Chen Guangcheng - RFA Unplugged

China’s authorities have belatedly woken up to the news that it is not enough to just pull the plug when certain topics appear online if you want to hide the truth from the public you also need to provide an alternative story.

In the two current high profile cases currently circulating, the Bo Xilai scandal and the escape from house arrest of blind lawyer and activist Chen Guangcheng both techniques can be seen at work.

In the case of Chen the method has been to suppress information. Bejing based lawyer William Farris did a search for Chen and yielded 12 hits on Yahoo.cn, however on Yahoo.com the results were 155,000. And just to be clear the results on Yahoo.cn were all from state media.

Bo Xilain on the other hand went from being a person of high rank beyond criticism to being openly vilified on the social media and the internet. There is little doubt that this change of heart was sanctioned by the highest authority.

Though it should be kept in mind if you are going to secretly tape the top echelons of the Chinese leadership you probably have a lot worse coming than just having your reputation trashed online.

But what is of more relevant to netizens is that the facts surrounding the Bo Xilai case are becoming muddied as various politicians and others leak information and stories about him via social media on a far wider scale than ever before.

But as Rebecca McKinn0n says in the Toronto Star newspaper neither method ultimately works and that netizens find ways round both kinds of censorship. She argues it may not bring down China ruling communist party but clever and innovative netizens are ensuring a much greated degree of transparency in the country.

Provincial authorities in China have heeded calls to ease the restrictions on blind legal activist Chen Guangcheng, they are allowing him to accept medication sent to him by his supportes and allowing his six year old daughter to go to school.

It is interesting to ponder why they have taken such a move with someone they have regarded as dangerous and a threat for his calls for greater democracy in China.

What is interesting to contemplate is to what extent has the internet and social media played in this change of heart by the authorities.

The answer must surely be an enormous amount. Chen’s supporters have been able to galvnize public opinion and even sway government officials with postings about the conditions of his house arrest. In the past such information would have been passed by word of mouth, underground newspapers with limited readership and possibly foreign reporting broadcast into China by the likes of RFA.

Such methods of communication in any country but particularly one as big as China would have had limited reach and the delay between the information being obtained and then reaching the target audience would have made his plight more remote and impersonal. Today there is an intimacy with events and people because so much of what is being posted is fresh and new. As people sit down for dinner they have a very good idea of what Chen is going through at that very moment.

Some people will say this is simply stating the obvious and has been going on for years. And of course that is true, but it never hurts to remind ourselves that the virtual world has enormous possibilities for creating non-violent change for the better.

I could have cited the Arab Spring or similar major events that social media played a key role in but I believe we should never overlook the smaller victories because they build on each other. Maybe the internet revolution’s greatest gift to society will be revolution via the internet. Virtual revolutions are likely to have far fewer casualties than the old fashioned sort.