China: Organized big demonstration via SMS

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Several thousand people demonstrated in the Chinese city Xiamen this
weekend protesting the construction of a potentially dangerous chemical
plant. The demonstration exemplifies how it is becoming increasingly
difficult for the Chinese regime to control sentiments of its
population.

By

John Einar Sandvand, 

Asia Observer

No other country employs as many people trying to regulate citizens use of the Internet and other digital communication. An estimated 30.000 government censors try to stop Chinese people from accessing web sites that are not deemed to have the proper content.

The issue at hand in Xiamen is government plans to construct a
potentially dangerous chemical plant close to the city. Earlier this
would have passed without anyone giving notice. Nowadays public
oppoisiton is being organized.

Asia Sentinel has
written an excellent background article about how the demonstration in
Xiamen was organized. The article explains how citizens were blogging
and starting web sites to increase awareness about the potential danger
caused by the plan. Official media, on their part, apparently was asked
to to pay attention.

But then SMS messages were starting to spread and that was how the
demonstration was organized. Before authorities managed to block the
message about one million people apparently had been reached by the
organizers.

All the way citizen reporters and bloggers are distributing news
about what is happening. Pictures of the demonstration are published at
Flickr, a video has been uploaded to YouTube, and the latest news are continuously published on Twitter and other web sites.

The Danwei blog is one good place to learn about how how the demonstration was organized and information distributed.

You may also want to read John Kennedy’s blog piece on Globalvoices: “Liveblogging from ground zero”.

All in all I find it a fascinating example of how public sentiment
is becoming increasingly difficult to control in the world’s most
populous nation. And we are bound to see many more demonstrations like
this in China.



Just watch on.