Imagethief

Tag: Internet

  • A handy cheat sheet for interpreting the Google China story

    Should Google have been in China? Did they make the right move in pulling out? Will this influence the Chinese government? What does it mean for foreign businesses in China? Are they evil or not? Who knows? Not me. And none of these questions are going to be answered in this post.

    But stick with me, because that’s the point. The fact is that everyone and their goldfish has an opinion on Google’s fortunes in China, but few people actually know anything conclusive, so what we’re getting is a huge dose of punditry, analysis and opinioneering. This is the kind of thing that PR people live for, because what we’re witnessing first hand is the creation of a narrative. Or, rather, several narratives that serve different worldviews, audiences and points of view.

    This is PR in action: The effort to influence perception and opinion with regard to an entity or event, generally with the objective of supporting some kind of end-state result (higher sales, a political victory, popular consensus, the launch of a war, etc.).

    PR people are often accused of being liars. This is a shame, because a good PR person doesn’t lie or make up facts. I’d like to tell you this is because PR people are noble souls who want only the best for the planet and fuzzy puppies, but the real reason is that lying makes you vulnerable and doesn’t usually work very well (and, yes, it’s also wrong). Lies can often be proved false, and this can cause your position to unravel pretty quickly, often with devastating consequences. Even if you string the lie out long enough to achieve a stated objective, you’ll take damage on the backside if your story comes apart. See, for example, weapons of mass destruction and the Iraq war, which claimed the reputations and legacies of many people.

    But PR people do often try to interpret the facts (or obscure them) in specific in selective ways. In the vernacular, we spin things. In fact, the very term “spin doctor” (sometimes credited to the novelist, Saul Bellow) refers to trying to define the interpretation of events or facts — to determine which way they “spin” in the public sphere.

    PR people do this for a living. But we’re not the only ones who do it. Anyone with an agenda tries to interpret facts to create a narrative that serves that agenda, or that serves their world view. Often, dueling parties compete to establish the defining narrative of a situation or event. Consider how Democrats and Republicans competed to establish the narrative for health care reform in the interest of divergent political objectives. The media and public spheres of discussion are thus, often, noisy and squawky collections of competing narratives interpreted or distorted from the same basic set of facts in order to serve different agendas. Sometimes it takes a long time for a “definitive” narrative to emerge. Sometimes a definitive narrative never emerges, or different audiences arrive at divergent narratives because they’re exposed to different influences (anyone who looks at how Chinese and Western audiences fail to see eye-to-eye on many issues will be familiar with this).

    This is essentially what has been happening with Google over the past few weeks, as people have competed to establish different narratives regarding its withdrawal from China. There has been a huge amount written and said about Google’s predicament and options in both the Chinese and Western media and blogospheres. At last count I had 27 articles bookmarked since the announcement that Google would shift it’s Chinese search operation to Hong Kong. And there were plenty that I didn’t bother to bookmark.

    Well, that’s just too much damned stuff to analyze, and I am way too lazy to pore through it with a notebook and try to draw any meaningful conclusions about what it all means (hey, I don’t get paid for this). Also, my overwhelming impression is that there is so far roughly zero consensus on what it all means.

    What I did do, however, was to put together a handy chart that shows the key known facts, and, based upon all the articles I’ve read, how each of the major interest groups that I observe is spinning or reacting to each of those facts. In each case, the vertical thread through the series of facts creates the skeleton of a narrative. And that’s what each of these parties –Google, its rivals, the Chinese government, the Western activist community– is trying to do: They’re each trying to control and define the narrative of Google’s situation in China to serve their own agendas. They are, in other words spinning. Here is what the result looks like:

    google cheat sheet

    I realize this is a vast oversimplification and there are no doubt various interests omitted, but this captures most of the main parties and facts. What’s not included here is any kind of conclusion of each narrative. In my opinion, the story is still unfolding and its too early for that. But we’ll see how things go over the next few weeks.

    The other thing is that these narratives aren’t in equal competition. To use a possibly inappropriate military metaphor, there are different theaters of operation in which the stakeholder have varying levels of influence. So, in the US, Google and the activist (and analyst) community are the loudest voices. in China, the Chinese government has the tools to define the public narrative, and has been using them liberally, although there is some ferment in the margins (also here).

    Eventually, there will be a canonical version of Google’s misadventures in China. or at least one canonical version in the West and one in China. These may not be the creation of a single group. One group might control interpretation of one element of the story, and one group control another. But for the moment, the fun is in watching the battle to own the story. Enjoy it while it lasts.

    Finally, from a PR perspective, there is possibly one overarching lesson that can be drawn from this whole situation. I can’t take credit for this insight, it comes from Craig Adams, a colleague of mine. But it’s deceptively straightforward and I agree with it wholeheartedly. He said that if you have to sell out your basic principles to do business in China, that’s a pretty good sign you should reconsider your plans.

    Other sources (just to prove I’ve done my homework):

  • Google detonates the China corporate communications script

    Imagethief stumbled blearily to his computer this morning expecting a relaxed scan of the news but found the Chinese Twittersphere ablaze with the news of Google’s bombshell blog post, which went up in the middle of the night early this morning our time. Titled “A new approach to China”, the post, by Google’s Senior Vice President for Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer, David Drummond, was essentially a public threat to withdraw from China. As such, it was as direct a challenge to the Chinese authorities as I have ever seen in a piece of public corporate communication.

    The first half of the post discusses alleged hacking attempts on Google, apparently with the aims of both recovering Google source code and accessing the Gmail accounts of dissidents. But the second half of the post is more interesting. The money grafs below (emphasis mine):

    We launched Google.cn in January 2006 in the belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results. At the time we made clear that “we will carefully monitor conditions in China, including new laws and other restrictions on our services. If we determine that we are unable to achieve the objectives outlined we will not hesitate to reconsider our approach to China.”

    These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

    No doubt a great deal has transpired behind the scenes in the lead up to this announcement. To save time, here’s what I don’t know:

    • Whether this is linked to rumors of Google’s possible withdrawal from China and staff exodus that circulated several weeks ago.
    • The relative weights of the hacking issue, censorship issue and Google’s business struggles in China in leading the company to make this statement.
    • What, if any, discussions Google had with Chinese authorities prior to making this statement (they speak of discussions “over the next few weeks”), or whether there are actually continuing negotiations.
    • Whether recent blocks of Google Docs and Google Groups in China contributed to this decision.
    • Whether Google would have done this if their business in China was stronger. China contributes a minuscule portion of Google’s revenue.
    • What will actually happen to Google’s business in China in the long run.

    Here is what I do know:

    Google has taken the China corporate communications playbook, wrapped it in oily rags, doused it in gasoline and dropped a lit match on it. In China, foreign companies tend to be deferential to the authorities to the point of obsequiousness, in a way that you would almost certainly never encounter in the United States or Europe. Scan any foreign company’s China press releases and count the number of times you see the phrase, “commitment to China”. Demonstrating “alignment with the Chinese government’s agenda” is an accepted tenet of corporate positioning and corporate social responsibility work in China. This is testament to the degree of direct power that the Chinese authorities wield over the fortunes of foreign businesses in China. Even when foreign companies are in dispute with the Chinese government they tend to offer criticism obliquely as long as they have a business stake or operations in the country. Note, for example, the scrupulous diplomacy of Rio Tinto’s communications concerning the detention of its employees last summer, a far more serious situation than anything Google has encountered (although also with far more money at stake).

    In this situation Google has undertaken a bet-the-farm confrontational communications approach in China. They will not have made this decision lightly. Dressed up in the polite language above is what is essentially an ultimatum: Allow us to present uncensored search results to our Chinese users or we’ll walk. The Chinese government is not likely to cave to an ultimatum from a foreign company, no matter how decorously delivered. As Richard Waters of the FT has pointed out, the language does leave some wiggle room for further negotiation. However, Imagethief cannot imagine a circumstance in which the Chinese government will give Google free reign, especially in the current, highly restrictive climate for Internet services. Barring some surprising developments, the clock would therefore appear to be ticking for Google.cn, if not Google’s overall operations in China. It will be very interesting to see how this plays out.

