Reading diary consisted of 10

China Media Research, 8(1), 2012, Huang, Chinese Netizens’ Rhetorical Vision on Google’s Leaving China http://www.chinamediaresearch.net 40 [email protected] To Stay or Not to Stay, That’s Politics: Chinese Netizens’ Rhetorical Vision on Google’s Leaving China Shaorong Huang University of Cincinnati, USA Abstract: The population of Chinese netizens was 384 million by the end of 2009, with 3.68 million websites and 180 million blogs. These Internet users have formed a unique and vociferous community. They are eager to follow with interest the world, state and local affairs, ready to collect information and spread any kinds of news including rumors, and willing to express their opinions freely online. In their response to the Google’s threat of withdrawal from China in early 2010, Chinese netizens collectively formed a rhetorical vision that Google, a company with a “Don’t be evil” motto, was actually doing evil in China. In this paper, I will use Ernest Bormann’s symbolic convergence theory, an important communication theory, and the fantasy theme analysis, a method of rhetorical criticism rooted from the theory, to analyze the three fantasy themes created by Chinese netizens—setting theme, character theme, and action theme that helped construct this rhetorical vision. [China Media Research. 2012; 8(1): 40-47] Keywords: Symbolic convergence, fantasy theme, communication, rhetorical vision, Chinese netizens, Internet censorship, Internet strategy, Internet policy The Internet giant Google entered China market in 2006. On January 12, 2010, Google issued an ultimatum-like statement saying that disputes with the Chinese government on Internet regulation and major cyber attacks on the company that allegedly originated from China had forced the company to consider leaving the nation. Some Western media applauded the company’s threat and portrayed Google as a guardian of human rights and freedom of speech. The US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wasted no time to lend her support on Google’s accusations. Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, also stated that the president backed Internet freedom. On March 24, 2010, the company moved its Chinese language search engine google.cn to Hong Kong.

Google’s threat and withdrawal angered many Chinese netizens, whose population was 384 million by the end of 2009, with 3.68 million websites and 180 million blogs. These Internet users have formed a unique and vociferous community. Witnessing the two months of the Internet row, many of them believed that the Google’s threat of withdrawal from China was nothing but a political posture to cover its business failure in the Chinese market, an effort in the US Internet strategy to seek Internet hegemony, and a deliberate plot to damage China’s image and to slow its fast economic development. A rhetorical vision that Google, a company with a “Don’t be evil” motto, was actually doing evil in China was thus formed.

In this paper, I will use Ernest Bormann’s symbolic convergence theory, an important communication theory, and the fantasy theme analysis, a method of rhetorical criticism rooted from the theory, to analyze the three fantasy themes created by Chinese netizens— setting theme, character theme, and action theme that helped construct this rhetorical vision. I will first briefly introduce Bormann’s symbolic convergence theory and the method of fantasy theme analysis. Then, I will review the history and development of Chinese Internet and Chinese netizen population. Finally, I will analyze the three fantasy themes created by Chinese netizens— setting theme, character theme, and action theme that helped construct the rhetorical vision that Google was doing evil in China.

Bormann’s Symbolic Convergence Theory and Fantasy Theme Analysis Symbolic convergence theory is an important communication theory developed by Professor Ernest Bormann in 1972. At that time, he was leading a small group communication seminar at University of Minnesota, studying the decision-making process in group discussion. For several years, most of the seminar’s “attempts to make a rhetorical criticism of small group communication proved relatively barren until psychologist Robert Bales published Personality and Interpersonal Behavior in 1970” (Bormann, 1972, p.

396). In their study of communication in small groups, Robert Bales and his associates discovered the process of group dramatizing or fantasizing that created social reality for groups of people. This fantasizing communication in small groups is described in this way: “The tempo of the conversation would pick up. People would grow excited, interrupt one another, blush, laugh, forget their self-consciousness. The tone of the meeting, often quiet and tense immediately prior to the dramatizing, would become lively, animated, and boisterous, the chaining process, involving both verbal and nonverbal communication, indicating participation in the drama” (p. 396). Bormann found that the group China Media Research, 8(1), 2012, Huang, Chinese Netizens’ Rhetorical Vision on Google’s Leaving China http://www.chinamediaresearch.net 41 [email protected] fantasy Bales and his associates had discovered was what Bormann’s small group communication seminar had been working on at Minnesota. He extended Bales’ notion of fantasizing into a theory—symbolic convergence theory and a method—fantasy theme analysis that “can be applied not only to the study of small groups but to the communication of social movements, political campaigns, organizational communication, and other kinds of rhetoric as well” (Foss, 1989, p. 289). In an article to defend the theory, Bormann and his associates claim that “the symbolic convergence theory is a general one that applies to all human communication no matter the context” (Bormann et al., 1994, p. 275).

