Bloggers in China Start Testing Limits

The Wall Street Journal ran a good story today on the Chinese “mental firewall”––the idea that many Chinese bloggers participate in a kind of self-censorship (at least from the perspective of Western blogging standards).

Keso, an O.G. Chinese hacker, was prominently featured as the guy who lobbed the provocation out into the blogsphere: he is reported to have asked would it be so bad if Taiwan went independent. This question is super political and it was a fellow blogger who gave the smack down: "No discussion of politics here!"

WSJ concludes: Inside China, however, some of the smartest thinkers about the Internet believe the biggest hurdle to free speech in China isn't technical, it's social.

The article supports the findings about the Chinese blogsphere that PGJ, this research group, presented over the summer in Japan. Link here for an excerpt from the paper, “Unique Identity & National Discourse in Chinese Participatory-Network Spheres.”

Isaac Mao’s Social Brain Foundation looks fascinating.