China is evidently paying people to say the "right" (read: politically correct) thing on the Internet. And (surprise) they've been doing it for a while, according to blogger Joop Dorresteijn.

Let's make some distinctions. First, censorship is what happens when the government decides to not let you see something. If USA Today is censored where you live, that means you don't get to see it. Astroturfing is a public relations tool; it's an orchestrated effort to shape public opinion with what looks like grassroots discussion - but isn't because, well, it's orchestrated. Finally, I should mention crowdsourcing. That's when you get the larger community of Internet users to do your job for you (like with Wikipedia).

The story traces back to a piece in the Far East Economic Review (which I'm guessing is censored in China) about the "50-cent army."


© Rivard

According to FEER:

China's growing armies of Web commentators-instigated, trained and financed by party organizations-have just one mission: to safeguard the interests of the Communist Party by infiltrating and policing a rapidly growing Chinese Internet. They set out to neutralize undesirable public opinion by pushing pro-Party views through chat rooms and Web forums, reporting dangerous content to authorities.

The "army" has been around since 2005 and they get paid 50 yuan (about 7 US cents) for each pro-Party comment they post. FEER estimates that there are about 280,000 of these astroturfers out there working PR for China's Communist Party.

Kevin Donavan at Buzzya says the Internet Censorship is the newest industry to be crowdsourced. But it's not quite censorship...

So does this mean that China's looking at making the Internet more open in the People's Republic and the 50-cent Army is a safeguard? I'll leave you to judge that...