[bilbo0s]

Wow, where are you at?

It sounds like you are hearing a lot of pro-Google sentiment, but here in Ningbo, all I get from people is anger. Curiously enough, the anger is not about Google or the censors, but it seems more about the West 'trying to push China around...' or 'trying to keep China down...'

So much so that I've learned to avoid even remotely political conversations with people here.

Maybe I should start hanging out with more English speakers, but then I wouldn't be able to learn as much of the language.

Sigh...

[ntoshev]

Same old story: a corrupt government invokes patriotic feelings to counter attacks against itself from abroad (or inside, associate the opposition with external forces and call them traitors). I'm so sick of this.

[Quarrelsome]

Yeah but to be honest it's H.Clinton's fault for providing them with ammunition. What else did she think she was going to achieve by adding her weight to the argument? It was completely unnecessary and IMO a diplomacy fail.

It's the same with Ahmadinejad, most Iranians don't like him but they'll be "for" him if the Western world is being seen to deny them nuclear power.

[nostrademons]

Sounds an awful lot like the Bush administration in the aftermath of 9/11 and the buildup to the Iraq war...

[prole]

I'm in Harbin, but location has little to do with it since this pertains more to cyberspace than meatspace. The pro-Google sentiment I refer to in the beginning was coming from mostly Western blogs and social news sites. For a Chinese netizen perspective, chinaSMACK translates comments from popular BBSes here (though I don't know about authenticity/bias - my Chinese isn't that good yet). Here's an example regarding the Google announcement: http://www.chinasmack.com/stories/google-threatens-leaving-c....

It's difficult for me to gauge the Chinese reaction on my own, though. A handful of translated comments or an online poll don't amount to anything, really. Doubly so once you're aware of the "50-cent gangsters" who are paid to astroturf online (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party and http://www.zonaeuropa.com/20091221_1.htm). The best resource I have are my adult students who spend the time online and can give me their impressions. So far, their responses have been to the tune of: "If Google leaves, what am I going to do!? I use GMail and many other services, and the search engine is better than Baidu for finding information in English. It's a critical part of my work!"

It should be noted that all of them (university-level and older) are aware of the censorship, they just have differing ideas on its necessity.

Do they feel like the West is unfairly criticizing China? The Party loves playing the victim, probably because Western media affords them ample opportunity. What better way to unify the Chinese and distract them from a growing number of domestic problems than an enormous external enemy? But it's probably not always the direct work of the government - the Chinese are culturally cohesive, where the group is more important than the individual. Nationalism and its ilk pop up so often in the discussions here with students, it's frightening. (I used to live in Japan before coming here, and naturally it comes up when meeting new people. Actually having to try and reassure some people that modern Japan does not want to invade China and enslave them is unreal.)

Honestly, it's tough to say if such anti-Western reactions are genuine (thought out and justified) or just an internalized defensive mechanism.