The 1989 demonstrations at Tiananmen, by my reckoning, became a huge turning point for China.  The movement for democracy was crushed, for better or worse.  But a very propitious result rose from the ashes: the Chinese people realized that feeling dissatisfaction for certain aspects of the government was not an isolated situation.  Before, many Chinese felt that their complaints should not be spoken aloud, as their feelings were probably just a personal problem.  But after Tiananmen many Chinese realized that dissatisfaction was and could be widespread.  So they started talking to each other about what they disliked about the government.  However, most Chinese still will not publicly criticize the government and kept their thoughts to friends and family.  Thus, the phrase was born: You can say whatever you want around the dinner table, but not in public.

            Now, in 2006, blogging is approaching the status of a massive new dinner table.  But not everyone believes blogging should perform this role.  Before I continue with my assertion and provide examples, I want to provide some numbers to show you just how pervasive blogging is in China.  There are 16 million bloggers in China and 52% of China's office workers are writing blogs.  One of every two people in China's offices are writing blogs?  That's an impressive statistic.

            And though people are expressing themselves in massive numbers on their blogs, these online forums are still too public to allow for direct criticism of the government.  As a result, a good deal of self-restraint is being used by Chinese bloggers.  So blogs, in my opinion, are not a true "dinner table" yet. 

            But current "near-dinner-table" status of Chinese blogs is under fire.  The Nanjing School of Journalism's Associate professor Chen Tangfa is filing a case against www.Blogcn.com, China's largest blog website, in a personal reputation infringement lawsuit.  This all started when Mr. Chen did a random search on his name on Blogcn and found that a blogger, K007, had directly insulted him on his blog diary.  So Mr. Chen writes Blogcn and asks them to delete the blog.  Blogcn replies and says they have asked their bloggers not to post reactionary or humiliating notices, but they cannot and do not remove blogs for what is posted in them.

            Now the case is going to court among much voicings of criticism and approval, and the case is being touted as the first case against a blog in China.  Some say that no one should censor a blogger's personal opinion.  Instead, the insulted party should post another blog explaining their point of view.  Mr. Chen, among others, feels that this case will bring some much-needed order to the Internet.

            Personally, I think self-restraint is the best restraint.  But what do I think of personal slander?  Should the government take action in this case?  Being from a nation that upholds free speech, I think that the first opinion—that Mr. Chen has the right to put forward an opposing argument but not the right to censor another—is the right one.  But I can see that others may think that complaints about Mr. Chen should be spoken directly to Mr. Chen instead of on a public forum, among other defenses of Chen's position.

            What do you think and what are your reasons?

(Just a note here, I'm not implying that the Chinese government is horrible or particularly worse than any other.  Just as every person has their faults, every government has its faults—and coming from America many people have some big fingers to point at me—but it does so happen that China's government does not encourage public discussion of its errors at this time.)