There’s been a few fascinating, if unverified, insights thrown up over the past few days about how information management actually works on a day to day level in China. Here’s how it goes down at Southern Weekend. And here’s how Sina Weibo’s internet censors interpreted their directives:
With such background, we have the second thesis: The strategy on deletion and distribution. Please think about this: You guys keep posting messages like machines, and the micro-blog secretaries keep deleting them. If we don't delete messages one by one and suspend accounts, we could have saved more time and energy. We could have served better as the running dog. You can see the messages before they are deleted, right? You still have your account functioning, right? You are all experienced netizens, you know that the technology allows us to delete messages in a second. Please think carefully on this.
They’re working to rule, with a heavy hint that the more work they have to do, the harder the rule is to enforce. We’ve blogged this before.
What exactly is a running dog? I mean, what does the phrase signify in Chinese? It's not whippets, is it.
Posted by: ajay | January 10, 2013 at 09:27 AM
IIRC from rhetoric about "running dogs of capitalism etc", in Asia a dog is servile if it runs to you whenever you call it. In Europe, a dog is servile if it sits in your lap.
Posted by: dsquared | January 10, 2013 at 09:48 AM
Ah, right. I thought it might be some kind of jackal metaphor - i.e. capitalism itself is Shere Khan and it is followed around by lots of Tabaquis, muttering "hit him, boss! Yeah! You're the greatest!"
Posted by: ajay | January 10, 2013 at 10:20 AM
In fact, though, the phrase could be better translated as "Golden Retriever".
Posted by: ajay | January 10, 2013 at 10:21 AM
I think a lot of communist abuse is just old Russian curses, repurposed for class war and sent to China, whence they have appeared to embed themselves in the thrusting internetty economy.
Posted by: jamie | January 10, 2013 at 03:02 PM
The misconceptions of a Prussian about the French revolution and British economic history, written in order to win arguments against other Germans, implemented out of context by Russians (broadly defined), and used by Chinese people as an operations manual for a superpower.
Posted by: Alex | January 10, 2013 at 04:06 PM
Things that the PRC is still incapable of producing itself and must therefore import from Russia:
political insults
high-performance turbofan engines
Posted by: ajay | January 10, 2013 at 05:20 PM