Years of Poems and Spirits

Guo Liang

I read the following on the New York Times -

Guo Liang, the director of the China Internet Project at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said he thought Google’s accusations were little more than public whining. “Google may use politics as its excuse, which is easy for Westerners to accept, but in essence this is just a business failure,” he said. “If I were the government, I wouldn’t even bother to respond.”

If the reporter didn’t quote you out of context, I have to say I strongly disagree with your stance. You may question Google’s ulterior motive, that is your prerogative. But if you just look at the matter at its own merit, whatever the Party-State has been doing cannot be justified. You may dismiss us as outsiders not in tune with reality in China. But reasonable people disagree. In this case, you also need to ask whether your reality is THE reality or whether outsiders’ opinion are naturally irrelevant just because they are outsiders.

In the end, what goes around, comes around. The limit of information flow in the name of “stability and harmony” will backfire. To me, information freedom is not as much about some abstract ideal as about dollars and senses. A billion people with “little smart” (小聪明) is, in the end, a billion brains wasted. If you think the creative ways Chinese are making money now is the same as innovation, I am afraid you are terribly mistaken and sourly missing the point. If Chinese citizens are trained only to think as they are allowed to but no more, what you end of having is “involution”–a term historians used to describe the late Qing China.

Bing

Trackback URI | Comments RSS