    Would Google continue with an office in China if there was no Google.cn site? They could still conduct R&D here, for instance. But Google’s R&D operations in China have been troubled (remember the Sogou IME scandal?) and if the security issues are taken at face value continuing operations here in the absence of a local business to support might simply be extra risk. Consider how many China R&D operations are “PR&D”, designed to demonstrate that essential “commitment to China” in support of a revenue-generating business in China. It’s not that real R&D doesn’t happen here, but how many companies do high-level, primary R&D in China in the absence of an on-shore business and supporting government relations program? And could Google attract talent to a pariah operation? Distraught Chinese netizens are already laying flowers at Google’s China headquarters.

    The Wall Street Journal’s story (sub) on the unfolding situation makes some interesting points (emphasis again mine):

    The common assumption, however, is that no matter how onerous the limitations and challenges faced by foreign companies in China, the market is too big and important to walk away from.

    That calculation has forced a number of foreign firms to accept conditions in China that they might not tolerate elsewhere. The country has 338 million Internet users as of June, more than any other country.

    Google would be the most high-profile Western company in recent years to draw a line under the kind of compromises it is prepared to make and walk away from China.

    It would be an extremely rare case of a foreign company taking a stand on human rights, and placing that issue over commercial considerations. A number of foreign companies exited China after the Chinese army crushed student protesters around Tiananmen Square in 1989. But they mostly came back in the following years.

    A Google withdrawal would also be an implicit rejection of the argument made by many technology companies that their presence in China overall helps expand access to information for Chinese citizens, despite censorship.

    That’s the very last line in the story, but I found it one of the most interesting. If you followed the original justifications offered by many American Internet companies for launching businesses in China, or the congressional hearings on the matter in 2006, you will recall that the argument that even a censored presence in China improved access to information for Chinese Internet users was central. If Google repudiates that argument it will put pressure on other American Internet firms currently toeing the regulatory line in China, especially Microsoft, and weaken one of their core public arguments for a continued presence in China. Then again, it may also represent an opportunity for them. After all, “Google” doesn’t phoneticize well in Chinese, as the flap over the “谷歌” branddemonstrated. But “Bing” works quite nicely indeed.

    This only the latest chapter –albeit potentially a critical one– in the very interesting story of Google in China. Someone needs to write the book. Anyone want to step forward for that?

    See also:

    • Rebecca MacKinnon’s roundup of responses.
    • James Fallows’ analysis on how this development fits into a broader picture of increasingly tense economic relationships for China.
    • Sarah Lacy in TechCrunch, citing tweets from both Bill Bishop (@niubi — now also blogging again at Digicha) and Marc van der Chijs (@chijs).
    • Brief US State Department statement.
    • CNBC interview with David Drummond (Video – also embedded below): “We’re not saying one way or the other whether the attacks were state sponsored…” Note also the silly use of the word, “cyberterrorists” by the interviewer.
    • Brief, relatively straightforward report from the People’s Daily online (Chinese).
    • Chinese telecoms analyst Xiang Ligang calls it “psychological warfare”, doesn’t think Google will pull the trigger, and doesn’t think it will be a cataclysm if they do (if I read it correctly – Chinese).

    Updates:

    “In a world in which we are so used to public relations massaging of messages, this stands out as a direct declaration. It’s amazing,” said Jonathan Zittrain, professor of Internet law at Harvard Law School and co-director of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society.

    The fallout will be interesting. I can’t recall a single case of a major international company with operations in China taking a stand like this. As someone who agreed with Google’s reasoning when it entered China, I also support this move. If it cannot operate here in accordance with its global standards, it should leave. I have given up on getting my own website unblocked by the government and am resigned to the fact that it’s only accessible to people who are outside China or know the technical tricks to get over the Great Firewall.

    I’d rather be outside the wall and free than inside it with the icy hand of the censor around my throat.

    • Wired’s “Threat Level” blog on some of the considerations within Google (via @kaiserkuo).
    • Full disclosure: Imagethief is a supporter of foreign Internet services operating in China. Elaboration in this comment, below, in response to a point from a reader.
    • Isaac Mao’s open letter to Google (English), via Harvard’s “Difficult Problems in Cyberlaw” blog.
    • Xinhua English report on the statement: “‘It is still hard to say whether Google will quit China or not. Nobody knows,’ the official said.”
    • Gady Epstein’s column on Forbes.com: “Dreams of Internet openness in China appear to be a fantasy.” Indeed.
    • Evgeny Morozov punctures the feelgood balloon at Foreign Policy: “If…you believe that [Google] did the right thing in China by offering their limited service (rather than no service at all), I don’t see how this move could make you feel good…”

    http://plus.cnbc.com/rssvideosearch/action/player/id/1383977803/code/cnbcplayershare

  • Don’t scoop the reporter who interviews you, and other PR basics

    Last Wednesday, the 21st, the IT news channel of giant Chinese portal Sohu published the transcript of an interview of Sohu CEO Charles Zhang by Hong Kong-based BusinessWeekjournalist Bruce Einhorn. All well and good, you might think. Chinese portals regularly translate and run foreign media articles, and it makes sense that a portal might want to run a high-profile interview with its boss. But there were two problems. First, the interview was on the rather sensitive topic of the dueling IPR lawsuits between Sohu and Youku. Second, BusinessWeek hadn’t run the story yet.

    Alerted by YouKu, BusinessWeek presumably put pressure on Sohu because the Chinese interview transcript vanished by the next day, along with many of the reprints on other Chinese websites. If you’re curious, and read Chinese, a few instances remain online. TheBusinessWeek story by Mr. Einhorn is also now available online. It is interesting to compare the two, although Imagethief suggests reading the transcript with some caution for reasons that shall be explained below.

    Imagethief has no idea what transpired between Mr. Einhorn and Sohu in arranging and conducting the interview, but I’d bet actual money that an agreement for Sohu to publish their own transcript of the interview was not part of the deal. Another Western business journalist told me today that such a move was pretty likely to piss off a publication on any number of levels. Really, I didn’t have much trouble guessing that on my own. In general, Chinese companies have a lot to learn about working with Western media, but I can’t imagine the Economic Observer, 21st Century Business Herald or Caijing (even with its current woes) sitting still for such a move either. The fast removal of the transcript from Sohu suggests that publication took BusinessWeek by surprise.

    There were a couple of problems with what Sohu did. First, and most basically, they used a journalist’s interview to create and publish material that pre-empted that journalist’s story. That’s just plain rude, and probably won’t be soon forgotten. As a media organization itself, Sohu, of all companies, should know better. But it goes beyond that. Mr. Einhorn is an experienced journalist writing for a publication with a reputation to protect. As you would expect, his story on the lawsuits between the two companies is balanced and includes quotes from both Sohu and Youku.

    The transcript published on Sohu, however, included only brief questions and Mr. Zhang’s responses. Sohu’s introduction presents the transcript as “an interview with BusinessWeekjournalist Bruce Einhorn”, which is literally correct, but appropriates BusinessWeek’scredibility for a one-sided view on a contentious issue. That same introduction characterizes Sohu rival Youku extremely negatively, saying that the discussion would, “reveal the details of Youku’s piracy and rights infringement.” Not much balance there.BusinessWeek might run executive Q&As, but it’s safe to say they wouldn’t stake out such a negative position in an article that didn’t give Youku space to respond, and that wasn’t backed up by copious facts and extensive reporting. Interviews are raw material. A transcript of a single interview is not a story, and putting BusinessWeek’s name on the interview is a misrepresentation.

    Readers also have no way of knowing if the transcript is accurate or how it may have been edited. Any Q&A interview is likely to be edited, but a publication editing a Q&A for tightness or focus is not the same thing as a company editing a transcript to better present its point of view. Imagethief knows from experience that editing of interview transcripts by PR teams is common practice in China (many journalists expect a transcript by e-mail following an interview), and a reading with a critical eye is well advised. However, the imprimatur of BusinessWeek on the transcript implies that BusinessWeek itself had the final cut, not Sohu. That looks like another misrepresentation.

