Page 177 - Feasibility Study of New Media Technology on Constructing Online Public Sphere

Chapter 6. The Xiamen PX plant event

N.P.) .
29
Interviewee 6 described the priority in the operation of internet media companies,
as:
‘complying with government regulations and policies must be the primary po-
sition. Because in China’s media environment, survival is our first objective,
especially under the circumstance that the government hold the ultimate power

[…] ‘internet companies are mainly regulated by central and local Cyberspace
Administration of China, meanwhile the Security Bureau might arrange some ‘un-
dercovers’ in many internet companies. We mostly deal with the official network

managing departments, and we also have a specific administrative department in
our company which occasionally announce a variety of government instructions.
The instructions inform what content needs to be deleted, what content should not
be commented, what should not be recommended. Sometimes I did not realise
30
what had happened until I read the instruction’ .

Internet practitioners: probing the government’s reaction within the tolerant scope

Chang and Tai have stated that:
‘[w]hether the Chinese government likes it or not, the burgeoning public aware-

ness and demand for a free press, the commercialisation and internationalisation
of the Chinese media, and the increasing pressure from the world community may
make the next step – what to say and what to publish without fear of state interfer-
ence – irreversible’ (Chang and Tai, 2003, p.43).

This was in line with Margolis and Resnick’s (2000) argument that, in terms of
democracy, the most powerful influence is its competence in delivering information to
the public in a speedy and efficient manner. Since information represents power, for
people living in centralised states like China, ‘democratisation of information’ (Tai,

2006, p.180) on the internet has special implications.
After the Xiamen case, when speaking of Bullog’s involvement in this collective

29 Translation provided by the author.
30 Translation provided by the author.

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