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khalilhumam · 4 years

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What the Pentagon’s new report on China means for US strategy — including on Taiwan

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What the Pentagon’s new report on China means for US strategy — including on Taiwan

By Michael E. O'Hanlon The Department of Defense has just released its latest annual report, continuing a two-decade tradition, on China’s military and its role in China’s broader foreign policy. It is a serious read; I commend Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and his team for a thorough, dispassionate, and timely piece of work. The report also builds on Esper’s summertime assessment of where things stand with implementation of the 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS), which he inherited from former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis. That NDS placed primary emphasis on great-power competition, with particular focus on China, and has been been Esper’s main focus since becoming secretary in mid-2019. Overall, the new report is very good, but I would offer several comments on specifics. Relatedly, a new Foreign Affairs article by Richard Haass and David Sacks of the Council on Foreign Relations — arguing that the United States should be clear that it would respond to any Chinese attack on Taiwan with a resolute reply, even though the latter is not a formal U.S. ally — prompts me to caution that improvements in Chinese military power may mean that indirect defense of Taiwan could be better in some contingencies.

The Pentagon’s findings

The Department of Defense (DoD) report reads:

DoD’s 2000 report assessed that the PLA was slowly and unevenly adapting to the trends in modern warfare. The PLA’s force structure and capabilities focused largely on waging large-scale land warfare along China’s borders. The PLA’s ground, air, and naval forces were sizable but mostly obsolete. Its conventional missiles were generally of short range and modest accuracy. The PLA’s emergent cyber capabilities were rudimentary; its use of information technology was well behind the curve; and its nominal space capabilities were based on outdated technologies for the day. Further, China’s defense industry struggled to produce high-quality systems. Even if the PRC could produce or acquire modern weapons, the PLA lacked the joint organizations and training needed to field them effectively. The report assessed that the PLA’s organizational obstacles were severe enough that if left unaddressed they would “inhibit the PLA’s maturation into a world-class military force.

This is a good scene-setter. Chinese forces had of course been formidable in some ways a full half-century before even this first DoD report on the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) was penned in 2000 — fighting ferociously against U.S. and South Korean forces in the Korean War. But until recent years, China had always remained a low-tech ground power, and did not have a realistic option even for conquering nearby Taiwan, a polity with less than 2% the population of mainland China.

Two decades later, the PLA’s objective is to become a “world-class” military by the end of 2049—a goal first announced by General Secretary Xi Jinping in 2017. Although the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] has not defined what a “world-class” military means, within the context of the PRC’s national strategy it is likely that Beijing will seek to develop a military by mid-century that is equal to—or in some cases superior to—the U.S. military, or that of any other great power that the PRC views as a threat. As this year’s report details, the PRC has marshaled the resources, technology, and political will over the past two decades to strengthen and modernize the PLA in nearly every respect.

Again, this is somber but sober and clear-eyed analysis. With most expecting China’s economy to be considerably larger than America’s by mid-century, and with China now having the second-largest research and development budget in the world for science and technology, it certainly is a plausible aspiration. That said, at this point, anything about 2049 is aspirational. It is also worth bearing in mind how much demographics, and possibly the “middle-income trap,” will work against China, compromising its growth prospects substantially. My Brookings colleague David Dollar even thinks that the United States may again overtake China in gross domestic product (GDP) by the second half of the century, even if China had previously become the world’s largest economy in the 2030s or 2040s.

Indeed, as this report shows, China is already ahead of the United States in certain areas such as: Shipbuilding: The PRC has the largest navy in the world, with an overall battle force of approximately 350 ships and submarines including over 130 major surface combatants. In comparison, the U.S. Navy’s battle force is approximately 293 ships as of early 2020.

I have big issues with this simplistic argument. The United States has much larger and more sophisticated ships than China. As research done with my colleagues Ian Livingston and Adam Twardowski has shown in recent years (and as Jim Steinberg and I underscored in our 2014 book “Strategic Reassurance and Resolve”), America’s Navy remains way ahead in tonnage — still by a factor of at least two-to-one over China’s. It is ahead by at least ten-to-one in carrier-based airpower. It is way ahead, too, in the quality and quantity of long-range attack submarines, even if China now has a fine force of shorter-range and mostly nonnuclear-powered attack subs itself. In fairness, it should also be acknowledged that many of China’s new ships are well-equipped with launch tubes and modern missiles — as Jerry Hendrix and others have argued — so the PLA Navy does have considerable strengths, no doubt. I am not counseling complacency with this assessment, only analytical accuracy and balance.

Land-based conventional ballistic and cruise missiles: The PRC has more than 1,250 ground-launched ballistic missiles (GLBMs) and ground-launched cruise missiles (GLCMs) with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers. The United States currently fields one type of conventional GLBM with a range of 70 to 300 kilometers and no GLCMs.

Here DoD has a point. And the threat to U.S. assets in the western Pacific from these kinds of Chinese weapons has indeed grown enormously in recent times. The United States was a party to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty) with Russia until earlier this year; that treaty prohibited any type of mid-range ballistic or cruise missile, whether arrayed against Russia or any other state, irrespective of the type of munition carried. As my colleague Frank Rose emphasizes, it is also not clear where the United States would base intermediate-range missiles in the western Pacific region. Those are the reasons the United States is outgunned in these weapons categories today. There is a case that the DoD should consider building medium-range missiles, if we can figure out where and how to base them (on land, at sea, or with long-range airpower). But there are many ways for the United States to strike Chinese missile launchers, including with long-range stealth aircraft, a category of capability the United States still dominates. So yes, let’s watch this space, but not be too surprised or flummoxed that we are presently at a specific disadvantage in this type of armament.

Integrated air defense systems: The PRC has one of the world’s largest forces of advanced long-range surface-to-air systems—including Russian-built S-400s, S-300s, and domestically produced systems—that constitute part of its robust and redundant integrated air defense system architecture.

Agreed, though this system is really relevant only for defending China, not for projecting power abroad.

More striking than the PLA’s staggering amounts of new military hardware are the recent sweeping efforts taken by CCP leaders that include completely restructuring the PLA into a force better suited for joint operations, improving the PLA’s overall combat readiness, encouraging the PLA to embrace new operational concepts, and expanding the PRC’s overseas military footprint. Despite the PLA’s progress over the past 20 years, major gaps and shortcomings remain. The PRC’s leaders are aware of these problems, and their strategy envisions the PLA undergoing almost 30 more years of modernization and reform. Of course, the CCP does not intend for the PLA to be merely a showpiece of China’s modernity or to keep it focused solely on regional threats. As this report shows, the CCP desires the PLA to become a practical instrument of its statecraft with an active role in advancing the PRC’s foreign policy, particularly with respect to the PRC’s increasingly global interests and its aims to revise aspects of the international order.

This is true. But China’s roughly $200 billion annual budget, according to DoD (even after adding in many things that China leaves out of its own official defense budget figures), represents only about 1.5% of the country’s GDP. China does not seem to be in any huge hurry to build and flex its muscles. It is far and away the world’s #2 military power, but it only spends about one-third as much as the United States on its armed forces in absolute terms and only about one-half as much as a fraction of national economic output. If China were in NATO, we would berate it for inadequate burden-sharing, since its military outlays fall well below NATO’s 2% minimum. Still, let me not overstate: With the huge size of its economic and manufacturing base, China does indeed have the capacity to devote lots of resources to its armed forces. And it does so in a targeted way, increasingly focused on power-projection capabilities for the western Pacific and beyond. It does not have the combat experience of American armed forces from, among other things, the wars of the broader Middle East this century. But nor does it have those kinds of burdens or drains that take away from its real military priorities.

Given the continuity in the PRC’s strategic objectives, the past 20 years offer a harbinger for the future course of the PRC’s national strategy and military aspirations. Certainly, many factors will determine how this course unfolds. What is certain is that the CCP has a strategic end state that it is working towards, which if achieved and its accompanying military modernization left unaddressed, will have serious implications for U.S. national interests and the security of the international rules-based order.

Yes, and my colleague Rush Doshi also underscores that China has a clear grand strategy with specific goals. However, I do not believe China has decided that the maximization of those objectives is worth a high risk of war. It will more likely be opportunistic. Hence, much of the U.S. role is to push back with an integrated mix of military, economic, and diplomatic responses to various attacks, probing actions, or coercive actions that China may (and will) attempt in future years.

Defending Taiwan

The recent Foreign Affairs piece by Richard Haass and David Sacks calls for Washington to be clear with Beijing: that it would respond to any Chinese attack on Taiwan firmly and resolutely, even though Taiwan is not a formal U.S. ally. This approach would, of course, reverse a policy of ambiguity now four decades old. If what Haass and Sacks mean is that the United States could not be indifferent to any such attack, I agree completely. And if they mean that we should help Taiwan fend off an attempted amphibious attack (that DoD does not consider likely according to its latest report, by the way, which notes the inherent difficulty of such amphibious operations, and China’s lack of key investments in some assets needed for forcible entry), I am not even sure that Taiwan would need the help. However, were China to use a partial blockade, cyberattacks, and some menacing missile strikes against Taiwan in an attempt to coerce it into capitulation and forced reunification, for example, it is not clear to me that the United States could confidently defeat that PLA strategy. Geography works heavily to China’s advantage in such a scenario. To win, we might wind up feeling the need to attack Chinese submarines in port, missile launchers on mainland soil, and Chinese command and control networks that are also used for China’s nuclear arsenal. Escalation could certainly ensue; China could easily respond with attacks against U.S. bases in Japan or beyond. Any such scenario would be highly fraught and not easily or confidently won. Overall, then, I would caution that with all the improvements in Chinese military power the Pentagon report documents, it may make more sense to attempt an indirect defense of Taiwan in such a contingency. Rather than try to break a blockade comprehensively and directly, for example, we might place primary reliance on geographically asymmetric operations against Chinese shipping in the Persian Gulf, for example, together with moves towards a fundamental decoupling of our economy from China’s as a punitive measure. These approaches would themselves be dangerous, and painful — and they might not immediately rescue Taiwan, it is true, as I discuss in my 2019 book, “The Senkaku Paradox.” But they would have a much lower chance of escalating to what could become World War III. At a minimum, we need such options in our quiver of possible responses. There is no going back to the days of overwhelming American military preeminence within 100 miles of China’s shores, I’m afraid, and the DoD report should help us all see why.

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shirlleycoyle · 4 years

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The Trump Administration Is Attacking Critical Internet Privacy Tools

A few weeks ago, I was shocked to learn that the US government had begun dismantling the Open Technology Fund (OTF), a major funder of open source tools like Signal, Tor, and Tails that allow internet users to circumvent censorship and protect themselves from online spying.

The organization’s entire leadership team had been summarily fired by Michael Pack, an ally of Steve Bannon and the new Trump-approved CEO of the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM). The firings were just a small piece of a bigger reconfiguring of the organizations administered by USAGM, which include government-run media networks Voice of America and Radio Free Europe. But as someone who has watched OTF thrive for the past eight years as a member of its Advisory Council, this stood out as an attack against the organization that gave birth to some of our most important anti-censorship and privacy tools.

When I began studying online censorship in 2008, it was not a particularly well-known phenomenon in the United States. Elsewhere in the world, however, was a different story: In places like China, Tunisia, Syria, Vietnam, Iran, and Thailand, a heavily restricted Internet was the norm. Individuals in a number of countries were commonly prohibited from accessing information about human rights, foreign news publications, social media websites, religious content, and information about sexuality and sexual health.

In those days, it wasn’t easy to circumvent web blocks. While organizations like Tor had long provided anonymous and uncensored access to the Internet, they did so on shoestring budgets. Basic web proxies were often free but worked poorly, while paid VPNs required a credit card—something out of reach for many web users worldwide. Back then it seemed like a divided, Balkanized web was our global shared future.

Then, in January 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a speech at The Newseum introducing Internet freedom as a core component of “21st century statecraft.” Acknowledging information networks as “a new nervous system for our planet,” Clinton spoke to the need to “synchronize our technological progress with our principles,” and laid out a plan to fight online censorship, connect more people to global information networks, and find diplomatic solutions to strengthen cyber security.

That plan came with funding, first through the State Department’s Department of Democracy, Rights, and Labor (DRL), and later joined by OTF, launched under Radio Free Asia and funded through USAGM (then called the Broadcasting Board of Governors).

That funding, as anyone in the Internet freedom community can attest, has altered the landscape of the Internet for millions upon millions of users around the world by providing support for technology that enables users to leap over firewalls and protect themselves from pervasive government surveillance. It has provided organizations in numerous countries where local funding is impossible and major foundations fail to reach with the necessary support to keep Internet users in their countries safe from harm and able to access important information.