    It’s sensible policy for companies and PR teams to record their own versions of interviews with journalists. A recording enables you to check the accuracy of final quotes, provides leverage if you need a correction or clarification, and can help out if the journalist has a problem with their own recording (it has been known to happen). Recorded interviews with experienced spokespeople can also often be good source material for messages, sound-bites and other content. However, publishing or leaking recordings or transcripts in their entirety is a bad idea if you want to preserve your media relationships.

    There is only one situation in which I would suggest to a client publishing verbatim portions of an interview transcript. If a story has already run with an inaccurate or wildly out-of-context quote that I feel misrepresents a spokesperson or client company, and if I can’t get the publication to correct the quote or issue a clarification, I might suggest that the client publish an appropriate excerpt of the transcript on a PR page or company blog. I would only recommend an excerpt, and I would include an explanatory note of why the excerpt is being published and a link to the original article. I would also notify the publication that I was going to do this.

    Running the transcript also hints at a deeper issue. It would have been simplicity itself to have a Sohu journalist interview Mr. Zhang for the exact same responses (or to put the same material on Mr. Zhang’s blog, which appears to have been fallow since July). An admittedly cursory search of Sohu today didn’t turn up any such articles since the founding of the Alliance last month. Why not?

    News organizations are generally disinterested (as opposed to uninterested) in the news they are reporting. When reporting on issues in which they have an interest, such as the fortunes of their parent companies, good news organizations take pains to be balanced in order to preserve their reputations. There are op-ed pages and blogs for points-of-view (not to mention the occasional leaked letter to ownership). Sohu is hardly a disinterested party in the lawsuit with Youku or in the fortunes of the Online Video Anti Piracy Alliance, which it founded and largely speaks for. Running the transcript of the BusinessWeekinterview might just have been a mistake. Or it might have seemed like a way for Sohu to have the best of both worlds: A splendidly one-sided interview that carried that authority of a respected, international business magazine and that didn’t seem to compromise their own newsroom.

    But in the long run you can’t have it both ways. And for a company listed on America’s NASDAQ, annoying Western business media in attempt to have it both ways is probably not a great PR strategy.

    Disclosures: I found out about this episode from a friend who works for Youku. In my job I also regularly work with journalists from Sohu’s news organization, all of whom are completely professional. I have no opinion on the merits of the various lawsuits flying back and forth between Youku and Sohu.

  • Communication is the real lesson from the Green Dam Youth Escort fiasco

    So Green Dam + Youth Escort blocks images based on skin tone. But what if I like Afro-porn? These, and other important questions are arising now that serious analysts (which is to say, people other than me), have had some time to dig into the capabilities of Jinhui’s now infamous software package. The verdict is pretty much as you might have guessed: Green Dam + Youth Escort is a poorly designed rip-off of a foreign nanny-ware product, is unstable, and is riddled with security holes. It is, in short, crapware. I won’t go into the gruesome details, but if you’re interested I highly recommend an analysis by the Computer Science and Engineering division of the University of Michigan. For those in a hurry, the summary gives you a taste of their conclusions:

    We examined the Green Dam software and found that it contains serious security vulnerabilities due to programming errors. Once Green Dam is installed, any web site the user visits can exploit these problems to take control of the computer. This could allow malicious sites to steal private data, send spam, or enlist the computer in a botnet. In addition, we found vulnerabilities in the way Green Dam processes blacklist updates that could allow the software makers or others to install malicious code during the update process.

    We found these problems with less than 12 hours of testing, and we believe they may be only the tip of the iceberg. Green Dam makes frequent use of unsafe and outdated programming practices that likely introduce numerous other vulnerabilities. Correcting these problems will require extensive changes to the software and careful retesting. In the meantime, we recommend that users protect themselves by uninstalling Green Dam immediately.

    Judging from the livid reaction in China, no-one will have to work too hard to convince Chinese computer users to take that advice. So this will go down as yet another shining moment in the annals of government procurement.

    But despite what you may think, the government’s real problem wasn’t in the procurement process or obviously less-than-rigorous technical evaluation. It was in the public communication, which was nonexistent. This is a bit of surprise because on average, Chinese government bodies have become significantly better at public communication in the past few years, developing a level of responsiveness to public opinion that would have been unthinkable a couple of decades ago. But the radar was definitely switched off in this situation.

    In Imagethief’s personal experience, most Chinese people are relatively sanguine about the Great Firewall (or Net Nanny or Golden Shield or what have you). It doesn’t interfere with most of the things your average Chinese net user wants to do (watching a complete and conveniently subtitled version of the new Star Trek movie on Youku, for instance), and is treated as a kind of necessary but slightly obnoxious inconvenience, like a younger brother who wants to join your pickup soccer game. You can always make him play fullback, where he’ll probably stay out of trouble.

    But there is something important about how the mechanism of the Great Firewall relates to this forgiving attitude. The Great Firewall is implemented at a distance from the end user, in the ISPs, routers and gateways that form the infrastructure of the Internet. It’s enforced out in the cloud, and is thus abstract to some degree, even if its effects are apparent in the information you can or cannot access at any given time.

    But what the regulator does in the cloud is one thing. What it does when it reaches out and plants its mitts squarely in your computer — your personal computer, in all senses of the word– is entirely different. It is the difference between posting speed limits and deploying the highway patrol on dangerous stretches of road, and putting a governor in your car so it won’t go over 55 mph no matter what you do. The former is completely reasonable for the public good. The latter is an insult to your manhood (unless you’re a woman, in which case it’s presumably an insult to something else).

    Now, imagine that the authorities are not only putting a governor in your car, but that it’s a crappy governor that sometimes kicks in when you’re only going 35, stalls the car completely when you break 55 rather than simply limiting your acceleration, and spontaneously unlocks all the doors and starts the engine when car thieves walk by. That’s about where we stand with Green Dam + Youth Escort according to the analyses.

    It’s conceivable that the authorities could have pulled this off if they had taken a few basic steps. First, it would have been good to have a period of public consultation. At least that would have provided a chance to assess public reaction and respond appropriately prior to making a commitment. They also could have used that period to defuse some of the negative reaction from the PC manufacturers, all of which are publicly walking a fine diplomatic line, and privately lobbying like Jack Abramoff on poppers and Red Bull. At the risk of letting you see how a PR person thinks (a dark and terrible thing), if I was selling this idea I’d do as much work as I could with grass-roots and community groups and academics to build up the problem of undesirable information with supporting comment from a variety of different directions. I’d run a parallel media compaign also building up the problem and making sure that regulatory interest in a solution was presented in an appropriately benevolent light. Then I’d position the free inclusion of parental control software (and that’s how I’d describe it) with all computers sold in the country as a gift, not as a mandate. Importantly, I’d suggest making it clear that the software is only included with the computer as a disk, and not preinstalled. I’d combine that with community distribution to get the software out to households that already have computers. This puts the software potentially on the desktops of children and students for whom it matters (if you believe in such things) while not wasting time on the committed geeks and randy young men who will immediately scrub the software off of any computer they buy. I’m not saying I like doing this, I’m just saying that’s how I would do it if I had to.

    Oh, it would help immeasurably if the software itself wasn’t complete crap. Because I’d also encourage public review of the software itself prior to finalizing the plan. And, after all, you’ll have a much easier time selling this idea to the PC industry and enlisting their support if the PC industry doesn’t think it’s going to break their products.

    Instead, the authorities mandated bad software by fiat without warning anyone. In the face of the entirely predictable backlask, they are reduced to their usual double-pronged approach to managing public opinion, telling the mainstream commercial media to tone down the criticism and running a happy-banner up the trusty Xinhua flagpole. Good luck with that. Imagethief stands by his original judgment: In six months, this will all be conveniently flushed down the memory hole. You might want to order a new PC soon just for the souvenir value.

    See also:

    Hey, does Green Dam Youth Escort block bunny porn?
    Hey, does Green Dam Youth Escort block bunny porn?

