
China has tens of thousands specially trained spin doctors posting blog comments - vaksel
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7783640.stm
======
andreyf
This not true! Everyone loves China anyway, and nothing bad ever happens here,
so why would the government ever need to pay people to do this? Silly
nonsense!

~~~
evilneanderthal
Damn reactionaries can't hold the people back!

------
hollerith
It looks like the People's Republic is moving to a more sophisticated model
closer to the one used by "the U.S. Government" in which dissenting voices are
not silenced with police force but rather must compete with and are spun by
professional non-dissenting voices.

For my comment to make sense, "the U.S. Government" has to be defined in a
nonstandard way to include for example Time Magazine, the New York Times,
Harvard University, the misleadingly-named "non-governmental organizations",
and as of the last few years professional bloggers like the ones at Daily Kos
-- but I advocate such a nonstandard definition. Added: thanks to _non_
-professional blogger Mencius Moldbug for teaching me the nonstandard
definition.

~~~
pg
There's already a name for the thing your nonstandard definition refers to:
"The Establishment." Also the more informal "The Man." Both terms now seem
somewhat laughable, for reasons they deserve. Mainly, I think, that the
underlying thesis was false.

~~~
bokonist
Consider these facts:

\- the US has a government funded k-16 education system

\- almost all political journalists rely on government press credentials to do
their reporting

\- most journalists rely on cultivating strong relationships with the
permanent civil service in order to get the inside dirt on politicians.

Now consider these three outrageous claims:

\- the New Deal was among the worst things to happen to America in the last
100 years

\- forcing universal suffrage democracy on Zimbabwe was a tragic mistake

\- the American revolution was accompanied by an incredible amount of mob
violence on innocent colonists. It would have been better for everyone if the
instigators had been caught and hung. Instead, they won and set up our current
government, so we remember them as heroes.

No respectable person believes these last three claims. Indeed, the fact that
I even posted such claims indicates that I may be a barbarian from Digg who
somehow found his way onto Hacker News. There are two possible reasons why
these claims seem so repellent: 1) these views really are crazy and wrong, or
2) believing these three things would undermine the legitimacy of our entire
government, including its education system. Thus, via self-selection and
overt-selection, no one in the education system or mainstream media defends
these claims. We spend our entire life only hearing one side of the story.
Americans views of FDR end up being as inaccurate as the Chinese view of Mao.

If you are willing to entertain the idea that #2 may be a possibility, Sydney
George Fisher is a fine place to start. Take a look at Chapter 8 of his
history of the American Revolution:
[http://books.google.com/books?id=YmFMcvSIwOEC&printsec=f...](http://books.google.com/books?id=YmFMcvSIwOEC&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+true+history+of+the+american+revolution#PPA155,M1)

~~~
rms
I'm happy to entertain outrageous claims, what about outrageous claims #1 and
#3?

~~~
bokonist
For the claim about Zimbabwe, see here: [http://unqualified-
reservations.blogspot.com/2007/08/country...](http://unqualified-
reservations.blogspot.com/2007/08/country-that-used-to-exist.html)

I don't have a one stop source for the claims about FDR and the New Deal. But
these three are a good start: John Flynn's _The Roosevelt Myth_ (
<http://mises.org/books/rooseveltmyth.pdf> ), this podcast on the New Deal (
[http://files.libertyfund.org/econtalk/y2008/Higgsgreatdepres...](http://files.libertyfund.org/econtalk/y2008/Higgsgreatdepression.mp3)
), and this book on the origins of World War II: (
<http://mises.org/books/perpetual.pdf> ).

------
tokenadult
"Comments, rumours and opinions can be quickly spread between internet groups
in a way that makes it hard for the government to censor.

"So instead of just trying to prevent people from having their say, the
government is also attempting to change they way they think.

"To do this, they use specially trained - and ideologically sound - internet
commentators.

"They have been dubbed the "50-cent party" because of how much they are
reputed to be paid for each positive posting (50 Chinese cents; $0.07;
£0.05)."

Even today that can be decent money in China. I think this phenomenon has been
going on on Usenet since the 1990s. Certainly Usenet was a critical
communication resource for students in North America in the China democracy
movement that flowered in 1989.

