The most popular online video site, YouTube, has been blocked in China, according to parent company Google. The action, which has not been explained by the Chinese goverment, is rumored to be a response to the posting of a video by the Tibetan government in exile in which Chinese police officers are shown aggressively beating Tibetans after riots last year. This is the video rumored to have sparked the controversy:
The images in the video above are very poignant, and have started to receive substantial attention throughout the web. China's response to the accusations, rather than publicly denying them or offering an official response, seems to have been to block the medium through which its citizens could access and view the video. This response suggests a lack of understanding of public diplomacy dynamics
For starters, the gap between govermental and non-govermental actors as communicators has decreased significantly in the age of public diplomacy. The democratization of media production allows anyone with a recording device to create a video and distribute it widely across the world. Individuals have a much greater potential to impact international affairs than they have ever had. The idea that it is an appropriate response for a goverment to simply dismiss a public accusation in order to prevent it from garnering public attention is most commonly wrong in today's world.
Goverments no longer have exclusive dominance over the public debate, not even in the realm of international affairs, and as such, they must be ready to fight in the war of ideas. China's lack of willingness to defend itself from an accussation that is now being discussed in important international news outlets, conveys a limited understanding of the impact of new media in international affairs.
More so, in the age of public diplomacy, increasingly, publics are not defined by their national affiliation, but rather by similarities that often transcend national borders. The communication, whether through text, images, or video, between individuals in different parts of the world had resulted in a reconfiguration of global publics. Yet, with this action, China once again seems stubbornly determined to break up publics by the national borders that no longer serve to contain them.
The Chinese goverment's eager desire to dominate the public debate within its borders, not by winning the war of ideas, but rather by blocking and banning messages that it deems negative for its internal image is worrisome. The fact that the goverment would rather limit its citizen's ability to access information than to persuade them, gives the impression internationally that China is trying to hide its actions instead of standing by them.
Futhermore, the futile attempt to clearly divide its citizens from other publics abroad, can lead to an isolation of Chinese citizens, who may wonder without fully understanding, why people around the world think about their country the way that they do.
China can keep pretending like Chinese affairs are only discussed internally, it can keep trying to contain its publics within its borders, it can keep trying to regulate their citizens' access to new media content, but sooner or later public diplomacy is going to knock on the door, and China won't have any other option but to open.
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