I’ll readily admit that I was, and remain, skeptical of the Internet freedom agenda. The State Department agenda seemed heavily focused on countries where the US sought regime change—like Iran, Syria, and China. And I wasn’t the only one: Prominent Tunisian activist Sami Ben Gharbia criticized the agenda for its propensity to disincline the US from engaging in action that would “endanger the ‘stability’ of the dictatorial Arab order,” while writer Evgeny Morozov challenged the very idea that the Internet could bring about freedom or change.

In those heady, early days it was not uncommon for untested and unvetted tools—at least one of which turned out to be utter snake oil—to receive funding, invitations to State Department events, or even awards. In my circles, rumors of Beltway Bandits competing for lucrative Internet freedom contracts abounded.

But OTF, launched in 2012, sought to change all that by putting into place measures that ensured that any technology it funded was open source. Recognizing the mistrust that existed amongst much of the global internet freedom community, OTF put together an expert advisory council (of which I was a founding member) to review applications for funding, and began to create a sense of community amongst OTF-funded projects through the creation of an annual summit that has, over time, grown to be a diverse, inclusive, and community-led event.

This is what sets OTF apart and, regrettably, what is most at stake if Michael Pack gets his way. Neither Pack—nor James Miles, his recent appointee to the position of the position of OTF CEO—is an expert on Internet freedom, but some powerful players have his ear, among them the Lantos Foundation for Human Rights and Justice and the lobbyist Michael Horowitz, another Steve Bannon ally. Both have long worked to get the majority of funding for a particular set of tools backed by the anti-gay religious group Falun Gong that includes China-focused VPNs Ultrasurf and Freegate.

The Lantos Foundation would have you believe that it is that affiliation that has prevented their favored tools—which include Ultrasurf and Freegate—from receiving funding from OTF, claiming prejudice against this oppressed religious group. But the fact of the matter is that the people behind the tools have for many years refused to open up their code, and thereby verify the accuracy of their security claims. The battle is, therefore, between closed and open source technology.

Open source technology is critical in the internet freedom space, because it allows —anyone to inspect the code and understand how a given program works, or whether its code contains any bugs or backdoors. If bugs are found, they can be reported to the developers, helping them to improve upon the technology.

OTF requires that the tools it funds make their code open and publicly available, allowing it to be used by other developers, who can learn from it or reuse parts of it to build new programs or create applications that run on top of existing ones. Closed source technology, on the other hand, withdraws that knowledge from the public—it is inherently proprietary, unavailable for audit by anyone but hired experts under a non-disclosure agreement.

For OTF’s global community, this is a matter of trust and safety. I have attended most of OTF’s annual summits and spoken to a number of the developers, researchers, and activists from all over the world. Many of them speak of persecution by the state, of targeted surveillance, and pervasive censorship. They trust open source technology because they understand that using it does not present yet another vulnerability in their lives, the way that an unvetted closed source tool could.

Open source can also be a matter of thrift: OTF’s estimated annual budget is $15 million—hardly a dent in what myriad state actors spend each year to go after activists and dissidents. By using open source code, technologists can stretch that budget even farther, creating news tools that run alongside existing ones, or “forking” existing code for new purposes. It also ensures sustainability: If a project’s founders move on, they leave their code behind, allowing another group to pick up the slack and continue the work.

OTF’s opponents have failed time and time again to engage with any of these arguments, instead hammering on how their favored tools will ensure that more people can leap over China’s Great Firewall. That is certainly a noble goal, but what concerns me is that it seems to be their only goal.

While China’s censorship model is one of the most sophisticated, there is no publicly available instruction or guidance from the developers of tools such as Ultrasurf or Freegate on how users can continue to use this tool despite some enforcement of VPN restrictions in China, as well as VPNs repeatedly being removed from China’s Apple store. Because these tools are closed source, no one can say whether they’re even safe for Chinese users. Yet, these problems are regularly discussed and new approaches piloted among other open source anti-censorship projects, so that they can learn from each other’s hard work.

As the space for online free speech continues to shrink, the developers of these tools have apparently done little to nothing to make their technology available to, say, activists in Uganda impacted by the country’s new social media tax. Using these tools, protesters in Hong Kong will be unable to access censored content or safely hide their online identity amid growing surveillance capabilities used to find protesters. There’s also no evidence that Lebanese human rights defenders could make use of these tools to organize safely.

The digital threats that face anyone whose right to existence is under attack are not isolated to one country. Civil society worldwide must work together to overcome well-coordinated, well-resourced digital adversaries, and must trust in the technology that holds their sensitive conversations and identities. This trust can only be earned through open source code.

It is for these reasons that nearly five hundred organizations—and more than a thousand individuals, many of whom are experts in the field—have signed a letter calling on Congress to require Internet freedom funds to be awarded through an open, fair, competitive, and evidence-based decision process; to remain fully open-source in perpetuity; to ensure that all technologies supported by government funds receive regular security audits; and to pass the Open Technology Fund Authorization Act.

It is difficult to say what exactly will be lost if Michael Pack is allowed to continue his tyrannical reign, but one thing is for certain: The Internet freedom agenda is going to look a lot more like the Trump agenda—dangerous and ineffective.

The Trump Administration Is Attacking Critical Internet Privacy Tools syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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snehajamadade · 4 years

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Global EGRC Market 2020 Trends, Market Share, Industry Size, Growth, Sales, Opportunities, Analysis and Forecast To 2024

Summary:

A new market study, titled “Discover Global EGRC Market Upcoming Trends, Growth Drivers and Challenges” has been featured on WiseGuyReports.

Introduction

Global EGRC Market

For an organization to run well, there are several factors that the enterprise needs to consider so that it runs smoothly, while providing maximum value to its shareholders. The process of development of procedures, relations, and mechanisms to ensure that the organization runs lucidly one needs to consider multiple factors that come under criteria called e-GRC. The e-GRC consists of risk, governance, and compliances, which affect the company in a quite compelling way.

The rising need for professionals who can handle the ever-changing compliances has boosted the growth of the e-GRC in a much-sophisticated way. On the other hand, issues like risk management and complex regulatory agreements have affected the growth aspects of the market by a great extent.

The role of the e-GRC does not stop here. It demands professionals to combine all the resources to produce effective results that can help companies attain a great feat in the industry. Most recently, the range of resource that can be used for the following purpose includes human resources, technological abilities, and awareness in combination to ensure that the organization accepts the maximum visibility on a global scale.

The global e-GRC market crossed a major milestone in the last year. The total estimated market size of the industry is $27.80 billion, and the industry is developing at an astounding figure of 12.9 percent for the next few years. The double-digit growth figures, coupled with the huge market size, has attracted many businesses across the world. Furthermore, as the global e-GRC market continues to proliferate, the industry is expected to cross a significant milestone by the year 2025.

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Factors affecting the growth prospects

The e-GRC market represents a vast market, and there are very few individuals or professional consulting firms that have worked in the space. The experts develop frameworks and use computational powers to make sure that technology is leveraged throughout the process. On the development of strategies, one common platform is shared by all individuals to make sure that the organization’s roles and strategies are transparent to all and they can contribute their ideas on the growth prospects of the company. The inclusion of software, coupled with human knowledge, can help companies reduce risk and offer better products at competitive prices. This has led to the rise of the e-GRC market and the companies working in the space.

Key Geographies

The e-GRC market represents a huge opportunity and is rapidly expanding every day. The software has seen significant growth in the developed countries like North America, with the segment accounting up to 30 percent of the market. The rise in cyber-attacks along with the growth of latest technologies like IoT, cloud computing, and big data has pushed the product further, and the field is booming like anything.

Other important nations include the Asia Pacific region where the industry is rapidly expanding in the emerging nations like India, China, and Japan. Strong growth in terms of advanced solutions coupled with quickly developing infrastructure has led to the rise of the industry in the region.

The industry is still in its nascent stages, and with the verities of solutions catered by software giants like SAP and Thomson Reuters, there exists stiff competition between vendors all around the globe.

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addisonbouza-blog · 4 years

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Anthology Report

I. Techno-panics throughout history

Whenever a culture is faced with a new emergence of technology it is always greeted with opposition from critics. A trend was noticed that many of these critics use rhetoric to drive fear and hesitancy into the public in order to achieve gains, whether person, political or legislatively. In order to achieve the panic response critics will look for new technology that will affect “… our relationship with time, space, and each other,” these three categories are indicators on whether a techno-panic can be created from the technology (Rinehart, 2017). This rhetoric is seen on many different platforms, from sources such as The Atlantic to other private publications. One article mentioned from the Atlanticstates that “But the twin rise of the smartphone and social media has caused an earthquake of a magnitude we’ve not seen in a very long time, if ever (Rinehart, 2017).” This quote displays how rhetoric is used to create the negative connotation in the viewers mind and instill fear in the use of new technology. This fear inducing rhetoric is not limited to the development of new technology, it is seen in debates about cybersecurity as well as media policy and online safety. Phrases like “…Digital Pearl Harbor… cyber 9/11… privacy Chernobyl… and toxic data waste spills,” have ben coined for the same purpose (Thierer, 2012). All the catchphrases are using historical traumatic experiences as links to their arguments about the future of the Internet and technology, inciting techno-panics. Even though the seriousness of privacy leaks and other data security should not be undermined, critics are placing these fears with catastrophes that were a threat to people’s lives when the instances they are applying them to are only a threat to livelihood. No one has directly died from a data leak over the internet, the same cannot be said about Chernobyl however. The authors of these articles are relying on human survival instinct to be combined with poor risk analysis skills so their viewers will buy into their techno panics (Thierer, 2012). The fears that are present in today’s society are built off previous techno panic rhetoric and will continue to be present as new techno panics arise.

II. The future of the body

The future holds numerous possibilities for the human body. Looking back in history we can see the effects of the technology that we use today, from vaccinations to MRI’s, people are living longer, healthier lives than ever before. This trend does not seem to be changing either, with new technology comes greater advancements for the medical field. A major trend for articles being published is the excitement and overall positivity of the progress doctors and researchers are making. For starters, articles are touching on the topic that the future will see an increase in the use of scanners, cameras and other imaging technologies to propose more choices for medical treatment, decreasing the time of doctor-patient interactions (Khasriya, 2018). This could eventually even lead to an extension of medical care to outside of clinics and into individual’s homes. Having individuals being able to self-diagnose their illnesses could see a reduction of patients entering clinics for minor injuries, allowing more of the doctor’s effort to be focused on imminent situations that arise. More cutting-edge revelations that have been made include the field of prosthetics, an area where there is still much to discover. Researchers have been working towards having prosthetics become incorporated parts of the human body, not just external artifacts. They have achieved this by interfacing the prosthetic with the patients nerves through the bionic arm which allow the prosthetic to be controlled just like a normal arm. An exciting case of this is highlighted in the case of Melissa Loomis, “…one of the world’s first patient to regain a sense of touch through a mind-controlled prosthetic robotic arm (Moncrieffe, 2017).” Loomis underwent sensory reinnervation which grafts the nerve that would previously receive stimuli from her hand to different parts of her arm which can then be stimulated by the prosthetic (Moncrieffe, 2017). In the video included along with the article, it shows Loomis moving the robotic arm with her mind and receive pressure sensory input from the robotic arm through the use of sensors attached to the nerve innervation points on her arm, during this process the prosthetic arm is not attached to her body. The results from the test with Melissa Loomis reflected the positivity that was found throughout other articles as these researchers and doctors were giving Melissa back her sense of touch which she had not had in a few years. It is easy to see why each of these discoveries are being presented with such a positive light, the doctors and researchers on these projects are able to drastically change the patient’s life. Their work not only changes how the patients will live but also the lives of others, as the positivity and excitement that they show to the world will only motivate others to create such an impact.