Symbolic convergence theory is a general theory of communication, while fantasy theme analysis is a method of rhetorical criticism underpinned by the theory. Bormann believes that by sharing common fantasies, individuals are transformed into a cohesive group, thus “the sharing of group fantasies creates symbolic convergence” (Bormann, 1990, p. 122).

Communication theorist Em Griffin (2003) points out that Bormann’s fantasies include “any reference to events in the group’s past, speculation about what might happen in the future,” and that they “are expressed in the form of stories, jokes, metaphors, and other imaginative language that interprets or places a spin on familiar events” (p. 38). Griffin uses an imaginative example to illustrate the fantacizing process. Suppose a group of cattlemen are having a regular Saturday morning breakfast in a cafe at Great Falls, Montana.

One rancher tells a story about a man carrying a briefcase who knocked on his door. “Hello, Mr. Clayton Rogers,” the stranger says, “I’m from the federal government and I’m here to help you.” Whether or not the event really happened is not important. If the story triggers a burst of derisive laughter or other tales of bureaucratic interference, a fantasy chain reaction is developed in the group, so is the symbolic convergence (p. 38).

Symbolic convergence theory is based on two assumptions: that communication creates reality for individuals, and that the meanings individuals hold for symbols can converge to create a shared reality (Foss, 1989, pp. 289-290). Convergence here refers to shared meaning. With convergence, individuals “share a common consciousness and have the basis for communicating with one another to create community, to discuss their common experience, and to achieve mutual understanding” (Bormann, 1983, p. 104). Bormann’s symbolic convergence theory and the method of fantasy theme analysis do not focus on the speaker, the audience, the channel, or the situation, but on the message and the sharing of the message, the later is even more significant.

With its roots in symbolic convergence theory, fantasy theme analysis is a method of rhetorical criticism which enables critics to explore the shared worldview of communicators. Donald Shields and Thomas Preston (1985) have identified five assumptions of the method: 1) through messages people build a shared view of reality that is created symbolically; 2) a rhetorical community’s shared view of reality is best analyzed through a rhetorical concept called a fantasy theme; 3) meaning, emotion, and motive for action are in the message; 4) as people begin to share and extend fantasy, they build up a composite dramatistic explanation or reality that is filled with heroes, villains, plotlines, scenic description and sanctioning agents for maintaining and promulgating the rhetorical vision; and 5) rhetorical visions are often in competition about the same issues (pp. 103-104).

Fantasy theme is the basic unit of symbolic convergence theory and fantasy theme analysis, and there are three major fantasy themes for critics to use.

They are setting theme, character theme, and action theme (Foss, 1989, pp. 290-291). When there is “a swirling together of fantasy themes to provide a credible interpretation of reality,” a rhetorical vision is constructed, and it “contains fantasy themes relating to setting, characters, and actions that together form a symbolic drama or a coherent interpretation of reality” (p. 292). Fantasy theme analysis has been used by many communication theorists and scholars in rhetorical criticism (Bormann, 1973, 1982; Wells, 1996; Jackson, 2000; Benoit et al., 2001; Bishop, 2003; Chen, 2007). In this paper, I will use this method to investigate the fantasy themes and the rhetorical vision shared by the Chinese netizens in their response to the report of Google’s decision to leave China. Before that, I’ll briefly discuss the development of the Internet and Internet users in China.

