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December 1, 2006
Who Did What in China's Past? Look It Up, or Maybe Not
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
SHANGHAI, Nov. 30 — Just who was Mao Zedong?
In the English-language version of Wikipedia, the popular online
encyclopedia, he was a victorious military and political leader who
founded China's modern Communist state. But he was also a man whom
many saw as "a mass murderer, holding his leadership accountable for
the deaths of tens of millions of innocent Chinese."
Switch to Wikipedia in Chinese, though, and you read about a very
different man. There, Mao's reputation is unsullied by mention of any
death toll in the great purges of the 1950s and 1960s, like the Great
Leap Forward, a mass collectivization and industrialization campaign
begun in 1958 that produced what many historians call the greatest
famine in human history.
Wikipedia, an open encyclopedia founded in 2001 that allows ordinary
users to create and edit the vast bulk of its entries, has always
posed a challenge to China's hypersensitive censors. Earlier this
month, the government opened access to both the English and Chinese
sites, though it has since resumed its blackout on the Chinese site.
But on questions of this country's modern history or on hot-button
topical issues, the Chinese version diverges so significantly from its
English counterpart that it sometimes reads as if it were approved by
the censors themselves.
This gulf comes across powerfully in the entry on Mao, one of the most
frequently searched and edited topics in Chinese, and in items on
historical watersheds, like the Tiananmen Square massacre, the Great
Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.
Chinese Wikipedia users and critics say the differences highlight the
resilience of a system of information control whose reach goes well
beyond simple censorship.
In each of its language versions, Wikipedia is collaboratively written
and edited by online enthusiasts. As such, its articles reflect the
constantly shifting collective effort of its contributors, who may add
and delete material at will.
Contributors to the Chinese-language site attribute the contrasts with
the English-language version to the powerful influence of Chinese
education, which often provides a neatly sanitized national
perspective on turbulent events in the country's past.
The parochialism is reinforced by the blocking of foreign Web sites
and by the careful censorship of the news media. Alternative
viewpoints are sometimes available, but usually only to a restricted
circle of people who have the means and determination to seek them
out.
For some, the Chinese version of Wikipedia was intended as just such a
resource, but its tame approach has set off a fierce debate in the
world of online mavens over its objectivity and thoroughness.
In a recent discussion on the encyclopedia's Web site about Mao's
legacy, a user with the online name Manchurian Tiger wrote, "If anyone
can prove that Mao's political movements didn't kill so many people,
I'm willing to delete the wording that 'millions of people were
killed.' " Rather than contribute to encyclopedias, those who wish to
pay tribute to Mao, he added, should "go to his mausoleum." Another
user replied angrily: "If you want to release your emotions, use a
bulletin board. Wikipedia is not your toilet."
In the end, caution prevailed, and the entry on Mao included no death
toll from either famine or purges.
In most instances, it seems, the fight over editorial direction of
Wikipedia is won by enthusiasts who practice self-censorship.
"Most of the people who contribute to Wikipedia rarely touch upon
political topics," said Yuan Mingli, a frequent contributor from
Shanghai. "They prefer to write about things like technology. There
are other things in life."
Others say the object should be to spread reliable information as
widely as possible, and that, in any case, self-censorship is
pointless because the government still frequently blocks access to
Wikipedia for most Chinese Internet users.
"There is a lot of confusion about whether they should obey the
neutral point of view or offer some compromises to the government,"
said Isaac Mao, a well-known Chinese blogger and user of the
encyclopedia. "To the local Wikipedians, the first objective is to
make it well known among Chinese, to get people to understand the
principles of Wikipedia step by step, and not to get the thing blocked
by the government."
After Mao, few questions are treated as more sacrosanct in China than
the status of Taiwan, which every pupil is taught is irrevocably part
of China. To publicly suggest that Taiwanese have any historical basis
for asserting their independence from China would be a career-ending
offense for anyone in academia or in the news media.
The English-language version of the encyclopedia speaks of a Japanese
shipwreck incident off Taiwan in 1871, in which 54 crew members were
beheaded by Taiwanese aborigines. Japan demanded compensation from
China, only to be told that Taiwan was not in China's jurisdiction.
The Chinese-language entry on Taiwan, meanwhile, is silent on the
jurisdiction question.
Similarly, the English-language Wikipedia mentions the settlement of
Taiwan about 4,000 years ago by aborigines who are genetically related
to Malaysians. It also places the first meaningful settlement of the
island by Chinese in the 16th century. The Chinese version merely
speaks of cultural affinities with Malaysians and speculates about the
possible exploration of the island by Chinese as far back as the third
century.
A parallel, and purely homegrown effort at creating an online
encyclopedia in China, Baidu Baike, skirts controversies like these
altogether. The site, owned by China's biggest Internet search engine,
asserts that Taiwan's original inhabitants "came from mainland China
directly or indirectly," and not from Malaysia. Similarly, a user who
searches for the Tiananmen Square massacre will find no entry.
As online reference sites grow in popularity here, Baidu Baike
benefits from the government's efforts to block Wikipedia, just as its
parent company once benefited from the government's blockage of
Google.
Baidu Baike, much of whose uncontroversial content appears to be
copied directly from Wikipedia, would not release detailed user
statistics, saying only that it had "several million" users every day.
A spokeswoman for the company, Zhang Yan, said it was guided by the
editorial policy of not "judging the existing national system with
malice."
Asked to explain what this meant, Ms. Zhang said, "Anyone who is Chinese
knows."
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