III. Intelligent systems

As a species we are always trying to make better, stronger connections and improve the quality of our lives. When looking at intelligent systems such as AI and mechanisms like driverless cars, there is an objective approach to each of the many articles written. These articles are not saying how we absolutely need the AI technology that we are developing but rather that once we do implement this technology, our life on Earth will change as we know it. In a highly thought-provoking article by the Smithsonian Institute, the author of the article, Stephan Talty, gives possible scenarios for what the future could look like with artificial intelligence. What makes this article even more interesting is how calming Talty makes the audience feel after giving these scenarios. Talty affirms that “…many researchers will tell you that the heaven-or-hell scenarios are like winning the Powerball jackpot,” putting to rest the notion that once we have AI on Earth it would result in either an utopian fantasy or utter hell (Talty, 2018). We are rather more likely to get a future where AI will aid our daily lives, changing the nature of our civilization. Throughout the article Talty does not project the future of AI as some impending doom but rather as an even similar to the creation of the cell phone, it is something that is inevitable and will forever change our world. AI will not only change the way we live but also the quality of life we live with by “…improving patient outcomes at reduced costs (Deep, 2019).” Deep positive tone about the aid that AI can provide to the medical field is prevalent throughout the entirety of the article. From minimizing hospital and medical errors, which account for 440,00 deaths in America, to providing individualistic medicine based off a patient’s genome, the possibilities of incorporating AI into the medical world will provide a plethora of positive benefits (Deep, 2019). This same hopefully tone of the inevitable is carried into Ron Schmelzer’s article in the Forbes journal. Schmelzer begins by stating that already narrower versions of AI are already being implemented in our society, as seen in blue-collar industries such as automotive companies, and have improved these industries with its enforcement. He continues this positive tone by touting that AI will be the program that will take care of the repetitive, mundane work allowing individuals to focus on more precedent issues (Talty, 2018). Similar to the positivity shown in the articles dealing with the future of the body category, the use of intelligent systems used that same positivity to convey how it will be benefit in our future life on Earth.

IV. Making and things

Humans are always looking to make things better, easier, and stronger for our own gain. A world that has the possibility to do these exact tasks is the world of 3D printing. There are few limits when it comes to creating objects from 3D printers. One of the very exciting possibilities is the prospect of revolutionizing “…our societies and transform the development sector (Rosenthal, 2018).” One of the many options for 3D printing is a cure for the fight against homelessness and world pollution, which is gaining understandable positive press. The reason that this idea is so exciting is because the world would be able to combat two major issues at the same time. In China they are using “…3D printing to produce more than 22 million m2 of prefabricated building materials from industry solid waste (Sustainia, 2018).” With using only 100% recycled materials the Chinese company WinSun, had saved approximately 18,000 tones of cement in 2016 alone (Sustainia, 2018). By being able to create these structures they are helping the environment and the citizens of their country in an eco-friendly and cost-friendly way that may be leading the way for construction of the future. With increased concerns for global warming and the harm of industries on the environment it is understandable to see why this approach is predisposed to the same type of positivity that is found in the other categories of this paper. Another way that 3D printers are generating positivity is through the empowerment of people to impact the industry of 3D printing. The increasing accessibility of individuals to 3D printers allows them to explore their creativity and push the capabilities of these printers to the edge. There are already examples of people generating 3D printed food, which could be a god send for populations that struggle with food accessibility. We have also seen the use of these printers in areas hit by natural disasters and even in space to generate necessary tools needed. For those in space the capability to print off a tool that has the same strength as those made on Earth could allow for quick fixes made on the fly (The Future of 3D Printing, 2016). Looking into the future then generation of building parts and tools in space could be instrumental in the push to explore deeper part of the cosmos than ever before. No wonder why this topic has so much excitement and eagerness around it.

V. Cyborgs and Bioart

With the increased integration of technology into our lives it begs the question of when we as humans become something more. The use of technology has already put us far ahead of any other species on the plant and the addition of “…mechanic body parts to improve a certain bodily dysfunction or enhance capabilities” could push the nature of our species into becoming cyborgs (The Medical Futurist, 2019). However, by combining our natural bodies with machines this could cause many ethical and philosophical questions as the boundaries of what qualifies an individual as human will be stretched to its limits. Out of all the previous topics discussed this is the one that is met with slightly more hesitation that the others. This is refuted by that fact that in a way we are already cyborgs, just not the Terminator way that everyone thinks about. Our technological devices such as our phones are “…an abstract form of brain-machine interfaces (Bidshahri, 2018).” At first this is a complex idea to ponder but if one thinks about everyday tasks are performed on our phones, from calculating a math problem to retrieving and storing information. Our phone and other technological devices therefore serve as an “…extension of our minds (Bidshahri, 2018).” With the fusion of man and machine come more realistic ideas of what the future cyborgs could look like. The possibility that we could “…one day be able to fill the blood with nano-bots - tiny machines - that repair our cells,” is just marvelous since in our world today the repair of cell and tissues needs to be done through surgery (O'Reilly, 2017). Not only could these nano-bots aid in the repair of cells but they could also possible monitor glucose levels for diabetics, detect the early onset of cancer and other diseases and even fight pathogens. With the possibility to treat and fight illness like never before becoming a cyborg might not be a bad feat.

VI. Conclusion

In conclusion each of these articles had the similar themes when talking about the future of their technology. These sources all used rhetoric in order to persuade their audience into the viewpoint of the author. All of these sources, except the ones talking about techno-panics, focused on the positive aspects of the technology that is being developed. I believe this is important because it forced the readers to shift their mindset from what can go wrong to what can go right. This initial mindset can be seen even in our questions and answers assignments from class. Whenever one of these new topics was brought up, the majority of responses always fell into the rejection of the idea because we were afraid of what could go wrong. However, by keeping this predetermined mindset we are holding our civilization back as the possibilities of this technology are limitless and can aid so many in amazingly different ways. Each of these authors sent out to use positive rhetoric to influence readers into seeing that the technologies of the future can and will be highly beneficial to our species. In my opinion they accomplished that successfully in their deliverance of their ideas.

VII. References

Rinehart, W. (2017, September 10). The Rhetoric of Techno panics And Why It Matters. Retrieved from https://medium.com/@willrinehart/the-rhetoric-of-technopanics-and-why-it-matters-a78870048ee0.

Thierer, A. (2012, March 18). The Six Things that Drive “Technopanics”. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamthierer/2012/03/04/the-six-things-that-drive-technopanics/#407b2e5d70b0.

Thierer, A. (2019, September 15). Technopanics, Threat Inflation, and the Danger of an Information Technology Precautionary Principle. Retrieved from https://www.mercatus.org/publications/technology-and-innovation/technopanics-threat-inflation-and-danger-information.

Thierer, A. (2017, June 21). What a 1911 Silent Movie Tells Us about the Technopanic Mentality. Retrieved from https://techliberation.com/2017/06/21/what-a-1911-silent-movie-tells-us-about-the-technopanic-mentality/.

Moncrieffe, M. V. (2017, March 24). New prosthetic invention lets users reclaim their sense of touch. Retrieved from https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-03-prosthetic-users-reclaim.html.

ServiceMay, R. F., MervisDec, J., MalakoffDec, D., StoneDec, R., ServickDec, K., & FrederickDec, E. (2018, December 26). New artificial nerves could transform prosthetics. Retrieved from https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/05/new-artificial-nerves-could-transform-prosthetics.

Planke, M. (2015, May 12). These 8 Incredible Advances in Tech Are Changing What It Means to Be Human. Retrieved from https://www.mic.com/articles/118002/these-8-incredible-advances-in-tech-are-changing-what-it-means-to-be-human.

Khasriya, J., Beastall, C., Jones, & Jones, G. (2018, August 29). The Impact of Technology on The Human Body - Ape Investigates. Retrieved from https://www.apetogentleman.com/technology-human-body/.

Talty, S. (2018, April). What Will Our Society Look Like When Artificial Intelligence Is Everywhere? Retrieved from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/artificial-intelligence-future-scenarios-180968403/.

Rohde, K., Vukovic, R., Zeldich, M., Ramesh, S., Hershkowitz, J., & Farkas, G. (2017). Benefits & Risks of Artificial Intelligence. Retrieved from https://futureoflife.org/background/benefits-risks-of-artificial-intelligence/.

Schmelzer, R. (2019, October 18). The AI-Enabled Future. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/cognitiveworld/2019/10/17/the-ai-enabled-future/#53f7008d3339.

Deep, A. (2019, April 4). How AI Is Transforming The Future Of Healthcare Industry. Retrieved from https://hackernoon.com/how-ai-is-transforming-the-future-of-healthcare-industry-f6020cc18323.

Yeap, M. (2019, March 1). The Future of 3D Printing: A Glimpse at the Next Generation. Retrieved from https://all3dp.com/2/future-of-3d-printing-a-glimpse-at-next-generation-making/.

Rosenthal, A., & SocialGood. (2018, May 1). How 3D Printing Could Revolutionize the Future of Development. Retrieved from https://medium.com/@plus_socialgood/how-3d-printing-could-revolutionize-the-future-of-development-54a270d6186d.

The Future of 3D Printing. (2016). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89Bx–Ubf3o

Sustainia. (2018, June 15). 3D Printed Structures Save Time. Retrieved from https://goexplorer.org/3d-printed-structures-save-time/.

Tuttle, J. (2018, July 30). We the Cyborgs (of the Future). Retrieved from https://becominghuman.ai/we-the-cyborgs-of-the-future-cb301ed0d29e.

O'Reilly, T. (2017, October 27). What Will Our Lives Be Like as Cyborgs? Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/10/cyborg-future-artificial-intelligence/543882/.

The Medical Futurist. (2019, October 14). From Human To Cyborg: Are You Willing To Augment Your Body? Retrieved from https://medicalfuturist.com/from-human-to-cyborg/.

Bidshahri, R. (2018, December 20). Educating the Wise Cyborgs of the Future. Retrieved from https://singularityhub.com/2018/12/21/educating-the-wise-cyborgs-of-the-future/.

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terabitweb · 5 years

Text

Original Post from SC Magazine Author: Doug Olenick

No doubt about it, these women, with their diverse backgrounds and different career trajectories, are powerhouses in the cybersecurity field.

Dawn Beyer senior fellow, Lockheed Martin

Dawn Beyer didn’t know it when she left her Florida home at age 17 some 30 years ago to go into the Air Force, but she was about to embark on a long career in the military, intelligence and cyber.

Over a 24-year career in the Air Force, Beyer says the military helped pay for four degrees, culminating with a doctorate in information systems from Nova Southeastern University.

Beyer says her first job in security was as a terminal area security officer where there might be an office of 10 people and only one or two desktop computers available to the staff. She says the job mostly entailed running checklist items, but gave her a background in IT security that the military put to work for more than two decades.

“I had experience in IT security, and was also trained to handle sensitive information, which fit in well with my work in IT,” Beyer says.

Then in 1998 there was a security event with an advanced persistent threat (APT) involving a nation-state that heightened Beyer’s interest and awareness in security. From that point, Beyer recognized how important the field was becoming and how important it was to national defense.

When asked about being a women in a male-dominated field, she says for most of her career, she would go into a meeting thinking about the points she wanted to make in a meeting – and never noticed that the room was all men.

“Some of my best supervisors were men. They would always support my goals and would let me work on the type of projects I was interested in,” she says.

Then in the past year Beyer was in a meeting with one of her leaders and was asked how many women participated in a recent cyber event. She said that there was only one.

“From that point on I made it more of a goal to help women work through the challenges of working in a male-dominated field,” Beyer says. “In many ways it’s not about a women’s technical capabilities, they are often brilliant. The best thing we can do is encourage women to take risks in their careers and build up their confidence.”

Beyer says Lockheed Martin works closely with local high schools, community colleges and universities to attract women into the IT and cybersecurity fields. She tries to expose interested candidates to the broad number of opportunities in cybersecurity. Beyer says many people assume cybersecurity personnel work mainly on incident response, but there are many jobs in the field, including analysts in a security intelligence center, threat research, forensics, embedded security, privacy and risk analysis and management.

“People are often limited about what they know about the field,” Beyer says. “But once I point out all the possibilities, they often say they didn’t realize cybersecurity was so broad.” – Steve Zurier

Jadee Hanson CISO, vice president of information systems, Code42

Jadee Hanson’s cybersecurity bonafides are clearly recognizable – CISO at Code42, Target’s senior director of information security – but it’s the numerous activities in which Hanson is involved that push her to Power Player status.

In her role at Code42, Hanson serves as a mentor and advocate for women, but that is only the tip of the iceberg. She often participates in speaking with local security groups on the issue of boosting the role of women in security and discusses the issue in outlets like WeAreTheCity. This organization was started in 2008 as a centralized site that houses a multitude of career development resources helping women gain new skills, grow their networks and ultimately progress in their careers, including cybersecurity.

“Jadee is not only committed to putting the protection of our customers’ data first, but is also an advocate for women in technology and drawing on diverse viewpoints to solve business challenges,” says Joe Payne, Code42’s president and CEO.

Hanson was behind having Code42 work with the Girl Scouts. In the past year Code42 has hosted two events with the Girl Scouts at which more than 150 girls earned STEM and Cybersecurity badges.

“We have to start encouraging participation at the next generation of workers. One of the ways we do this at Code42 is through a partnership with Girl Scouts. We house Girl Scouts here to get their STEM Badge or Cybersecurity Badge. In fact, we’re the first company within the River Valley region of Girl Scouts to host the Cybersecurity Badge. They’re not all going to choose a career in cybersecurity, but the thing that we’re trying to do is make sure that the younger generation knows and believes that if they do want to choose this career path, there’s a place for them,” Hanson said in a GRA Quantum article.

“The active role Jadee takes in developing her team, supporting professional networks and championing educational events with children is paving the way for women to make a bigger impact on the security industry in the future,” Code42 said about her actions.

In addition to numerous extracurricular efforts to boost the number of women in security, Hanson has also worked tirelessly internally to improve her Code42 team. This includes crafting a vision statement for the security department with a philosophy that the team should be a collaborative service organization that enables innovation rather than a mysterious, feared entity – one that says yes instead of no.

Hanson’s efforts to help others also extends outside the tech field. She is the founder of Building Without Borders, a non-profit started in 2015 with the mission to serve those in poverty-stricken locations around the world through housing services. Since April 2015 it has built 42 homes in the poorest areas of the Dominican Republic. – Doug Olenick

Priscilla Moriuchi director of strategic threat development, Recorded Future

Asia is home to some of the world’s most sophisticated state-sponsored hacking groups, but just because they share a continent doesn’t mean they operate by the same playbook.

That’s what makes Priscilla Moriuchi’s expertise so valuable: she has that unique combination of government background, cybersecurity knowledge, and geo-political experience that allows her to develop a keen understanding of foreign cyber operations.

As director of strategic threat development at cybersecurity company Recorded Future, Moriuchi serves as a preeminent expert on Asian cyber activity, with in-depth knowledge of China and North Korea. Moriuchi joined Recorded Future in April 2017 after spending 12 years at the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), most recently as its enduring threat manager, leading the agency’s East Asia cyber threats office. Among her responsibilities at the time was assessing whether China was adhering to its 2015 agreement to refrain from stealing intellectual property and trade secrets from U.S. corporate firms.

Earlier this year, Moriuchi authored a paper released during the annual RSA show revealing how China exploits social media platforms to sway the opinions of Westerners and portray China in a more sympathetic light. According to the report, Chinese state-run news agencies use social media to spread biased, English-language content that favors China’s stance on global issues such as the ongoing trade war with America.

As part of Recorded Future’s Insikt Group research team, Moriuchi has also recently investigated how China and Russia manage their respective national vulnerability databases. The team found that China is on average much faster than the U.S. at reporting the latest confirmed product vulnerabilities in its National Vulnerability Database (CCNVD). However, Recorded Future also accused China of manipulating CCNVD records to cover up evidence that the Ministry of State Security withheld public disclosure of certain vulnerabilities while it evaluated the viability of exploiting them in offensive cyber operations.

Meanwhile, research into Russia’s vulnerability database, the BDU, found it to be far less comprehensive than its American counterpart, omitting many critical bugs while focusing heavily on flaws that appear to be specifically relevant to Russian state information systems.

Moriuchi also collaborated on research into the digital behavior of North Korea’s most senior leadership. The investigation revealed that the country’s ruling elite are technologically savvy and use the internet to circumvent international sanctions, as well as generate revenue through means such as cryptocurrency theft.

Moriuchi has become a prominent voice in the cyber industry, speaking out on the need to recruit more women as skilled talent, while openly acknowledging the challenges these women can face when entering the field. – Bradley Barth

Eve Maler vice president of innovation and emerging technology, ForgeRock

A strategist and innovator in the digital identity, security and privacy space, Eve Maler has been assigned quite a few of her own “digital identities” over an accomplished 34-year career.

For starters, she earned the nickname “XMLgrrl” for her work as a co-creator of Extensible Markup Language (XML), which debuted in the late 1990s. She was later called “SAML Lady” for her role in the invention of the Security Assertion Markup Language standard for exchanging authentication and authorization data between parties.

And she has referred to herself as “chief UMAnitarian” for founding and leading the User Managed Access Work Group that’s been developing UMA, an OAuth-based access management protocol standard. The group operates under the auspices of the non-profit Kantara Initiative, whose website describes the group’s mission as developing “specs that let an individual control the authorization of data sharing and service access made between online services on the individual’s behalf, and to facilitate interoperable implementations of the specs.”

Currently vice president of innovation and emerging technology at identity and access management provider ForgeRock, Maler drives advances in privacy and consent that enable user-controlled and compliant data sharing across web, mobile, and Internet of Things contexts.

She also directs the company’s engagement in interoperability standards such as Health Relationship Trust (HEART), which is a set of profiles that gives health care patients the power to specify how, when, and with whom their clinical data is shared. In fact, Maler co-founded and co-chairs the OpenID Foundation’s Health Relationship Trust Work Group.

Additionally, she serves as a trusted advisor to public and private forums specializing in key initiatives such as open banking, which requires strong authentication protocols.

Prior to ForgeRock, Maler was a principal analyst at Forrester Research, where she consulted with clients on such topics as emerging identity and security solutions, consumer-facing identity, distributed authorization, privacy enhancement and API security. Before that, she was named distinguished engineer of identity services at PayPal, which followed a long stint with Sun Microsystems, where she served as technology director and XML standards architect. Other key stops along her journey included Arbortext and Digital Equipment Corporation.

“Even is an extremely bright and quick technologist with deep insight into standards and politics surrounding them,” said Gerald Beuchelt, CISO at LogMein, in a recommendation posted on Maler’s LinkedIn page.

“I consider her to be one of the leading figures in user-centric identity, having contributed to many internet standards, adds John Bradley, senior architect at Yubico, in another recommendation. – Bradley Barth

Lisa Monaco partner, O’Melveny

Two years ago at the Council on Foreign Relations, Lisa Monaco, then counterterrorism advisor to President Obama, called out compromised data integrity as a serious threat going forward and stressed that the U.S. was open to using every tool in its arsenal to battle nation-state cyberinterference, noting the country just need to be nimbler and quicker on the draw.

Well-known for her work with the White House and as the assistant attorney general for mational security in the Justice Department, Monaco regularly drew praise for making cybersecurity a priority, including her leadership in the U.S.’s response to a number of security risks, cyber and otherwise, both domestically and internationally.

As the chair for the Homeland Security Principals Committee, she helped develop and coordinate policy and response to cyber threats, terror attacks and other crises. Her latest gig as a partner with O’Melveny, heading the Data Security and Privacy group with partner Steve Bunnell, leverages her 15 years of experience at Justice and stint in the Obama administration to guide clients through security-related sensitive governance, legal, regulatory and policy concerns.

A Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Reiss Center on Law and Security at New York University Law School and at NYU’s Center on Cybersecurity, Monaco also serves as co-chair for the Aspen Institute’s Cybersecurity Group, a public-private forum that includes industry leaders, former government officials, Capitol Hill leaders, and members of academia and journalism aimed at bringing cybersecurity to the forefront and putting action to words.

She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a senior fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center on Science and International Affairs and a senior national security analyst at CNN.

After graduating Harvard and the University of Chicago Law School, Monaco clerked for Judge Jane R. Roth on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

Her dedication to public service has garnered her a number of awards, including the Justice Department’s highest hone – the Attorney General’s Award for Exceptional Service – as well as the Edmund J. Randolph Award, which recognizes outstanding contributions to the department. – Teri Robinson

Malini Rao vice president, information security, Deutsche Bank

With more than 18 years in cybersecurity, Malini Rao has extensive experience and expertise working globally for Fortune 500 clients in various areas of cybersecurity such as application security, cloud security, DevSecOps, security operations, governance, risk and compliance management, cyber risk management, IOT security and identity and access management.

Malini has managed large multimillion dollar projects and large teams globally. She has rich experience working in various industry verticals like financial services, retail, consumer goods, energy as well as for oil and gas industry clients globally. She has worked as a program manager, CISO and a global practice head in the various roles she has taken on over the years. – Teri Robinson

Lisa J. Sotto managing partner, New York office, Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP

In the 20 years since Lisa Sotto started building what eventually became the storied privacy and cybersecurity practice at Hunton Andrews Kurth, she’s helped prominent clients like Hudson’s Bay Company and Yahoo! navigate thorny privacy issues as they try to recover from massive breaches.

Sotto’s influence has been felt on boards around the country and across industry sectors that she advised on information governance issues surrounding privacy and safeguarding data. She’s worked side by side with organizations to develop and enhance formal privacy programs compliant with an array of legal and regulatory requirements worldwide, encompassing technologies such as facial recognition, wearables, retail tracking and geolocation as they emerge.

Sotto spent the better part of 2018 preparing more than 50 U.S.-based multinational clients like PepsiCo, Tiffany & Co., The Western Union Company and Proctor & Gamble to meet GDPR requirements, which took effect in May 2018. Her more recent work included helping organizations like Verisk and Rite Aid comply with the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 by its January 1, 2020 deadline.

In 2017, she was tapped by the U.S. Department of Commerce to aid in its first joint review with the European Commission (EC) of the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield framework for data protection compliance. Sotto brought her voluminous expertise to bear during testimony before the EC, various U.S. regulatory agencies and several EU Data Protection Agencies (DPAs).

For the Judicial Reform and Government Accountability Project funded by USAID, Sotto advised the Serbian government on the legalities of global data protection and has been invited by other governments in China, Thailand and Myanmar to inform them on global privacy and data security law. She is currently working on Democratic presidential candidate Kirsten Gillibrand’s lawyers’ committee and has briefed candidate Pete Buttigieg on privacy and security issues.

For the past 13 years she has been a member of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee, where she is now the chairman. Sotto has worked closely with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on its global data breach notification laws report – she and FTCD Chairman Noah Phillips presented the report in Brussels last October.

She is also editor and lead author of the best-selling Privacy and Cybersecurity Law Deskbook, a treatise to guide those tasked with managing privacy and cybersecurity law issues. The book includes a roadmap for compliance with global data protection laws as well as state breach notification requirements. – Teri Robinson

The post Women in Security: PowerPlayers appeared first on SC Media.

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Go to Source Author: Doug Olenick Women in Security: PowerPlayers Original Post from SC Magazine Author: Doug Olenick No doubt about it, these women, with their diverse backgrounds and different career trajectories, are powerhouses in the cybersecurity field.

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awesomeblockchain · 6 years

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There's a lot going on in the world of decentralised networking and not just the daily rollercoaster ride of the cryptocurrency markets. A decade after the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto first unleashed Bitcoin on an unsuspecting world, the blockchain has grown and branched out and now a thousand flowers blossom, some of them rather peculiar blooms indeed.

Look around and you'll see that blockchains are apparently the answer to every problem. From replacing the global banking system to guaranteeing the provenance of diamonds to paying your dentist - there's a blockchain for that.

Overhyped they may be, but blockchains actually are a big deal and they will get bigger. Their potential for secure 'trustless' interchange is too great to ignore and once the silliness has died down inevitably some serious use cases will emerge.

Indeed that's already starting to happen, hence this blog. We'll be updating this page every few days to reflect the serious innovations bubbling up in this most interesting and volatile of spaces. (Also check out our rolling 5G coverage.)

11/06/18 The EOS mainnet, a blockchain designed as a platform for smart contracts to rival Ethereum, went live over the weekend, although it's not yet open for business.

Voting is currently underway among holders of EOS cryptocurrency tokens to decide on the first 21 block producer candidates which will manage the blockchain and mine the blocks, for which they will earn EOS tokens.

EOS is designed to support decentralised applications (dApps) and smart contracts. It is expected that it will be able to handle a much higher throughput than Ethereum - 5,000 per second compared with the latter's 15 - and at a lower latency. EOS uses a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism rather than Ethererum's proof-of-work (PoW) which is harder to scale. Transactions in Ethereum's currency the ether (ETH) also incur relatively high charges while fees to secure the EOS blockchain are managed through inflation - tokens produced to pay the miners mean there are more in circulation.

On the other hand, the EOS model is more centralised with just a few miners controlling the governance of the blockchain - and only one running the election to decide the initial 21.

There can a total of only 21 EOS block producers at any given time. This would be a big problem were all the miners to be in one jurisdiction although the block producers will be continuously rotated to reduce this problem. Nevertheless critics point out that large miners may be able to influence this process by buying votes.

The launch of the EOS mainnet was postponed be postponed after critical vulnerabilities were discovered by a cyber security company a few weeks back.

The EOS project has raised approximately $4 bn through sales of its token over the last year making it by far the largest project of its kind in financial terms.

04/06/18 Blockchain hype is not restricted to fintech startups and dubious cryptocurrency launches. The Chinese government and its supported tech companies now appear to be climbing on board the bandwagon too.