Internet and Netizens in China Internet was first connected to China in 1987. In the same year, Qian Tianbai, a professor of the Chinese Academy of Science (CAS), sent out the first e-mail message from China, making the beginning of Internet utilization and development in China. According to Lu et al. (2001), the development of the Internet in China has undergone two major phases. From 1987 to 1993 was the first phase, during which the High-Energy Physics Laboratory of CAS and a few other research institutes started accessing the Internet and implementing e-mail services through CHINAPAC. The second phase started in 1994 and spanned to present. During this period, TCP/IP connections were developed to offer full Internet services, and large networks such as CSTNET, CHINANET, CERNET and CHINAGBN were founded as China’s first-level Internet service providers (p. 207). Chinese search engines were also developed with a rapid speed. By the end of 1999, 74 such search engines were founded, and the number continues to grow (p. 208). China Media Research, 8(1), 2012, Huang, Chinese Netizens’ Rhetorical Vision on Google’s Leaving China http://www.chinamediaresearch.net 42 [email protected] With the fast development of the Internet, the Chinese search engines, and the Chinese websites, there was a boom in Chinese Internet users, or the population of Chinese netizens. By the end of 2000, the total number of netizens in Mainland China reached 22.5 million (p. 210). By the end of 2007, this number surpassed 210 million, and registered websites reached 1.5 million (“Chinese Agency,” 2008, p. 1). In June 2008, the number of Internet users in Mainland China reached about 253 million, making China the world’s biggest Internet market, overtaking the US. This number also represents a 56 percent increase in the previous 12 months (Wu, 2008, p. 1). At the same time, 84.6 percent of Chinese netizens have broadband access, giving China the world’s highest number of broadband users.

More over, this time 12.19 million websites were registered with the “.cn” domain name (p.1). However, the number of China’s netizens represented only 19 percent of China’s population, while the ratio was 21 percent worldwide and 72 percent in the US (“Chinese World’s,” 2008, p. 1). By the end of 2009, China’s Internet users hit 384 million. The number registered a 28.9 percent jump since the end of 2008, and the country’s Internet penetration reached to 28.9 percent, though still low compared to the US. Mobile Internet users also increased by 120 million in a year to reach a total of 233 million (“Internet Users,” 2010, p. 1).

According to the survey of CNNIC, among the 22.5 million Chinese netizens in 2000, 69.6 percent were male and 30.4 percent were female (Lu et al., 2001, p. 210). The gap between male and female netizens changed significantly by June 2008, with 46.4 percent of the population being women (“Chinese World’s,” 2008, p. 1). Among the 253 million Chinese netizens in 2008, 39 percent had a high school diploma (Wu, 2008, p. 2). Netizens aged below 30 accounted for 69 percent of the total web users. High school students contributed a lot to the high growth rate, with 56 percent increase in the first half of 2008, accounting for 39 million of the 43 million new Net users (“Chinese World’s,” 2008, p. 1). About 11.39 percent of Chinese netizens between 18 and 23 suffer Internet addiction, and among those addicted, 68.64 percent are male and 31.36 percent are female (“One Tenth,” 2008, p. 1). One third of the Chinese netizen population would go online at net cafes, known as wangba or web bars (Watts, 2008, p. 2).

Chinese President Hu Jintao publicly admitted to be a netizen himself in 2003 when he told a group of doctors in Gongzhou that he had read about their good suggestions on how to treat SARS victims online. In the same year, Premier Wen Jiabao also revealed that he was a netizen when he went to Beijing University for an observation tour in the middle of anti-SARS campaign.

On June 20, 2008, President Hu even visited Qianguo Forum of the popular website, bbs.people.com.cn, and answered a few questions from other netizens. Since the Internet has become a major stage where the general public can pass on their opinions freely and effectively, Chinese governing authorities have started to interact with netizens and to collect public opinions from online sources. It is reported that central leaders of the country “can see public opinion information collected and assembled by the related departments and government organs from the Internet on the same day,” and that more and more Chinese government officials “regard surfing online as a day-to-day routine task they must do” (“Chinese Leaders,” 2007, p. 2). In 2003, a 21-year- old college student, Sun Zhigang, was mistakenly detained as a vagrant in Guangdong Province and later died in the detaining center. This event immediately became a heated issue online and triggered the cancellation of a long-time national regulation, “Procedures for Detaining and Transporting Vagrants and Beggars in Cities.” This is a striking example of the role the Internet has played in government’s decision- making. Premier Wen Jiabao said at a press conference in March 2006, “The Chinese government supports the development and wide application of the Internet. The people’s government is supposed to accept democratic supervision imposed by the masses, including seeking opinions from a wide range of sectors via the Internet” (p. 2).

