The Click That Broke a Government's Grip

The Click That Broke a Government's Grip

"BEIJING -- The top editors of the China Youth Daily were meeting in a conference room last August when their cell phones started buzzing quietly with text messages. One after another, they discreetly read the notes. Then they traded nervous glances. Colleagues were informing them that a senior editor in the room, Li Datong, had done something astonishing. Just before the meeting, Li had posted a blistering letter on the newspaper's computer system attacking the Communist Party's propaganda czars and a plan by the editor in chief to dock reporters' pay if their stories upset party officials.

Li Datong, shown outside the China Youth Daily, challenged a plan to dock reporters' pay if government officials took issue with their stories. The speed and power of the Internet helped launch a campaign that ultimately compelled a government retreat from the plan. No one told the editor in chief. For 90 minutes, he ran the meeting, oblivious to the political storm that was brewing. Then Li announced what he had done."

One of Robert A. Heinlein's cahracters, Lazarus Long, advised that we should never appeal to a person's sense of justice, principles or ideals as they might not possess that capacity. Instead, appeal to a person's sense of self-interest because that is a guaranteed possession. Here we see ideals and principles brought forth because the government and the boss was reaching into the pockets of people that already worked too hard for every coin earned. What a way to spark a revolutionary idea... through a labor protest. But our own history is filled with such examples. Our labor movement, which has all but been cast aside by the ultra-conservatives, brought us fringe benefits, sick days, vacations, FMLA, health insurance and community-based hospitals, fair wages and recognition that the workers of a corporation have sweat equity in the companies that employ them. Too bad that we have allowed that spirit to diminish under the pro-business/anti-worker GOP reign. (It's also too bad that the unions got to be too focused on their own form of greed and allowed it to happen!) Our labor movement helped us develop a fuller sense of liberty, freedom and rights... and gave rise to our standard of living.

The chief editor stammered and rushed back to his office, witnesses recalled. But by then, Li's memo had leaked and was spreading across the Internet in countless e-mails and instant messages. Copies were posted on China's most popular Web forums, and within hours people across the country were sending Li messages of support. The government's Internet censors scrambled, ordering one Web site after another to delete the letter. But two days later, in an embarrassing retreat, the party bowed to public outrage and scrapped the editor in chief's plan to muzzle his reporters.

The episode illustrated the profound impact of the Internet on political discourse in China, and the challenge that the Web poses to the Communist Party's ability to control news and shape public opinion, key elements to its hold on power. The incident also set the stage for last month's decision to suspend publication of Freezing Point, the pioneering weekly supplement that Li edited for the state-run China Youth Daily.

Perhaps the ISPs and search engines could take a page out of this book and stand up for basic rights... but that might mean foregoing some profits from the world's largest consumer market.