  • Why I’m not in a tizzy over China’s new Internet filtering software

    Another day, another censorship-related thing to get bent out of shape about here in China.This week it’s the dreaded “Green Dam Youth Escort” internet filtering software, which goes right to the head of the nominee list for the annual Imagethief “branding that translates badly” award. They can collect the statuette, a little plastic model of a Chevy Nova*, at the ceremony, which will be hosted by the auntie who empties the garbage can in my apartment hallway. Watch your mailbox for an invitation. Black tie, please.

    Originally reported by the Wall Street Journal and then relayed by the New York Times in somewhat darker terms, the story is that the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the IT regulator, will require all computers shipped in China after July 1st to include Green Dam Youth Escort, a client-side Internet filtering program (actually two related programs it turns out, “Green Dam” and “Youth Escort”) . The Journal also published a day-after follow-up with some further industry response and third-party comment. The industry response might best be characterized as weary sighs punctuated with occasional slaps to the forehead when they think no one is looking.

    Personally, Imagethief isn’t getting his shorts in too much of a twist over this. Don’t misread me: There is nothing to celebrate in yet another measure of government intrusiveness in people’s surfing habits, or the mandating of the use of what is almost certainly a perfectly crappy bit of software. But I’d say that the net effect of Green Dam Youth Escort on Chinese surfing habits will be close to zero.

    First of all, it is unclear whether PCs will ship with the software installed. The Wall Street Journal says that the software need only be packaged with PCs sold in China, and not necessarily installed. Rebecca MacKinnon, on the other hand, has received a copy of what is claimed to be the original MIIT notice calling for the use of the software. Her reading is that the document requires that the software be pre-installed on computers. (See also Rebecca’s initial post on the software.)

    Even if Green Dam Youth Escort comes pre-installed, however, it seems like the leakiest of dams. After all, what’s to stop anyone acquiring a new computer from simply doing a fresh reinstall of Windows? Certainly no IT administrator at a major corporation –especially a foreign one– will allow this software on company systems, given its apparent propensity to phone home for poorly documented reasons.

    And even a post-purchase reinstall won’t be necessary in many situations as I’m sure any DIY vendor at the highly competitive IT malls will sell you a nicely scrubbed box at your convenience. They’re already willing to sell you pirate software and technically illegal mobile phones, so it’s hard to imagine they’ll let a little thing like Green Dam Youth Escort stand between them and a sale.

    Also, this is Windows-only software as near as I can tell (the website is not accessible right now, so I can’t confirm). Will Macs and Linux systems be in technical violation? Or will they be conveniently ignored? What about the increasing number of Internet capable mobile handsets that are on the market? Plenty of palm-friendly (I don’t mean it that way, you filthmonger) yellow content out there for on-the-go types.

    The claim is that Green Dam Youth Escort is meant primarily to filter pornographic and otherwise socially objectionable content rather than politically objectionable content. It’s hard to imagine that it wouldn’t be used for both, redundant as that seems given existing censorship mechanisms. But the Chinese government has a well established obsession with limiting access to pornography and similarly nasty content. Hence the periodic Internet-purification campaigns and the regular drip-feed of ghastly stories about Internet addiction, young lives ruined, etc.

    But if this is really about limiting access to porn, then the effort is even more doomed than I thought. Demand for dissident content is pretty selective despite what people overseas may believe (Imagethief’s Chinese colleagues were annoyed by the recent blocking of Twitter, but mostly for mundane reasons). However, it’s a safe bet on demographic grounds alone that demand for porn is as sky-high among Chinese Internet users as it is anywhere else. Commercial forces alone will doom Green Dam Youth Escort (unless it’s actually linked to an escort service, which seems unlikely). After all, look how miserably government attempts to limit online game playing worked. It took a commercial issue to deny Chinese gamers access to World of Warcraft for any significant amount of time.

    Imagethief detects the whiff of a sweetheart deal. Certainly the company that produced the software, Jinhui Computer System Engineering Company, will cash a nice check from the government, which will apparently underwrite the inclusion of the program. But client-side filtering software, even if updated from a central database, is principally useful at an organizational level, such as by a company or household, where policies need to be set locally. If the government wants to set policy for the entire country, then China’s existing DNS, ISP and gateway-based filtering mechanisms are much more efficient and, for all their porousness, harder to circumvent. If Chinese ISPs start denying connectivity to clients not running Green Dam Youth Escort, then I’ll panic. But I don’t see how that’s feasible (and if it gets tried, stand-by for the slap-fight of the century between MIIT and MOFCOM).

    Frankly, despite the inevitable hand-wringing and bluster, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the whole initiative vanish quietly after a few face-saving months.

    *NB: The Chevy Nova story is actually bullshit, but it lives in legend.

    Update:

    From Malcom Moore’s story on this in the Telegraph, this outstanding quote from the Jinhui spokeswoman:

    “This is very good news for users, so they should not uninstall it. It will automatically filter pornographic images and antirevolutionary content. It will not take up much space on the hard drive. It is very stable and we have conducted many tests already,” [the spokeswoman] added.

    As if. Also, screenshots here (in Chinese) courtesy of @davesgonechina.

    Update 2:

    Speaking of handwringing, this quote from the AP’s coverage:

    John Palfrey, an Internet censorship expert at Harvard University, described the latest requirements as “a potential game changer in the story of Internet control,” by moving China’s “Great Firewall” closer to the user, where censorship can be more effective.

    Game changing indeed. As long as the game is strip-Parcheesi played by monkeys in diapers. I disagree that censorship is more effective when it’s closer to the user. I think it’s more effective when it’s centralized for the reasons described above. Ask the DVD consortium how they feel about device-level security restrictions in China (although it’s an imperfect comparison as the government doesn’t give a crap about DVD piracy). Still, unless something completely unexpected is sprung in the implementation of this software, getting it off of your computer will be about as easy as hitting a dead sturgeon with a fork.

    Update 3 (June 10):

    The government and Jinhui both insist it’s not spyware. So that’s OK then, but I notice nobody insists its not crappy software, as alleged elsewhere. Bonus: The Foreign Ministry spokesman claims that China’s internet has always been “open”. Which is true, if by “open” you mean “restricted”.

    Also, Bruce Einhorn of BusinessWeek writes about the lack of consultation with the industry over this move, and what that says about the Chinese approach to regulation.

    Also on Imagethief:

    I can't see any sea cucumbers, but look what Edison Chen's doing with this girl!
    I can’t see any sea cucumbers, but look what Edison Chen’s doing with this girl!

  • Consultants say hardened Chinese death-nerds are coming for your daughters

    Yes, it’s true. Those Chinese death-nerds are everywhere. They’re in your bank account. They’re in the Pentagon. They’re sending naked pictures of themselves to your daughter. And they’re completely invulnerable to all known countermeasures!

    Or at least that’s the terrifying conclusion one might draw if one was to read a long article from the Washington Times with the chilling headline, “China blocks US from cyber warfare.” Now, the Washington Times and this journalist in particular have–how shall I put it?–a distinct point of view on China, and it’s perhaps just a tad darker than my own. But I find this story interesting less on its own (thin) merits and more because it represents the latest installment in what seems to be something of a fad in hair-raising stories on the Chinese cyber-security threat. My heavens, are we having a meme?

    You may recall that this idea began rolling in its most recent incarnation with a report about Ghost Net, in which the link to the Chinese government was unclear but widely assumed. It gathered steam with a rather vague Wall Street Journal article about Chinese “spies” hacking into the US electricity grid. With this Washington Times article, which has been picked up by AFP and thus relayed to Yahoo and other portals, it’s reached something of a loony crescendo. You’d think bureaucracies in Washington were competing over turf and budgets and thus doing their best to dial up the general anxiety level in order to exert political leverage. Because, you know, what with the economy, two wars, the Taliban destabilizing Pakistan and Swine A/H1N1 flu we so desperately need one more thing to be afraid of.

