"All are deemed "wall dancers" by Liu because they must "dance in shackles" - a metaphor coined by Sun Yunfeng, chief product designer for Internet-service provider Baidu in Beijing. Yunfeng used it in 2010 to describe how people in China must navigate life like performers on a stage with limited space, constrained by the shifting rules of the nation's communist party."
"Liu tells the story of China's Internet - often shaped by "coded puns and cryptic memes" to hoodwink censors - through the lives of six individuals, including the founder of the country's largest gay social-networking app and a tech worker turned science-fiction writer."
"Supporters point to the model's efficiency and convenience. Human-rights campaigners, however, argue that mechanisms such as the country's social credit-scoring system, which can restrict access to jobs or travel because of perceived societal infractions deemed inappropriate by the Chinese state, pose serious risks to individual freedom."
China's digital ecosystem offers efficiency and convenience through smartphone-based services, but operates under surveillance systems like social credit scoring that restrict individual freedoms. The Great Firewall filters and monitors internet activity, yet little is publicly known about how this system functions daily. Yi-Ling Liu's book explores China's internet through six individuals who navigate censorship using coded puns and cryptic memes. These "wall dancers" must operate within constraints imposed by the Communist Party, performing like stage actors with limited space. China's relationship with the internet evolved from embracing its revolutionary potential in the 1990s to implementing extensive control mechanisms.
#chinese-internet-censorship #digital-surveillance #online-freedom-and-expression #great-firewall #social-credit-system
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