Recently the website Wikileaks (Chinese translation 「維基解密」”wiki-declassified” 「維基泄密」”wiki-breach of confidentiality” and thus I prefer my translation of 「維基告發」”wiki-whistleblower” borrowing from Japanese) generated much news because it releases confidential documents on US Afghanistan war. Here I predict that Beijing and its news agency will downplay this, especially the features and mission of the Wikileaks website and its connection with Chinese dissidents.

Geo-politically speaking, Beijing would like to cover fully and spin the news about US problem in Afghanistan. The military and geo-political relationship between Beijing and Islamabad is enough reason for Beijing to report it. However, because the whistleblower this time is a website that promotes whistleblowering online to uncover the secret (usually dirty and unjust) business which governments and corporations try to hide, Beijing will be extremely cautious.

Thus, I boldly predict, Beijing and downplay the role of the Wikileaks website and its related news.

The reasons are summarized here:

(1) Among the founders and advisory members of Wikileaks, there are many Chinese dissidents that were directly involved in the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, including Xiao Qiang (蕭強), Wang Dan (王丹) and Wang Youcai (王有才).

(2) Wikileaks is among the websites that are still blocked by Beijing.

(3) Wikileaks has the potential to serve as “bad influence” for Chinese netizens (or Internet users), especially the controversies regarding the unjust secrets that Chinese governments and corporations try to hide from the Chinese citizens. Both Beijing and local governments have records in punishing those whistleblower who post their information online. For another example, China Central TV (CCTV) has warned the Chinese citizens that inappropriate geo-tagging on the Internet map services can violate the laws because of national security concerns. In addition, on April 24 this year, the legistlation branch of Beijing authorities have included in their drafted law that “Internet operators should cooperate with police and national security agencies to investigate on leakage of confidential documents”.

Thus, in order to “keep confidentiality” 「保密」 (baomi) and “stability preservation” 「維穩」“weiwen”, Beijing will confront the online whistleblowers with more forcible measures, including using the tools of libel and national security laws.