Public Diplomacy in the Age of the Internet a Minority

1 112TH CONGRESS " ! S. PRT. 1st Session COMMITTEE PRINT 112–15 ANOTHER U.S. DEFICIT —CHINA AND AMERICA— PUBLIC DIPLOMACY IN THE AGE OF THE INTERNET A MINORITY STAFF REPORT PREPARED FOR THE USE OF THE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS UNITED STATES SENATE ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION FEBRUARY 15, 2011 Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations Available via World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gpo.gov U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 64–768 PDF WASHINGTON : 2011 For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512–1800; DC area (202) 512–1800 Fax: (202) 512–2104 Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC 20402–0001 VerDate Nov 24 2008 13:05 Mar 28, 2011 Jkt 062931 PO 00000 Frm 00001 Fmt 5012 Sfmt 5012 S:\HEARING FILES\112TH CONGRESS, 1ST\STAFF TOPIC REPORTS\CHINA, PAUL FOL seneagle COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts, Chairman BARBARA BOXER, California RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey BOB CORKER, Tennessee BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho ROBERT P. CASEY, JR., Pennsylvania MARCO RUBIO, Florida JIM WEBB, Virginia JAMES M. INHOFE, Oklahoma JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire JIM DEMINT, South Carolina CHRISTOPHER A. COONS, Delaware JOHNNY ISAKSON, Georgia RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming TOM UDALL, New Mexico MIKE LEE, Utah FRANK G. LOWENSTEIN, Staff Director KENNETH A. MYERS, JR., Republican Staff Director (II) VerDate Nov 24 2008 13:05 Mar 28, 2011 Jkt 062931 PO 00000 Frm 00002 Fmt 5904 Sfmt 5904 S:\HEARING FILES\112TH CONGRESS, 1ST\STAFF TOPIC REPORTS\CHINA, PAUL FOL CONTENTS Page Letter of Transmittal ............................................................................................... v Executive Summary ................................................................................................. 1 Findings, Observations and Recommendations ..................................................... 4 Introduction .............................................................................................................. 7 Public Diplomacy (PD) ..................................................................................... 7 Why Does China Even Need PD? .................................................................... 7 PD As A Mirror: How China Views Itself .............................................................. 9 Chinese PD—Modern Day Reliance on a Distant Past ................................. 9 Chinese PD Platforms: The Rise of the Confucius Institute ......................... 10 American PD Platforms in China—Too Small, Too Few To Matter ............ 12 U.S.-China People to People PD ...................................................................... 15 How Mighty is ‘‘100,000 Strong’’?—Higher Education as PD ....................... 16 Introducing the World to China—the 2008 Olympics; Introducing China to the World—the 2010 World Expo ............................................................ 18 Chinese PD in Uniform .................................................................................... 22 PD Realities: The World’s View of China .............................................................. 23 KFPD—‘‘Kung Fu Panda Diplomacy’’ and the Role of Cinema in PD ......... 24 No Nobel for Liu Xiaobo—Poor Human Rights Undermine China’s PD Efforts ............................................................................................................ 25 China—First or Third World? ......................................................................... 29 Commercial Dominance and Territorial Saber Rattling Strain Local Rela- tionships ........................................................................................................ 30 An iPhone Does Not Equal Democracy ........................................................... 34 The ‘‘Google-ization’’ of Internet Freedom ...................................................... 35 ‘‘The Web is Fundamentally Controllable’’—The Great Firewall of China . 36 China’s Answer —Create Our Own Internet Sites We Can Control ............ 39 Beating the Censors at Their Own Game—Proxies and VPNs .................... 40 U.S. Broadcasting—Already Practicing Internet Censorship Circumven- tion Every Day .............................................................................................. 43 APPENDIXES Appendix A.—List of Confucius Institutes in USA by Year ................................. 45 Appendix B.— U.S. Legislation Regarding Funding of International Expo- sitions .................................................................................................................... 47 Appendix C.—Foreign Film Box Office Gross in China 1999–2010 .................... 