The whispering revolution

Ai Weiwei

April 17, 2012

OPINION

Beijing must understand it can't control the internet - freedom will eventually win.

CHAIRMAN Mao used to say: ''As communists we gain control with the power of the gun and maintain control with the power of the pen.'' You can see propaganda and the control of ideology as an authoritarian society's most important task. Before the internet, all the Chinese people could do was watch television or read the People's Daily. They would carefully read between the lines to see what had happened. Now it is very different. The papers try to talk about things, but even before they appear everyone has talked about it on the internet.

Openness and transparency are the only way to limit dark powers. Chinese citizens have never had the right to really express their opinions; the constitution says you can, but in the real world it is more dangerous. In the West, people think it's a right they're born with. In China, it's a right given by the government, and one that's not really practised.

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Even though we had reform and opening, ''opening'' didn't mean ''openness''; it meant opening the door to the West. It was more practical than ideological. At the beginning, nobody - even in the West - predicted that the internet would have so much to do with freedom of speech and that social media would develop in the way it has. They just understood it was a more efficient, fast and powerful means of communication.

But since we got the net and could write blogs, people have started to share ideas and a new sense of freedom has arisen. Of course, it varies from silly posts about what you've had for breakfast to serious discussions of the news, but, either way, people are learning how to exercise their rights. It is a unique, treasured moment. People have started to feel the breeze. The internet is a wild land with its own games, languages and gestures through which we are starting to share common feelings.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/the-whispering-revolution-20120416-1x3nw.html#ixzz1sIrDF8BA

Wall Street Has Become `Huge Casino,' Cohan Says April 13 (Bloomberg) 

William Cohan, author of "Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World" and a Bloomberg View columnist, talks about the investment strategy of Achilles Macris, head of JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s chief investment office in Europe and Asia. Cohan speaks with Erik Schatzker and Stephanie Ruhle on Bloomberg Television's "InsideTrack." Bloomberg's Christine Harper also speaks. (Cohan is a Bloomberg View columnist. The opinions expressed are his own. Source: Bloomberg)