In China, Griping About Mom and Dad Gets an Official OK
Young Communists' Blogs
Tap Vein of Resentment;
Tale of 20-Pound Backpack
HONG KONG -- In April, a vocal group of Chinese Internet users banded together to speak out against oppression and censorship. They posted a list of 10 "outrageous and intolerable crimes" on a popular Web site. On the same site, one blogger from Shanghai wrote, "It feels terrible to be censored by somebody else."
The postings were all written by children, and they were rebelling against their parents. Among the "crimes" that prompted this outburst: spanking, putting too much pressure on children and playing too much mahjong, a gambling game.
The Web site where all this took place, called Chinakids, is an online business venture run by an entrepreneur from Taiwan and a wing of the Communist Party known as the Young Pioneers. In a country where online discourse is often tightly controlled by the government, Chinakids has turned into an unusual social experiment that encourages Chinese children to speak out with rare candor in a society that normally teaches obedience to parents and the state.
Chinakids is hardly a political forum; most of the 800,000 registered preteen bloggers have no interest in sensitive political issues. But the Chinakids community does explicitly teach kids to speak out, sometimes against authority. That raises a potent question: Will some kids make a jump from discussing "democracy" within the family to democracy in the state?
That is a risk the Communist Party seems willing to take in its efforts to stay relevant, and to have a say in how the next generation of Chinese youth face a world of new influences, including those on the Web. Kids in China are going online with or without the Communist party. About 17% of the country's 111 million Internet users are between 6 and 18 years old -- and over half are under the age of 24, according to the China Internet Network Information Center.
In blogs and chatrooms, children "holler what they dare not say in the real world," says Yang Jiangding, the deputy director of the Young Pioneers in Shanghai.
In China, kids have plenty to holler about. Thanks to Communist Party family planning, urban families are limited to one child. Parents often place enormous pressure on their child to succeed in school and prepare for life in China's intensely competitive economy.
The Chinakids site offers a glimpse of what it's like to be on the receiving end of that pressure.
Shortly after sunrise on a Sunday, an elementary school student from Zhejiang province writes in a posting, his mother marched into his bedroom and told him to start on his homework. "I felt like I was listening to a military boss's order," he wrote on his Chinakids blog under the name XT307.
After studying all morning, he asked his father for permission to play with other kids outside. Dad told him to finish his "Practice After Class" workbook. He had only a quick lunch before moving on to Chinese calligraphy practice -- under his father's supervision.
"Daddy, mommy, a childhood is very short," wrote XT307. "Please do not deprive me of it."
The communist party takes Chinakids seriously. In March, China's National People's Congress formally endorsed a study of some 100,000 of the Chinakids posts to highlight the growing importance of blogs to stressed-out Chinese kids.
Still, China's government just last month announced it was redoubling efforts to block certain information from blogs and search engines to "purify the environment."
The young target demographic of the Chinakids site makes it safer territory for the government. Leaders of the Young Pioneers, some of whom have been educated in the West, want the next generation to have experience with civic thinking, says the site's chairman, Eddie Wang. "Unlike adults, kids nowadays have the potential to be part of a democratic society by being trained from a young age."
The site has five adult censors who can delete what the site calls "inappropriate" posts. Vicky Yu, the site's top adult editor who looks through most of the posts, says she has only taken down a post on one occasion, when it appeared that a sexual predator was trying to lure children into meetings.
Mr. Wang says he believes Chinakids has a social mission as well. "We want the next generation to be able to compete in the world, but they are too protected by schools and parents," says Mr. Wang, a businessman from Taiwan who has spent much of his working life in China.
Chinakids editors actively prod the kids to vent their feelings through postings like an April one by one of the site's adult editors, Grace Zhou. Ms. Zhou, using the pen name Wai Wai, recounts a fairy tale about a young girl with an enormous backpack filled with a dozen textbooks, including "The Practice of Mathematics" and "49 Methods to Learn Chinese."
The backpack, she says, weighs more than 20 pounds. "I can't even stand straight," the girl complains. At the end of the story, Wai Wai asks her readers how much their backpacks weigh.
"Are you out of breath every day after school? Is it a fact that the heavier the backpack is, the better the exam result is? Speak out!"
