September 14, 2008 may go down as a landmark in the history of political blogging in China. Oriental Outlook journalist Sun Chunlong published an open letter to the Shanxi Provincial Governor article on his blog, exposing a cover-up of a background to the fatal mudslide in Xiangfen that claimed 270 lives. The same day, the governor handed in his resignation.
It is impossible to say whether the publication of the blog triggered the resignation but many are saying it is an example of the increasing influence of blogging in China.
Elsewhere political blogs have had even more dramatic effects. Some may remember that President Clinton's affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky was exposed by the scandal blog the Drudge Report after Newsweek balked at carrying the story. Of course political blogging is in its relative infancy in China compared with Western countries, and the USA in particular.
But as in other countries, the mainstream media in China are being forced to take notice of the explosion in blogging. On October 13, Beijing Daily carried an article on the history of political blogging in the USA and China. The following day an editorial in the Beijing News praised Chinese political blogs and urged the government to take more notice of them.
Political blogs can be divided into two main types: on the one hand there are blogs by ordinary citizens, including journalists, and that recent hybrid – the citizen journalist; on the other hand there are blogs by professional politicians on the other hand. Grass roots bloggers are apt to express their views on political and social matters extremely forthrightly while blogs by politicians are notably more circumspect, and always open to the accusation of "spin".
A number China's National People's Congress deputies and officials already publish blogs as a way of getting their message across to the public. And the government is beginning to pay more attention to the views of bloggers as a barometer of public opinion. Some caution might be called for; bloggers are not yet a representative sample of the population as a whole. They are overwhelmingly young city-dwellers. People over 35 are much less likely to blog and the lack of internet access in many rural areas means the countryside view is under-represented. Nevertheless the proportion of people regularly using the Internet is almost certain to grow, and with it the influence of political blogging.
(China.org.cn by Ma Yujia October 19, 2008)