Red Guards Against Rednecks
October 31st, 2009
When you applied to the MBA program we required you to write an essay that addressed the ethics of Google (and other firms) doing business in a China, and the ethics of internet censorship in general. And Google has also been in the news a great deal the past year for its (alleged) decision to pull out of China. But before you read the rest of this post and watch the below video, be sure to read my initial post (and the cited WSJ article) therein, Battling the Information Barbarians, as it will give you a historical perspective on this issue.
Then, check out this video presentation (click HERE) of Kaiser Kuo at my undergrad alma mater, the University of Nebraska - Lincoln. This is an excellent, excellent talk, and well worth the investment of your time. He speaks directly to the very essay admission questions you responded to when you applied to the program.
It is a 1 hour and 18 minute broadcast (includes Q&A). The intro takes about 2:40 minutes to get through to get to his actual speech. His talk is titled, “Shouting Across the Chasm: Chinese and American Netizens Clash in Cyberspace”. You will learn a great deal about the true Internet and information landscape in China that you did not know before.
FYI, Kaiser is a UC Berkeley grad and two years ago he exclusively spoke to our MBAs during our trip to China. Below is a more beefy bio for Kaiser.
Your thoughts and takeaways from his talk? And what are your thoughts after reading the WSJ article noted above about China “Battling the Barbarians”?
Kaiser Kuo: Born in the U. S. to Chinese parents, Kuo lives in China and identifies equally as American and Chinese. Formerly director of digital strategy for the Beijing office of a global advertising agency, Kuo has worked as a technology and business writer for publications such as Time, TimeAsia, China Economic Review, Asia Inc., and the South China Morning Post, and currently serves as an advisor for Youku.com, a leading video sharing company in China. Kuo co-founded China’s most famous rock band, Tang Dynasty, and continues to be active in the Chinese music scene.
Professor Carr addendum: This is not required as part of your homework on this post, but you might be interested in THIS 30 MINUTE PODCAST of Kaiser where he reads from some of his work and writings in Ich Bin Ein Beijinger. I really enjoyed this investment I made in myself to listen to this and learn a few new things that I did not know or had not thought about before.
2 Comments Add your own
1. Hemanth Kundeti | November 10th, 2009 at 10:51 pm
Dr. Carr, thank you for a very interesting podcast. I can understand and relate to where Kaiser Kuo is coming from. It is unfortunate that people fight wars instead of finding common ground on Internet. The internet is the only window of communication between China and the rest of the world (even if limited). If the Chinese netizens continue to see aggressive posturing of the other global netizens, it would only confirm their worst fears and would breed antagonism, as they see it through their lens mired with the scars of the past. The scars that were made in the past to a nation’s psyche cannot be erased in a matter of a few years. Sometimes the scars last decades. To understand a nation, we should try to understand the history of the nation.
Communist government of China would not have succeeded in implementing widespread economic reforms, if not for the popular public support for opening up their markets to the developed world especially America. If petty wars like the one on internet continue, China will not be able to justify its economic cooperation with America. Subsequently if their only eye is poked time and again, that eye might turn sore.
2. Kirk Story | December 3rd, 2009 at 4:42 pm
Thank you for this post. To date, I have only heard fragments of this issue. I recall a friend showing me that if you google search “I hate _______” the top two blanks are #1 “the United States,” and #2 “China.” Kaiser Kuo’s talk underscores an alarming new dynamic in China/US relations catalyzed by the internet and resulting in “a decline at the people to people level.” In other words, it is not the bilateral state-to-state relations that are breaking down between China and the US, it is a virtual clash amongst nationalists from these nations that are fueling populist animosity. Kuo notes that at this time in national politics, both China and the US are substantially impacted by populism and often times unsophisticated value systems. The Chinese government has to respond to public opinion despite the fact that the West portrays it as a ‘repressive totalitarian regime.’ The fact that a considerable portion of the internet using populations of both countries are confirming the respective extremist positions of the ‘radical right,’ and therefore influencing a bottom-up distrust for the opposing nation, is frightening when peering into the 21st century.
Kuo postulates from a corner that sees two sets of understandable people with uninterpreted worldviews. In his book he aims to give the American intellectual layman a sense of “why there is merit to the way the Chinese approach issues given the set of assumptions they are approaching them from.” I find hope in Kuo’s statement that when ‘travelling in Europe, he sees a group of Chinese tourists and a group of American tourists, and is equally ashamed.’ It appears that the most promising solution lies in this context. I contend that positive interpersonal contact is the surest way to bridge the gap in person-to-person Chinese/US relations. It is important for both populations to uncover the decency in one another as opposed a bludgeoning their counterparts with the radical right’s insecurity-turned-aggression nonsense. I commend the steps that Cal Poly’s GSB has made in facilitating interpersonal contact by sending its students to the Far East on an annual basis. This sort of forward looking action is our best shot at cultivating a bipolar or mulitpolar world order where powers cooperate and compromise instead of paying credence to the naysayers of their respective societies.
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