There was a huge discussion 2 weeks ago on China blocking Twitter and other social networks for June 4th Tienanmen Anniversary 2009.

I don’t think we need further analysis and opinion on that issue, but today, Thomas Crampton, Jean-François Amadei and I were lucky enough to meet Chinese journalist and political blogger, Michael Anti (Chinese: 赵静 or 安替), who gave me a new angle on the social media environment in China and how Chinese behavior on Twitter different from most of us.

China has No Citizen

As Michael Anti mentioned at the beginning of the meeting, Chinese people think that there’s “No Citizen” in China, only “Netizens” because people can only freely express their point of view online.And Michael Anti believes that the growth of Netizen will eventually turn Chinese into Citizens.

Heaven or Hell?

There are two sides of media in China. Traditional media (TV, newspaper, radio) in China make China heaven, while social media in China make China Hell. Michael Anti also kidded about how it takes only a day for most Chinese people to turn anti-government if they get on social media like Twitter.

The meaning of “Coffee”

Learned from Michael that in China these days,  “having coffee” refers to how police ask netizens to have coffee and chat with them at the police station for hours when found posting sensitive content on the Internet.

Twitter is more than 140 in China

As we all know that “simple” is the whole point of using Twitter for it only allows 140 characters for each status update, which is around 30 words in English and other major lanuages, but not in Chinese. 140 charactors = 140 words in Chinese, which is already long enough to be a paragraph with the 5W (Who What When Where Why) and it completely changes the form of Chinese Tweets. Michael Anti believes that Twittersphere (in English) would be totally different too of it offered 350+ characters.

Say Yes to Retweets (RT), but No to @Replies

Unlike most of the Twitter users who interact, Chinese Twitter users see Twitter as more of a news sharing/ grading tool. It is powerful because posts/ pieces of news are basically rated by human, which means the more RTs they see, the more important that piece of news means to them. Most of them don’t write tweets like “I am on my way to work” or “@username: what are your plans for tonight” because they have other platforms to do so. (Facebook, Xiaonei and IM platform like QQ).

Thomas Crampton did a short video interview with Michael Anti, and will be posted on his blog. Also, thanks to Jean-François Amadei for the images below.

Thomas Crampton and I listening to Michael Anti

Michael Anti talking about Social Media in China