On Sunday, Chen Weihong a presenter on state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) - a channel widely seen as a mouthpiece of the government - claimed "the economic value of blockchain is 10 times more than that of the internet".

His statement came during a discussion about blockchain technology that featured well-known figures in the field such as Canadian author Don Tapscott, who claimed that "we're moving from an internet of data to an internet of value".

"No for the first time ever people and organisations can do transactions peer-to-peer," Tapscott said.

Also present were included Chen Lei, CEO of cloud network firm Xunlei, and Stanford University professor and investor Zhang Shoucheng.

As reported by Coindesk Zhang said: "While the real value of the internet is aggregating individual pieces of information into one place, which is exactly what Google and Facebook does, we are now entering an era where information is being decentralised so that individuals can own their individual data. And that's the real value of blockchain that makes it exciting."

Since programmes on CCTV generally reflect the views of the Chinese government the debate was unsurprisingly critical of many of the cryptocurrency 'initial coin offerings' (ICOs) that have come up from nowhere to net billions, sometimes on the strength of a single white paper. China implemented a nationwide cryptocurrency ban in February. However, there are plenty of signs that China plans to become a big player in the underlying blockchain technology.

On Saturday Baidu - the 'Chinese Google' - announced a protocol called Super Chain designed to reduce the energy requirement for the blockchain mining process.

Last November the firm unveiled a service called Baidu Jinkuang which would allow users to take advantage of unused computer resources in a peer-to-peer fashion. Baidu is also in the process of creating a blockchain-based photo store that protects owners' copyright and has a blockchain as a service platform in the offing.

25/05/18 Ayr-based MaidSafe (the inspiration, incidentally, for the 'new Internet' Pied Piper in the HBO series Silicon Valley) has come up with what it claims is the most efficient solution yet to the well-known Byzantine Generals problem: achieving consensus across a masterless distributed network in which no one node can be seen as the ultimate source of truth. It's a system the firm says could replace blockchain consensus for trustless data storage.

MaidSafe has been working on its blockchainless peer-to-peer autonomous data network for more than a decade. Unlike traditional client-server networks, the SAFE Network has no central point of control. Instead, it is made up of users' own machines which are used to randomly store encrypted chunks of the files uploaded to the network - a little like BitTorrent but without any central trackers and with everything encrypted. The idea is that it allows data storage (and eventually compute) with no single point of failure and in such a way that only the user has total control of his or her data. Only the user can grant access to people and applications that might want to share it. It also has its own integral cryptocurrency which is used to balance the give and take on the network.

Byzantine fault tolerance is a central issue for all decentralised distributed networks. In brief, how without a central point of authority can 'truth' be agreed upon? A particular node might be faulty or malicious but while another node nearby will see it as such a third node located in a far-flung part of the network might see it as perfectly fine because of the time taken for messages to traverse the infrastructure. Another way of looking at it is how can the network as a whole be sure of the order in which events happen on it?

This long-standing issue was finally solved by Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto via the proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism. Miners compete to be the first to solve a complex mathematical problem for which they are awarded Bitcoin and their particular version of the truth is put forward. The other nodes then come together to accept or reject this version and ultimately the network converges on the one true agreed state that will be used going forward. A key application is to prevent the problem of double-spend, where one might otherwise spend a Bitcoin simultaneously in two places.

But while Bitcoin has been highly successful in this regard the limitations of the blockchain regarding carrying capacity, scalability and throughput have become apparent. Moreover, the energy-intensive PoW consensus system has led to a high degree of centralisation since only large-scale professional miners with access to the latest ASICs and cheap electricity can now realistically earn Bitcoin in this way.

These issues make blockchains ill-suited as the basis for a data network - the equivalent of the internet or, looking further afield, the sort of heterogeous distributed networks represented by the IoT, the company says.

"The very design of blockchains means that their use case isn't suited to a global internet that deals with vast amounts of data that needs to be both private and secure," MaidSafe writes in a blog post.

The SAFE Network actually predates the Bitcoin blockchain by a couple of years but it is still at pre-release alpha stage. One of the key things that have held back progress is the difficulty in achieving a reliable consensus mechanism - the equivalent of PoW. However, this is a nut MaidSafe now claims to have cracked with PARSEC (Protocol for Asynchronous, Reliable, Secure and Efficient Consensus), a new algorithm based on a gossip protocol which the firm will open source under the GPL3 licence.

"It provides network consensus through maths and not through burning huge amounts of electricity," said CEO David Irvine (pictured).

The blog goes into more detail: "The concept of Byzantine fault tolerance is a crucial one. It means that it is mathematically guaranteed that all parts of the network will come to the same agreement at a certain point in time. Exactly what PARSEC achieves."

It continues: "With PARSEC, consensus is mathematically guaranteed as certain (as well as having a throughput that dwarfs blockchain tech). What's more, PARSEC is highly asynchronous. This means that there is no trusted setup nor any synchronous steps involved."

The company claims that PARSEC, a type of directed acyclic graph (DAG), offers significant advantages over other alternatives to PoW such as Proof of Stake. The nearest competitor would seem to be the Hashgraph DAG, but that has shortcomings when it comes to autonomous data network applications for the IoT, the firm says.

Got any breaking decentralised developments to tell us about? Let us know. (Mature projects with code published on GitHub or similar or a paper reproduced in an established journal please, rather than speculative stuff or coin news.)

https://ift.tt/2LKC6F9

#Ingentium #Inc. - Today

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chinesefeminism-blog · 6 years

Text

FINAL REPORT

SOCL923: Critical Methods in Media and Cultural Studies

Topic: The Stigmatization of Chinese Feminism in Cyberspace

Module conveners:

Dr Robert Gutsche Jr, Senior Lecturer in Critical Digital Media Practic

YOU WU – MA Media and Cultural Studies

MIN XU – MA Media and Cultural Studies

YUMENG TIAN – MA Media and Cultural Studies

ZHEHUI ZHANG – MA Media and Cultural Studies

Word Count:10082

Abstract:

Our topic is the stigmatization of Chinese feminism in cyberspace. Feminism has always been closely linked with everyone in the society. Feminism have been stigmatized in the cyberspace seriously lead to the gender equality movement cannot be treated correctly. Ultimately, it affects everyone's rights and interests. We have used two methodologies including interview and textual analysis to find out the phenomenon and reasons of the stigmatization of Chinese feminism in cyberspace.

Introduction:

In traditional sense, feminists are actually who want to fight for gender equality in order to make real equal come true. Feminism plays an important role in the development of the society. Women have been oppressed for thousands of years in china. Nowadays, many gender discriminations still occur in china, feminists want to let people know the stereotype is wrong and must be change. They are actually doing good changes which benefit all the people.

When feminism was introduced into china it has been continued dispraised. Because it has destroyed my peoples’ vested interest. Nowadays in the cyberspace, there are many malicious slander towards Chinese feminism. Chinese feminism has its own disparaging name ‘Zhong Hua Tian Yuan Nv Quan’ which means Chinese feminism are like indigenous and countrified dogs. The phenomenon of stigmatization of Chinese feminism in the cyberspace is very severe.

Based on the social phenomenon above, this report is going to analyze three questions: 1. What are the concrete manifestations of the stigma of feminism in China's online media? 2. Why feminism is stigmatized in China’s online media? 3. What role does online media play in the stigmatization of feminism in China?

This study is going to make it easier for people to understand why Chinese feminism are stigmatized in the cyberspace. The study is going to be 4 parts: the first part-literature review, this part will introduce the conceptual literature related to this topic; the second part is about the methodology; then the third part will analysis the information which are get from the interview and the textual analysis. Finally, there is a bibliography which according to the APA.

Literature review:

1. Feminism & Chinese feminism

The term ‘feminism’ first appeared in France, referring to social theories and political movements that were created and initiated to end sexism, sexual exploitation, sexual discrimination and sexual oppression, and promote equality of the sexes. The themes of inquiry include discrimination, stereotypes, materialization (especially with regard to sexual materialization), body, oppression and patriarchy.

‘Feminism is a process of fighting for women’s rights in all aspects of society to achieve gender equality between women and men.’ (Jiqing, 2015) In the Oxford dictionary, feminism means ‘the advocacy of women's rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes’. What is the pursuit of feminism? There is no clear definition of this issue so far, and feminists who really speak for women groups themselves are divided into many different camps, such as anti-porn, pro-porn, sexual emancipation and cherish the body care for health etc.

At the same time, China's feminism has its own unique characteristics. In the May 4th Movement in 1919, feminism was spread to China. The pioneers of the May Fourth Movement used the feminist issue as a breakthrough to promote individual rights and resist traditional culture. The issue of women’s rights was considered at that time to be the yardstick of modern civilization and the precondition for the liberation of human nature. After the founding of New China in 1949, women’s equal status with men in the law was clearly guaranteed, but in real life, the traditional model of gender relations remained entrenched.

Generally, feminists are not in the oppressed class and have a higher education level. They belong to the upper class and some of them are the elite of the society. However, most of the oppressed female groups are unaware of what kind of situation they are in. They even challenge and oppose those feminist women. Generalizes the traits of those feminists who are criticized in China as ‘radicalness and self-interest. they are extreme hate to male instead of pursuing gender equality.’ (DuYun F, 2017)

2. Stigma & stigmatization

In talking about the research in stigmatization (not only those of the feminism one), quite a large amount of researches have been conducted on this topic in different fields. There has been 50 years’ history of the research of stigmatization. Stigma was first proposed by the sociologist Erving Goffman in his book called Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity (1963). This is considered as a starting point for social discrimination. As individuals or groups have some kinds of social unwanted or disgraceful characteristics, other people make their status lower in society. Stigma is the social derogatory and insulting label on these individuals or groups. These labels give them shame and even a sense of guilt, and at the same time lead to unfair social treatment (Scott, 2006). Discrimination is the result of stigma, the attitudes and behaviors of society in depreciation, alienation and hostility towards labeled people.

Also, the early research based on the stigma theory provided by Goffman and combining the analysis of media production (practices), media content (beliefs, attitudes), analyzing the representation of one most deprived public housing estates in the print and broadcast media, trying to figure out what role does media play in the process of stigmatization and the relationship between them. Finally, concluded by examining debates regarding the potential for rehab spoiled identity. A research has been done by Eoin Devereux, Amanda Haynes and Martin J Power (Devereux, Haynes, & Power, 2011), trying to understand the dynamics of and underlying reasons for stigmatization of certain place. The research described contributes to a body of work how mass media and other social forces factor in the creation of negative stereo damage the reputations of the places in which the poor reside.

In recent years, Chinese sociologists have studied and summarized the stigma theory. Guan Jian scrutinized the study of stigma both domestic and abroad in the article ‘The Developed Concept and the Construction of Multi-dimensional Models of Stigmatization’ and used a multi-dimensional hierarchical structure. Analyze the stigma problem from the perspective of the analysis of the model. The study proposed the formation mechanism of stigma, and the theoretical framework of stigma research psychology and behavior. It also summarizes some of the problems and limitations existing in the existing research of stigma theory, and the new progress and future development direction of the stigma theory both domestic and abroad.

3. Stigma of feminism

In 2004, Gregory M. Herek discussed sexual stigma, heterosexism, and sexual prejudice. As is known that research on feminism cannot be separated from sexuality research. Janet K. Swim, Melissa J. (1999) have discussed their survey results in terms of ‘prejudice and fear of association with the lesbian, aiming at avoiding stigma for lesbian by association.��

From a feminist point of view, the stigmatization of feminism in China originates from the society of patriarchy and hegemonic masculinity. Li Yinhe, a famous Chinese sexologist, believes that the contemporary feminist consciousness started to be stigmatized as soon as they were introduced to China.

DaHai H. (2016) has done the research on stigma phenomenon of intellectuals in the cyber space focusing on the promoting effect of cyberspace which produce an example for us to do research on stigma phenomenon.

Methodology:

We have chosen two methodologies during our research including textual analysis and interview. There are some reasons for why we have chosen these two.

Firstly, textual analysis is non-contact research and objective (content analysis does not target people as objects, there is no interaction between researchers and the subjects being studied, and the researched objects will not respond to the researchers). The subjective attitudes of the researchers are not easy to interfere with research object, this non-contact study is more effective than contact research, easy to quantify and statistical analysis. However, the disadvantage of textual analysis is it cannot reflect the user's subjective perception (non-intuitive). Also, its ambiguity, meaning between the lines of the word is elusive and may have multiple.

We have collected some typical comments on feminism in China’s online media so that we can know the mainstream opinions on Feminism in China’s cyberspace. it is the basis for us to figure out the reason for the stigmatization of feminism in China’s online media.

