Chinese Government Gives Thumbs Up on Blogs...For Its Lawmakers
The Chinese government is setting up blogs for their upcoming convening of its figurehead parliament later in this week. "Only eight of more than 5,000 delegates to the NPC and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference have been approved to post comments online, the official Xinhua News Agency said, citing Tang Weihong, who runs the site."
Ahhh so only if you are approved can you have your blog greenlights by the government!
Forbes has several quotes of government officials sounding like patriotic bagpipes, airing off on how they can better server the government through their blogs.
National People's Congress delegate Zhou Hongyu wrote that serving in the legislature is a way to "fulfill my duty and be a better deputy."
"I hope to collect the wishes of the people, listen to their will and experience the people's lives," wrote
"What we should be concerned about is the feelings of the ordinary people," wrote Zhao. The poet said the CPPCC opened in "beautiful weather conditions, full of spring colors."
China can essentially shows the West how blogs are not a digital simiulacra of democracy. Americans are always projecting Democracy onto every tool invented - whether it's blogs, internet, freeways or airplanes - it's always hyped up first as a truly democratizing system that allows anyone to particiapte. But then we always find out how the very system built can become it's own panapticon, and then throw all the socio-economic access stuff and you start realizing that you actually have a very feudal system - where the rich have access and the poor usually don't. hmm sounds a lot like that digital divide the everyone talks about right?