The Chinese are certainly following the U.S. presidential campaign. A video of a televised Republican primary debate was circulating on the Internet, attracting the attention of up to 500 million Chinese Netizens. In this video, former U.S. Ambassador to China, Jon Huntsman stated that his hope for China is to influence the country’s internet users, also known as the young people, to lead them toward change which would eventually “take China down.”
In the context of Huntsman’s speech, the goal to “take China down” is to bring prosperity and economic growth back to America through changing China’s political system. Of course, there are the Chinese bloggers who are upset by this, provoking very nationalistic reactions. However, there are also bloggers who are digging deeper into Huntsman’s statement.
A microblogger called “Silentchinese” calls Huntsman out, criticizing the logic behind his speech. Silentchinese points out that Huntsman clearly believes in a zero-sum game between China and America, where one country would have to lose while the other wins. Secondly, Silentchinese highlights Huntsman’s belief that political change in China would slow down its economy, implying he sees that the current system working well for China. But the blogger also interprets that Huntsman hopes for China to return to “a chaotic, pseudo-democratic, post-soviet era like state,” as written in English on his blog.
This analysis is a reflection of Netizen’s awareness of their potential to illicit change in China. No wonder the Communist Government seeks to increase censorship of the blogosphere.