    The Washington Times article really is in a class all by itself, though. It focuses on the devastating implications of a “hardened” Chinese operating system that, to read this article, makes Chinese government computers essentially hack-proof. It is based largely on the testimony (PDF) of Mr. Kevin Coleman, one of nine witnesses speaking before the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission on April 30th. (The USCC makes periodic recommendations to congress on the national security implications of trade with China.)  There is no one part of the article can single out for an excerpt, so I’ll instead give you a rundown of the highlights. The article features:

    • An IT security consultant (Mr. Coleman) who “advises the government on cybersecurity” telling us that the Chinese are outplaying us badly. Because what do you expect him to say? “It’s all good. I’m done here.”
    • Terrifying absolutes, such as this quote on the effect of China “hardening” it’s servers with this new operating system:

    “This action also made our offensive cybercapabilities ineffective against them, given the cyberweapons were designed to be used against Linux, UNIX and Windows,” he said.

    • The suggestion that the revelation of this operating system is somehow an intelligence coup, on par with the cracking of Enigma:

    The secure operating system was disclosed as computer hackers in China – some of them sponsored by the communist government and military – are engaged in aggressive attacks against the United States, said officials and experts who disclosed new details of what was described as a growing war in cyberspace.

    • Further vague but terrifying details designed to emphasize our inferiority:

    Additionally, Mr. Coleman said, the Chinese have developed a secure microprocessor that, unlike U.S.-made chips, is known to be hardened against external access by a hacker or automated malicious software. “If you add a hardened microchip and a hardened operating system, that makes a really good solid platform for defending infrastructure [from external attack],” Mr. Coleman said.

    • Hopeless over-generalizations of dubious technical soundness:

    U.S. operating system software, including Microsoft, used open-source and offshore code that makes it less secure and vulnerable to software “trap doors” that could allow access in wartime, he explained.

    • Quotable quotes:

    “What’s so interesting from a strategic standpoint is that in the cyberarena, China is playing chess while we’re playing checkers,” he said.

    • The devastating revelation that the Chinese government is hiring hackers!

    A third computer specialist, Alan Paller, told the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on April 29 that China’s military in 2005 recruited Tan Dailin, a graduate student at Sichuan University, after he showed off his hacker skills at an annual contest.

    Mr. Paller, a computer security specialist with the SANS Institute, said the Chinese military put the hacker through a 30-day, 16-hour-a-day workshop “where he learned to develop really high-end attacks and honed his skills.”

    • Meaningless statistics:

    Mr. Coleman said one indication of the problem was identified by Solutionary, a computer security company that in March detected 128 “acts of cyberagression” per minute tied to Internet addresses in China.

    “These acts should serve as a warning that clearly indicates just how far along China’s cyberintelligence collection capabilities are,” Mr. Coleman said.

    •  Just plain goofyness:

    Mr. [Joel] Brenner [national counterintelligence executive] said there are minimal concerns about a Chinese cyberattack to shut down U.S. banking networks because “they have too much money invested here.”

    Well, thank god for that!

    It’s hard to know where to start with this article, but perhaps I should begin by saying, of course the Chinese government is conducting cyber-espionage against the US. They’d be stupid not to. And of course they are concerned with securing their own critical systems against the United States’ equally inevitable cyber-espionage. Again, they’d be stupid not to. And certainly the US government needs to take information security seriously. And so do businesses. And so does your grandmother. Especially if she’s using Windows. All granted.

    And it’s nice that various American government bureaucracies are having a pissing match about who should oversee American cyber-security at a government level (the end of the article hints at that a bit). I hope somebody wins someday. But, really, do we need to frame all of this in such Michael Bay terms? Let’s take a closer look at this super-secure operating system, “Kylin”. It’s hardly a secret, having been in the press since at least 2004. You can even download the ISO files, which suggests security somewhat shy of, say, the Manhattan Project. I’m thinking Langley may have a copy. A fairly sketchy DIY site promisingly called “Cheapest-computer-hardware-software.com” has the skinny (all Chinglish is sic):

    The Kylin operating system focuses on high performance, reliability and security. The development program was first funded by the Chinese government sponsored R&D program during 2002. The operating system developed in a hierarchical model, in which, the kernel layer is based on Mach, the system service layer is based on FreeBSD and the desktop environment is similar to that of Windows. The operating system standards are similar to UNIX standards, and are highly compatible with Linux binaries.

    ***

    The operating system was on development at the National University of Defense Technology. The operating system was designated as the document processing operating system. It can now turn China into super power in IT product development. The powerfulness, stronger security of the operating system may make Chinese people to replace the foreign operating systems. In China, Kylin was listed among the best 10 scientific and Technological Progresses News of Higher Learning Institutes during 2005.

    ***

    The dominance of IT product by the foreigners in China will get reduced, once this operating system made popular among Chinese population. The security of data will be stronger, because, it is being developed by the Chinese government and people themselves.

    So, the indestructible Chinese operating system is FreeBSD + Mach. Yes, that’s right, the operating system that frees them from foreign innovation and with which China will conquer the world is a less slick version of Mac OS X. Well, I hate to break that to the scare-mongers Washington, but we have that technology also. As for the secure microprocessor, I hope he’s not talking about Godson, the domestic chip project that languishes in the same commercial phantom zone as the domestic video disk project (EVD) and the domestic WiFi standard project (WAPI).

    Why would I trust some half-assed and likely Chinese no-name site over the best and brightest of Washington DC?  Well, for one reason, the language in the extract above rings absolutely true. Second, let’s just say I’m getting agenda sensitivity on this issue. Sure, it’s possible this is all part of some huge Chinese disinformation campaign and I’m just another useful idiot, talking down the crowbar that the Chinese state will someday use to pry open the secret folder where I keep the naughty photos of Mrs. Imagethief. Maybe there are two Kylins, and I’ve got the wrong one. Maybe Kylin + Godson is the shit, and I should trade in my MacBook Pro.

    Or, just conceivably, people with their noses in the Washington trough are blowing smoke up my ass. Let’s face it, it wouldn’t be the first time.

  • Chinese cyberspies? Sheer lies and heinous fabrications!

    Alright, I confess I made up the “heinous fabrications” bit. But the “sheer lies” sound bite comes straight from China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which has clearly worked hard to make sure that its representatives around the world are working from the same talking points.

    China has found itself accused of a lot of hacking recently. A March 28 New York Timesarticle covered the dreaded “GhostNet”; innocent computers ruthlessly compelled to do the bidding of alleged shadowy overlords in Beijing (which bidding was, apparently, to screw with Tibetan exile organizations). More recently, a story in the Wall Street Journalreported on attempts to hack into the systems controlling America’s power grid, some of which apparently originated from China and Russia.

    The Chinese government had chances to rebut both stories. Here is a Beijing-based Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman responding to a “GhostNet” question in a regular media Q&A the day after John Markoff’s story broke in the Times:

    “I have noted before that the Chinese Government has always taken cyber-safety very seriously. We resolutely oppose any crime including hacking that destroys the internet or computer network, which is stipulated in relevant Chinese laws and regulations. The current problem is, some people overseas are indulged in fabricating the sheer lies of the so-called cyber-spies in China. What I have seen is a ghost of “Cold War” and a virus of “the China Threat” mentality. The China Threat virus on those haunted by the Cold War ghost strikes from time to time. Their attempt to defame China will get nowhere.”

    And here is Chinese Embassy spokesman in Washington DC responding to the electric grid issue in the Journal (responding in writing, I would guess):

    [The Chinese government] “resolutely oppose[s] any crime, including hacking, that destroys the Internet or computer network” and has laws barring the practice. China was ready to cooperate with other countries to counter such attacks, he said, and added that “some people overseas with Cold War mentality are indulged in fabricating the sheer lies of the so-called cyberspies in China.”

    Well, that’s message discipline for you. And it would be admirable discipline indeed, were the talking points not the usual throwback language that always sounds better coming off of a red-ink woodcut with a picture of Mao in a sunburst than off of the pages of, say, theWall Street Journal. The only thing reminiscent of the Cold War here are those quotes.

    Of course the Chinese government, like all governments with access to electricity, is probably involved in computer-espionage and computer-warfare programs. But it obviously has to deny any involvement in polite company. That’s a given, and no-one can blame them. There are even some good bits and pieces in both responses above: “Always taken cyber-safety very seriously”, “oppose [activities] that destroy the Internet”, and “ready to cooperate with other countries”. Unfortunately, the usual, overly scandalized language wrapped around those bits and pieces does nothing to help. It makes the spokespeople sound, to abuse Shakespeare’s Queen Gertrude, like they are protesting too much. The good stuff gets lost.

