Shanghai Street View: Reality Microblogging 沪经动向：现实微博秀
Shanghai is once again showing off its status as China’s premier mixing ground between east and west, staging a recent microblogging event that combines the Chinese love of Internet chatter with the broader global explosion of reality TV. The origins of this creative new story began last week, when a distressed migrant took a worker hostage in a Shanghai hotel and held her in one of the guest rooms for more than 6 hours as police tried to negotiate his surrender. The man was desperate after failing to find work in the city, and was hoping that police would shoot him to death during the drama. The situation finally ended after negotiations failed and police stormed the room and rescued the hostage.
I remember seeing reports of the drama on TV, including images of police breaking in through the hotel window. So I was amused to read in the paper a couple of days later that the city came up with the innovative idea of letting the lead negotiator host a microblogging session to talk with ordinary Shanghai residents about what happened behind the scenes in the tense situation.
Such a format is somewhat reminiscent of popular western reality TV shows that often show cops in action, arresting a wide range of people for various offenses from drunken driving, to spousal abuse and robbery. But the idea for taking this kind of reality crime show to the Internet seemed uniquely Chinese, reflecting the huge popularity of social networking over platforms like Sina (Nasdaq: SINA) Weibo and Tencent’s (HKEx: 700) WeChat.
The latest government data show that nearly half of China’s 1.3 billion people now use the Internet, many on their home-based computers but also increasingly on the smartphones. I often notice on the subway that half or more of my fellow commuters are playing with their smartphones in one way or another during their rides, usually chatting with friends or reading the latest news. I have no doubt that some of those people were probably taking part in the reality microblogging event on December 14 hosted by the Shanghai police to talk about the hostage incident.
The event featured several top police officials, but the main speaker was the man who actually led the negotiations, who captivated attendants with a “behind the scenes” look at what happened during the 6 hour standoff. The negotiator recalled how he tried to convince the hostage taker that suicide wasn’t the solution to his problems, and that he should stop to ask himself it he really needed to take this kind of action. He also described his efforts to calm both the hostage and suspect, and riveted his audience by describing how the hostage injured her finger in a struggle when she tried to grab the knife from her abductor.
I don’t know if police in the west or other countries would conduct similar kinds of online events, but I suspect this kind of dialogue is uniquely Chinese. For one, western police wouldn’t want to discuss the specifics of individual cases in such detail, since doing so could affect their investigations. They also would probably be reluctant to discuss many of their tactics, fearing such discussion could affect their future negotiations.
By comparison, Chinese government agencies are suddenly discovering a new fondness for communicating with the public. That eagerness is less driven by a desire to communicate better, and more by directives from Beijing aimed at creating more transparency to build citizens’ trust in government.
Regardless of the reasons, I personally find this kind of creative effort at communication a refreshing break with the past, when government agencies would often treat incidents like hostage situations as top secret affairs and forbid any public discussion. I’m hopeful we’ll see lots more similar efforts like this from Shanghai’s government agencies in the future. And I would also expect to see other smaller cities and towns follow Shanghai’s lead in experimenting with new and similarly creative formats to implement Beijing’s call for greater government transparency.
