From 'fart people' to citizens on China's internet | Xiao Qiang | TEDxLiberdade

This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences. Xiao Qiang delivers a fascinating look at the awakening of Chinese people to their political rights through their struggle against online censorship and control of information. This topic is only becoming more critical as online restrictions are rising throughout the world, while online sharing is becoming an indispensable component to civil society rights.

Xiao Qiang is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of China Digital Times, a bilingual China news website launched in 2003 to aggregate, organize, and recommend ONLINE INFORMATION from and about China. He is an adjunct professor at the SCHOOL OF INFORMATION, University of California at Berkeley, as well as the Director of the school’s Counter-Power Lab, an interdisciplinary faculty-student RESEARCH group focusing on the intersection of digital media, counter-censorship technology and cyberactivism.

He became a full time HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST after the Tiananmen Massacre in 1989. Xiao has published numerous articles on China, human rights, and Internet politics in the International Herald Tribune, the WASHINGTON Post, the WALL STREET Journal, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, the Los Angeles Times, the South China Morning Post, and other major publications. Xiao was the Executive Director of the New York-based NGO Human Rights in China from 1991 to 2002 and vice-chairman of the steering committee of the World Movement for Democracy. Xiao received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2001 and is profiled in the book Soul Purpose: 40 People Who Are Changing the World for the Better (Melcher Media, 2003).

Xiao’s current research focuses on mapping political discourses in Chinese cyberspace, measuring the state censorship and control of the Internet, and developing CLOUD-based technologies which can break through such censorship.

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