Google and the “Twisted Cyber Spy” Affair: US–Chinese Communication in an Age of Globalization

Abstract The "twisted cyber spy" affair began in 2010, when Google was attacked by Chinese cyber-warriors charged with stealing Google's intellectual property, planting viruses in its computers, and hacking the accounts of Chinese human rights activists. In the ensuing international embroglio, the US mainstream press, corporate leaders, and White House deployed what I call the rhetoric of belligerent humanitarianism to try to shame the Chinese while making a case for global free markets, unfettered speech, and emerging democracy. That rhetorical strategy carries heavy baggage, however, as it tends to insult the international community, exalt neo-liberal capitalism, sound paternalistic, and feel missionary. Belligerent humanitarianism sounds prudent, however, when compared to the rhetorical strategy of the US military–industrial complex, which marshals the rhetoric of warhawk hysteria to escalate threats into crises and political questions into armed inevitabilities. To counter these two rhetorical strategies, this essay argues that China's leaders deploy the rhetoric of traumatized nationalism, wherein they merge a biting sense of imperial victimage, Maoist tropes of heroism, and a new-found sense of market mastery to portray the US as a tottering land of hypocrisy and China as the rising hope for a new world order. The "Twisted Cyber Spy" affair therefore offers a case study of US–Chinese communication in an age of globalization. Keywords: Belligerent HumanitarianismWarhawk HysteriaTraumatized NationalismChinaGlobalization Acknowledgments send comments to stephen. hartnett@ucdenver. edu. For their editorial support, thanks to my colleagues in the Front Range Rhetoric Group, including Hamilton Bean, Greg Dickinson, Sonja Foss, Lisa Keranen, and Brian Ott. The anonymous readers of this essay and editor McKerrow made insightful comments for which the author is grateful. For their camaraderie while traveling in and thinking about China, thanks to Drs. Patrick Dodge, Donovan Conley, Sonja Foss, John Sunnygard, Lisa Keranen, Barbara Walkosz, and our friends at the International College of Beijing Notes 1. Drummond's posting is accessible at http: //googleblog. blogspot. com; Guobin Yang, The Power of the Internet in China (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 213; Ian Bremmer, "Gathering Storm: America and China in 2020, " World Affairs, July/August 2010, http: //www. worldaffairsjournal. org. 2. Susan Shirk, China: Fragile Superpower (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 267; Robert Dreyfuss, "China in the Driver's Seat, " The Nation, September 2, 2010, http: //www. thenation. com; for an example of such threat-mongering, see Bill Gertz, The China Threat: How the People's Republic Targets America (New York: Regency, 2000) ; David Shambaugh, "A New China Requires a New US Strategy, " Current History 109 (2010): 219–26, quotation from 219. 3. Xing Lu and Herbert Simons, "Transitional Rhetoric of Chinese Communist Party Leaders in the Post-Mao Reform Period: Dilemmas and Strategies, " Quarterly Journal of Speech 92 (2006): 262–86, quotations from 264 and 278; Evan Medeiros, "Is Beijing Ready for Global Leadership? " Current History 108 (2009): 250–56, quotations from 250 and 251. 4. Zbigniew Brzezinski, "How to Stay Friends with China, " New York Times, January 3, 2011, A19; President Barak Obama, comments at the January 19, 2001 press conference with China's President Hu Jintao, posted by the White House, http: //www. whitehouse. gov 5. Andrew Jacobs and Miguel Helft, "Google May End China Operation Over Censorship, " New York Times, January 13, 2010; Shapiro's quotation and following information from Miguel Helft and John Markoff, "In Google's Rebuke of China, Focus Falls on Cyber-Security, " New York Times, January 14, 2010; on the censoring of the story, see Andrew Jacobs, "Google's Threat Echoed Everywhere, Except China, " New York Times, January 14, 2010; Jiao Guobiao, "China's Information Pigsty, " China Rights Forum (2005, no. 3): 85–97; to protect their safety, the names of all Chinese interlocutors quoted herein are blinded; on "netizens, " see Jiyeon Kang, "Coming to Terms with 'Unreasonable' Global Power: The 2002 South Korean Candlelight Vigils, " Communication and Critical Cultural Studies 6 (2009): 171–92. 