China’s netizens have the unique characteristics, namely, they very much like to express their opinions online because the Internet as compared to traditional media is more open to let them do so. In comparison with the US Internet users, surveys suggest that Chinese netizens “are more passionate about the web, three times more likely to feel freer in the virtual world than in reality, and more than twice as likely to consider themselves addicted” (Watts, 2008, p. 2). A survey in 2008 suggested that among 253 million Chinese netizens, 81.5 percent, or 206 million users, “read news online and regarded the Web as their major source of news,” while 11 percent of US netizens read news on the Internet and 67.1 in South Korea (Wu, 2008, p. 1). Most Chinese netizens like to express their opinions on various forums, as well as on personal blog sites. By the end of 2007, over 70 million blog sites were opened on the Internet (“Chinese Agency,” 2008, p. 1). According to sina.com, one of China’s popular web portal, the site of China’s most popular blogger, the actress Xu Jinglei, “has attracted more than 174 million visitors over the last few years,” and “11 other bloggers have also attracted more than 100 million visitors in recent years” (Barboza, 2008, p. 2). Chinese netizens have built up a community of their own, where they freely interact with others, collect news and information, express their opinions, exchanging stories or spread rumors, and create fantasies. China Media Research, 8(1), 2012, Huang, Chinese Netizens’ Rhetorical Vision on Google’s Leaving China http://www.chinamediaresearch.net 43 [email protected] Chinese Netizens’ Rhetorical Vision and Fantasies Rhetorical vision is a “composite drama that catches up large groups of people into a common symbolic reality” (Jackson, 2000, p. 197). Like any other forms of drama, this one also includes the setting, where the action taking place; the characters, the agents or actors taking the action; and the action or the plotlines of the drama. In order to fully understand the origin and the development of Chinese netizens’ rhetorical vision that Google was doing evil in China, we need to carefully analyze its three elements or three fantasy themes; namely, the setting theme, the character theme, and the action theme.

Setting Theme: The Google incident is a pawn on the chessboard of the US Internet strategy and its policy on Sino-American relation.

Setting is the scene of a drama, the place where the action occurs, and the place where the characters of the play act out their roles. In many dramas, the setting or the scene “becomes so important that it appears to influence both the qualities attributed to the actors or characters and the plotlines within the vision” (Shields & Preston, 1985, p. 107). In the field of rhetorical criticism, some famous examples of rhetorical visions “where the exigencies of the scene have been deemed sufficiently powerful to load to the formation of a rhetorical vision include ‘the American frontier,’ ‘the Iron Curtain,’ ‘the Berlin Wall,’ ‘the Dark Continent,’ and ‘the Holocaust’” (p. 107). Most Chinese netizens understand that Google’s leaving China was not an isolated incident, or a pure business decision. It happened in a much large situation or environment. This big environment is the Internet strategy of the United States.

Some Chinese netizens point out:

The United States is trying to make people believe that in the Internet age, there are only “high seas” without “territorial waters.” While on the “high seas,” the United States, as a nation with superior power, can implement factual control in this Internet world. Therefore, it believes the Internet can be employed to establish hegemony which may be more difficult to achieve through other means. Internet freedom, though, could serve as a handy and disposable camouflage of today. (“Google Incident,” 2010, p. 1) Thus, those netizens conclude:

The essence of the US Internet strategy is to exploit its advantages in Internet funds, technology and marketing, and export its politics, commerce and culture to other nations for political, commercial and cultural interests of the world’s only superpower. This is not merely sales, but coerced trade under the disguise of protecting “universal values.” (p.1) The netizens believe that Google is such a tool that exports American politics, culture and value to other countries. The Google incident is nothing but an implication of Washington’s political game with China.

Some netizens notice that just a few days before Google made its announcement, on January 7, 2010, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had a lunch with chief executives of Google, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. At the lunch, Mrs. Clinton “lavishly praised US Internet companies for their role in helping the Obama administration realize its foreign policies,” and particularly appreciated “their positive role in instilling US political stances and values into Georgian and Iranian street politics to sway local public opinion” (“Google’s Exit,” 2010, p. 1). Since Facebook, Twitter and YouTube were no longer having access to the Chinese Internet market, Mrs. Clinton understood that Google alone could not “play a large role in China as it did in Georgia and Iran,” and that it “would be easily curtailed by China’s powerful Internet ‘Great Firewall’” (p. 1). Only a few days after that lunch, Google announced its threat of withdrawal of its search service from China on charges that hackers tried to infiltrate its software coding and invade the email accounts of Chinese human rights activists, and that the company could not tolerate strict Internet censorship required by the Chinese government. Chinese netizens identify those “Chinese human rights activists” as Xinjiang and Tibetan separatists, and consider Google’s action as a deliberate plot of pouring dirty water on China and Chinese government, a part of the Internet strategy of the United States.

