1. Media tug of war in China:
Last week, my daughter sent me this amazing Bloomberg.com story, accompanied by graphics and clickable family trees, that unraveled how the “princeling” ancestors of China’s “Eight Immortals” – the generals and party leaders who built the communist superpower – now control the country’s leading industrial and financial conglomerates. The New York Times has also been on the case, detailing in articles like this one and this one how those controlling China’s national and regional governments have showered favors on their entrepreneurial relatives.
Then, last Friday the Times added a report describing heightened Internet blocking measures that Chinese authorities are taking to keep these kinds of stories about Chinese crony capitalism and other scandals from being seen online in China. The new efforts to firewall information that would embarrass the ruling class even include trying to block offending content from reaching the virtual private networks (VPNs) used by corporations to ensure the privacy and security of the information their employees transmit around the world.
It’s all fascinating, important stuff. But it’s only the opening rumble of what could be one of the major business and political stories of 2013. After all, this is the kind of information that threatens to overturn the implicit deal with the citizenry that the Communist Party rulers have depended on for the last two decades: let us rule and we won’t act like Communists when it comes to giving you economic opportunity.
Yet maintaining a digital firewall seems fruitless – and trying to is hardly going to go unnoticed.
So, this confrontation is going to be worth constant coverage. News organizations ought to set the scene now for the fight that’s coming by giving us the scoops on:
