Which China using which Chinese Internet?

I learned something early on when “studying China”; There is no such thing as ONE CHINA.¹ Please note that I’m not advocating the independence – de-facto or otherwise – of any province or autonomous regions. I’m simply saying that when you want to understand “China”, you got to think of it as several different countries which occupy the same space and time. People sometimes say the same about other countries. There are the “Red states” and the “Blue states” of America, for example. But the differences in America are minor when one considers that the income level differential, average education level, and most other demographic elements differ less than 50%…and Americans (with the exception of recent immigrants) all speak the same mother language. Most importantly, there are no real barriers between Red States and Blue States. You can find both nearly everywhere in America.

The differences between China’s internal “countries” is obvious to anyone who lives in China. Its so obvious we never even think of it, except when we are thinking about the interactions between these different “countries” which exist within China. For example, when we consider labor shortages, we are thinking about the labor shortages in “industrial country” of China. And therefore, we consider the interactions with the “rural country” of China to obtain workers.²

When doing market research in China, this “several countries” issue becomes very visible. There is vast demographic differences between urban and rural. There are big culture differences between North and South. There are big differences between the tier #1 cities. There is a big marketing demographic gap between people born 4 years apart in China.

Now lets get to the point of this post: Internet Market in China. The question is…which China is using which internet?

According to today’s New York Times³:

Even though Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are blocked by censors here, Chinese social networking sites like QQ Zone, Tianya.cn and Kaixin001.com are flourishing in surprisingly inventive ways.
[...]
A study conducted by the Boston Consulting Group found that people in China (which now has nearly 400 million Internet users) are far more connected than Americans, and that globally only the Japanese spend more time on the Web.
[...]
Analysts say Google struggled to gain market share in China partly because the company had failed to build a big enough online community around its search engine, unlike its chief rival here, Baidu.com.
[...]
[of Baidu]There is also Baidu Knows, Baidu Space (for blogs) and Baidu Baike, a Chinese version of Wikipedia.

To summarize the NYT’s implicit and explicit points:
1. China is creating its own version of the internet. See here and here about this topic⁴.
2. Chinese people are bigger nerds because they are ALL on the net.
3. Google didn’t play the game right⁵. They should have added more stupid games wherein Chinese people can steal non-existent vegetables from each other.
4. Baidu is copying Google’s functionality.
5. The CCP is afraid of all this “networking”

Furthermore, the main point of the article is that the Internet in China is used primarily for entertainment, and not for revolution. The NYT did not say how this is any different than in the US. (cough…the internet is for porn!) So we have this picture of lazy, socially unskilled little emperors going to college in Shanghai. They have nothing to do. So they download pirated DVDs and MP3s. And QQ each other. Because Google could not get involved with this part of the internet, they failed in China, with only 30% of the internet search market.

I believe this “picture” of China’s internet is essentially right. But it only shows of the internet in one “China country”. It shows what the kids who don’t work are doing. It shows what people working in Chinese companies and in net-cafes are doing. But for the 120 million people (30% of the reported 400 million internet users), Google is not used for playing games. 120 million Chinese people use a relatively international product to search for results. The competing product (Baidu), offers all sorts of cool things: free mp3s, free movies, free blog space, etc. Yet people used Google for search and email. Why?

I hypothesize that the people who use Google are not in the same “China” as the people who use Baidu. Yes…that’s a gross generalization yadda yadda yadda. There is intersection between the markets of course. But generally speaking, people who are using an international search engine to find foreign customers for their product are not the same people who are spending their day playing farming games. Its very likely that the people who are using Google are working with foreigners and/or foreign companies. They will not run for the hills when they see a search result in English language. Therefore, it is more likely that these people live in Tier 1 cities. Therefore it is more likely they are a little older, a little more experienced, a LOT more educated, and much richer than the average Baidu-only user.

If I’m right about the above, then it is more likely that Google users are very acquainted with how China’s Greate Firewall works, even if they never actually felt the desire to get around it. But if they know how it works, they definitely could get around the Wall, for special reasons. ⁶

If all this is true, it means that the observations and generalizations which both Western media and marketing specialists say about the Chinese internet… does not reflect the reality of China today. So if we want to understand the internet in China today, we need to do what all China marketing managers and aspiring sociologists do; we need to first define which China we are observing.

UPDATE: My new favorite blog is china/devide. Mr. Damjam DeNoble wrote a post there speculating about the future of the China’s Information Economy. Near the end, he asks this question:

Will the information economy topple China’s Great Firewall?
Or…
Will Chinese central control prove to be a blessing, and somehow give China a lasting advantage in the developing information economy of the 21st century?

I don’t know if I believe so much in this “Information Economy” thing myself; I believe at the end of the day what you eat and what toy you show off is far more important to most people than what website you go to. However, I think part of the answer to Mr. DeNoble’s question is that, as of today, a significant portion of the population can walk right on past the GFW if they want to, so there is no reason for it to topple. Don’t know if it will stay that way in the future though.