Chinese netizens also see the Google incident as a sign of US policy shift in Sino-American relation. The god term for Obama’s 2008 election was “change.” For Obama administration, “change” in foreign policy means using the so-called soft power to influence the world, and using the “smart diplomacy,” coined by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in international affairs. At the beginning of Obama Administration, US tried to use both soft power and smart diplomacy in promoting Sino-American relation. However, the US found that China was not so cooperative in many bilateral and international issues, such as the ones at the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen in December 2009. After Obama’s maiden trip to China in November 2009, US seemed to re-adopt its hard-line approach towards Sino-American relation. Its voice became louder and tougher over trade issues and China’s currency issues. To make the relation even intense, the Obama administration announced the sale of weapons by the US to Taiwan, and Obama’s meeting China Media Research, 8(1), 2012, Huang, Chinese Netizens’ Rhetorical Vision on Google’s Leaving China http://www.chinamediaresearch.net 44 [email protected] with Dalai Lama, leader of the illegal Tibet government-in-exile, and a separatist labeled by the Chinese government. China regarded these US actions as a gross intervention into China’s internal affairs.

Immediately after Google announced its threat of withdrawal from China, the US government and media reacted quickly to the news by criticizing China’s Internet policy and accusing it of cyber warfare. The US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton demanded “an explanation” for claims that the Gmail system had been infiltrated. She said, “We look to Chinese authorities to conduct a thorough review of the cyber intrusions that led Google to make its announcement. We also look for that investigation and its results to be transparent” (“Clinton criticizes,” 2010, p. 1). She cited China as among countries like Tunisia, Uzbekistan, Egypt and Vietnam where there had been “a spike in threats to the free flow of information” over the past years. From Hillary Clinton’s figure-point and Obama administration’s support of Google, Chinese netizens see a huge government shadow behind the company’s action. This is the major setting of the Google incident.

Character Theme: To cover its business failure in China, the hypocritical Google uses politics to challenge Chinese laws and to pour dirty water on the Chinese government.

Characters are agents or actors in the drama. They are “attributed certain qualities, depicted as taking certain actions, represented as appearing within a certain scene, and their actions are motivated or justified by the sanctioning of a certain agent” (Shields & Preston, 1985, p. 106). In a certain drama or a vision, the characters include “both heroic and villainous” ones, as well as “minor and supporting players” (p. 107). In the drama of the Google incident, Chinese netizens identify the company as a villainous player.

“Would Google be doing this if it had top market share in China?” Chinese netizens ask scornfully.

Google China was founded in 2005 and launched its Google.cn service in 2006. In 2009, Google.cn only made $300 million, which is rather trivial compared to the $5.5 billion in overall revenue Google earned in the first quarter of 2009 alone. Google’s share of the Chinese search engine market is between 16 and 17 percent, while a China’s homegrown search engine Baidu enjoys 58 percent of the market share. Most Chinese netizens do not see Google as a political hero, but a business failure in the Chinese Internet market. Some netizens call Google’s retreat from Chinese market a Don Quixote style solemn tragic.

Google spokesman Gabriel Stricker told Institutional Investor in an email: “When we launched our service in China, we did so in the belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some search results.

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered- -as well as recent attempts to limit free speech on the web even further--have led us to conclude that we are no longer comfortable censoring results in China” (Cheng, 2010, p. 1). While some Western media outlets try to portray Google as a guardian of human rights and freedom of speech, Chinese netizens are doubtful about Google’s real intention. If Google’s exit threat is a matter of censorship and human rights, it should have taken the action much earlier, Chinese netizens argue.

Actually, it should have never entered the Chinese market, since it had to agree to follow the Chinese government rules on the management of the Internet before it was allowed to do business in China.

It is a common practice for a country to censor the Internet to protect the interests of its innocent users, and to safeguard the national security. FBI and other US intelligence agencies can hack into the mailboxes of citizens in the name of fighting terrorism, then, why can’t Chinese government, netizens ask, censor the Internet to protect its country from the separatists’ attack? What is the difference between recruiting jihadists in New York and inciting ethnic violence in Xinjiang or Tibet? It is widely recognized practice that a foreign company should abide by the laws and regulations of the country that it is operating and making money. How can Google force China to accept its unfair terms, and to change the Internet laws and regulations of the country? Many Chinese netizens may not be very happy with their own government, but they would not like a foreign company to challenge their country’s laws and to pour dirty water on their government.

