China's web war, Weigui Fang

Sun, 13 Apr 2003 23:00:00 +0000

Peking, 20 March 2003, 1o:35: The news ticker of sohu.com.cn publishes China’s first war news: “Baghdad has been bombed by US forces. The second Gulf war has started.” A minute later, hundreds of thousands of Sohu users receive an SMS with the same message. The war started at 10:34. Within an hour, more than five hundred news items were sent, attracting 1.3 million users and more than 100 million pageviews were registered. “We had a group hug after the news programme”, remembers Li Shanyou, editor of Sohu’s news centre, “because we have been in the shadow of our competitors for too long. Now, we are back.”

Who was first?

Everybody knows who he means by ‘competitors’. Another mega portal, sina.com.cn has been the leading commercial provider in China for some time. And Sina is not eating humble pie. They point out that they sent the first war news at the same time as Sohu, also reaching hundreds of thousands of users by SMS. In the following two hours, the Sina news site received more than 10 million pageviews, and users posted thousands of messages on their online bulletin boards.

The battle for first place between Sina and Sohu has become red hot under the smoke of war. Other Internet combatants are Netease.com, Tom.com, and the website of the state news agency Xinhua. Everyone is consumed by who is first; the number one challenge for all number fetishists. Influenced by earlier disputes over exact transmission times, Sohu went out of its way to get its transmission times certified. They did the same when news of the Space Shuttle Columbia’s explosion first broke. Minutes and seconds make you number one in Chinese online news.

“We have prepared half a year for this war”, says Li Shanyou of Sohu. But Sohu is hardly unique in this. If you surf through the Chinese web these days, you get the impression that the war preparations of the whole media sector have been well nigh perfect. Right now, the most extensive and complex sites in the world are to be seen here, with all sorts of links chronicling the progress of war, its background, weaponry, protagonists, expert analyses, plus endless flashes and icons as the audio-visual possibilities are fully exploited. As soon as an Apache helicopter is hit, the user can access detailed data on the helicopter. Simulations illustrate the reports. The main news sources are not just Reuters, CNN or al-Jazeera, but reports from every corner of the world.

Chinese TV learns the lesson

During the first days of war, clicking on the URLs of sina.com.cn or sohu.com.cn did not take you to the familiar portals, but instantly transported you to professionally designed war-sites, already seeming to reek of cordite. Bypassing the familiar homepages in this way, prompted by the extraordinary events, was perhaps a first in web history. Similarly impressive was yahoo.com.cn’s war-site. One could not help feeling that in design terms, the war-site set out to show the defects in the usual home page.

In no time, orders for ‘mini-news’ by SMS from the three mega portals Sina, Sohu and Netease multiplied. Sohu for example, gained more than 10,000 new customers an hour. They all ordered updates in the categories ‘focus’ and ‘Gulf war report’. In the streets, excited users forwarded the war news by mobile phone.

At least in China, speed is of the essence in online news. The first news about the 11 September events came from Sina, exactly 10 minutes after the terrorist attack in New York. Another 4 minutes later the message was sent by SMS. At that time, Xinhua was possibly still putting the news summary together. The first pictures and information about the American attack on Afghanistan also came from Sina – 2 minutes after the first strike.

The bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade on 8 May 1999 at 5:45 was reported by Sina at 6:24 as ‘urgent news’ and at 6:40 in length, while the national newspaper, People’s Daily only reported online at 9:44. The official news agencies in China have problems coping with such dramatic events due to their restrictions and last but not least, due to ‘politics’.

With the present Gulf war, China has for the first time permitted the state television channel China Central Television (CCTV) to broadcast an event of international standing without waiting for political advice. This means that for the first time, state television is testing international TV standards on a large scale.

Coverage of the Iraq war is almost wall-to-wall. Never before have so many CNN images been shown on Chinese television. Speeches by George W. Bush, Tony Blair and other warlords are transmitted live and translated simultaneously. As many images are sourced from al-Jazeera. In this media frenzy, the Iraq war busts all the constraints of party propaganda. It is in this new political environment that the uncensored Iraq internet coverage also operates.

Internet service providers take to the sky

The three Chinese internet service providers (ISPs) are in demand at Nasdaq. One remembers a time – as the new economy collapsed – when stocks of Netease were to be had for under one US dollar. On 24 March 2003, Nasdaq experienced another landslide due to bad war news. But the three Chinese internet companies are booming, having gained more than 20% each on 25 March. Sohu’s 26% gain pushed its stock to a two year high over US$12. At the end of trading, Netease had reached US$17.12, close to its all-time high of US$17.90.

The background to this stock development was a report by the Wall Street Journal of 25 March to the effect that Sina and Sohu were profiting from the Iraq war. Online news and SMS have made the Internet the leading information medium in China. The SMS service and advertising has meant an added income for the mega portals. As you might expect, the big national and international corporations are fighting over advertising space on the war-sites. Last but not least, this internet war is about stock value.

The mega portals have tried for some time to make online news the first choice for people. What is characteristic of the internet in China, is the combining of the familiar ‘information-superhighway’ with something called ‘hailing’. This Chinese word is used to describe someone who can hold his drink, and is written with two characters: hai (the sea) and liang (volume). In the context of the Internet, the word is to be understood in its etymological sense. The providers of online news are striving explicitly for simultaneity, interactivity – and hailing.

Hot discussion in the chatrooms

According to statistics at the end of 2002, 59.1 million people use the Internet in China. This is only 4.6% of the population. No doubt television remains the main source of information for most Chinese people. But as China’s long-awaited entry into the global communication community takes place, the internet will gain more and more users and importance in China, especially as it is far superior to other media in interactivity.

Forums and chatrooms are particularly popular since it seems you are for once allowed to voice your opinion, something certainly appreciated in times of war. As a result – all hell is let loose, with the proper presentation of an argument as hotly debated as the opinion itself.

Here too, you will find an ‘asymmetric war’, whose message is: ‘Kill another American!’ Nationalism and patriotism have recently experienced a kind of renaissance in China, finding an outlet in sometimes frightening ways: ‘China needs a Saddam!’ ‘This is the long missed national spirit!’ or ‘In comparison to Saddam the Chinese government should be ashamed of itself!’

Some, worrying about China’s destiny, think ahead: ‘today Iraq, tomorrow China’, and address their fellow chatters: ‘Chinese, why don’t you take to the streets?’ This is of course addressed to the Chinese government who doesn’t allow demonstrations that could run out of control. Nevertheless, dissatisfaction can be aired in the chatroom. One is outraged that ‘Blair has presented the battlefield as a kind of paradise’ and another asks Bush if he has any evidence that Saddam owns weapons of mass destruction, only to answer on his behalf: ‘Sure, I kept all the delivery receipts’. Many are saddened: ‘Not yet liberated, already blown to pieces’. Or: ‘The live coverage of the killing of human beings is a tragedy for mankind.’

In the breaks between battles, discussions continue: ‘could precision bombs once again hit a Chinese embassy?’ Black humour turns on the ‘friendly fire’ that British troops had to face: ‘Why have the Americans and British chosen Iraq to fight each other?’ Bush is quoted asking his advisors: ‘Why didn’t you tell me before the war that there was not only desert in Iraq, but also cities?’ A news item about the conquest of an Iraqi port triggers the following comment: ‘Umm Qasr conquered. This is already the fourth town called Umm Qasr that the allies have occupied.’

A German version of this article appears on Telepolis.

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China's web war, Weigui Fang