China’s Sina Weibo and Guo Meimei Scandal

The Internet has unlocked door to information for average Chinese peoples in ways that were unthinkable just a few years ago. Putting limits on foreign websites and social media, instead of abolishing them, have resulted in a flourishing home-grown, state-approved domestic system in which Chinese-owned properties thrive. Even though YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter are blocked in China, their Chinese parallels are expanding. A Study found that Chinese Internet users are online for an average of 2.7 hours per day, considerably more than other developing countries and more on par with usage patterns in the United States. Numerous factors help drive Chinese, more than other populations, to engage in social media. These include rural-to-urban migration that has separated families, the loneliness of the one-child generation, and a distrust of information from government-controlled media.

Social Media Equivalents in China

One of the most influential China’s social media is Sina Weibo, China’s parallel Twitter. At first glance, Sina Weibo is a latecomer to microblog phenomenon. But launched in 2009, just about three years after Twitter, Sina Weibo is by far the most popular microblogging platform in China and has more than 300 million registered users as of February 2012. Similar to Twitter, Sina Weibo allows users to post 140-character messages, and users can follow friends and find interesting comments posted by others. Small but important differences in the platform have made some say it is a Twitter clone, but better. For example, unlike twitter, Sina Weibo allows users to post videos and photos, comment on other people’s updates, and easily add comments when re-posting a friend’s message. One of the most striking differences between Sina Weibo and Twitter, however, is the length of communications expressed via microblogs in Chinese versus English. Twitter holds messages to 140 characters, which is quite short in English, especially if users want to include a URL. Since each character in Chinese is a word, users can write much more using the Chinese-language microblogging platform. This language efficiency turns microblogging in China into a more blog-like platform. Another difference is that though mobile phones are used to send less than 20 percent of Twitter updates in the United States, nearly half of Sina Weibo’s updates are sent via mobile phone. Part of reason of that is because over 80 percent of Sino Weibo users in China are under 30 years old, who are heavily depended on mobile phones to communicate with others.

As we know, the traditional media in China is still heavily controlled by the government; so social media offers an opening to let the steam out a little bit. But because Chinese do not have many other openings, the heat coming out of this opening is sometimes very strong, active and even violent.

The girl in these pictures is called Guo Meimei (@ Guo Meimei Baby) , a 20-year-old woman who stirred national outrage last year. People were infuriated when she claimed on Sina Weibo to be the general manager of Commerce Chamber of China's Red Cross , boasted about her luxurious lifestyle, showing off her Maserati and Lamborghini cars, expensive handbags and palatial villa. The furious people began to question whether Guo had financed her lifestyle out of money that had been donated to the Society and started a human flesh search to find out the identity of Guo Meimei and her connection with the Red Cross Society. This scandal aroused national questioning, almost a turmoil, against the credibility of Red Cross. On June 20^th when she began to flaunt her wealth, only 2126 people were following her. Because of the controversy of her title, over 190,000 people followed her just in three days. By March 27^th, the number of her followers had boosted to 700,000.

"Just got my 20-year-old birthday gift. The Year of 2011 is a lucky year, right?"

"My mom made a big dinner for me. Yummy! I was staying at home all day packing my loving bags!!! If one day I left home with my lover and took away some of them, we can live off them,hahah" 

Showing-Off Pictures on Weibo

Although both Guo and the Society publicly denied having any ties to one another afterwards and Guo posted one apologetic weibo five days in a row, continuous disclosures of inside stories and disputes over this incident flooded the Internet. The Red Cross Society of China was plunged into an unprecedented crisis of trust. After police investigation, Guo Meimei actually has no connections with Red Cross. The reason of her doing that is because she felt proud to be associated with charity. But the public does not buy it even after the Red Cross held numerous press conferences and set up a specific Weibo account (@ 中国红十字会）to explain this event. Due to the Red Cross's long established shady operation and lack of internal transparency, as well as its already plummeted public credibility following previous scandals, the collective outburst of public doubt triggered by this incident hardly came as a surprise. It directly shows a general mistrust of government or government-backed institutions in China nowadays.

Apologetic Weibos

In retrospect, there are two main reasons that triggered this turmoil. On one hand, China is in the phase of transformation when misallocation of resources, the unevendistribution of benefits and large gap of wealth and poor are taking place. People in lower stratum of society who have not received the benefits feel relative deprivation. They instinctively believe the words such as “official” and “wealthy” who are China’s benefactors are offensive. This antipathy causes a “hatred of government” and “hatred of the rich” and becomes a social phenomenon. Nowadays, many people in China have a stenotype for second generations of “the official” and “the rich”, assuming they are inevitable bad. Any ordinary little thing could easily touch sensitive nerves of people with similar experience and would soon be able to trigger a chain reaction. This instinctive hatred because of the benefits missing allows Internet users a high degree of concern for such “showing off” things, and extremely easy to form a resonance. When Guo Meimei began to show off her wealth on the Internet, she stepped on people’s such sensitive nerves and caused this scandal.

On the other hand, this event shows a general mistrust of government or government-backed institutions in China which are not transparent in so many ways. Red Cross Society of China, as a non-profit state-backed member of International Federation of Red Cross, has been synonymous with the public good. As long as there is a sudden natural disaster or man-made damage, we can always see the presence of the Red Cross flag which represents the public interest. But because the information of China’s Red Cross is not as transparent as it is supposed to be, the public had already lost the trust. If Guo Meimei just showed off her wealth, it may not cause such a strong reaction. It is the made-up identity of her Sina Weibo account showing “China’s commercial general manager of he Red Cross” that made the public suspect the credibility of the China’s Red Cross.

Social media users in China, rather than merely chat personal life and follow other comments, increasingly tend to participate in the discussion of social issues related to politics and use Sina Weibo as a channel to express requirements, supervise government and facilitate social changes ultimately. Guo Meimei scandal is associated with the Red Cross and the trust of government-backed organizations. People participating in this debate hope to achieve the goal of improving charity management in China and supervising government by social media. The progress of a country manifests itself by the progress of its people. It not only involves the improvement of people’s economic life, for which it should give a lot of credits to China, it also includes the enhancement of people’s awareness of democracy, people’s participating in social affairs increasingly and overseeing the governance. The increase democratic consciousness makes a lot of China’s Internet users go through social media expressing their views and monitoring the hot events to promote social justice.  It can be clearly seen that the traditional media agenda has been changed from the Guo Meimei scandal. All parties in this event expressed their opinions through Sina Weibo. Sina Weibo users have become another force to promote social justice by initially starting the heated debate on social media and then drawing the attention of traditional mass media. A considerable microblogging politics in China has been formed.

This whole scandal was originated from Sina Weibo, and then distributed rapidly by social media which has enormously impact traditional media agenda. As Sina Weibo users, they are able to discuss social affairs and participate in politics and monitor the development of this whole event from the sense of social supervision. This influential online force has increased the transparency of the Red Cross Society and improved its management.

The role of social media regarding supervising government management will continue to play in China. It is anticipated to impact China development in other areas as well in the future. A high degree of social media’s participation and effective online discussion have become a substantial form to promote China’s development in many ways.  

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