6. Marilyn Geewax, "China Aims to Build the Next Silicon Valley, " National Public Radio, 13 June, 2010, transcript downloaded from http: //www. npr. org; Richard Clarke and Robert Knake, Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What To Do About It (New York: HarperCollins, 2010), 59, 126; on technology transfers, see Sylvia Pfeifer, "Overseas Defense Clients Get Tougher, " Financial Times, June 11, 2010; for a contrasting view, wherein the Chinese are surging ahead in developing green technologies, see Evan Osnos, "Green Giant: Beijing's Crash Program for Clean Energy, " The New Yorker, December 21, 2009, http: //www. newyorker. com 7. Nicholas Kristoff, "Google Takes a Stand, " New York Times, January 14, 2010; "conflict" from David Sanger and John Markoff, "In Wake of Google's Loud Stance on China, Silence from US, " New York Times, January 15, 2010; Gjelten quoted in Robert Siegel, "Chinese Attack on Google Seen as Cybertheft, " NPR's All Things Considered, January 18, 2010, http: //www. npr. org; Clarke and Knake, Cyber War, 67, note that I have altered the prose for purposes of clarity. 8. Helene Cooper, "US Arms for Taiwan Send Beijing a Message, " New York Times, February 1, 2010; "His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama at the White House, " February 18, 2010, http: //www. whitehouse. gov; on the US's confused treatment of Tibet, see Melvyn C. Goldstein, The Snow Lion and the Dragon: China, Tibet, and the Dalai Lama (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). 9. Ellen Nakashima, "Google to Enlist NSA to Ward Off Attacks, " Washington Post, February 4, 2010; ACLU web-message to members, February 9, 2010, entitled "Tell Google: No Deal with the NSA"; for the CCP's response, see Zhang Xiaojun, "Google's Team-Up with Spy Agency Dangerous, " Xinhua News Agency, February 25, 2010, http: //www. xinghuanet. com/english2010/. 10. On the Marsh Commission, see Clarke and Knake, Cyber War, 106 ff. While much attention has been paid to Clinton as a candidate, and to Clinton as a bellwether of the status of women in US politics, little rhetorical attention has been given to her exemplary service as Secretary of State; for an example of this ongoing oversite, see Janis L. Edwards, "The 2008 Gendered Campaign and the Problem with 'Hillary Studies, '" Rhetoric see the 1948 U. N. Declaration of Human Rights, http: //www. un. org 12. On Jefferson's Declaration, see Garry Wills, Inventing America: Jefferson's Declaration of Independence (New York: Vintage, 1978) ; Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791), repr. , The Thomas Paine Reader, ed. Isaac Kramnick (New York: Penguin, 1987), 201–364; Immanuel Kant, "The Metaphysics of Morals" (1797), repr. , Kant's Political Writings, ed. Hans Reiss (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 131–75, quotations from 137; President William Jefferson Clinton, "A Just and Necessary War, " speech reprinted in the New York Times, May 23, 1990; for an overview, see Lynn Hunt, Inventing Human Rights: A History (New York: Norton, 2007). 13. Noam Chomsky, "The Current Bombings: Behind the Rhetoric, " posted to ZNet (March 1999), http: //www. chomsky. info; Jean Bricmont, Humanitarian Imperialism: Using Human Rights to Sell War (New York: Monthly Review, 2007) ; Jiang Yu quoted in "Most Nations Oppose Peace Prize to Liu, " China Daily, December 10, 2010, Chinadaily. com. cn; for background to this critique, see Samuel Moyn, The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010), 84–119. 14. Daniel Luban, "When the 'Good Fight' is Anything But, " Inter-Press Services, August 2, 2007, http: //ipsnews. net; Seyla Benhabib, The Claims of Culture: Equality and Diversity in the Global Era (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 24; on the consequences of this dilemma for international aid workers, see Fabrice Weissman, "Military Humanitarianism: A Deadly Confusion, " posted on June 11, 2004 by Medecins Sans Frontieres, http: //www. msf. org, and Rod Norland, "Killings in Afghan Aid Efforts Stir a Debate on US Strategy, " New York Times, December 14, 2010. 15. Thomas Friedman, The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2005), 44; Clinton, "Remarks, " 4; Schwab's 7 April 2008 claim, from a press briefing, is cited in Lies, Damn Lies, and Export Statistics (Washington, DC: Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, 2010), 6; for critiques of this position, see Mike Davis, "Planet of Slums, " New Left Review 26 (March/April 2004): 5–34; Amy Chua, World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability (New York: Anchor, 2004) ; and Stephen John Hartnett and Laura Ann Stengrim, Globalization and Empire: The US Invasion of Iraq, Free Markets, and the Twilight of Democracy (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2006), 139–211. 16. On the rhetoric of "benevolent empire, " see Stephen John Hartnett, "War Rhetorics: The National Security Strategy of the United States and President Bush's Rhetoric of Globalization-Through-Benevolent-Empire, " The South Atlantic Quarterly 105 (2006): 175–206; Mao Tse-Tung's "On the Chungking Negotiations, " 17 October 1945, as excerpted in his "Little Red Book, " formally titled Quotations from Chairman Mao (Beijing: CCP, 2010 bilingual edition), 137; on the Opium Wars, see W. Travis Hanes and Frank Sanello, The Opium Wars: The Addiction of One Empire and the Corruption of Another (Sourcebooks, 2004). 