    If I was rewriting their talking points, I would take a classic broadening approach where you turn the accusation everyone’s problem. You can see the beginnings of this in the embassy spokesman’s quote. I might suggest something like this, which takes the good bits from both responses and loses the righteous anger:

    “The Chinese government takes Internet security very seriously, and is opposed to any activities, including hacking, that make the Internet less secure or less useful. Internet security is a concern for everyone who uses a computer. As you know, internet use has been growing rapidly in China. This year we passed 300 million users, and now have more people online than any other country. The Internet has been a great contributor to growth and innovation in China, so no one takes these issues more seriously than we do.”

    If you wanted to be extra-saucy, you could build a bit on the embassy spokesman’s cooperation statement and say,

    “We stand ready to cooperate with the governments of other Internet using nations to find ways to improve global Internet security for all users.”

    Less quotable, perhaps (short of a threat to kill the questioner’s pets, what wouldn’t be?), but also much less of that how dare you? tone that comes off so defensively. As we say in PR, you can’t control the questions you get asked, but you can always control the answer you give. Why not take the opportunity to say something positive instead of just reeling off an angry denunciation of the charges?

    And if you read the responses above carefully, denunciations is what they are. There is no outright denial in either of them. I doubt that’s a legal maneuver (after all, what are you going to do, sue them?) so much as a chosen rhetorical technique: Attack the credibility of the charge rather than denying it. If so, it’s shrewd on a certain level. Denials always look terrible in print. “I never stole those panties!” has “cover pull quote” written all over it. That’s why we always tell spokespeople not to “repeat the negative” in a question. But there are many things that could better replace an outright denial than straw men fabricating sheer lies.

    See also:

    James Fallows: What should we make of this Chinese cyber-spy story?

    Schneier on Security: US power grid hacked, everyone panic! Welcome perspective:

    Honestly, I am much more worried about random errors and undirected worms in the computers running our infrastructure than I am about the Chinese military. I am much more worried about criminal hackers than I am about government hackers.

    Nart Villeneuve of the Internet Censorship Explorer on the hype-factor in the article.

  • What the “grass mud horse” means and doesn’t mean

    Warning: This post contains vulgarity in an academic context. Those with weak constitutions are advised to stop reading and visit this wholesome site instead.

    The New York Times has an interesting story about Chinese Internet users putting a stick in government efforts to “purify the Internet” with various plays on a rude pun: 草泥马. Read “cáo ní mă“, it means “grass mud horse”. It’s also, however, a few tones away from the scorching but well-worn vulgarity “操你妈”, which is read “cào nĭ mā” and means (send the children out of the room) “fuck your mother”. From the Times:

    A YouTube children’s song about the beast has drawn nearly 1.4 million viewers. A grass-mud horse cartoon has logged a quarter million more views. A nature documentary on its habits attracted 180,000 more. Stores are selling grass-mud horse dolls. Chinese intellectuals are writing treatises on the grass-mud horse’s social importance. The story of the grass-mud horse’s struggle against the evil river crab has spread far and wide across the Chinese online community.

    Not bad for a mythical creature whose name, in Chinese, sounds very much like an especially vile obscenity. Which is precisely the point.

    The grass-mud horse is an example of something that, in China’s authoritarian system, passes as subversive behavior. Conceived as an impish protest against censorship, the foul-named little horse has not merely made government censors look ridiculous, although it has surely done that.

    Have a read, and make sure you visit some of the linked videos. One of them will ensure you never think about alpacas the same way again. Nasty looking beasts. [Original video now deleted, but re-uploaded by Rebecca McKinnon here.]

    Imagethief, a labored speaker of Chinese at best, is no expert on Mandarin profanity or puns, although I have an academic appreciation for the latter. But as with any passenger of Beijing taxis, I am well acquainted with “cào nĭ mā“, and its common accompaniment, the hissed “shaaaaabi!” (You can look it up on the Wikipedia page linked right above.) I hastily point out that these are generally directed at other drivers and pedestrians, and rarely at Imagethief.

    Sound-alikes and double entendres are important in Chinese (think of all the words that are auspicious or inauspicious because they sound like something else), and they certainly have played role in the ongoing dance between Chinese Internet users and censors. But I rather think this story reads a bit too much significance into what is, at the end of the day, a naughty pun:

    It has also raised real questions about China’s ability to stanch the flow of information over the Internet — a project on which the Chinese government already has expended untold riches, and written countless software algorithms to weed deviant thought from the world’s largest cyber-community.

    Perhaps. But the idiosyncrasies of the Chinese language cut both ways. Have a read of ESWN’s translation of a recent Southern Metropolis Daily article on “The Seven Possible Fates of an Internet Post” which talks about how many BBS postings get filtered because of accidental character combinations that look like forbidden terms. And also have a read of James Fallows’ excellent Atlantic Monthly article on China’s Internet censorship from almost exactly one year ago, perhaps the best analysis so far in mainstream media.

    The goal of Chinese Internet censorship is not absolute control, but sufficient inconvenience and management to keep most people people on the straight-and-narrow. In that context, some naughty puns, even ones that encode an implicit criticism of censorship, can probably be thought of as a feature, if an annoying one, rather than a bug. Poke some fun. Have some laughs. Don’t cross the red lines. I’d guess that the authorities are pretty comfortable waiting for people to get bored and move on to the next allegorical pun.

    See also:

  • Let me tell ya about Edison Chen’s dirty photos

    With the possible exception of Disney villains, Imagethief cannot think of a group of people that more richly deserve their miserable fates than Hong Kong celebrity Edison Chen and his cavalcade of cupcakes.

    If I sound unsympathetic here, that is because I am unsympathetic. Really, how dumb do you need to be? On all sides? Girls, here’s a free piece of advice for you from your friendly neighborhood PR man: If you let a guy take digital nudie pix of you, sooner or later those pix are going to end up on the Internet. Not maybe. Not could be. Inevitably. The Internet is like a gravity well for nudity, and there is a 100 percent chance those pictures will end up there someday. Probably the week of your wedding.

    And the guy might not even mean to do it. Edison Chen presumably didn’t mean to plaster Gillian Chung’s ass all over the Internet, thus ensuring that formerly semi-wholesome pop group Twins is now destined to be remembered forever as some kind of tawdry porn-o-rama. (This is the same Gillian Chung who was a spokeswoman for premarital chastity, by the way, illustrating once again a timeless lesson about the value of celebrities as role models.) I’m sure he thought he’d keep those snaps as his private treat. Or maybe share them with just a couple of close friends over beers.

    But –and I say this with affection for my gender– dudes are stupid. We’re especially stupid when it comes to managing technology effectively. We like to portray ourselves as masters of technological realm, with amazing powers of digital wizardry. But a little knowledge is a dangerous thing and in reality we’re as screwed over by modern technology as your grandmother. Probably worse, because at least she doesn’t pretend to understand it. We’d rather die –or inflict crushing humiliation on our girlfriends– than admit weakness.

    This is important, because only someone who is totally screwed over by modern technology would think to leave hundreds of pictures of himself banging eight different starlets sitting on an unencrypted laptop hardrive. Laptops get lost. Laptops get stolen. Laptops get filched off the back seat of your Lexus when no one is looking. Laptops fall out of overhead bins on airplanes and land on people’s heads, causing the porn to fall right out of them. Laptops break spontaneously, like Chihuahua dogs, and need to be sent in for repairs.

    Edison Chen had a customized pink Macbook that broke. He took it in for repairs. I don’t know if you’ve ever had a computer repaired before, but certainly on the mainland many such repairs are handled by spotty young men who have never had sex and have no immediate prospects of having sex. A customized pink laptop might as well be stenciled, “raid me for porn”. If you didn’t know otherwise you’d probably think it belonged to a chick (or an incredibly flamboyant gay man, but odds favor a chick). And that’s pure temptation, because the kind of girl who would have a customized pink Macbook would probably also have vanity lingerie shots somewhere on the hard drive. You might as well hand a mirror with six lines of primo Andean nostril icing and a rolled up twenty to a Hollywood agent and say, “Dude, I’m going out to have my ass waxed. For the love of god, whatever you do, don’t snort this excellent coke!”