Her post spurred kids all over China to put their backpacks on a scale. "My backpack is heavier than me," writes one. "I have spine problems because my backpack is so heavy," says another. "Mine feels like moving a house," writes a third.
Last month elementary school blogger Li Zi complained that because she is a girl, her own mother treats her as a second-class member of the family. "I want to go to another world, where boys and girls are equal," Ms. Li wrote.
Chinakids dates back to 1997 when Mr. Wang, who was already doing business in China, decided to approach the Young Pioneers about jointly setting up a Web site for kids. Sort of a Communist Party version of the Cub Scouts, the Young Pioneers wear trademark red scarves and learn early on to sing the group's anthem, "We Are the Heirs of Communism." Joining the Young Pioneers is usually the first step to becoming a party member later in life.
Advertisers such as Coca-Cola Co. are taking notice, too. Coke uses the site to promote a local soft drink it sells in China called "Qoo" (which sounds like "cool").
After a bit of controversy, Chinakids adult editors earlier this year decided to allow parents to blog alongside their children.
Qi Xiaojian, a parent and physical education teacher at a middle school in Jiangsu Province, says the experience has brought him closer to his 13-year-old daughter. His daughter, Qi Qinxin, recently opened up on the site about feeling lost under the pressures of school. "I don't know what I have been studying so hard for," she wrote. "Is it just for the grades?"
"Her character becomes more open after blogging and her writing skills improve a lot," says Mr. Qi. "We don't talk a lot about what's on the blog in person, but most of our communication about internal feelings happens via blogging."
网络让中国孩子畅所欲言
今年4月，一群中国互联网用户联合起来公开反对压制以及审查制度。他们还在一个非常受欢迎的网站上发布了“令人愤怒以及不可容忍的十宗罪”。就在这个网站上，一位上海博客人写道，“被别人审查的感觉糟糕透了。”
这些贴子的作者是一群孩子，他们在集体反抗父母。导致这次集体情绪爆发的几宗“罪”就包括：体罚、给孩子太多压力，以及沉溺于麻将等。
这一切都发生在名为雏鹰网(Chinakids)的网站上。雏鹰网是由一位台湾企业家和中国共产党的羽翼中国少年先锋队共同经营的一家互联网风险企业。在这样一个网络言论通常要受到政府严格控制的国家，雏鹰网成了一场不同寻常的社会性试验，它鼓励中国儿童以少有的坦白态度畅所欲言。而中国社会往往教导孩子们服从于父母和国家。
