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Coffeeshop Chit Chat - Camera phone: potent new weapon </TD><TD id=msgunetc noWrap align=right>
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</TD></TR><TR><TD><!-- headline one : end --></TD></TR><TR><TD>Chinese protesters armed with cellphones and the Internet pose a new challenge to Chinese govt </TD></TR><TR><TD><!-- Author --></TD></TR><TR><TD class="padlrt8 georgia11 darkgrey bold" colSpan=2>By Peh Shing Huei, China Bureau Chief </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
BEIJING: he Chinese government is squaring up to a more potent weapon for rioters - the camera phone.
In the recent riot in Shishou city in the central province of Hubei, the authorities were assaulted on the Internet with videos taken on Nokias, Motorolas and Samsungs.
'It was like a live telecast,' said Dr Yu Jianrong, an expert in peasant resistance from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
'The biggest difference between the Shishou incident and previous riots is the amount of video footage uploaded online. We have not seen this before.'
Hours after some 10,000 protesters set fire to a hotel and overturned police cars over the mysterious death of a hotel chef in Shishou, dozens of videos of the riot started appearing on Chinese cyberspace last Friday.
They were pixellated, unedited and short.
They were also not flattering to the Chinese authorities, showing the disdain the Shishou residents had for the government, as they hurled stones, bricks and beer bottles at the police while onlookers cheered 'Da de hao!' (good hit!).
A check by The Straits Times found different video footage online - at least 20 - although most have since been deleted by censors.
And even though access to YouTube has been blocked in China for the last three months, netizens were still able to upload onto the video-sharing site.
'What is the point of deleting?' said Dr Yu. 'The videos are still here, there and everywhere. The people are getting more avenues to communicate.
'How can the government control it? Everybody can speak now. Everybody can express their views.'
It is a massive headache for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which has been pampered by decades of total control over the mainstream media and a stranglehold over sources of communication and information.
The video of the death of Iranian student Neda Agha Soltan, shot on a camera phone, and the uproar it created internationally, is a further reminder to the CCP of the power of the increasingly high-tech mobile phones.
Days after the Shishou protest, the party's mouthpiece, the People's Daily, labelled the current age as the 'Microphone Era', a time when the power of every individual to broadcast information is akin to each having a microphone.
'In the first 80 hours of the incident..there were three articles laying out the government's position,' the article observed.
'But on the forum of just one website alone, there were nearly 500 postings on the subject. On some blogs, there were quite a few videos shot by netizens using camera phones.'
The article wondered aloud how the government should deal with this new Microphone Era and concluded that it has to be faster with the news and reach the people through every means possible - not unlike what the government did during last year's Sichuan earthquake.
That is one strategy favoured by some - to loosen the controls over the mainstream media so that it can be a more credible alternative to the new media.
It is a realisation that the alternative of controlling the new media is a pretty hopeless endeavour given the exponential growth in China's netizens and mobile phone users.
By next year, market analysts expect the number of mobile phone subscribers to hit 750 million, a jump of nearly 200 million from just 2007. Most of the users will be carrying phones with built-in cameras.
Netizens' numbers are likely to hit 322 million at the end of this year, tripling the online population of 2005.
But the hardline stance to control and censor still looms large.
The Xinhua-run Outlook Weekly magazine chastised local officials earlier this month for not understanding the power of the Internet to stir up protests, and urged them to think of new ways to rein in this new cyber power.
At Shishou, such suggestions were seemingly taken up, with residents reporting that mobile phone signals were jammed, Internet connection disrupted and even electricity cut off for a short period.
Such measures have mixed results, said Law Professor Carl Minzner of the Washington University in St Louis.
'It certainly hinders the efforts of protesters or rioters to coordinate among themselves.
'But people do switch to other channels, such as new technologies, or old-fashioned ones, such as word of mouth or putting up flyers. Both the government and people are learning from each other.'
[email protected]
</TD></TR><TR><TD> </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
</TD></TR><TR><TD><!-- headline one : end --></TD></TR><TR><TD>Chinese protesters armed with cellphones and the Internet pose a new challenge to Chinese govt </TD></TR><TR><TD><!-- Author --></TD></TR><TR><TD class="padlrt8 georgia11 darkgrey bold" colSpan=2>By Peh Shing Huei, China Bureau Chief </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
BEIJING: he Chinese government is squaring up to a more potent weapon for rioters - the camera phone.
In the recent riot in Shishou city in the central province of Hubei, the authorities were assaulted on the Internet with videos taken on Nokias, Motorolas and Samsungs.
'It was like a live telecast,' said Dr Yu Jianrong, an expert in peasant resistance from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
'The biggest difference between the Shishou incident and previous riots is the amount of video footage uploaded online. We have not seen this before.'
Hours after some 10,000 protesters set fire to a hotel and overturned police cars over the mysterious death of a hotel chef in Shishou, dozens of videos of the riot started appearing on Chinese cyberspace last Friday.
They were pixellated, unedited and short.
They were also not flattering to the Chinese authorities, showing the disdain the Shishou residents had for the government, as they hurled stones, bricks and beer bottles at the police while onlookers cheered 'Da de hao!' (good hit!).
A check by The Straits Times found different video footage online - at least 20 - although most have since been deleted by censors.
And even though access to YouTube has been blocked in China for the last three months, netizens were still able to upload onto the video-sharing site.
'What is the point of deleting?' said Dr Yu. 'The videos are still here, there and everywhere. The people are getting more avenues to communicate.
'How can the government control it? Everybody can speak now. Everybody can express their views.'
It is a massive headache for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which has been pampered by decades of total control over the mainstream media and a stranglehold over sources of communication and information.
The video of the death of Iranian student Neda Agha Soltan, shot on a camera phone, and the uproar it created internationally, is a further reminder to the CCP of the power of the increasingly high-tech mobile phones.
Days after the Shishou protest, the party's mouthpiece, the People's Daily, labelled the current age as the 'Microphone Era', a time when the power of every individual to broadcast information is akin to each having a microphone.
'In the first 80 hours of the incident..there were three articles laying out the government's position,' the article observed.
'But on the forum of just one website alone, there were nearly 500 postings on the subject. On some blogs, there were quite a few videos shot by netizens using camera phones.'
The article wondered aloud how the government should deal with this new Microphone Era and concluded that it has to be faster with the news and reach the people through every means possible - not unlike what the government did during last year's Sichuan earthquake.
That is one strategy favoured by some - to loosen the controls over the mainstream media so that it can be a more credible alternative to the new media.
It is a realisation that the alternative of controlling the new media is a pretty hopeless endeavour given the exponential growth in China's netizens and mobile phone users.
By next year, market analysts expect the number of mobile phone subscribers to hit 750 million, a jump of nearly 200 million from just 2007. Most of the users will be carrying phones with built-in cameras.
Netizens' numbers are likely to hit 322 million at the end of this year, tripling the online population of 2005.
But the hardline stance to control and censor still looms large.
The Xinhua-run Outlook Weekly magazine chastised local officials earlier this month for not understanding the power of the Internet to stir up protests, and urged them to think of new ways to rein in this new cyber power.
At Shishou, such suggestions were seemingly taken up, with residents reporting that mobile phone signals were jammed, Internet connection disrupted and even electricity cut off for a short period.
Such measures have mixed results, said Law Professor Carl Minzner of the Washington University in St Louis.
'It certainly hinders the efforts of protesters or rioters to coordinate among themselves.
'But people do switch to other channels, such as new technologies, or old-fashioned ones, such as word of mouth or putting up flyers. Both the government and people are learning from each other.'
[email protected]
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