    For people who must indulge in personal porn, Imagethief offers two words: encrypted + files. It just ain’t that hard, even for troglodytes.

    And the stakes are high. There’s no getting the porn genie back in the bottle. Even the Chinese government and their splendiferous Golden Shield (which, now that I think about it, really sounds like a condom brand) can’t keep smut under control. Rabbits on Viagra and Benzedrine have nothing on the speed with which anything having to do with female nudity replicates on the Internet. Like the herpes virus, it can be driven out of sight for a while, but it’s always still there, waiting to erupt painfully at the worst possible moment. So, as always, an ounce of prevention is worth is a pound of cure, especially when what you’re preventing is every newspaper in Hong Kong running a four page spread (and I don’t use that word lightly) of gynecologically explicit photographs of you.

    Now, about the reaction to the photos. ESWN has posted an exhaustive chronicle of fifteen days of breathless (but certainly not breastless) Hong Kong media coverage of the scandal. Tianya is, I gather, now all Edison & Co., all the time. Nobody anywhere should be shocked. I come from the country that has documented the decline and fall of Britney Spears with a ruthless detail that would give Edward Gibbon the sweats, if he hadn’t died in 1794 when carrier pigeons were still all the rage in high speed communication. There is really nothing a society likes better than celebrities imploding. Especially if it’s imploding naked starlets.

    Just say it out loud once, to get the taste of the words in your mouth: Imploding, naked starlets. Then tell me how any free media anywhere is going to resist. Now, imagine in particular the Hong Kong media, with its tradition of restraint, good taste, and sober, intellectual journalism. Now stop tut-tutting and go pick up the latest Oriental Sunday. You know you want to.

    I suppose I would be slacking if I didn’t offer some PR advice to all of the affected parties. This should be taken lightly as I freely admit to being a corporate PR person with no experience as a celebrity publicist. No crisis I have ever worked on has involved public nudity (although I keep hoping. as long as it’s not my own public nudity).

    The sad fact is that it’s going to be much easier on Edison than on Gillian, Cecilia, Bobo (oddly named for a girl, even in Hong Kong) and the other women. That’s because the universal double standard will unfortunately apply. Dudes who bed strings of starlets are swinging studs who will be admired by other men everywhere. Even if, inexplicably for straight guys, they have pink laptop computers. (Although it does occur to me now that I read this back that the entire episode has an air of “prove you are straight” overcompensation about it.) Edison needs only issue a public apology to the fans and affected girls and retire from the limelight for an appropriate spell of restorative contemplation before re-emerging a better man and, purely by accident you understand, using the momentum of the scandal to plug his latest project.

    Unfortunately girls who allow themselves to be photographed in flagrante by their boyfriends and who are then unlucky enough to have those pictures sucked into the vortex of the Internet face a tougher path. Their public images will most likely not be enhanced, at least not in the circles that count for a mainstream career. Unless they’re Paris Hilton, who, in Imagethief’s book, is the exception that proves the rule. Remember, unless that camera was disguised as a riding crop or a tube of Astroglide, these weren’t sneak pix.

    Apologies all around then, and perhaps a confession that the pictures were taken at “a difficult time” (it’s going to be funny how many of these girls were dating Edison at “a difficult time”). This can be followed by a spell in rehab, which is the modern equivalent of slinking away to join a convent without the shaven head or any of the other obnoxious religious rituals and the added bonus that it is temporary. After that we’ll see how it goes. Gillian probably survives. As for Bobo, well, it’s anyone’s guess.

    So girls, next time the camera comes out in that moment of passion, remember the Internet porn gravity well, poor Bobo, and the fact that dudes are idiots. If a late-career resurrection is what you want, pose for a professional so you can reap the benefits of props, makeup and –most important– airbrushing. Otherwise, gently demure and preserve the element of mystery that is so critical to a woman’s public image. Nobody looks sexy photographed up close on a cheap digital camera under bedroom lighting with their lips wrapped around some guy’s, um, memory stick.

    And if your boyfriend insists, kick him in the pills. It’ll be much harder for him to take a steady picture while he’s staggering around holding his crotch and you’ll have time to make a quick getaway.

    See also:

    • John Kennedy’s piece on the police response to the scandal on Global Voices
    • The extensive Wikipedia page (B) on the scandal, which includes almost sixty references and an invaluable though slightly out-of-date chart of how many photos have been posted of each starlet (Cecilia Cheung led at press time). And to think some people say Wikipedia is a waste of time:

    Updates:

    • I knew this would happen and I didn’t control for it, which perhaps I should have. You should see the Google strings that are turning up in my referrals now. Example:http://google.com/search?q=edison+chen+eating+out+gillian&hl=en&start=10&sa=n

      I don’t think that string is looking for a picture of the two of them at a restaurant.

    • Further proof of idiocy. This clown sold his computer on E-bay with his illegally videotaped k!ddie p*rn still on it. One assumes he secretly wanted the pain to end. I think we can all be happy he *didn’t* encrypt his hard drive.

  • Nobody said media-whoring would be easy

    If you follow the Internet in China, you may have heard of a young man who goes by the online name “Zola” (or “Zuola” to be perfectly correct). He has been billed as “China’s first citizen journalist“. Zola first attracted widespread attention when he blogged from the site of Chongqing’s famous (and now demolished) nail house in late March. He also popped upat the recent demonstrations opposing construction of a chemical plant in Xiamen.

    It all fit the model of the crusading online journalist/blogger quite nicely. Fame, fortune and –who knows?– perhaps even hot chicks beckoned. Then Zola decided he was going to take a crack at Google, and his fortunes took a turn for the worse.

    In what seems to be a move taken from the Michael Moore playbook, Zola showed up at Google’s Haidian R&D office in Beijing armed with a video camera and confronted a security guard and then a receptionist about a customer service problem. The gist of his complaint appears to be that he was victimized by click fraud and then, in resolving that, shortchanged about seventy bucks he claims he was owed by Google. Neither the bemused security guard nor the Google receptionist was much help. The security guard palmed Zola off onto the receptionist (possibly the best move he made that week) and the receptionist alternated between futile attempts to steer Zola into Google’s normal online customer service channels and sullen silence.

    Zola posted a ten-minute video of the confrontation on YouKu, which Bingfeng kindly posted a link to. It’s in Chinese, but a rough English transcript can be found on Reading China.

    If Zola was expecting to be lauded for putting a burr up Google’s ass, he was, as we used to say in college, on crack (I was going to say “in high school” but I went to high school before the crack epidemic). He was instead pretty ruthlessly savaged in comments to his blog and on the YouKu video. The situation appears to have been aggravated by a bout of petulance over lack of public appreciation for his efforts in the Xiamen PX incident and an admirably honest but image- tarnishing confession that, really, he’s just in it to get famous.

    China blogger and commenter-at-large Feng37 was helpful enough to send me a rough translation he did of some of the harsh criticism being launched in Zola’s direction. Here are three consecutive beauties in Chinese and English from Zola’s Bullog blog:

    4 支持
    [匿名] 火星 @ 2007-6-19 16:24:49
    你直言不讳求名求钱，足够坦诚。但你动机如此纯粹，作为公民记者，不免让人对你的职业操守和诚信额度担心。

    you’re straight up about wanting fame and money, that’s honest enough. But if your motives are so pure, as a citizen reporter, people can’t help worry about your professionalism, personal integrity and honesty.

    [匿名] emlary @ 2007-6-19 23:08:47
    网上那么多骂你的人，看来你离出名不远了，不知道你对客服是怎么理解的，不过看来在你之前已经有很多人去过google公司了，对于一点小事就睚眦必报，你觉得真的有这个必要吗？
    So many people cursing you out on the internet, it looks as though you’re not too far away from getting famous. I don’t know what your understanding of customer service is, but it looks as though many people have been to Google before you…do you really think it’s necessary to get revenge and report on something to small and irrelevant?

