Wei Guan, translated alternatively as surround and stare, surrounding gazeHu, Yong (2011-01-17). "On the "Surrounding Gaze"". Retrieved 2013-07-24., or popular surveillance.
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Chinese Woman Imprisoned for Twitter Message
Renee Xia, the international director of Chinese Human Rights Defenders, said Ms. Cheng was part of a group of daring freelance advocates known as weiguan who travel across the country to show up at courthouses where dissidents are on trial.
Sometimes, when a friend has disappeared into police custody, the weiguan will post to Twitter personal details about the officials involved in the detention. In rare cases, the resulting deluge of phone calls has led to the speedy release of a detainee.
“There is a growing group of people like her, netizens who are moving from cyberspace to the real world,” Ms. Xia said. “Putting her into a labor camp shows that the government is prepared to come down hard on these people.”
- Rights Defence (weiquan), Microblogs (weibo), and Popular Surveillance (weiguan)
- Same article on ebscohost
- Hu Yong: On the "Surrounding Gaze"
The rise of China’s rights defence movement has occurred in tandem with the rapid development of the Internet in China. Various forms of rights defence inside and outside of the courtroom have emerged and developed alongside changes to China’s ideological, political, and legal systems and social structure. Similarly, Internet technology such as microblogs and other social media are enriching the modalities of activity in the rights defence movement, enhancing the mobilisation capacity of activists, and accelerating the systematisation of popular rights defence, profoundly affecting China’s ongoing political transformation.
In China, Strolling for Reform
The lesson from past crackdowns was to apply even more decentralized tactics. Today’s organizers — who seek to launch a “molihua” (jasmine) revolution — have used social networks like Sina Weibo (the Chinese equivalent of Twitter), Facebook and Google groups to spark public meetings in large cities in every province over the past two weeks.
In doing so organizers have tapped into a traditional method of crowd gathering known as wei guan. The words literally mean “surround and stare,” but they also connote a willingness to participate. It’s a kind of street democracy, with impromptu public juries declaring their binding verdicts on how civic disputes should be resolved, refusing to allow the antagonists to leave until the group’s judgment is enforced.
The organizers say they want to draw increasing public attention to Beijing’s brutal security crackdowns, hoping this will produce the kind of snowball effect it has had in the Arab world.
Hu Yong: On the "Surrounding Gaze"
In an interview with CMP fellow and Peking University professor Hu Yong (胡泳) posted in January 2011, blogger Xiao Mi (小米) addressed the issue of “the surrounding gaze,” and its historical roots and importance. Here is a translated portion of Hu Yong’s response:
Abstract: The rise of China's rights defence movement has occurred in tandem with the rapid development of the Internet in China. Various forms of rights defence inside and outside of the courtroom have emerged and developed alongside changes to China's ideological, political, and legal systems and social structure. Similarly, Internet technology such as microblogs and other social media are enriching the modalities of activity in the rights defence movement, enhancing the mobilisation capacity of activists, and accelerating the systematisation of popular rights defence, profoundly affecting China's ongoing political transformation.
Institute Fellowship Paper University of Oxford The Power of the Chinese Netizen?
The Surrounding Gaze is changing China, paying close attention is power’ ( 围观改变中国，关注就是力量 ) refers to hundreds of thousands or millions of Chinese netizens gathering through the Weibo in support or opposition to important social and political issues.
On the morning of September 10, the Zhong family were confronted by 40 local police officers and urban administrators seeking to carry out the forced demolition of their home to make room for a new construction. In the course of their protest, three members of this family, Zhong Zhifeng, 59, her daughter Zhong Ruqin, 31, and Ruqin’s uncle, Ye Zhongcheng, 79, set fire to themselves and jumped off the roof of their house. Ye eventually died in hospital.
The incident was quickly ‘harmonized’in the mainstream media and major websites by the propaganda department and web-censors. However, video taken by local residents from the scene started trickling out online. The turning point happened on September 16th when Zhong Rucui and Zhong Rujiu, who are daughters of Zhong Zhifeng, tried to travel to Beijing for a petition visit (this is a process whereby citizens can have their grievances heard by central government). On their way to Nanchang airport, they were chased by police and government officials who tried to stop them. Finally, the two girls had to lock themselves in the women’s toilets at the airport and sent out mobile text messages to local reporters to seek help.
Over the next three hours, with the help of a reporter on the ground in Jiangxi, Deng Fei, a journalist for the Phoenix Weekly, reported live on Sina Weibo on the news of their plight and the actions of local officials in the airport. He posted 20 tweets; after re-tweeting and additional comments, this event became breaking news and a news focus in China. Then, Zhong Rujiu opened her own microblog account in Sina Weibo. In the following days, she made 253 postings to her Weibo site, relaying the bitter experience of her family members in the hospital. M ore than 30,000 followers expressed their anger toward local government, with each entry re-posted by an average of a thousand other netizens. As informa tion sped through the microblogs and drew popular attention to the forced demolition case, this event reached the ears of high-level government officials.
More than half month after the self-burning, on 17th September, Qiu Jianguo, the Party secretary and top leader in Yihuang, and the county’s governor, Su Jianguo, were put under formal investigation. The county’s deputy governor, Li Minjun, was removed from his post and subjected to investigation. The media were allowed to report this result; some newspapers even published the story on the front-page. Netizens commented that “rights were fought and won through each microblog post.” In the push to defend the rights of citizens, microblogs have offered a ray of hope, helping to promote civil society in China.
See Also Yihuang self-immolation incident
„Following is power, Surrounding Gaze changes China‟ - On the Chinese Blogosphere
To conclude, Wei Guan is the minimum level of public participation. In fact, it is very far from the kind of politics in which people participate, reach a consensus, make decisions, and then act. Therefore, it would be pretentious to conclude that by means of Wei Guan we can change the reality of China directly, as this would be based on a naive reading of the Chinese situation. On the other hand, we should not for the same reasons make the mistake of underestimating the importance of Wei Guan in social media. It lowers the threshold of public participation, enabling many people to express their views and desires. These micro-expressions, when combined together, can form forceful public opinion. The fact that some parts of government panic when faced with public demands in the social media shows that Wei Guan is a force of its own. Apart from this, the so-called―surrounding gaze‖ means that people can see each other. This is very important. According to Hu (Yee 2011), the problem of people in contemporary China is not ignorance, but apathy, which is more harmful than ignorance. It represents a kind of witness and caring about each other on the part of the citizenry, this will surely encourage grassroots political participation.
References
edit- ^ Jacobs, Andrew (2010-11-18). "Chinese Woman Sentenced to a Year for Twitter Post". China: NYTimes.com. Retrieved 2013-07-24.