雏鹰网根本不是一个政治论坛；注册的800,000名儿童大多对敏感的政治话题毫无兴趣。但是雏鹰网社区确实公开地教孩子们自由表达自己的想法，有时这些想法可能是反权威的。这就引发了一个问题：一些孩子会不会从讨论家庭内部的“民主”话题跳跃到国家的民主？
中国共产党努力参与其中，似乎宁愿承担这样的风险，也要在面对网络等种种新势力影响的中国下一代青年中拥有发言权。有没有党的参与，中国的孩子们都会上网。根据中国互联网络信息中心(China Internet Network Information Center)的数据，在全中国1.11亿网民中，约17%的人年龄在6-18岁之间，超过一半的人都不到24岁。
上海少工委副主任杨江丁说，孩子们在博客和聊天室中自由表达著他们在现实世界中不敢表达的东西。
中国的孩子们有很多需要发泄的东西。由于多年执行计划生育政策，城市家庭只能有一个孩子。家长通常会给唯一的孩子施加巨大压力，督促他们取得优异成绩，为将来竞争激烈的中国经济社会生活做好准备。
那么，承受这些压力的一方是一种什么状况呢？雏鹰网为我们打开了一扇窗。
浙江省的一名小学生以XT307的名字在雏鹰网上写道，记得一个星期天，又是一个太阳升起的时候，妈妈走进卧室告诉我快写家庭作业。他还写道“我彷佛听到了‘长官’的命令声。”
学了一上午之后，他问爸爸能否和小朋友在外面玩一会儿。爸爸却告诉他要完成“课后练习”。匆匆吃过午饭，他就在爸爸的监督下开始练习中国书法。
“爸爸、妈妈，孩子的童年是短暂的，”XT307写道。“请不要剥夺。”
中国共产党非常重视雏鹰网。中国全国人民代表大会(National People's Congress)3月正式批准对雏鹰网的100,000多个贴子进行研究，彰显了博客对于承受巨大压力的中国儿童日益增长的重要性。
中国政府上个月才刚刚宣布，为了“净化网络环境”它将加大力度堵截博客以及搜索引擎中的某些信息内容。
但雏鹰网的目标人群年龄较小，这使它成为政府眼里较为安全的领域。网站董事长王淑华(Eddie Wang)说，少先队的很多领导人在西方接受过教育，他们希望中国的下一代拥有公民意识。与成年人不同，现在的孩子如果从小就接受相关教育，将来就有可能成为民主社会的一部分。
这个网站有五位成年人担任审查，他们可以删除网站认为“不合适”的贴子。网站总编辑余滢(Vicky Yu)负责浏览大多数贴子，她说她只删过一个贴子，因为作者似乎动机不纯，有性诱惑的意味，想引诱孩子们见面。
王淑华认为，雏鹰网还担负著社会使命。“我们希望下一代能够具有全球竞争力，但是他们现在受到家长以及学校过多的保护。”王淑华是一位台湾商人，大多数时间在中国大陆工作。
雏鹰网的编辑们积极地激发孩子们通过各类贴子发泄自己的情绪。成人编辑之一Grace Zhou在4月份就做过这样的活动。她用“歪歪”作笔名讲述了一个童话故事，故事中的小女孩有一个巨大的书包，里面装满了《数学练习册》和《学习语文的四十九种方法》等各种课本。
她说，这个书包足足20多斤重。女孩抱怨说“我的腰都直不起来了。”在故事的结尾，歪歪向读者们抛出一个问题：你们的书包有多重？
“你每天放学回家后是不是累得气喘吁吁？难道书包的重量和考试成绩成正比吗？把你们心里最真实的想法呼喊出来吧！”
她的贴子使中国各地的孩子都去称自己的书包到底有多重。一个孩子写道：“我的书包比我自己还重。”另一个写道：“我的脊椎有毛病，因为书包太重了。”还有一个写道，我的书包象座房子那么重。
雏鹰网的博客们上个月讨论了很多中国家庭重男轻女的问题。小学生李姿（音）抱怨，因为她是女孩，妈妈待她就象家里的二等公民。她写道“我希望去另一个世界，一个男女平等的世界。”
另一个女孩用“天外飞狗”这个网名建立了自己的博客，希望对自己的网络生活保密。这位浙江女孩说：“只有父母不在家的时候我才上网，我不会让他们知道的。”她因为害怕受到惩罚而拒绝告诉我们她的真实姓名。她还说：“他们认为上网会影响我的学习，分散我的精力。”
在5月份的一张贴子中，天外飞狗把自己描述成“家庭作业的奴仆。”她写道：“伤心，可我找谁倾诉，爸爸，不敢，妈妈陌生，朋友没有。”
雏鹰网的历史可以追溯至1997年，当时王淑华已在中国大陆做了几年生意，但他决定与少先队进行接触，希望联合他们为中国的儿童建一个网站。中国少先队员戴著标志性的红领巾，从很早就开始学唱少先队队歌《我们是共产主义接班人》。加入少先队通常是未来成为共产党员的第一步。
今年初，关于是否允许家长进入雏鹰网爆发了激烈的争论。之前，家长已经可以自由访问网站，但是不能发贴子。后来一些家长要求给他们个机会发表自己的见解，于是网站的成年人编辑决定允许家长在网站上创建博客。
一位名叫齐小建（音）的家长说，雏鹰网使他和13岁的女儿齐琴琴（音）变得更加亲密了。他是江苏省一所中学的体育老师。他女儿最近在雏鹰网开设了自己的博客，并讲述了自己在上学的压力下感到十分困惑。“我不知道自己这么努力学习到底是为了什么，”她写道。“只是为了成绩吗？”
“她写博客之后性格开朗了很多，写作技巧也有很大的进步，”齐小建说。“我们虽然不经常面对面地交流博客内容，但多时候我们都是通过博客来进行内心感情的交流。”
