美国颇有人气的政治博客《哈芬顿邮报》（Huffington Post）在奥运前刊登美国汉学家华志坚（Jeffrey Wasserstrom）和Kate Merkel-Hess共同撰写的一篇文章“数字中国：关于中国互联网值得了解的10件事”（Digital China: Ten Things Worth Knowing about the Chinese Internet）认为，2008，也是“中国互联网年”。为什么这么说，因为中国的互联网本身的变化，多半会使2008年成为载入青史之年，标志着2008年是中国互联网转折之年。

文章列举了十个方面：第一．很早以前，乐观的观察者就预测（这种预测后来被证明是错误的），互联网将迅速地把中国转变成为一个完全开放的社会；第二.悲观论者不断地推论（这种推论后来被证明同样是错误的）；中国的政治生态并没有发生真正的改变，第三.认清一种误导观念：唯一与政治相关的中国互联网事件，都是与“政治异议者”和群众示威相关联的。第四.对中国互联网上出现的言论和事物，中国的关注点和在美国的关注点，从政治上看，经常是不一样的。

第五.中国互联网上发生的许多事情与政治无关。(中国互联网的使用途径越来越广，也越来越反映了欧美、日本和其他互联网发达国家所流行的范围和趋势。大多数中国网吧里，都挤满了玩网络游戏的学生，而不是浏览政治网页的人。互联网聊天室都是人满满的。网络商业正在飞速成长。网络炒股也开始升温。另外，四川大地震后，中国网民通过网上共捐献了数百万美元。

第六.尽管，互联网被视为“国际空间”，但是，网上的言论可能是非常爱国的，甚至，充满了强硬的军国主义口吻（在中国和其他地方都如此）。早期的互联网先驱以为互联网会使人们之间，特别是互联网时代的年轻人之间的国家界限和特征越来越稀薄。但是，中国网民既可以仍然是民族主义的，同时，又非常国际化。例如，今年春季期间，西藏和巴黎事件引发不少愤青上网，制作贬斥西藏暴动者和攻击法国人的YouTube视频片段和写作博客文章。

第七.自封的的爱国主义贴文会使政府感到不安。对中国政府来说，失控的爱国主义行为往往成为麻烦问题。所以，当年轻人开始在网上喊起爱国口号时，可以理解政府官员们对此的担忧，以及政府有时候会迅速采取控制局面的行动。例如，2005年4月，因为日本的历史教科书里出现极具争议的内容以及他们对二战的记述，引发了蔓延全中国的反日示威，互联网审查人员迅速把“示威”两字加入到他们禁止网民在QQ上使用的词语名单内。今年春季，政府最初助长国民的反法情绪，但是，随着网民开始呼吁抵制国际性公司的商品时，政府很快就采取行动来压制网民蠢蠢欲动的情绪，因为，北京还需要这些外资的投资。

第八.互联网的审查并不仅仅是由“老大哥”禁止浏览某些网站，或者用“中国防火墙”过滤网页内容，实际要比这复杂多了。虽然，中国互联网审查系统非常普遍，但是，它并不是一个统一的系统。互联网上会有一些元层次的禁词和图象，但是，这“防火墙”其实是由一系列保护墙组成的，一些是国家级的，一些是地方级的。大学、高中和公司也监控和审查他们自己的互联网流量，互联网服务提供商，乃至个人网站也不例外。在中国新闻博客“单位”(danwei)，他们发明了一个便于记住的词语“网络保姆”，来反映中国政府为防范他们公民看到一些“不恰当”的东西而进行的努力。一些像前CNN驻华记者芮贝卡·麦考宁(Rebecca Mackinnon)一样的观察家发现，中国网民为钻这些过滤器的漏洞，而玩起的一些有趣的语言游戏，但是，其他讨论则从未发生过，这不仅仅是因为互联网上有这些粗陋的干扰，也因为网民实行了自我审查。

