted Cold War politics that Tsui (2008) has critiqued as “The Great Firewall as Iron Curtain 2.0″, which only distracts the attention to the false dichotomy of communist-versus-free worlds. Third, it could be further developed, following Ong (2004), to update the debate on the effects of the zoning technologies as a whole (not just simply in economic sense) on the Chinese identity, citizenship, and political integration/competition among the Chinese-speaking regions. Fourth, for serious critical researchers and hardcore social activists, the metaphor of zoning technology provides a critical yet unified front to understand the governing technologies deployed. These technologies could be deployed spatially: from economic zones to protest zones. They could also be established online: from good governance discourse to anti-disruption (or pro-harmony) mechanism. In sum, it is particularly viable to talk about “Special Speech Zones” (SSZs) when Chinese are no strangers to “Special Economic Zones”(SEZs) and some Americans have heard of “Free Speech Zones” (FSZs).
Towards Transparent Zoning Technologies or Special Political Zones ?
The policy implications of zoning technologies’ strategy of “divide and regulate” should have two different seemingly contradictory directions. One is to take zoning as a given; another is to challenge zoning technologies with the ideal of republic or universal values.
Take MacKinnon’s empirical experiment research as an example, researchers can first ask whether there exists a correlation between “Special Speech Zones” (SSZs) and “Special Economic Zones”(SEZs). After all, all blog hosting sites need operating licenses issued by a specific body of authorities, and such a body is usually region-bound at the provincial or municipal levels. If such a correlation exists, then an argument might be made, along the good governance discourse, the economic success of SEZs may promote and require the increasing speech “openness” of SSZs. Even if such a correlation does not exist, similar arguments could still be made by strategically linking the “special” treatment in both economic and information domains, using the popular discourse that healthy markets need more and accurate information. This is a strategy to take zoning technologies as a given.
Another strategy is increasingly politically sensitive given the almost-30-year of China’s successful economic reform may meet a crossroad this year. Disagreeing with Ong (2004)’s argument that zoning technologies is flexible enough to integrate “distinct political entities such as Hong Kong and Macao, and even Taiwan and Singapore, into an emerging Chinese axis”(70), I argue that the power of zoning technologies may backfire to such a flexible approach in deploying exceptions. For example, it is hard to imagine, after the toxic milk event, people from these distinct political entities can accept the flexibility in food safety regulation across different zones. For another example, although MacKinnon’s research may be interpreted as “a flexible and creative approach to the diverse regulation of spaces and civil society” (Ong 2004:74), it can be speculated that once the citizens have the whole picture, they will either game the differentiated system or demand a unified treatment. For bloggers equipped with MacKinnon’ mapping, they can chooose either to move the less regulated spaces or to demand a transparent universal speech regulation regime under their constitution or basic laws. Unified China as a single republic (not two republics or two systems) is too powerful a discourse to continue the flexible zoning technologies without proper justification or legitimacy. Hence it would be a constant struggle between “levelling the playing field” and “uneven special speech zoning”, where levelling could be bi-directional (up or down) and zoning could be used for censorship and special speech. Either way, zoning technologies provides a versatile and resourceful metaphor to reformulate questions regarding filtering and speech regulation online in Chinese-written Internet in specific, in physical public space and virtual global space in general.
References
Lessig, L., & Resnick, P. (1999). Zoning Speech on the Internet: A Legal and Technical Model. Michigan Law Review, 98(2), 395-431.
Ong, A. (2004). The Chinese Axis: Zoning Technologies and Variegated Sovereignty. Journal of East Asian Studies, 4(1), 69-96.
Tsui, L. (2008). Chinese Internet Research Conference » Blog Archive » The Great Firewall as Iron Curtain 2.0. In Chinese Interent Research Conference. Hong Kong. Retrieved December 7, 2008, from http://jmsc.hku.hk/blogs/circ/2008/06/13/the-great-firewall-as-iron-curtain-20/.