Chinese netizens understand that Google has enjoyed intimate links with the Obama administration.

During 2008 election, Google was one of the four major sponsors of Obama’s presidential campaign. After the Obama administration was sworn in, at least four senior Google managerial staff members got important government positions. In the Pentagon, some security experts are from Google. These “close connections between the two make it natural for Google to be devoted to serve the Obama administration’s foreign strategy” (“Google’s Exit,” 2010, p. 1).

When explaining why Google decided to close its search engine in China, Google’s co-founder Sergey Brin states that China reminds him of the country of his birth, the former Soviet Union. He says, “In some aspects of their policy, particularly with respect to censorship, with respect to surveillance of dissidents, I see the same earmarks of totalitarianism, and I find that personally quite troubling” (Huang, 2010, p. 1). It is unknown what a Soviet Union Brin saw before he came to the United States in 1979 when he was 6 years old. What is obvious is that today’s China is no Soviet China Media Research, 8(1), 2012, Huang, Chinese Netizens’ Rhetorical Vision on Google’s Leaving China http://www.chinamediaresearch.net 45 [email protected] Union. In China, the Internet community is “easily one of the most dynamic and vibrant on Earth. On any issue, there are passionate debates and opinions across the ideological spectrum. Maoists, Hayekians and Confucians trade barbs with insults and zealotry. Blogs by serious intellectuals attract audiences unimaginable in the West. China’s market for ideas is enormous” (p.

2). To some extent, Chinese netizens feel free to question and criticize the government. Internet provides them with the technological means for a certain degree of free speech. Google co-founder’s opinion, if not malicious, is biased and prejudicial. This coincides with the prejudices cultivated in the Western public toward China and the Chinese government.

Action Theme: Google’s accusations against China and the Chinese government are completely groundless.

Opposition to cyber attacks and internet censorship are the two major reasons Google has selected for its excuses of its threat of withdrawal from China.

However, Chinese netizens believe that both accusations are groundless.

The controversy and issue surrounding the alleged cyber-attack on Google is absurd. The company can’t submit any convincing evidence of the Chinese government-aided hacker attacks on its search engine.

An American corporate trainer and English language teacher in Beijing who has been living in China for more than four years says, “… practically all Chinese, even those critical of the government, are passionate about maintaining the country’s territorial integrity. There are thus lots of people who need little encouragement from the government to hack into Gmail accounts of Tibetan and Xinjiang separatists” (“Let’s Google,” 2010, p. 1). It could be anybody for any purpose to hack into any email account. Anyone in any country can wage cyber attack on Gmail or any other Internet users. It “happens in Russia, too, where organized gangs routinely attack Gmail account holders but that has not caused Google to shut down shop in that country” (p. 1). Besides, Google is not the only company that suffers from hackers’ invasion. Other Internet companies such as Microsoft have been hacked all the time. No Internet portals can avoid attacks by hackers. The Chinese government has always considered such attacks as an online crime, because Chinese Internet users are also the victims of the cyber crime. If Google believes that the Chinese government is behind such crimes, it should show the solid evidence.

Otherwise, the accusation can only be a pretext Google has cooked for its political purpose.

Google’s another reason for its decision to pull its search engine out of China does not hold water either. As an international company, Google should not be so ignorant to see that preventing practices such as censorship prevail across the world. For example, the US congress approved the Patriot Act to allow security agencies to search telephone and email communications after the terrorists’ attack of September 11, 2001.

Moreover, regulators in Beijing have been censoring the Internet for years, and all websites operate in China under the same regulations. When Google launched its search operations in China in January 2006, it made the commitment of filtering its Chinese-language search results, as required by China Internet regulations. Four years later, the company demanded China to change its Internet laws and regulations while the Internet environment in the county had improved tremendously even in terms of censorship.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin complained in an interview with the Wall Street Journal that “online censorship in China has intensified in recent years” (Huang, 2010, p. 1). Although the Chinese government maintains a list of hundreds of banned search terms, with new ones added periodically, Huang (2010) argues, compared to “the total information available on the Internet in China, the number of banned terms is minuscule, no matter how quickly the list expands” (p.