17. Clinton, "Remarks, " 4, 6, 7; the Sichuan quake of 2008 killed as many as 70, 000 Chinese and left between five and ten million homeless (see Jake Hooker, "Toll Rises in China Quake, " New York Times, May 26, 2008, http: //www. nytimes. com) ; on the Yushu quake, see Tania Branigan and James Meikle, "Earthquake in China Leaves Hundreds Dead, " The Guardian, April 14, 2010, http: //www. guardian. co. uk 18. The first two quotations are from the Associated Press, "China Warns US Over Clinton's Criticism, " as posted at MSNBC. Com, January 22, 2010; the Global Times's lines were reported by Christopher Bodeen, "China: Clinton Internet Speech Harms Ties with US, " Associated Press, January 22, 2010, http: //news. yahoo. com; and see Michael Wines, "China Issues Sharp Rebuke to US, " New York Times, January 26, 2010. 19. Bryan Krekel, George Bakos, and Christopher Barnett, Capability of the People's Republic of China to Conduct Cyber Warfare and Computer Network Exploitation (Washington, DC: US–China Economic and Security Review Commission/Northrop Grumman, 2009), 6, 8; Garry Wills, Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State (New York: Penguin, 2010), 1, 2; Larry M. Wortzel, "Preventing Terrorist Attacks, Countering Cyber Intrusions, and Protecting Privacy in Cyberspace, " testimony before the US Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security, November 17, 2009; the CNE Report and Wortzel's testimony are both accessible via the Commission's website, http: //www. uscc. gov; on "threat construction, " see Stephen John Hartnett and Greg Goodale, "The Demise of Democratic Deliberation: The Defense Science Board, The Military–Industrial Complex, and The Production of Imperial Propaganda, " in Rhetoric and Democracy: Pedagogical and Political Practices, ed. David Timmerman and Todd McDorman (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2008), 181–224, and Lisa B. Keränen, "Bio (In) Security: Rhetoric, Scientists, and Citizens in the Age of Bioterrorism, " in Sizing Up Rhetoric, ed. David Zarefsky and Elizabeth Benacka (Long Grove, IL: Waveland, 2008), 227–49. 20. CNE Report, 8; Wortzel, "Preventing Terrorist Attacks, " 5, 6; on the toxic combination of WMD rhetoric and invocations of 9/11, see Hartnett and Stengrim, Globalization and Empire, 40–83; for a critique of this form of threat construction, see Daniel Fromson, "Weapons of Mass Distraction: Object Lessons from Cybermythology, " Harper's Magazine, September 2010, 54–56. 21. CNE Report, 8, 15, 21, emphasis added; and see Seymour Hersh, "The Online Threat: Should We Be Worried about a Cyber War? " The New Yorker, November 1, 2010, 44–55. 22. Guoguang Wu, "Command Communication: The Politics of Editorial Formulation in the People's Daily, " China Quarterly 137 (1994): 194–211, quotations from 195; "global audience" and CNC World information from David Barboza, "China Puts Best Face Forward in New English-Language Channel, " New York Times, July 2, 2010; for background, see Geoffrey Taubman, "A Not-So World Wide Web: The Internet, China, and the Challenges to Nondemocratic Rule, " Political Communication 15 (1998): 255–72; the closing quotation was provided by an anonymous reviewer for this journal and has been confirmed in my own conversations with Chinese citizens. 23. Jason Abbott, "Democracy@Internet. Asia? the Challenges to the Emancipatory Potential of the Net: Lessons from China and Malaysia, " Third World Quarterly 22 (2001): 99–114, quotation from 100; and see Fengshu Liu, "The Norm of the 'Good' Netizen and the Construction of the 'Proper' Wired Self: The Case of Chinese Urban Youth, " New Media see Liu Xiaobo, "The Internet is God's Present to China, " The Times (London), 28 April, 2009, and Ai Weiwei, as quoted in Ron Gluckman, "The Art of Social Advocacy, " Wall Street Journal, January 25, 2011, http: //online. wsj. com. 24. "Linking Hackers' Cyber Attacks with Chinese Government, Military Groundless, " People's Daily Online, February 25, 2010 —please note that all People's Daily Online stories cited herein are archived at http: //english. people. com. cn; "Chinese Official Defense Website Still Under Intense Attack, " People's Daily Online, March 17, 2010; Chen Xitong, "Report on Checking the Turmoil and Quelling the Counterrevolutionary Rebellion, " speech of June 30, 1989, repr. , The China Reader: The Reform Era, ed. Orville Schell and David Shambaugh (New York: Vintage, 1999), 79–95, quotations from 79, 80. 