Interview is a main approach to collect data during qualitative research. An interview, basically, is a conversation where several questions are asked and to get the interviewees’ reaction and feedback, not only their answers to the questions, but their facial reactions or gestures they had when answering them. ‘A qualitative research interview attempts to understand the world from the subjects’ points of view, to unfold the meaning of peoples’ experiences, to uncover their lived world prior to scientific explanations.’ (Kvale 2007) To be more specific, the aim for our interview is to have some detailed information of stigmatization of China’s feminism in a certain people’s mind. ‘The research interview is an inter-view where knowledge is constructed in the inter-action between the interviewer and the interviewee.’ (Kvale 2007)

There are many disadvantages that interview have, including: the lack of privacy, the influence of interviewers, and the difficulty of handling results, interview surveys have a flexible side, but at the same time it also increases the randomness of this investigation process. Different respondent responses are varied and there is no uniform answer. In this way, the processing and analysis of the interview results are more complicated. Due to the low degree of standardization, it is difficult to make quantitative analysis.

In using this certain research methodology, we had 9 one to one interview and invited 9 of our friends altogether. Each interview took about half an hour and was recorded. The interviewees we invite are those who use online media frequently. in what they comment on feminism during the interview, we could have an overview of what feminism looks like in cyberspace. All of the interviewees are Chinese and they use social media to express their opinions a lot. We want to find out that the status quo of the stigmatization of China’s feminism from their expression. The interview contents were transcribed into texts for qualitative analysis. (Detailed interview questions have been attached at the end of the report)

But because our sample of interview is small so we have to combine this method with textual analysis to get more data and information. On the other hand, because the interviewees are greatly affected by the interviewer, the lack of privacy can easily lead to inaccurate results. The textual analysis of the contents in cyberspace can make up for this because of the anonymity of the network itself.

Using these two methods, both collect information in the network and do objective and efficient information collection and analysis. There is also usage of the depth of interviews to understand people’s real and direct understanding of the current status of women’s rights in China.

Analysis and Discussions

1. What are the concrete manifestations of the stigma of feminism in China's online media?

a. On the cyberspace, there are many biased definition of feminism. A lot of articles and reviews describe Chinese feminism in a wrong way. When searching on Chinese biggest search engine Baidu, using ‘Chinese feminism’ as the key words, half of the results are negative, like ‘feminism in china has such tremendous power’; ‘are Chinese feminism too radical’; ‘why do I think that feminism in China are just like cults?’ etc. The definition of feminism as ‘gender equality’ seems to not apply in China's cyber environment. Chinese feminism seems to be a very terrible figure.

b. Also, there are many anti-feminist remarks in cyberspace. Many people describe feminism as cancer. As the comment of a Chinese netizen during comment on a news said that ‘feminism are cancer patients’ ask all the Chinese not to pregnant. Most of the time, netizens call feminism as ‘Tian Yuan Nv Quan’ to abuse feminists like dogs.

2. Why feminism is stigmatized in China’s online media?

a. As far as the translation of feminism is concerned, translating feminism into ‘feminist’ is itself biased. Because feminism refers to ‘women’s right’. ‘Feminism’ is not a new Chinese vocabulary but has existed for a long time. Its meaning in Chinese corresponds to ‘Patriarchy’. The analogy in English should be to ‘matriarchy’. The feminism that correspond to male rights/hegemony are naturally misunderstood as ‘female hegemony’.

b. Feminism in China is at the ‘marginal’ and ‘minority’ status which lack of mainstream guidance for researchers, scholars, etc. Using CNKI, the largest academic search engine in China, the results of searching for the keywords 'female rights' and 'Chinese women's rights' are quite different. China has about 400 studies on ‘female rights’ each year. However, the number of papers on the study of 'female rights in China' is very small. It is only about a dozen in a year. There are 11094 research results from the search for ‘Feminism + China’ using JSTOR. This shows that in China, there are quite a lot studies on feminism, but there are very few studies on domestic feminism. Since feminist issues are often not treasured by the traditional media, the spread of feminism is basically attached to public opinion events and then enters the public agenda through new media platforms.

c. Feminism in China's cyberspace

1. One of the most typical phenomena for Chinese feminism is the appearance of those certain kinds of ‘pseudo feminism’, basically refers to some misunderstanding and misuse of feminism due to many different reasons or purposes. As a matter of fact, those ‘pseudo feminism’ is quite popular on social media in China and has quite a great amount of followers. Due to the popularization of this, people may have a quite negative impression on feminism and it may also consolidate those negative stereotyping, and gradually brought about the stigma in the end. Those ‘pseudo feminism’ can be divided into two certain kinds. We are going to have a brief explanation and analysis on both of them.

The first one can be briefly summarized as the ‘female privilege’. To be more specific, those so-called feminists hold the belief that it is the right for female to enjoy privileges because they are female and it is a ‘weakness’ in gender. For example, for those ‘female privilege’ followers, there is a slogan that summarizes their ideas really well, ‘The man is responsible for making money to support the family, and the woman is responsible for keeping their beauty’ They believe that this is feminism. What is more, they also think that it is men’s responsibility to give up more resources for women. Once men violate their wishes, they will blame them as ‘anti-feminism’ and even have a quarrel on it. Due to this kind of thinking and its popularization on social media, the negative stereotyping of feminism was gradually established.

2.The stigmatization of feminism in China is probably due to the prevalent radical feminism in cyberspace. It may not be appropriate to name it as feminism because it actually represents a female hegemony.

The embodiment of those female hegemonists is that they are intent to persuading all the women being independent, regardless of personal situation. They pretend to standing on all women’s shoe, conveying the view that it is men’s fault to ‘leave’ women at home and that all the women should go to the workplace in order to reveal the value of being women. What is more, the radical female hegemonists interfere the personal choices, such as the right of marriage and procreation. The news report headlined “a 51-year-old woman successfully gave birth to a twins” (Weibo@沙和尚的围脖01)was criticized by the pseudo-feminism who hold the opinion that older mothers are the complicity of male hegemony, no matter what the parties really think.

All kinds of news release online give the angry radical feminists opportunity to find proof of the best male hegemony field, and then advocate the necessity and rationality of female hegemony.

Another kind of embodiment is that some women are objectifying males by consuming male beauty. Over the last several months, we see increasingly more TV shows, films and commercials featuring good looking guys and targeting female consumers. It is dubbed Nan se xiao fei, literally meaning consumption of the male beauty.

Women Attracted to Male Beauty Consumption has been widely practiced through online media, which is supported by women who reject to situate themselves at the status of being consumed. For the supporters of consuming male beauty, they hold the opinion that they could revise the gender status by situating male at the place of being consumed. Objectifying males, some network terms appears, such as ‘xiao lang gou’, ‘xiao nai gou’ literally meaning ‘little puppy’ with the implication that ‘the good-looking guy who has perfect obedience to his wife/girlfriend’.

Online media, as the platform of entertainment, provides the pseudo-feminism an easier and wider approach to spreading the concepts contradicted to gender equality.

d. When we asked interviewees what reason do they think that lead to the stigmatization of feminism, many of them mentioned about the patriarchy in Chinese society. ‘Due to the one child policy and the patriarchal thoughts in China leads to the unbalanced development of gender ratio.’ (Interviewee SHEN, 29, Male)

From the traditional farming society to the contemporary post-industrial era, the blood of the ancestors has always been flowing in Chinese people’s body. The traditional idea of the generations passed from farming society believed that only men can pass on the blood of the family to next generations, and women just are the accessories of the process of this heritage. "The Confucian believes that the gender relationship between men and women is the birthplace of all human relationships."(Wang Xiaoyan, 1994) And in the long history of China, the statuses of two genders have experienced a long period of inequality.

Some scholars believe that the main reason for gender inequality in China lies in the fact that Chinese society has a strong preference of boys. The basic reason lies in three points: the succession of generations, the raising of children in order to look after the elderly, and the family power. (Li Huiying, 2012) These have a very close relationship with the family patriarchy. Boy's preference is a structural social problem. It is a complete set of gender mechanism that contains profound gender discrimination. Although the development of contemporary society is already in opposition to this mechanism but it is still not an easy thing to break the traditional concept of genders.

3. What role does online media play in the stigmatization of feminism in China?

a. There is no denying that feminism in China do exists many defects or inadequacies (which has been mentioned before) and it is obvious that the development of feminism in China has not yet reached a better state. However, the deviation of online media in reporting ‘feminism’ may also intensify the negative stereotyping and the problem of stigma of feminism in China to some extent. According to the ‘agenda setting’ theory (Lippmann, 1922), ‘the mass media are the principal connection between events in the world and the images in the minds of the public.’ What the mass media decided to focus on may have in influence on people’s thinking. For example, when searching for ‘Chinese feminism’ on mainstream searching website in China, negative news reports, although having the lowest frequency of occurrence, still occupied a considerable portion (seeing the picture below). Under this circumstance, combined with the established negative stereotyping of feminism, the problem of stigmatization may be intensified.

Image：Percentage of reporting attitude towards feminism

b. From a media perspective, the growing stigmatization of feminism in recent years is inseparable from the media's attention economy. The rate of the click of news reports is directly linked to the economy, and they are becoming convertible. Therefore media tends to incite the emotion of audiences, causing the audience to discuss the news stories. The media is about to pan-entertainment.

Many self-media use feminism theories to pack their own attractive but wrong ideas in order to attract audiences in exchange for benefits. Digitization caused a first wave of ‘viewer empowerment’, and the second wave was from the technological infrastructure of the internet. (N Helberger, 2008) In eyeball economy, it is no longer that media decide what audiences receive, but audiences have choices, breaking the previous frame of the consumer. Media started to cater to audiences’ tastes. Although the attention economy has brought short-term benefits, it will damage the content of feminism in the long run, weaken the influence of feminism and make feminism criticized by people.

Besides, when we focus on the platforms of Weibo and WeChat, we can divide these into two kinds of social media by their features. One is about spread among strangers, and one is about interactions with friends and acquaintances.

...thirdly, it’s also decided by the features of social media, for example, Wechat is for a social circle of people who know each other, like colleagues, friends and families... but Weibo is a circle of strangers. The information on Weibo is too large and people think that nobody knows them so they would like to say their true opinions and don’t care what other people think. It’s so easy to go extremely. However on WeChat, things are different... (Interviewee XUN, 22, Female)

Because of the differences between Weibo and WeChat, people tend to use more euphemistic terms in WeChat when talking about feminism, and sometimes even avoid discussing this topic in order to get a more smooth situation in interpersonal communication. While in Weibo's stranger social circle, people will be more direct and radical to express their views

c. ‘Populism is defined as a thin-centered ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic camps, “the pure people” versus “the corrupt elite,” and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people.’(Mudde, Rovira, Cristóbal, 2017) The cyberspace has the characteristics of equality, freedom, and low barriers to entry. It is precisely because of these characteristics that cyberspace has become a focal point for populism. As a representative of elite groups, feminists are stigmatized in the populist trend of thought.

In China, many feminists are highly educated. Most of the feminists who have spoken in the network are senior intellectuals who have received gender education abroad. In cyberspace, those who anti feminism are generally not educated in formal feminism. The degree of education naturally divides netizens into two classes. In today's cyberspace, some populists with populist tendencies are not necessarily populists. Netizens made judgment only by the identities to determine right and wrong. It is more like an irrational way of not seeing facts to distinguish between right and wrong.

There are a lot of 'grassroots' netizens on the Internet. The level of education of these netizens is uneven, their ability to express each other is different, and their personal qualities and life experiences are very different. When they need to express themselves on a certain problem, the expression of each person are all different. Some people can rationally and restraintly discuss things. Some people, regardless of facts, love to talk dirty. Like one of the interviewee Kelly said:

‘Chinese netizens can be effected by public opinion easily. When one person stands out and expresses his/her negative views on feminism, many people only shows their agreement after reading. There are few people are really willing to seriously think about the implications of this matter. They do not necessarily understand feminism, nor do they also understand the status transitions that women are actually taking place in today’s society. Anyway, I was very annoying about those keyboard man.’

The lack of content review and checkout mechanisms is also an important reason for the irrational arguments of the populist ideological trends and opinions in the Internet. As a platform for public expression, the Internet platform is necessary to properly monitor and review the content. In today’s Chinese Internet, extreme irrational remarks about feminism often appear in various social media and forums. The discussion and dissemination of these remarks will increase its influence, affect more netizens and make more emergence of irrational speech on feminism.

d. Due to the anonymity of the Internet, negative thoughts and emotions expand proportionately. The Spiral of Silence Mode (Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann,1993) has been challenged by the high-level right to speak through online media. The theory points out that if a person feels that his/her opinion is a minority, he/she is less likely to express himself because he/she may fear revenge or isolation by the majority of the parties. Because of the anonymity and autonomy of online media citizens, most users are more willing to freely express their opinions on social media, which means for those anti-feminist, the online media gives them a relatively safe place to stigmatize feminism.

