Behind Beijing’s web war on Apple

AFTER more than two weeks of sustained attack from China’s biggest state media outlets, Apple finally genuflected last week and apologised for its “perceived” arrogance and disregard for Chinese customers. The lesson was clear: the world’s most powerful brand is no match for the Chinese Communist Party in a head-tohead battle.

But there was another important lesson that came out of the skirmish. On the internet, which the party can corral with the “Great Firewall” but cannot really control, and particularly on Twitter-like Weibo, the backlash against the state and the cheering for Apple was devastating. “Our support for Apple doesn’t mean we agree with the company’s insincere behaviour; it mostly represents our contempt for China’s shameless (state) media,” wrote Wan Tao, the young CE of a Chinese technology company.

It is pretty much axiomatic that the young, urban and middle class in China are apolitical and accept the social contract presented to them by the party after the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown — stay out of politics and we will let you have lots of shiny things.

But, at least in the virtual world, that compact has broken down, partly as a result of the technology that has come along with all the shiny things companies such as Apple are selling. It was subtle at first — a few coded comments poking fun at a particular government policy, a mildly subversive cartoon passed around until it was deleted by the web watchers. But in the past three or four years, along with a huge rise in internet users, the wave of mockery and cynicism directed against the government has grown exponentially.

Hi-tech gadgets and social media sites are inherently cool and the fact that online discourse is dominated by snide remarks about the government makes poking fun at the government cool as well. In private, senior party officials worry they have lost control of the public discourse, which now revolves around Weibo.

The fact that the party used to exercise such a stranglehold over all forms of public expression has probably made the online awakening of petty dissent so much more shocking to the mandarins in Beijing.

Humour, particularly satirical humour, is anathema to authoritarian regimes and Chinese leaders fear being laughed at more than outright opposition or even rebellion.

They like to define their tenure with slogans — Xi Jinping, the new president, seems to have chosen the “Chinese dream” as his political strapline, but already there has been a wave of mockery.

“I have a dream that one day I will be able to breathe fresh air, drink clean water and eat vegetables that aren’t poisoned,” wrote Pan Caifu, a columnist, on his Weibo account. “But these are biological necessities … if we have to ‘dream’ about having these things then talking about a China Dream is just a joke.”

For people who lived through the fall of the Soviet Union, scathing political humour was a telltale sign the old order would eventually fall. Another sign of bankruptcy in Soviet times was the popularity of blue jeans and US rock music. Twitter, Facebook and iPads are the blue jeans of China and that is one reason the party has blocked the first two and may be planning an assault on the third. 2013 The Financial Times Limited