25. Christopher Williams, "China in 2010 and Beyond, " People's Daily Online, March 8, 2010; "Google Totally Wrong, " People's Daily Online, March 24, 2010; Richard P. Suttmeier, "China's Techno-Warriors, Another View, " China Quarterly 179 (2004): 804–10, quotation from 804. 26. "Foreign Firms are Welcome in China, " People's Daily Online, April 6, 2010; on China's merging capitalism with totalitarianism, see Kellee S. Tsai, Capitalism Without Democracy: The Private Sector in Contemporary China (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007) ; on labor unrest, see Keith Bradsher, "An Independent Labor Movement Stirs in China, " New York Times, June 11, 2010. 27. "Google Totally Wrong, " People's Daily Online, March 24, 2010; "groundless" from "China Refutes Hacking Accusations, " People's Daily Online, April 6, 2010; "twisted" from "Official Fires Back at US, " People's Daily Online, 24 November 2009; "nonsense" from "China Blasts Accusations of Govt. Involvement, " Peoples' Daily Online, February 10, 2010; Mao's 1948 PDO comment as quoted in Wu, "Command Communication, " 204; Deng Xiaoping, "Taking a Clear-Cut Stand Against Bourgeois Liberalization, " speech of December 30, 1986, as reprinted in Schell and Shambaugh, China Reader, 182–85, quotations from 182, 183, 184; Luo Gan is quoted in James Mann, The China Fantasy: Why Capitalism Will Not Bring Democracy to China (New York: Penguin, 2007), 114. 28. "Official Fires Back at US, " People's Daily Online, November 24, 2009; "Don't Impose Double Standards on 'Internet Freedom, '" People's Daily Online, January 24, 2010; Charter 08 is the human rights manifesto that shook the Party and led to a wave of arrests—see "China's Charter 08, " trans. Perry Link, New York Review of Books, January 15, 2009, http: //www. nybooks. com. 29. "Good Faith Urged for Global Cooperation, " People's Daily Online, March 1, 2010; "China Rejects US 'Cyber Warfare' Allegations, " People's Daily Online, October 23, 2009; "US Using Google Case to 'Act Tough, '" People's Daily Online, March 19, 2010; "hidden agenda" from "China Rebukes Spy Charges, " People's Daily Online, February 10, 2010; "ulterior motives" from "Linking Hackers' Attacks with Chinese Government, Military Groundless, " People's Daily Online, February 25, 2010; on the US press during the war, see Michael Massing, Now They Tell Us: The American Press and Iraq (New York: New York Review of Books, 2004). 30. See "In Information Age, We Need 'Web Spokesmen, '" People's Daily Online, April 1, 2010; on Party-picked "Internet commentators, " see Guobin Yang, Power of the Internet in China, 50–51; on the "information police" in Chinese life, see Shirk, China: Fragile Superpower, 93–102, quotation from 93, and The Committee to Protect Journalists, Attacks on the Press 2009: China, February 16, 2010, http: //www. cpj. org. 31. Kenneth Lieberthal is quoted in Geoff Dyer and Richard Waters, "China Renews Google License, " Financial Times, July 10, 2010; and see Juan Carlos Perez, "Restored Google China Search Site Very Limited in Features, " Computerworld, July 9, 2010, http: //www. computerworld. com; for an overview, see Micky Lee, "Revisiting the 'Google in China' Question from a Political Economic Perspective, " China Media Research 6 (2010) ; 15–24. 32. National Security Strategy of the United States (Washington, DC: GPO, 2010), 43; Leonard C. Hawes, "Human Rights and an Ethic of truths: Pragmatic Dilemmas and Discursive Interventions, " Communication and Critical Cultural Studies 7 (2010): 262–79, quotation from 262. 33. Figures from "China Renews Google's License, " Al Jazeera, July 10, 2010, http: //english. aljazeera. net; "below expectations" from Warwick Ashford, "Google Share Price Dips, " ComputerWeekly. com, July 16, 2010, http: //www. computerweekly. com; "impatient" and latter figures from Claire Miller, "Google Earnings Disappoint Investors, " New York Times, July 15, 2010, http: //www. nytimes. com; on India, see Joe Leahy, "India Presses for Blackberry Data, " Financial Times, August 15, 2010; on the Middle East, see Barry Meier and Robert Worth, "Emirates to Cut Data Services, " New York Times, August 2, 2010; on Malaysia and Singapore, see Cherian George, "The Internet and the Narrow Tailoring Dilemma for Asian Democracies, " Communication Review 6 (2003): 247–68; Obama's trade deals are discussed in Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Mark Landler, "Obama and Hu Cite Mutual Aims Amid Trade Deals, " New York Times, blog; January 19, 2011, http: //thecaucus. blog. nytimes. com 34. Summers is quoted in James Fallows, "The 1. 4 Trillion Question, " The Atlantic, January/February 2008, http: //www. theatlantic. com. Additional informationNotes on contributorsStephen John Hartnett Stephen John Hartnett is Professor and Chair of the Department of Communication at the University of Colorado Denver