Fons picks up on the new Markle Foundation study on the attitudes of Chinese Internet users:

A new survey of professor Guo Liang of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences into the 103 million Chinese internet users has come up with some interesting material. Here is the survey in pdf-format.

The survey, presented on Thursday at the Brookings Institute in the US was the second done with international funding of also the Markle foundation and has already widely been quoted in the US media, like the International Herald Tribune and CNN. A few of the key findings, according to CNN:

- The overwhelming majority of Chinese feel some Internet content — such as pornography and violence — should be regulated;

- although the average Chinese Internet user spends nearly three hours a day online, 75 percent have never made an Internet purchase and 42 percent never use a search engine.

- Eighty-five percent spend their time viewing mainland Chinese-language content, while only three percent viewed overseas foreign language content.

In another post, Fons also notes what he sees as bias on the part of AFP:

AFP really had a to open their article on the new Guo Liang report today. It read: “Internet in China may become powerful political tool. Of course, they quoted Guo correctly by letting hem say:

The Internet is supposed to be the information highway but according to our survey, for many Internet users in China, it is an entertainment highway.

But that did not stop them from giving their own political bias to his words. As they wrote further on:

But survey respondents had “strong expectations” that the Internet would change politics in China, which is today — according to global media watchdog Reporters without Borders — the “world’s biggest prison for cyber-dissidents.”

My estimation is that in this case ‘change’ means something different for the internet users than for AFP.

I would agree that China’s Internet users, and particularly bloggers, have very different attitudes to censorship and the leadership of the communist party than their western counterparts. However, I haven’t met any who don’t want to see change. That may not mean an end to the one-party state, but the Chinese like everyone else would like efficient government and the elimination of corruption. To quote the study: “According to statistical results of the World Internet Project, more people in China than in other countries believe that the Internet will have a positive impact on political transparency.”

Further:

Among the respondents, 62.8% “agreed” or “strongly agreed” that by using the Internet people will acquire better knowledge of politics, 60.4% “agreed” or “strongly agreed” that higher-level government officials will better understand the common people’s views through the Internet, 55.3% “agreed” or “strongly agreed” that with the Internet people have more opportunities to criticize government policy and 45.1% “agreed” or “strongly agreed” that by using the Internet, people have more opportunities to express their political views.

Does AFP reveal a political bias? Probably, all reporters and writers have a political bias - my editors usually stomp mine out before publication (even though as a financial reporter I feel my ‘free-market’ bias probably goes over well with the readership). But Fons, you title your post “internet - Users want government control…,” that may be true from one part of the study cited - on porn and violence, specifically - but it may reveal one of your biases. From my reading and the above statistics, a better headline would be “Internet - Users want governmental change.”

But that’s just my bias.

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