Treason by the Book

"I suppose I’m cheating because there was no internet in the 18th century. But it happens to be my favourite book of Jonathan Spence’s and it’s on a theme that is very relevant today, which is control of how rumours and information spread. So this is about the Yongzheng Emperor, who becomes concerned about a treasonous letter that is written somewhere in some part of China. He doesn’t know much about it, but he wants to find out who wrote it, who is responsible for circulating it and this triggers an imperial investigation. The imperial bureaucracy goes to work, and the horses are literally sent out. What’s interesting about it is the obsession with something that would seem so insignificant to most people, that it could have just been ignored. Instead, the resources of empire are marshalled to try and figure out the source of this rumour and to crush whatever sentiment is behind it. I think that is relevant today, in the age of the internet, with all the rumours and rumour-hunters online. It is something you’ll see an obsession with from the Party as well. They want to crush rumours, they’re constantly sending out directives against spreading rumours and even arresting people for spreading rumours – as in the supposed “coup attempt” of March 2012. That authoritarian instinct to control rumours is fascinating. Yes, anything that might lead to instability or panic. They were concerned about the rumours about salt-buying after Fukushima happened. There were rumours that you needed to get salt and there was a rush on salt. At that time they mobilized people to counteract those rumours, saying the rumours were false. They don’t have to be seditious, they see rumours as inherently worrisome. Of course the notion of trying to chase down every rumour in the age of the internet seems Sisyphean, but this is actually an ancient instinct of Chinese Empire… Whether or not it’s sensible is an interesting question. Also 2000 years ago, another emperor’s approach was to actually collect information from rumours. He listened to them for any intimations that officials were corrupt or not doing their jobs, or to hear about sources of dissatisfaction. They actually do that today as well. Online public opinion monitoring is a key component of how China manages the internet. They are listening on the internet as well as trying to control it. They can fix the very visible cracks, the ones that get the most attention and that cause the public the most concern. They can patch those up. The more fundamental problems – the deeper cracks in the foundation of the system – persist and get worse. Down the road there could be some crisis or catastrophe or economic crash, that will lead to both social unrest and political uncertainty and quite dicey times for the Communist Party. I just think the internet is not hastening that day. It may actually be delaying that day of reckoning. There is quite a strong potential for a political transformation. How that takes place, what form it takes, really remains unclear to me. I do think a multi-party system or a system where people can vote and actually participate in choosing their leaders is inherently more stable long-term. So that would seem to suggest that eventually one party rule won’t work. But it could be decades before we come to that day of reckoning. Or it could be a shorter time. At that point the internet could become quite an important player in the whole thing. I talk about that in the report. From the authoritarian perspective the options will be limited. Shutting down the internet – turning on the “kill switch” as they did in Xinjiang – doesn’t seem a really viable option and would be an admission of system failure. Whether the internet plays a decisive role in whatever transformation is to come, I don’t know. But what some of these authors have written about, that the internet has actually prepared Chinese citizens for political transformation, I think there is probably truth to that."