China cracks down on the sex bloggers
By David Eimer
July 18, 2005
Beijing - For the hundreds of thousands of people who log on to Furong Jiejie's
website daily, her saucy self-portraits and delusional diary entries ("I have a
physique that gives men nosebleeds") provide something to talk and laugh about
during breaks at work. But the dizzying rise of Furong, who has become the most
talked-about woman in China, has prompted the Chinese government to assert
further its control over cyberspace.
With about 100 million users, China has the second-largest internet population
in the world after the US, and it's growing by millions each month. To monitor
what these increasingly curious "netizens" are reading about, the authorities
have intensified their internet surveillance by recruiting "web watchdogs" to
anonymously police thousands of cyber-cafes and public message forums. And all
Chinese websites, bloggers and bulletin-board operators must register with the
government - or be fined and shut down.
Furong Jiejie - the name literally means "hibiscus older sister" - seems likely
to face that fate. "We have been keeping an eye on sister Furong," said Liu
Qiang, an official with the Ministry Of Culture, which is responsible for
overseeing the internet. "But there aren't any explicit regulations to control
such a phenomenon." The latest in a series of online celebrities, known in
China as BB, or bulletin-board, stars, to have emerged in the past couple of
years, 28-year-old Furong is an unlikely candidate to run into trouble with the
authorities.
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Prone to posing in provocative photos - tame by Western standards - Furong has
an obvious hunger for fame. She hardly seems a threat to society.
Nevertheless, the publicity department of the central committee of the
Communist Party has told BlogChina, the largest provider of blog-hosting
services, to relocate content relating to Furong, whose real name is Shi
Heng-xia, to less prominent parts of their website.
That's what happened to Mu Zi-mei, a 27-year-old magazine journalist, in late
2003, after she became equally famous by publishing an explicit online diary
detailing her busy sex life.
The government's heavy-handed approach is an indication of its ambivalent
attitude towards the internet. "The government sees the internet as vital for
China's technological progress but, at the same time, they want to stop people
from accessing content they see as unhealthy," says Chen Changfeng, deputy dean
of Beijing University's School of Journalism and Communications. That includes
political dissent and pornography.
Most print and TV media in China are local rather than national, making the
internet an even more powerful tool. "The internet is omnipotent now. If
something happens in Guangzhou, then people in Beijing will hear about it
quickly ... People can check the news and immediately respond to it by posting
their opinion," notes Ms Chen. "What the internet in China does is help to form
public opinion very quickly."
The anti-Japan protests in March and April began on-line, with millions venting
their anger in open forums over a history textbook that downplayed Japanese
army atrocities during the Second World War. Only later did the traditional
media pick up on the story. It's been the same with Furong Jiejie, whose photo
adorned the front pages of many papers last week. Now, though, it seems that
her 15 minutes of fame are up.
