Why John Kerry Must Listen to China's Social Web

[Commentary] In order to craft an appealing diplomatic message that reaches beyond the heights of Chinese bureaucracy, Secretary of State John Kerry must elevate the role of China's vibrant social media within the mix of American policy-making information.

It must lie on equal footing with official meetings, intelligence assessments, "Track 2" dialogues, and academic exchanges. Only then can American officials begin to take a reliable reading of the Chinese public's temperature on Beijing's role in the world, China's relationship with the United States, and Chinese peoples' conceptions of their own rights and duties as citizens. If Secretary Kerry were to scan Chinese social media today, or use available English-language tools that specialize in tracking it, he might be surprised by the candor he encountered. Virtually every other day, a corrupt Chinese official is felled by online sleuths. Angry anti-government rhetoric abounds, and while some of it is censored, much of it remains conspicuously visible. A year and a half ago, for example, citizens in the village of Wukan relied on social media to follow and debate protests against corrupt land deals there. And while Chinese social media has not led to Chinese democracy, it has become a hotbed for crowd-sourced political activism. Earlier this month, online citizens (or "netizens") frustrated with corruption teamed up en masse to collect and share photographs of luxury cars carrying license plates of the People's Liberation Army, China's armed forces.

[Lee is an Asia Security Analyst at the CNA Corporation. Wertime is the co-founder of Tea Leaf Nation]