Media bulit a symbolic reality called “pseudo-environment”，which influence the objective judgment of the audiences to the reality. ‘People construct a pseudo-environment that is a subjective, biased, and necessarily abridged mental image of the world, and to a degree, everyone's pseudo-environment is a fiction. Human behavior is stimulated by the person's pseudo-environment and then is acted upon in the real world. Some of the general implications of the interactions among one's psychology, environment, and the mass communications media are highlighted.’(Walter，1922)

At the same time, due to the new media has the characteristics of interactivity, with large amount of information, one-sided narration and fragmented information also makes the spread of communication more irrational, ‘they are based on means of modern communication and digital information technology, highly interactive, diversified in the forms of presentation, and constantly innovative.’(Lei and Liang, 2017) Everyone can access to new media and put forward their own perspective. Many participants are advocators of patriarchy because they want to keep the advantages from this kind of oppression of women, so they always say some crucial words on social media to avoid feminism.

Conclusion & Reflection

Because of the misunderstanding of the term ‘feminism’ caused by translation from English into Chinese, and the impediments of the vested interests of the original patriarchal system, the development of feminism in China is difficult. Chinese feminists are a marginal minority group. The various characteristics of the network have also exacerbated the stigma of feminism in the Internet. In the process of social progress, the resistance is inevitable when changing people's stereotype. Feminists must adhere to their ideals and convictions. The government must also supervise these erroneous remarks on the Internet. Only do so can gender equality comes true.

In our interview, we only had 9 interviewees. All nine interviewers were university graduates or above. They were relatively same in education and their media habits were similar. We have not come into contact with people who are extremely resistant to feminism. If we do this research further, we will take the initiative to reach out to some people in the network who oppose women's rights and interview their opinions. At the same time, due to the device, we didn’t record video. some facial expression or gesture may be missed out. We will also pay attention to this point later.

Bibliography:

Clarke, V. (2000). “Stereotype, Attack and Stigmatize those Who Disagree”: Employing Scientific Rhetoric in Debates about Lesbian and Gay Parenting. Feminism & Psychology, 10(1), 152–159. https://doi.org/10.1177/0959353500010001018

DaHai Huang. (2016). Research on the Stigma Phenomenon of the Intellectuals in the Cyberspace.

Devereux, E., Haynes, A., & Power, M. J. (2011). At the edge: Media constructions of a stigmatised Irish housing estate. Journal of Housing and the Built Environment, 26(2), 123–142. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10901-011-9210-4

Goffman, E. (1963). Stigma: notes on the management of spoiled identity. Penguin; New Ed edition (14 May 1990).

Helberger, Natali. (2008). From eyeball to creator - toying with audience empowerment in the audiovisual media service directive. Entertainment Law Review, 19(6), 128-137.

John Scott (16 October 2006). Fifty Key Sociologists: The Contemporary Theorists. Routledge. p. 115. ISBN 978-0-203-12890-9. Retrieved 29 May 2013.

Lei, Q. and Liang, C. (2017) ‘The New Media and social culture demoralized and demoralizing in China’, Cultural Studies. Taylor & Francis, 31(6), pp. 877–893. doi: 10.1080/09502386.2017.1374430.

Lippmann, W (1922). Public opinion. New York: Harcourt.

Mudde, C., & Rovira Kaltwasser, Cristóbal. (2017). Populism : A very short introduction (Very short introductions).

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邱吉青. 国际社会视域中的女权主义研究[D].上海交通大学,2015.

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Appendix:

Interviewee 1: Cassie (23, Female, Media and Cultural Studies, Postgraduate)

Interviewee 2: Kelly (23, Female, Advertiser)

Interviewee 3: Kang (24, Male, Bachelor of Food Engineering)

Interviewee 4: Yang (23, Male, Electrical Engineering, Postgraduate)

Interviewee 5: Shen (29, Male, Business Staff)

Interviewee 6: Xun (22, Female, Work for Self-media about Feminism)

Interviewee 7: Nan (24, Female, Media, Postgraduate)

Interviewee 8: Yi (24, Male, Bachelor of Life Science, Postgraduate)

Interviewee 9: Wen (21, Female, Computer Science, Junior)

Interview1: CASSIE (23, Female, Media and Cultural Studies, Postgraduate)

Q: Have you ever heard about feminism?

A: Yes, I first heard about this before I went abroad, but things seem to be different on various social media platform. On Weibo, basically something not very good in fact, like “rural feminism” or and other negative adjectives, but on Facebook always very positive.

Q：When did you start to know about feminism? Or from when you start to think that feminism is becoming an issue?

A: When I was in university, I first saw something about feminism, but at that time I felt that it doesn’t have much relation with me. After I came here and having some course of gender studies, I realized that feminism really has some close connected with me, and my career marriage will always be influenced by the notion of equality between men and women.

Q: What do you think about feminism?

A：I think feminism is not only for the benefits of female, but male’s benefits as well. Stereotyping and consolidated gender discrimination may also be a big press for male.

Q: Could you use some adjectives to describe what the feminism is?

A：Aggressive, hard and lonely

Q: Do you think it is a commendatory term, a derogatory term or a neutral word?

A：I think it differs from language. In English it seems to be a neutral word, while in Mandarin, it seems to be more aggressive, especially when some people misunderstand it and use this word for their own purpose. So from my personal point of view, in China feminism has much more negative meanings than that in western countries.

Q: Do you think feminism is related to yourself?

A：Of courses, I think feminism has a really close connection with me. My career, my family and my marriage in the future, all of them will be affected by the development of feminism. My rights as a woman can be protected.

Q: How do you think about the negative comments on the internet about Chinese feminism? And how is your feeling?

A：I think the growing of feminism has some influence on those people with vested interest, so it is unavoidable that there will be some counterattack in public opinion and the consolidated inherent concept as always difficult to be changed.

Q: Have you ever seen some contexts about feminism on any platforms? What is that? By what means did you find it? Did you search it for purpose? Could you please describe a little for us? Why do you think you can still remember this context? What was your first response or feeling when you first saw this context?

A：Basically in Weibo, sometimes on Facebook as well, usually articles from some feminism opinion leader or some articles about the development of feminism like the “me too campaign”. But nowadays...some more articles about the gender inequality in workplace.

When I need to use these things in my essay, I will search for them in purpose, but usually I see those things in casual, but I will forward it when I have same feeling with it.

I think the reason why I can remember those things is that it is closely connected with my life in the future, and I also want to avoid bad things like gender discrimination in my life and career in the future.

Q: Have you ever brought out your opinions about feminism on the social media?

A：I basically don't send related content. The main reason is that very long ago I didn't really understand this concept, and I thought that women's rights had nothing to do with me, so I wouldn't send them. But now I have learned a lot about the content of feminism. I also think that I don’t know much about it, I dare not send it, and I’m afraid to say the wrong thing.

Q: What do you think about the status quo of Chinese feminism?

A：I think the status of women's rights in China is still not very optimistic. It is mainly because the environment does not support the development of women's rights. I feel that many national policies are against feminist rights. For example, many feminist movements’ leaders were expelled from the rental house by the police.

Q: What reasons do you think that lead to this result?

A：I think that the problem is still about vested interests. Women's rights affect some people's vested interests, so they rush back. There is also a national policy that now has a tendency to make women return to their families.

Interview 2 KELLY (23, Female, Advertiser)

Q: Have you heard about feminism?

A：Yes, I’ve heard about it.

Q: When did you start to know about feminism? Or from when you start to think that feminism is becoming an issue?

A: When I was in high school, I saw some news in the news. When I see this feminism information, I’ve notice that there are more information in European and American.

Q: What do you think about feminism?

A：I think feminism fights for women’s equal status as men. I think this is very meaningful for women.

Q: Could you use some adjectives to describe what the feminism is?

A：Realistic, positive and brave.

Q: Do you think it is a commendatory term, a derogatory term or a neutral word?

A: I think it is neutral. Because feminism itself is the declaration of women’s rightful right. Since it is a proper demand, then it shouldn’t be judged to be right or wrong.

Q: Do you think feminism is related to yourself?

A: As for me, it’s OK. Women are in dominant place in my workplace. Also, I haven’t met any unequal treatment in my life. However, the phenomenon of inequality between men and women in the elders is still very obvious.

Q: How do you think about the negative comments on the internet about Chinese feminism? And how is your feeling?

A：Chinese netizens can be affected by public opinion easily. When one person stands out and expresses his/her negative views on feminism, many people only shows their agreement after reading. There are few people are really willing to seriously think about the implications of this matter. They do not necessarily understand feminism, nor do they also understand the status transitions that women are actually taking place in today’s society. Anyway, I was very annoying about those keyboard men.

Q: Have you ever seen some contexts about feminism on any platforms?

A：Yeah, on ZhiHu.

Q: What is that?

A：Mainly different people's interpretation of feminist cognition.

Q: By what means did you find it? Did you search it for purpose?

A：I haven’t taken the initiative to search, sometimes see the relevant posts.

Q: Could you please describe a little for us?

A：Because many people now have an excessive interpretation of feminism, that women want to have higher status than men, or want to obtain more rights than men through feminist movements. But in reality, what women need is only the weakening of gender significance, not being materialized, assuming due obligations and responsibilities.

Q: Why do you think you can still remember this context?

A：Because feminism itself is a very controversial topic, the appearance of such a positive message seems to be very comfortable, and it feels that some people are still sober.

Q: What was your first response or feeling when you first saw this context?

A：I feel they are reasonable. It’s actually what I think.

Q: Have you ever brought out your opinions about feminism on the social media?

A：No, I haven’t. I almost never comment on controversial topics in social media.

Q: What do you think about the status quo of Chinese feminism?

A：People are still at the first stage of learning about feminism. Too many people have excessive interpretation of feminism and lack proper understanding.

Q: What reasons do you think that lead to this result?

A：The society does not give a clear attitude to feminism. At the same time, there are many pseudo feminists who use the feminist topic to exchange concepts in certain feminist events and cause people to misunderstand feminism.

Interview 3 ZHENG YUEKANG (24, Male, Bachelor of Food Engineering)

Q: Have you heard about feminism?

A: Yes.

Q: When did you start to know about feminism? Or from when you start to think that feminism is becoming an issue?

A: When I looking something on Weibo, I see it inadvertently. Then I start to get to know about feminism.

Q: What do you think about feminism?

A: I think it’s literally reasonable.

Q: Could you use some adjectives to describe what the feminism is?

A: Ideal, advanced for contemporary society, inevitable process of future.

Q: Do you think it is a commendatory term, a derogatory term or a neutral word?

A: Commendatory term, at least neutral.

Q: Do you think feminism is related to yourself?

A: A little bit.

Q: How do you think about the negative comments on the internet about Chinese feminism? And how is your feeling?

A: The negative comment is not because most people think that feminism is wrong, but there is a contradiction between the social process at the present stage and the ultimate goal of ideal feminism. It needs to be step by step. It’s like...socialism is also still in its infancy? On the other hand, feminism on the Internet lacks a specific standard. Feminism itself is still on the primary process of development, so it’s easy for people with undesirable motivations to use it as a tool for their own profit, such as some bloggers who gain profits by posting chicken soup contents and inciting negative emotions on Weibo and etc. This is the reason for many men and women who originally understood and respected women’s rights then resistant to feminism.

A: Probably more on Sina Weibo, although it is popularly recommended and often very confused, I generally support and understand the normal one.

Q: Have you ever brought out your opinions about feminism on the social media?

A: Basically not, this is not something I can change and help.

Q: What do you think about the status quo of Chinese feminism?

A: Confusion, there is no uniform standard, Chinese feminism is easy to be used by people with ulterior motives, but in some aspects is more advanced than some countries in the world. The public needs to be properly guided and scientifically developed.

Q: What reasons do you think that lead to this result?

A: China hasn’t developed wavy well. The quality of the people and the economy are not well-developed. In such a situation, it is unrealistic to realize communism directly. The same holds true for feminism. It is unrealistic to make feminism developed advanced in a short time. Some Chinese feminists are bent on developing feminism as the developed countries. The ideal is good but ignores the process. If there is an authoritative institution and correct appeal and guidance, let feminism and other parts of the Chinese society develop at the same time, and it will be getting better and better in the long run.

