What does mass blogging in China tell us?

image here

Thomas Friedman column on blogging in China becoming the true voice of the people at 70 million strong.

Positive or negative trend?  Because you're talking relatively successful people in a fast rising country, the overall voice is going to be one of nationalistic pride--even hubris, leading Friedman to hypothesize that aggressive bloggers are already becoming yet another source of populism that Beijing is both scared and mindful of in its decision-making.

Already, notes Freidman, the US ambassador is hosting big-time bloggers in an effort to get out America's message to the people with less official filtering.

Key point and a cool bit from Friedman:

“China for the first time has a public sphere to discuss everything affecting Chinese citizens,” explained Hu Yong, a blogosphere expert at Peking University. “Under traditional media, only elite people had a voice, but the Internet changed that.” He added, “We now have a transnational media. It is the whole society talking, so people from various regions of China can discuss now when something happens in a remote village — and the news spreads everywhere.” But this Internet world “is more populist and nationalistic,” he continued. “Many years of education that our enemies are trying to keep us down has produced a whole generation of young people whose thinking is like this, and they now have a whole Internet to express it.”

Watch this space. The days when Nixon and Mao could manage this relationship in secret are long gone. There are a lot of unstable chemicals at work out here today, and so many more players with the power to inflame or calm U.S.-China relations. Or to paraphrase Princess Diana, there are three of us in this marriage.

I see an advantage for us in all of these developments: our system is much more comfortable processing such popular pressures than China's is--and a lot more experienced to boot.

A lot of strategists on our side salivate at the notion that China will be forced into military confrontations with the West by all this rising nationalistic spirit, but the truth is just the opposite: fear of enraging the population by accepting any form of defeat keeps the Chinese leadership very keen to avoid any scuffle with the U.S. that it cannot control.