~~~
est
> "They have been dubbed the "50-cent party" because of how much they are
> reputed to be paid for each positive posting (50 Chinese cents; $0.07;
> £0.05)."

This is not true. 50-cent party is a word from the times of Beiyang Army. in
1917 they argued whether China should participate the WWI, Duan Qi Rui hired a
bunch of ppl to 'protest' in the parliament and urge China to declare ware
against Germen. They pay each ppl 50 cents. It's historical.

Now the word '50 cents' means goverment payed voiced. No matter how much they
got payed.

Sorry my English is bad but that's the true origin of '50 cents'.

Now 'Internet Commenters' gain more than 50 cents, in universities, students
participate this could get 200 Yuan a month, that's about $28 USD.

------
DenisM
I stands to reason that in the information economy there will be its own
commanding hights, and that different groups of people will strive for
control. I would call this _opinion warfare_ and there is certanly a lot of
combatants involved.

Most of the combatants are governments but really everyone with a budget and a
profit motive (monetary or otherwise) is participating.

An interesting front is open right now between Russian government and its
opponents. The coverage of Khodorkovski's fate was seriously slanted on both
sides of the border. Well, unsurprisingly as a lot of money and power was at
stake on both sides. Later the coverage of Russian-Georgian conflict suffered
the same fate and just now there is a row over natural gas supplies to Europe
which gets some odd coverage.

The most interesting battles to watch are the ones where usually rational
discourse turns into a foaming-at-the-mouth fight with a lot of stretches.
There are plenty of nuts online, but I can't help but suspect that money is
involved when a normally rational and thought-out source starts really
reaching for conclusions.

------
gojomo
I think they're also voting down my News.YC comments.

------
tlrobinson
Ah yes, the "Ministry of Truth".

~~~
baddox
Don't waste words and letters...it's called Minitrue

~~~
orib
Minitrue? You mean Minimal Truth?

~~~
tlrobinson
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_Truth>

~~~
orib
Yes, I'm familiar. I was playing with double meanings ;-)

------
medearis
I don't really see a huge problem with government hiring people to sell its
side of a story in itself. For better or worse, there are highly-paid
lobbyists on both sides of every policy issue these days.

I think the issue is that the Chinese government does more than "spin." It is
acceptable for one party to advocate for a policy by putting it in the best
possible light. Its unacceptable to change facts, control information etc.
Admittedly, this is a murky line in many cases...

Perhaps what more scary is that most Chinese students I've met know that they
don't get the "full truth" in China and don't really care. They seem to be
more concerned with China becoming an economic superpower than whether China
creates a "good" society.

------
lallysingh
Every government has some form of a propaganda team behind it. Some directly
in the government, many behind the parties/companies in power. Really anyone
who benefits from the way the government operates has a reason to push
propaganda at some level.

However, suppressing the opposing view is the problem. If the viewpoints are
both expressed, one can expect some level of truthiness(tm) to come out. And
frankly, someone's got to defend what the government's doing, b/c sometimes
their actions aren't completely corrupt or nefarious.

As for the US, I'm hoping the Net will eventually dissolve the b.s. legitimacy
of the old press core, who've got too much to lose to rock the boat very much.

------
jhancock
"Extract from internal document produced by Nanning city authority, Guangxi
province"

This is one of the most common mistakes made by foreign press. The quote is
possibly correct. The article extrapolates from this to assume that there is
some great puppet-master in Beijing.

China is run at the local level for most things. There may well be paid
commenters but having them organized from the top-down is next to impossible.

------
known
China has the unfair advantage of near-slave labor,

Source:
[http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1086571&cid=263...](http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1086571&cid=26387645)

------
justindz
And to think that I do this for _free_ whenever any of my pet ideologies are
attacked on the Internet. I'm getting ripped off.

------
theoneill
"Spin nurses?"

