What China most fears is mob rule.
Unfortunately, mobs are what the Internet does best.
Today Carlo at Techdirt references the new Family Fun Game out of Middle Earth — vigilante justice.
The example given is a man who was allegedly having an affair with another man’s wife, and was hounded out of college before it was proven no such affair had taken place.
What if people got mad at the government the way they did at this kid, the government asks. So the lid is clamped down firm on the Internet, which (as a result) can only go after minor citizens for minor crimes.
What China really fears, however, is public opinion. The trouble is its fear is misplaced. Most Chinese are just as afraid of anarchy as their leaders are. They know that prosperity can’t exist alongside revolution. They don’t want revolution.
What they want are the same things the rest of us want — honesty,
transparency, and a decent respect for the people in making policy.
These things the government seems categorically unwilling to grant
(kind of like our government in that way).
And so the time bomb that is China continues to tick. We know, in
America, that enough of us really care to get rid of the Bush
Administration, we can do it. If we go 80-20 against them, everywhere,
in November, there is no way the Bushies can steal anything. And survive.
The Chinese people don’t know that.
That’s why they’re so unstable. That’s why theirs is an industrial,
rather than a post-industrial , economy, despite their better
infrastructure.
If China’s leaders ever learn the basic lesson of dealing with the Internet — first listen — then watch out.
That’s the secret to successful open source politics.