49 Appendix D.—October 11, 2010 Open Letter to the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress Calling for Greater Press Freedom ............... 55 Appendix E.—Committee to Protect Journalists’ 2010 List of Imprisoned Chi- nese Journalists ................................................................................................... 63 Appendix F.—Screen Shots of Baidu Searches as Seen from Inside the Great Firewall ................................................................................................................. 65 Liu Xiaobo ......................................................................................................... 65 Tiananmen Square ........................................................................................... 66 Tibet ................................................................................................................... 67 Radio Free Asia (RFA) ..................................................................................... 68 Cairo’s Tahrir Square ....................................................................................... 69 (III) VerDate Nov 24 2008 13:05 Mar 28, 2011 Jkt 062931 PO 00000 Frm 00003 Fmt 5905 Sfmt 5905 S:\HEARING FILES\112TH CONGRESS, 1ST\STAFF TOPIC REPORTS\CHINA, PAUL FOL VerDate Nov 24 2008 13:05 Mar 28, 2011 Jkt 062931 PO 00000 Frm 00004 Fmt 5905 Sfmt 5905 S:\HEARING FILES\112TH CONGRESS, 1ST\STAFF TOPIC REPORTS\CHINA, PAUL FOL LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL UNITED STATES SENATE, COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, Washington, DC, February 15, 2011. DEAR COLLEAGUES: Official U.S. interest in China for political, economic and strategic reasons has been part of our foreign policy for decades. Most Americans, on the other hand, when they have thought about issues outside our borders, have tended to focus on events in Europe and more recently the Middle East. But no more. The latest Pew Research poll shows that for the first time Asia has now overtaken Europe, by a wide margin, as the area of the world most important to Americans. This is not that surprising given the extent to which the United States and China are currently entwined in our most complex bilat- eral relationship. While we are increasingly dependent on each other for credit and markets, we nonetheless eye each other warily as each country copes with the economic challenges confronting it. At the same time, U.S. global strategic dominance will face pres- sures from China’s growing military expenditures and nascent but rising nationalist sentiment. Greater focus on China is necessary not only to enhance our national and economic security but to im- prove our ability to compete with China in markets overseas as well. One way to address these issues is through our public diplomacy with China. Yet in the same way that our trade with China is out of balance, it is clear to even the casual observer, that when it comes to interacting directly with the other nation’s public, we are in another lop-sided contest. China has a vigorous public diplomacy program, based on a portrayal of an ancient, benign China that is, perhaps, out of touch with modern realities. Nonetheless, we are being overtaken in this area of foreign policy by China, which is able to take advantage of America’s open system to spread its mes- sage in many different ways, while using its fundamentally closed system to stymie U.S. efforts. Chinese obstruction of our efforts to engage their citizens through both U.S. Government and commercial means is of par- ticular concern given how China restricts its own population’s ac- cess to information about the outside world and even the very workings of its own government and society. Internal scandals in- volving tainted milk, shoddy construction of schools that collapsed in recent earthquakes and corruption by high ranking officials or their family are but some of the many topics deemed too sensitive, risking the ‘‘harmonious balance’’ in Chinese society. (V) VerDate Nov 24 2008 13:05 Mar 28, 2011 Jkt 062931 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6602 Sfmt 6602 S:\HEARING FILES\112TH CONGRESS, 1ST\STAFF TOPIC REPORTS\CHINA, PAUL FOL vi But Beijing’s efforts to suppress information are beginning to produce stresses on its political system that will have lasting reper- cussions as more and more Chinese grow frustrated with their own government’s ‘‘Great Firewall of China.’’ China’s suppression of news regarding the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to jailed dis- sident Liu Xiaobo, cyber attacks on Google and repeated harass- ment of those who voice their opinion on the Internet are but a few illustrations. China is also beginning to export its Internet censorship tech- nologies to other countries bent on controlling information. In part because of this, and

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