第九.中国在互联网的使用上，并不总是追随潮流，有时候，他们是潮流的领导者。中国在互联网审查上，其软件和技术开发都是领先世界的。另外，在娱乐方面，中国也在领导潮流。例如，在哈里波特的最后一部新书于去年出现在书店前，中国书迷们就已经可以在网上读到多种版本的新书，那是由中国作家模仿英国女作家J.K.罗琳（J.K.Rowling）的这套系列畅销书写的，还有数种未经许可的原版书翻译。另一个例子是由热门博客编写出版的书在2006年间多次进入中国最畅销的书籍名单，当时，西方还少有这类现象。

第十.你不需要读中文就可以知道中国博客都在说些什么。(作为英文读者，你可以上“中国博客”（Blog for China），这是一个由一群在美国的中国留学生创造的网站，他们是基于最近引发争议的西方媒体对中国不公正报导而创立这样一个网站的。或者，你也可以访问像“中国数字时代”（China Digital Times）、“Danwei”、“东南西北”、“上海人”、和“Rconversation”等网站，它们都定期翻译中国博客的文章，并追踪报导中国互联网的变动事态。

英语原文：

Thanks largely to the Olympics, 2008 will go down in history as a turning point year for China -- or, rather, one when the country passed several milestones. It'll be remembered as a turning point year in Chinese sports history, due to the country getting its first chance to host the Games, and the history of Beijing's redevelopment, due to all of that has been torn down and built up to ready the city to play host. 2008 will go down as a turning point year in the history of cross-strait relations as well, thanks to the resumption today, after over half-a-century, of regularly scheduled Taiwan-mainland flights. Here, though, we focus on still another thing that 2008 is likely to be remembered as: a turning point year for the Chinese Internet.

Consider how many Internet-related developments have already taken place. In January, YouTube videos helped publicize Shanghai protests against extensions of a high-speed train line. In February, China replaced America as the country with the most Internet users. In March and April, bloggers and hackers made headlines, as the furor over the Tibet riots and the roughing up of a Chinese torchbearer in Paris played out in cyberspace as well as on the ground. In May, Wen Jiabao became China's first leader with a Facebook page. In June, Hu Jintao became China's first leader to respond to questions online.

And throughout 2008, news and views about the Olympics have shown up on the Chinese Internet, thanks to everything from the official Beijing Games website that features non-stop promotion of and updates about the event, to a flurry of unofficial postings, such as ones by angry netizens who complained right after the May earthquake government television was still showing triumphant images of the torch relay when the time had come to focus on the suffering of the people of Sichuan.

By now, in the wake of these and other digital events, news-savvy Americans all know the Internet has become an important force in Chinese life -- but not necessarily what kind of force. Here are ten things to keep in mind whenever the Chinese Internet makes headlines.

1. Optimists have long forecast -- inaccurately -- that the Internet will swiftly transform China into a completely open society.
Among others, George Will, Thomas Friedman, and Bill Clinton all predicted around the millennium's turn that the arrival of the Internet would inevitably and swiftly set China free. This hasn't happened. China's still run by a Communist Party that takes harsh measures against organizations that threaten its hold on power.

2. Pessimists continue to suggest -- also inaccurately -- that Chinese political life hasn't really changed and cannot be said to have changed until the Communist Party falls. This ignores shifts in which the Internet has figured centrally.

China's leaders may not have to stand for re-election and certainly limit some forms of dissent, but the Chinese public sphere has become a more freewheeling, interesting and chaotic arena for expressions of opinion than it was. This isn't all due to the Internet (crusading print journalists and activists have also done their part), but bloggers calling attention to official corruption or mocking government policies have definitely helped alter the political landscape. It's misleading to suggest -- as the New Republic does in its latest special issue, "Meet the New China (Same as the Old One)" --that the realm of Chinese politics has remained static.

3. It's misleading to imagine that the only Chinese Internet activity that matters politically involves "dissidents" and collective acts of protest.

Often, the politically significant things happening online involve forms of communication, such as efforts to call attention to corrupt acts by local officials, that dovetail with policies that are promoted or at least given lip service by the central authorities. In many cases, these take the form of satirical discussions, which only gradually move toward anything like a "dissident" position. A recent illustration involved reports that pigs raised to be eaten by Olympic competitors are fed a special organic diet to ensure that pork-consuming athletes won't get so full of chemicals they'll fail drug tests. This led to a flurry of Internet postings about the health risks ordinary Chinese face when eating "normal" pigs. First one and then scores of bloggers connected the dots between the regime's attentiveness to the well being of athletes and seeming lack of concern for other groups, like miners. (There are scores of coal mining accidents each year, only some of which are officially acknowledged.) Many corners of the Chinese blogosphere were suddenly plastered with variations on the line: "I'd rather be an Olympic pig than a man in a coal mine!"