Interview 4 XIA YANG (23, Male, Electrical Engineering, Postgraduate)

Q: Have you heard about feminism?

A: No

Q: When did you start to know about feminism? Or from when you start to think that feminism is becoming an issue?

A: From my high school.

Q: What do you think about feminism?

A: Sometimes reasonable, sometimes extreme.

Q: Could you use some adjectives to describe what the feminism is?

A: Respect, fair

Q: Do you think it is a commendatory term, a derogatory term or a neutral word?

A: Neural

Q: Do you think feminism is related to yourself?

A: No

Q: How do you think about the negative comments on the internet about Chinese feminism? And how is your feeling?

A: Nothing

A: No

Q: Have you ever brought out your opinions about feminism on the social media?

A: Never

Q: What do you think about the status quo of Chinese feminism?

A: I haven’t seen it.

Q: What reasons do you think that lead to this result?

A: History, customs

Interview 5 SHEN (29, Male, Business Staff)

Q: Have you heard about feminism?

A: Yes, of course

Q: When did you start to know about feminism? Or from when you start to think that feminism is becoming an issue?

A: I first knew about this on social media platforms like renren.com and Sina Weibo, at about 4 to 5 years ago.

Q: What do you think about feminism?

A: Well I think the appearance and popular of feminism is an unavoidable tendency during the process of the development of society and I believe that feminism is a part of the equal rights.

Q: Could you use some adjectives to describe what the feminism is?

A: equal, respect, independent

Q: Do you think it is a commendatory term, a derogatory term or a neutral word?

A: neutral word

Q: Do you think feminism is related to yourself?

A: I think so, because...you know, it is something that connected with the “political correctness” and I also have some communication with women in my work every day, so I do have some awareness of feminism.

A: Yes, usually something like the feminism campaign, bad news like sexual harassment, some marriage-related topics and discussion on the behavior and dressing of Chinese male and female etc. In fact, some of its remarks are quite extreme. I won’t search those things for purpose.

Q: How do you think about the negative comments on the internet about Chinese feminism? And how is your feeling?

A: I think it is because some so-called “feminist” in China are not the real feminist, but the female privilege, which means that female should have more privilege because female is the weaker one. I am very disgusted with this to tell the truth, but I’ll not pay attention to this.

Q: Have you ever brought out your opinions about feminism on the social media?

A: No I haven’t, because this topic is quite sensitive.

Q: What do you think about the status quo of Chinese feminism?

A: I think... well to be honest, Chinese feminism hasn’t reached the status to realize that feminism is to fight for the equal rights, they are just thinking about the privilege.

Q: What reasons do you think that lead to this result?

A: 1. Due to the one child policy and the patriarchal thoughts in China leads to the unbalanced development of gender ratio

2. The status of women has always been oppressed by feudal ideas, so that it cause too much negative emotion when feminist thoughts went into China

3. Due to physiological congenital structures, women are more likely to be affected by emotion.

Interview 6 XUN (22, Female, Work for Self-media about Feminism)

Q: Have you heard about feminism?

A: Yes

Q: When did you start to know about feminism? Or from when you start to think that feminism is becoming an issue?

A: The first year in the university

Q: What do you think about feminism?

A: I think feminism in China has a more serious polarization: one is those extreme one which means ‘female hegemony’, and the other one is those ‘fake feminism’ and advocate incorrect values. Because of this, those who really want to advocate feminism in China were regarded as the ‘rural feminism’ (a malicious calling for feminism in China). From my personal idea, I think that the real feminism is quite simple actually. Feminism means that everyone, both men and women has the rights to choose or reject something.

Q: Could you use some adjectives to describe what the feminism is?

A: equal, neutral, no label, no stereotyping, diversified and respect

Q: Do you think it is a commendatory term, a derogatory term or a neutral word?

A: A neutral word

Q: Do you think feminism is related to yourself?

A: Of courses, compared with men, women are faced with problems, difficulties and challenges due to gender since their birth.

A: I have seen some of it like videos or articles. For example, the documentary of Jane Austin and some beautiful stories that properly explains what feminism is. On the contrary, of courses, some discriminatory opinion as well. I’m not searching these things for purpose but I am always quite sensitive with this topic.

Q: How do you think about the negative comments on the internet about Chinese feminism? And how is your feeling?

A: Well in fact, even coins have two sides. I can understand why some people don’t accept feminism at all for China has been a feudal great power for thousands of years and the notion of feminism wobble the male privilege. On the other hand, those ‘fake feminism’ misuse feminism and make others have a misunderstand on it so that people may have a negative stereotyping on feminism. I feel quite helpless about this. I hope someday in the future, people can change their mind on it.

Q: Have you ever brought out your opinions about feminism on the social media?

A: Yes! I’ve just done this today.

Q: What do you think about the status quo of Chinese feminism?

A: I think basically it is showing a positive tendency, more and more people are now aware of fighting for equal rights, but on the contrary, it seems that the government’s policy direction seems to be different, so it is unclear that how will the development of feminism in China in the future.

Q: What reasons do you think that lead to this result?

A: Well there may be many different reasons I think. Roughly speaking, firstly, the government didn’t take an appropriate leading role; secondly, the notion of feminism hasn’t been popularized; thirdly, it’s also decided by the features of social media, for example, WeChat is for a social circle of people who know each other, like colleagues, friends and families...but Weibo is a circle of strangers. The information on Weibo is too large and people think that nobody knows them so they would like to say their true opinions and don’t care what other people think. It’s so easy to go extremely. However on WeChat, things are different… Finally, I think we are lacking of researchers in feminism and gender studies, the main communication channel is social media so basically, feminism in China are lacking of theoretical bases.

Interview 7 NAN (24, Female, Media, Postgraduate)

Q: Have you heard about feminism?

A: Yes.

Q: When did you start to know about feminism? Or from when you start to think that feminism is becoming an issue?

A: I have had some shallow ideas of equality between men and women from my childhood, but started to understand systematically from high school.

Q: What do you think about feminism?

A: This is a way for women to fight for equal rights. I don’t think if women are actually equal to men or not is not so important. What is important is that, for women, if we have certain rights, we must bear the corresponding obligations.

Q: Could you use some adjectives to describe what the feminism is?

A: -

Q: Do you think it is a commendatory term, a derogatory term or a neutral word?

A: Neutral

Q: Do you think feminism is related to yourself?

A: Yes.

Q: How do you think about the negative comments on the internet about Chinese feminism? And how is your feeling?

A: Many publicity stunts on feminism lead to the misunderstandings that feminism means women enjoy more benefits rather than equal rights. And many women think men should accommodate them for love. Actually I think feminism is not wrong, but over-feminism is wrong.

A: I thought of an exhibition called ‘What did I wear at the day of being raped’. It’s a great example. Many women being raped are always asked the question like ‘What did you wear at that day?’ But actually from this exhibition we can know that most of them were not exposed wearing and even had little femininity. Some of them wore sports wears, even police uniforms when they were raped. I think it’s really disrespectful to women and feminism asking questions like that.

Q: Have you ever brought out your opinions about feminism on the social media?

A: Yes

Q: What do you think about the status quo of Chinese feminism?

A: -

Q: What reasons do you think that lead to this result?

A: In essence, it is because the social environment and the women’s misplaced status.

Interview 8 YI (24, Male, Bachelor of Life Science, Postgraduate)

Q: Have you heard about feminism?

A: Yes.

Q: When did you start to know about feminism? Or from when you start to think that feminism is becoming an issue?

A: I started to know about feminism from high school history classes. My history teacher introduced the feminist movements in 20th century at that time. When in college, touching more information, I started to think that feminism is a very important social issue.

Q: What do you think about feminism?

A: I think this is a method for women to obtain equal rights and opportunities for themselves through public opinions, movements, and struggles in the context of social secular rules. Under the guidance of feminism, women can organize and plan to reflect their demands to society and the government, causing public opinion. Again, this is a challenge to the existing social rules. Starting from feminism, more and more people are beginning to voice for their equal rights.

Q: Could you use some adjectives to describe what the feminism is?

A: Equal; challenging; changing

Q: Do you think it is a commendatory term, a derogatory term or a neutral word?

A: Neutral word. The concept of feminism is not to say that we encourage women to grab benefits for themselves but to change the current situation of unequal social identity between two genders. The eventual purpose is not that women’s position is higher than men’s. It’s to say that they are both equal, including political position, economy and education.

Q: Do you think feminism is related to yourself?

A: Yes. The rights of women can not only rely on women, they need help from men, and vice versa. It’s a win-win.

Q: How do you think about the negative comments on the internet about Chinese feminism? And how is your feeling?

A: Everyone's views on feminism are determined by their experience and level of education, so it is normal for negative comments on feminism to appear on the Internet. Especially in China’s environment, there are some remnants of men’s patriarchy in the tradition. Sexism prevails in all aspects of society. For example, people prefer boys and believe that only boys can pass on to generations. When looking for a job, they are also treated different genders differently. Chinese people have a relatively late understanding of feminism and they have limited access to them. Therefore, when information about feminism appears on the Internet, many people, especially those with low education level and older people will make negative comments based on their experiences.

A: I have less contact with feminism, and often through the Internet and reading some WeChat articles. What I’ve seen is that in 2015, five feminists were arrested. I saw this on the wiki. I found some related reports in order to understand the truth better. This content is: These five feminists have appealed for feminism and LGBT people’s rights through artistic performances and exhibitions. They were then arrested by related organizations and finally released under the pressure of international public opinion. I was deeply impressed by this because of the unfair treatment. The first time I heard this news, I felt that the five women were very brave. I also felt that the struggle was long-term.

Q: Have you ever brought out your opinions about feminism on the social media?

A: No. It is difficult to bring out some different opinions on Chinese social media. The police may find and arrest you due to your comment.

Q: What do you think about the status quo of Chinese feminism?

A: The status quo is that there is a seemingly equal right for men and women, but if women want to fight for their legal rights as western women do, it’s not easy to achieve in contemporary China.

Q: What reasons do you think that lead to this result?

A: The social ideology of Chinese male superiority is too deep-rooted. Women themselves are very inadequate in their understanding of their rights. They are in the weaker side of the society and have no ability or opportunity to fight for their own rights and interests.

Interview 9 WEN (21, Female, Computer Science, Junior)

Q: Have you heard about feminism?

A: Yes, but I don’t know much about it.

Q: When did you start to know about feminism? Or from when you start to think that feminism is becoming an issue?

A: Recent 2 or 3 years. But I feel that I received a lot of influence of accesses to feminism. It may be I know more after I entered the university and get along with other people who know this much.

Q: What do you think about feminism?

A: Nothing to feel. However, quite a large part of the people does not really understand feminism. They are pursuing the banner of feminism and equality between men and women but actually they are just women superiority or men superiority. Some people only one-sidedly emphasize some rights, benefits and even privileges that women should or expect to receive. They do not really treat women and men on an equal position. They regard themselves as weak and do not pay attention to their own growth and development. They only expect and demand. Men and society are unreasonably tolerant of their own deficiencies. This to a certain extent also debases women and feminists, and actively reduces the status of women below men.

Q: Could you use some adjectives to describe what the feminism is?

A: Domineering, independence, emancipatory, unruly

Q: Do you think it is a commendatory term, a derogatory term or a neutral word?

A: Maybe...neutral I think. After all, it’s kind...good and bad mixed.

Q: Do you think feminism is related to yourself?

A: Well...not so much. Know something, changing a little, but still be myself, you know.

Q: How do you think about the negative comments on the internet about Chinese feminism? And how is your feeling?

A: I think there are two kinds of comments. One is that they just don’t what to know about feminism, not listening to any reasons or arguments. Another one is that people grab the part of immature ideas of feminism and misunderstand it. Besides, many women just follow these immature or...we can say...wrong ideas, regarding themselves as advanced feminists, saying some stupid opinions. No people like that. Chinese feminism still has a long way to go.

A: I can’t remember well. My friend told me that in Vatican City, there are some naked people shouted ‘God is a girl’? I don’t know...I think it’s too much. I don’t like it and can’t understand why they are so extreme.

Q: Have you ever brought out your opinions about feminism on the social media?

A: Not very much. But sometimes if I feel touched for certain contents maybe I would like to repost.

Q: What do you think about the status quo of Chinese feminism?

A: Extreme people are not too many but the traditional opinions are not easy to be changed. People know that feminism is something good but still hard to change our mind.

Q: What reasons do you think that lead to this result?

A: Traditional patriarchal opinions, lack of education, phenomenon that people already have some misunderstanding and prejudice about feminism.

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