    [匿名] 给你一个警告 @ 2007-6-19 23:21:34
    你太SB了，小子北京不是你想进就进的更不是你想出就出的
    You stupid little cunt, Beijing isn’t a place you can just walk into when you feel like it and leave when you want.

    And it gets worse. It’s hard being a celebrity, isn’t it?

    As Feng37 pointed out, Bullog does not allow blog owners to delete comments (an interesting and debatably worthy policy). His new blog, http://www.alouz.com/, does allow that, and I am told he’s been making use of that function to purge the unfavorable comments.

    In our communications about this issue, Feng37 asked me what advice “a PR 高手” (flattering, if perhaps a tad exaggerated) such as myself would give to Zola at this stage. I am sucker for this kind of challenge, so as much as I hate to be the john to Zola’s media whoring I am going make some suggestions. This is free advice and it’s worth every penny Zola has paid for it.

    1) It’s not about you

    You were in a good situation when you were covering the Chongqing nailhouse story. You had a sympathetic subject colorfully personified in Wu Ping, a relatively clear villain in the sinister developers, and a nicely unfolding drama that encapsulated a serious issue facing China. The Xiamen PX case had much the same drama and similar social relevance. Then you followed up these two immense dramas by going to Google to complain about seventy bucks they owe you. Spot the inconsistency.

    By making yourself the focus of what was a comparatively trivial complaint, you also made yourself look petty and unsympathetic. People are generally not interested in sympathizing with the observer, but with the subject. If you wanted to complain about Google’s customer service, you should have found someone else trapped in their Kafkaesque customer service maze and gone to bat for that person. It’s OK for you be manipulative, that’s part of the art form, so pick someone as tragic and photogenic as you can find. A cancer-stricken orphan with a website, for instance. But you need to channel someone else’s misery, not your own. That enables you to remain comfortably heroic.

    2) Pick your villains carefully and don’t humanize them any more than you have to

    Google could make a good villain, heaven knows. In the space of three years they have gone from the plucky little startup everyone was rooting for to sprawling, secretive and vaguely sinister monolith that could be the next Microsoft assuming Microsoft knew every little thing about you right down to what kind of p*rn gets you off. But not everyone hates Google. They still have a lot of fans even here in China. Furthermore, it is possible to make a naturally unsympathetic entity (and Google has definitely become that) sympathetic by personifying it in a way that undermines your crusade. In this case, Google was personified by the receptionist who was clearly totally unable to resolve your situation no matter how much you harangued her. In the end I felt sorrier for her than I did for you (although this whole episode revealed some issues for Google China as well — more on that later). The lesson is to go after people who represent power or who are actual gatekeepers for power (like, gulp, their PR people). Next time pick on Kaifu Lee.

    3) Grow a thick skin

    As they say, the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about. If you’ve already confessed that your motive is fame then you better be prepared for the reality that just because people know who you are doesn’t necessarily mean they will like you. And the more you appear to be shamelessly self promoting, the more people will naturally lean toward disdain. Think Furong Jiejie, who never seemed to realize that the joke was on her and ended up being famous (briefly) and unintentionally tragic and embarassing. You don’t want your fame to be of the car-wreck variety.

    But even if you are at your best, people will criticize you for any of a number of reasons. Suck it up, dude, and show some confidence. Soak up the criticism and, indeed, revel in it. The price of being a lone crusader is being lone crusader. Show some spine and treat the unbelievers as gnats unworthy of swatting. And remember your basic blogging etiquette: Don’t delete comments or posts if it can be avoided. Consider the fact that controversy on your websites will attract readers and that perhaps you should be cultivating it.

    4) Never forget that the Internet is the lowest rung of celebrity

    American radio star Howard Stern once said that radio was the lowest rung of the celebrity ladder (and as someone who used to work in radio, I empathize). Fortunately for him, the Internet has finally given him someone to look down upon. Audiences are fickle and celebrity is volatile and often short-lived. That’s especially true of Internet celebrity, which lends itself to transient, “flavor of the moment” fads and freakshows (see Furong Jiejie, above). Durable Internet celebrity is surpassingly rare. We’re all disposable on the Internet. Sucks, doesn’t it? In 1968 a smart man named Andy Warhol said, “In the future everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes.” He may have envisioning an Internet-powered world like the one we live in today. Or he may simply have been on dope. It was 1968, after all. But the essential truth of the statement remains. It is important, therefore, not to let Internet celebrity go to your head. Whatever else, don’t act like a movie star until you actually become one.

    5) If you’re going to make it about you, consider the value of irony

    OK, so maybe you’re going to ignore that first piece of advice and make it about you. There is a way it can be done. I note that the front page of your new website has a picture of you gazing into a mirror while wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with–a picture of you. I desperately hope this is meant to be a gentle bit of self-satire. Because if it’s not self-satire then you really are headed for same lonely, post-Warholian purgatory currently inhabited by William Hung (look him up).

    If you are willing to mock yourself, then you can ignore most of the rules above. But you then need to recognize that your mission has changed from citizen journalist to comic entertainer. Not everyone has the fortitude to make a career out of irony or self-ridicule, and my guess is that’s not what you want. So think it over carefully because this route will take 100 percent commitment, and it will be hard to mix with the kind of stories that got you notoriety in the first place.

    Reflect upon Mr. Moore

    I mentioned crusading film-maker Michael Moore on purpose. In crafting this advice, I considered quite a bit what makes Mr. Moore successful. He seems to be in the mold to which you aspire (metaphorically speaking — I don’t think you’ll ever be that big). Michael Moore is an utterly polarizing artist, but whether you love him or hate him he is undeniably a hit. Moore injects himself into his stories, but he is never the subject, only a conduit or engaged observer of someone else’s plight. He chooses his villains wisely (from an American perspective), knowing that his choices will generate controversy that will attract attention. And he is teflon-coated when it comes to criticism. Millions of people hate him. But millions also love him and he is world famous.

    So that’s my advice. It is offered constructively. I think China benefits from having citizen journalists, and I encourage you to keep at it and get world famous. Don’t take the media-whore comment too seriously. You’ve already confessed. And, after all, many of us in the blogging and PR biz are media- whores ourselves. We can all whore together. That is what the Internet is all about, isn’t it?

    That doesn’t sound like PR advice…

    Readers may be thinking to themselves that the above is more advice on Zola’s craft than his PR. But for a media celebrity –even an aspiring one– the two are often related. The persona is the PR. The answer to Zola’s public perception problem doesn’t lie in anything he can say or write, but in how he defines his public persona. Looked at another way, we PR people are often accused of crafting slick, empty words to rescue people or companies from bad situations. Sometimes that’s true. But PR at its best is helping a client to find a genuine, constructive solution to a problem and then communicating the solution. This is especially true in crisis situations, and I think it’s safe to say that Zola has had something of a little crisis. Therefore I have proposed what I think is a solution

    Bonus advice for Google China:

    Despite the fact that Zola’s Google stunt went wrong, Google doesn’t get a free pass from Imagethief. A basic rule of PR is that in this day and age everyone is a public representative of your company. This is doubly true of a company like Google that is famous, controversial, and the subject of much discussion in China. That secretary was sitting in a Google lobby and wearing a Google T-shirt. How is it that she (and for that matter the security guard) wasn’t briefed on what to do when a journalist came to the front desk? And in the era of blogging and the Internet, anyone waving a camera around in the lobby, even if they are raising a customer service complaint, needs to be treated like a journalist. Especially by the world’s biggest Internet company, which happens to own a huge blogging engine and world’s biggest video-sharing website. Connect the dots, people.

    In fact, a good policy might be to assume anyone who comes into the lobby is a journalist until conclusively proven otherwise.

    So give the poor girl at the front desk some clear guidance on what to do in that situation, and a simple escalation path she can follow when she is dealing with someone with a camera. That doesn’t mean escalating to security or the police, unless the story you want going public is “How I was roughed up by Google”. Have someone on call who is media trained, savvy and knows enough about customer service to answer questions on the record. Who knows? You might find that these kinds of situations can be turned into PR opportunities.

    Hey, nice shirt!
    Hey, nice shirt!