2). Using the source from the China Internet Network Information Center, a web site run by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Huang finds that “the total amount of digital information stored on Chinese web sites has increased by more than 40 percent since 2005,” and that in early 2010 there are “more than 9 million domain names registered under ‘.cn,’ compared with 1.1 million in 2006, when Google first entered China” (p. 2).

With more than 300 million Internet users and more than 700 million mobile subscribes, many of whom access the web with their phones, it is difficult even to “imagine exerting airtight and sustained control over such a massive Internet network” (p. 2). Thus, Huang concludes that the censorship in China is not increasing, but “the volume of information to be censored is now far greater,” and that “the supply of content deemed worthy of censoring has multiplied, forcing the government to play catch up, often from a hopeless distance” (p. 2).

Internet security is an indispensable part of national security for any country. As an international Internet giant, Google has the responsibility to abide with other countries’ Internet laws and regulations. Some Western politicians criticize China for its Net policy although they have similar or even harsher laws and regulations in their own countries. By issuing an ultimatum that either China change its Internet laws and regulations or the company will pull its search engine out of the country, Google has provided these Western politicians with the accusations they needed to fulfill their hidden agenda. Therefore, despite its effort to abide by its noble motto, “Don’t be evil,” Chinese netizens believe, Google is actually doing evil in China. China Media Research, 8(1), 2012, Huang, Chinese Netizens’ Rhetorical Vision on Google’s Leaving China http://www.chinamediaresearch.net 46 [email protected] Conclusion China’s netizens are a fast growing population, a unique community, and a vociferous group. They are accustomed to show solicitude for the world, state and local affairs, inquire and spread any kinds of news, and express their opinions freely online. The report that Google threats to withdraw from China due to its disputes on censorship with the Chinese government and unidentified cyber attacks against the Gmail accounts of the Chinese separatists has triggered a fantasy chain reaction among them. They respond to the web news with angry comments, assuring accusations, personal experiences, group opinions, imagery facts, and hypothetical reasoning. By sharing common fantasies and same opinions, a collection of individual netizens is transformed into a cohesive group. Collectively they see that the Google incident is a pawn on the chessboard of the US Internet strategy and its policy on Sino-American relation, that to cover its business failure in China, the hypocritical Google uses politics to challenge Chinese laws and to pour dirty water on the Chinese government, and that Google’s accusation against China and the Chinese government are completely groundless. By sharing their own stories, reasoning, and opinions, Chinese netizens craft “the most credible interpretation of experience or the most comprehensible forms for making sense out of experience” (Foss, 1989, p. 291). A rhetorical vision that Google, a company with a “Don’t be evil” motto, was actually doing evil in China has thus been formed. This is the reality the Chinese netizens have created through symbolic convergence.

Correspondence to:

Dr. Shaorong Huang Professor of English and Communication University of Cincinnati, USA Lecture Professor Xi’an International Studies University, China 9555 Plainfield Road Cincinnati, OH 45236, USA Email: [email protected] Tel: 513-745-5735 References Barboza, D. (2008, July 26). China surpasses U.S. in number of Internet users. The New York Times.

Available: http://www.lexisnexis.com/us/lnacademic /frame.do?tokenKey=rsh-20.230305.378150347. Benoit, W., Klyukovski, A., McHale, J, & Airne, D (2001). A fantasy theme analysis of political cartoons on the Clinton-Lewinsky-Starr affair.

Critical Studies in Media communication, 18-4, 377-394.

Bishop, R. (2003). The world’s nicest grown-up: A fantasy theme analysis of news media coverage of Fred Rogers. Journal of Communication, 53-1, 16- 31.

Bormann, E. G. (1972). Fantasy and rhetorical vision:

The rhetorical criticism of social reality. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 58, 396-407.

Bormann, E. G. (1973). The Eagleton affair: A fantasy theme analysis. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 59, 143-159.

Bormann, E. G. (1982). A fantasy theme analysis of the television coverage of the hostage release and the Reagan inaugural. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 68, 135-145.

Bormann, E. G. (1983). Symbolic convergence theory:

Organizational communication and culture. In L.

Putnam & M. E. Paconowsky (Eds.), Communication and organizations: An interpretive approach (pp. 99-122). Beverly Hill, CA: Sage.

