Heike, Jike, Chuangke: Creativity in Chinese Technology Community
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Heike, Jike, Chuangke: Creativity in Chinese Technology Community by Yu Wang M.A. Communication, University of Science and Technology of China, 2013 SUBMITTED TO THE PROGRAM IN COMPARATIVE MEDIA STUDIES/WRITING IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF SCIENCE IN COMPARATIVE MEDIA STUDIES AT THE MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY June 2015 © 2015 Yu Wang. All rights Reserved. The author hereby grants to MIT permission to reproduce and to distribute publicly paper and electronic copies of this thesis document in whole or part in any medium now known or hereafter created. Signature of Author: .......................................................................................................................... Program in Comparative Media Studies May 8 2015 Certified by: ....................................................................................................................................... Jing Wang Professor of Chinese Media & Cultural Studies S.C. Fang Professor of Chinese Languages & Culture Thesis Supervisor Accepted by: ...................................................................................................................................... T.L. Taylor Director of Graduate Studies Comparative Media Studies Heike, Jike, Chuangke: Creativity in Chinese Technology Community By Yu Wang Submitted to the Department of Comparative Media Studies/Writing on May 8, 2015, in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Comparative Media Studies ABSTRACT This thesis surveys creativity in Chinese technology communities and its implication in China’s development mode shift from “Made in China” to “Created in China.” It discussed the history of creativity in China and how various types of creativity apply to Chinese technology communities. This thesis investigated Heike, or Chinese hackers, through archival research of Chinese hacker magazines; it explored topics discussed in Jike media, or Chinese geek media, using text mining (a type of data mining) methods including co-occurrence analysis, TF-IDF analysis and topic models (based on LDA); this thesis also includes a field study of Chuangke, seeing how Chinese Chuangke teachers build makerspaces in their schools, engage with the Chuangke education ecosystem, nurture future makers in their makerspaces, and interpret the Maker Movement in Chinese context. This thesis views Chinese hacker culture, geek culture, and maker culture under the lenses of “Ke” cultures, and it examines these cultures’ relationships with technology learning, self-expression, innovation, and entrepreneurship in China. Thesis Supervisor: Jing Wang Title: Professor of Chinese Media & Cultural Studies, MIT 2 Contents Chapter 1 Introduction .................................................................................................................... 4! Chapter 2 Heike, the Chinese Hackers ......................................................................................... 25! Chapter 3 Jike, the Chinese Geeks ................................................................................................ 54! Chapter 4 Chuangke, the Chinese Makers .................................................................................... 80! Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 109! References ................................................................................................................................... 116! Appendix I A List of Stop Words Used in Text-mining ............................................................. 127! Appendix II Source Code for Text-mining ................................................................................. 129! 3 Chapter 1 Introduction The topic “Created in China” has been under the spotlight for a long time. Chinese policymakers hope that by promoting creativity and creative industries, China could move out of the problematic “made in China” development model, which is fiercely criticized for its high pollution, problematic working condition, and unsustainability. At the same time, Chinese policymakers and businessmen are allured by the potentials of the symbolic value associated with creativity, such as an increase in global influence (so-called “soft power”) or the value of brand. Chinese policy makers believe that in the global chain of production, the West profits from its competitive advantage in the domain of research and development while China is bogged down by the hard job of manufacturing. The Chinese government and businessmen have long been dreaming about reversing this economic food chain of and moving up to the top of the value pyramid. While the Chinese are undergoing a soul-searching about their capacity for innovation, the west is keeping a close eye at China’s move on creativity. After China became the world factory, industry observers and pundits in the West never stopped wondering whether China would become a creative center in the future. They wonder if the Chinese can only make things but can never be truly creative. Researchers seek clues in Chinese history, talk to Chinese government officials, attend conferences, and listen to Chinese scholars. Every effort is made to answer a same set of questions: is China emulating the west in creativity space? Will the strategies proposed by Chinese government transform China into a creative nation? Will China eventually climb up the value chain of international business – and ultimately drive its profit from successful strategies and technology breakthrough instead of relying on cheap labor? 4 In the academic sense, China is a test ground for creativity theorists, especially those who study economic and social development as it is associated with culture, creativity and innovation. China is an emerging developing country, so it can be put to test as to whether this “Created in China” movement can be applied to other developing countries. China has a non-western culture, thus if is succeeded in building a creative economy, it gives credence to the idea that development through creativity is universal, not specifically embedded within a particular culture. China is still regarded a non-democratic country, guided for thousands of years by Confucianism (which is considered largely a conservative and restrictive culture) and later by Maoism. It is known to be led by an authoritarian government and notorious for its censorship on mass media and Internet. The view of creative China also provides a challenge the long-held conventional wisdom that creative industries can only appear in a democratic and open society. Scholars took different approaches to the debate on “created in China.”. One school focuses on policy changes and political efforts that can lead to the growth of industrial clusters. In his book “How Creativity is Changing China”, Li Wuwei, a senior policy maker, explains why China should plan its shift from a low-end production nation to a “creative nation”, and how creativity is changing China by combining different economic and social resources1. Michael Keane, who has been involved in his decade long project of studying China’s creative industries, wrote a book named “Created in China: The great new leap forward”. In this book, he surveyed China’s modes of culture-knowledge production and its interaction with foreign culture throughout history. He examines China’s governmental policies and the creative clusters set up by Chinese government, and other business practices. Focusing primarily on cultural production such as films, TV, and animation, he concluded that to make the move “from Made in China to 1 Wuwei, Li. How Creativity is Changing China. A&C Black, 2011. 5 Created in China” a success, “more institution reform, more openness, and more transparency2” is required. However, in his later book published in 2011, “China’s new Creative Clusters: Governance, human capital and investment”, he agrees that “the creative industries discourse in China should not be evaluated through the same ideological lenses as in democratic states where creative expression is a given3”. However, he also noted that creative industries are facing the pressure of return of investment, and that creative industries in China is still immersed in the debate about whether creativity is harmonious or detrimental to the state ideology4. In response to the requirement of “openness and tolerance”, Li, a policymaker from Chinese government, reframes “free expression” from a “moral or ethical context” to that of “thinking freely, experimenting freely and conduct business freely5”, which is achievable via policy incentives and planning. From here we could see, the discussion around the national infrastructure of creative industry goes beyond simple “yes-or-no” questions. It is embedded in a multi-layered debate. Another approach to the debate over “Created in China” focuses on business practice and consumer mentality. Shaun Rein’s book, “The End of Copycat China” is largely based on interviews with business people and average urban consumers. He argues that China has gone through the “copycat” stage and entered a stage of “innovating for China”, which will finally lead to “innovation for the rest of the world”. Through his research, he concludes that this happened because the “low hanging fruit” – opportunities for making a profit just by copycatting Western products or business models – had disappeared, and that