4. The political uses of the Chinese Internet that draw attention here and in China often differ.

Take, for example, Zeng Jingyan, wife of AIDS activist Hu Jia. After blogging about her experiences trying to free Hu from detention, she and her husband made Time's list of the 100 most influential people. But her actions haven't gained the kind of traction in her own country as, say, the Olympic pig stories did.

5. A lot of what happens on the Chinese Internet isn't political.
Increasingly, Chinese Internet usage reflects the broad range of online activities happening in the US, Europe, Japan, and other wired countries. Most Chinese Internet cafes are packed with students playing online video games, not checking out political websites. Online chat rooms are packed. Online commerce is growing rapidly. Online stock trading has taken off. And after the Sichuan earthquake, Chinese donated millions of dollars online.

6. Though the Internet is thought of as an "international space," postings on it can be intensely patriotic, even jingoistic (in China and elsewhere).

Early Internet pioneers opined that the Internet would increasingly make national boundaries and identities irrelevant, especially among the wired young. But Chinese netizens can be nationalistic as well as cosmopolitan. In the spring, after the Tibet and Paris incident, for example, fenqing ("angry youths") took to the net , creating YouTube videos and blog posts that denigrated Tibetan rioters and railed against the French.

7. Self-styled patriotic postings can make the government uneasy.

Unrestrained nationalism has often been a problem for the Chinese government. So officials are understandably wary when young people start to toss about nationalist slogans on the Internet and sometimes act quickly to rein things in. For instance, in April 2005, when anti-Japanese protests broke out across China in response to debates over the content of Japanese history textbooks (and their portrayal of World War II events), internet censors quickly added the word "demonstration" to their list of banned words at QQ, China's most popular internet messaging service. This spring, the government initially allowed anti-French sentiment to build, but soon was moving to tamp it down as online activists began calling for boycotts of international companies whose investment money Beijng has courted.

8. Censorship is more complex than just "Big Brother" blocking sites or the "Great Firewall of China" keeping things out.

While Chinese Internet censorship is widespread, it's not a single unified system. There is some meta-level screening of taboo words and images (like the Dalai Lama's name and face), but the "firewall" is actually a series of blocks -- some at the national level, some at the local level. Universities, schools, and companies monitor and screen Internet traffic, as do Internet service providers and even individual websites. At the Chinese news blog Danwei, they've coined the catchy phrase "Net Nanny" to better reflect the Chinese government efforts to prevent its citizens from being exposed to the wrong kinds of things. Some observers, like Rebecca MacKinnon, have noted the playful language games netizens use to circumvent the filters, but other discussions simply never take place, due not just to ham-handed interference but also self-censorship.

9. China isn't always just following trends when it comes to Internet usage, as it sometimes set them.

This is true of software and technology developments for Internet censorship. It's also true of some creative areas. For instance, before the final installment of Harry Potter's adventures hit bookshelves last year, Chinese fans were able to read multiple versions online -- written by Chinese authors riffing on J.K. Rowling's popular series -- as well as several unauthorized translations of the real deal. Another example is that books made up of posting from popular blogs began making regular appearances on Chinese bestseller lists back in 2006 when these were still very rarely published in the West.

10. You don't have to read Chinese to know what Chinese bloggers are saying.

You can go to "Blog for China," a site started by a group of American-based Chinese students during the recent firestorm over alleged Western bias in media coverage of China, Or visit sites like China Digital Times, Danwei, EastSouthWestNorth, Shanghaiist, and RConversation, all of which regularly translate posts from and track development relating to the Chinese Internet. We depend heavily on them in our work for "The China Beat: Blogging How the East is Read" a site launched by academics and freelance writers interested in Chinese affairs. And as anyone who has gone to the links we've provided above will know by now, we've relied upon them in creating this top ten list on the challenging, important topic of making sense of an increasingly wired and ever-changing China.