Bormann, E. G. (1990). Small group communication:

Theory and practice, 3 rd ed. New York: Harper & Row.

Bormann, E. G., Cragan, J. F., & Shields, D. C. (1994).

In defense of symbolic convergence theory: A look at the theory and its criticisms after two decades. Communication Theory, 44, 259-294.

Chen, Y. (2007, May). Fantasy theme analysis of the rhetorical visions embedded in the blogs of expatriates in Taiwan. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association. Available: http://www.allacade mic.com/meta/p169970_index.html.

Cheng, A. T. (2010). Google in China: Taunting the dragon. Euromoney Institutional Investor. Available: http://www.lexisnexis.com/us/lnacademic/frame.do?

reloadEntirePage=true&rand=127007. Chinese agency says global reach of internet pose challenge to governance (2008, February 27). BBC Monitoring Asia Pacific. Available: http:// www.lexisnexis.com/us/lnacademic/frame.do?toke nKey=rsh-20.298785.844836825.

Chinese leaders paying more attention to online opinions (2007, December 7). BBC Monitoring Asia Pacific. Available: http://www.

lexisnexis.com/us/lnacademic/frame.do?tokenKey= rsh-20.830397.508 222537.

Chinese world’s top netizen group (2008, July 25).

China Daily. Available: http://www.lexis nexis.com/us/lnacademic/frame.do?tokenKey=rsh- 20.156650.208229375.

Clinton criticizes China’s Internet policies after attacks on Google (2010, January 22). Telegraph Media. Available: http://www.lexisnexis.com/us/lnacademic /frame.do?reloadEntirePage=true&rand=1270500.

Foss, S. K. (1989). Rhetorical criticism: Exploration & practice. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press.

Google incident and US Internet strategy (2010, January 23). Financial Times Information. Available: China Media Research, 8(1), 2012, Huang, Chinese Netizens’ Rhetorical Vision on Google’s Leaving China http://www.chinamediaresearch.net 47 [email protected] http://www.lexisnexis.com/us/lnacademic/frame.do ?reloadEntirePage=true&rand=127001. Google’s exit a deliberate plot (2010, March 25). Financial Times Information. Available: http:// www.lexisnexis.com/us/lnacademic/frame.do?reloa dEntirePage=true&rand=1270017. Griffin, E. (2003). A first look at communication theory 5 th ed. Boston: McGraw Hill.

Huang, Y. (2010). Why Google should stay in China. Washington Post. Available: http://www.lexisnexis.

com/us/lnacademic/frame.do?reloadEntirePage=tru e&rand=127369. Internet users hit 384 million (2010, January 16). Financial Times Information. Available: http:// www.lexisnexis.com/us/lnacademic/frame.do?reloa dEntirePage=true&rand=1270502. Jackson, B. G. (2000). A fantasy theme analysis of Peter Senge’s learning organization. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 36-2, 193-209.

Let’s Google for truth behind search engine’s pullout (2010, January 21). Financial Times Information.

Available: http://www.lexisnexis.com/us/lnacademic /frame.do?reloadEntirePage=true&rand=127007. Lu, W., Du, J., Zhang, J., Ma, F., & Le, T. (2002). Internet development in China. Journal of Information Science, 28, 207-223.

One tenth of young Chinese netizens said addicted to internet (2008, January 18). BBC Monitoring Asia Pacific. Available: http://www.lexisnexis.com/ us/lnacademic/frame.do?tokenKey=rsh-20.19032 2.0 18326015.

Shields, D. C. & Preston, C. T. (1985). Fantasy theme analysis in competitive rhetorical criticism. The National Forensic Journal, 3, 102-115.

Watts, J. (2008, February 9). Special report: China reshapes the internet: Behind the great firewall.

London: The Guardian. Available: http://www.

lexisnexis.com/us/lnacademic/frame.do?tokenKey= rsh-20.982033.985478683.

Well, W. T. (1996). A fantasy theme analysis of Nixon’s “Checkers” speech. Electronic Journal of Communication, 6-1.

Wu, V. (2008, July 25). China’s web fest: Most users, most on broadband; netizens up more than half in year-beating expectations, and the US. South China Morning Post. Available: http://www.

lexisnexis.com/us/lnacademic/frame.do?tokenKey =rsh-20.16000 3.432877929. Copyright of China Media Research is the property of Edmondson Intercultural Enterprises and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.