March 15th World Consumer Rights Day 消费者权益日

It's clear why World Consumer Rights Day is such big news in China; the lack of protection consumers face everyday when buying groceries, fast food, cars, in fact, anything at all, means 3.15 is a time to make a stand. Statistics released in 2010 by the State Administration of Industry and Commerce (SAIC) revealed 94,000 cases of substandard food production and 110,000 cases of fake and shoddy product sales, as well as thousands of other misconducts. Thankfully, these chronic breaches of consumers' basic rights can no longer be stifled. The Chinese are becoming ever more aware of their rights as consumers, correspondingly, the channels through which consumers can voice their complaints has also increased. Currently there are 339 centres spread across China handling complaints, receiving 5.21 million consumer queries in 2010 alone, alongside 22 provincial offices researching different methods of protecting consumer rights.

The Chinese melamine milk scandal of 2008

Moreover, the internet as a platform to voice dissent and dissatisfaction is proving impossible to gag. According to Reuters, Weibo, exploded with the hashtag '3.15' in the week leading up to this year's World Consumer Rights Day, appearing over 1.5 million times. On the day itself, a hugely popular state television news show, also called 3.15, publicly names and shames companies guilty of infringing consumer interests. Once aired, the Chinese take to the blogosphere to vent their wrath. In 2012, after MacDonalds was hit with accusations of improper food safety practices they saw their shares fall amid a storm of online anger. Alongside MacDonalds, the French hyper-market chain Carrefour also met with criticism over food safety. 

Exposing unscrupulous businesses makes good TV

As a result of World Consumer Rights Day, companies behave much like teachers when OFSTED are visiting, leading to "a spike in corporate good behaviour... aimed at balancing any negative press." As the Chinese are justifiably concerned about food safety, any challenge to a company's reputation or brand can cause irreparable damage to consumer trust. For example this year, just days after World Consumer Rights Day, MacDonalds gave away over a million McMuffins in a promotion unconnected with 3.15, according to Vivian Zhang (senior director of communications at MacDonalds China).  

Here's a translation of a Chinese article about World Consumer Rights Day:

快捷酒店将洗脸毛巾擦完马桶擦刷牙杯，浴巾当拖把拖地，杯子翻个面就可以了（现代金报3月13日）；超市将过期食品换包装再卖，霉烂水果切拼盘，重量作假价格虚高（广州日报3月13日）；足浴头顶中医科学院光环，骗游客4.8万元（中国经济网3月13日）……形形色色的侵犯消费者权益事件，似乎在“3·15”消费者权益保护日来临之际集中爆发了。

Hostels use facecloths to wipe toilet bowls and toothbrush holders, bath towels are used to mop the floor, cups simply turned upside down are acceptable for re-use (Xiandaijin Newspaper 13/3); supermarkets repackage out-of-date foodstuffs to re-sell, mouldy fruit used in fruit platters, the weight of items faked to increase the price (Guangzhou Daily 13/3); foot massages claiming to have the benefits of Chinese medicine, cheating tourists out of 48,000RMB (China Economics Website 13/3). It seems that leading up to 3.15 World Consumer Rights Day we focus on the eruption of cases of all kinds of consumer rights' violations. 

眼看又到了“3·15”消费者权益日，媒体对一些损害消费者权益的揭露多了，关于保护消费者权益的声音也多了。各地也开始每年一次的例行公事，大力宣传消费者权益保护的重要性，条幅挂上了，宣传车、宣传展板走上街头了。与此同时，网络上的“删帖”生意也迎来了一个旺季。在高声大喊“保护消费者权益”的浮华喧嚣下，一些真正的东西却被潜藏。 

Very soon it will once again be 3.15 World Consumer Rights Day; culprits of harming consumer rights are unmasked by the media in their droves, and a lot of noise is made about protecting consumer rights. Routine annual events spring up everywhere, vigorously proclaiming the importance of protecting consumer rights, banners are hung up, cars are sent out, propaganda placards parade the streets. At the same time, over on the internet, 'shan tie'* businesses welcome in their peak season. Under the ostentatious clamouring for the "protection of consumer rights", a few genuine problems are being hidden and concealed.  

*'Shan tie' 删帖 has the literal meaning to 'delete a notice' or 'remove a notice', and refers to the practice of employing people (presumably hackers) to remove posts or shut down sites revealing problems with a company's product. 

Consumer rights are of huge importance to a people who feel robbed of free choice. It's a sorry state of affairs for the Chinese who cannot freely eat food, drink water, and due the heavy pollution, even breathe without some potential risk to their health. Is World Consumer Rights Day just a band-aid solution to a much deeper epidemic of malpractice in Chinese business? How much can one day of exposure really fix the entrenched bad habits of companies? 24 hours isn't enough time to unearth all the culprits, but hopefully the increased awareness of consumers rights combined with the new systems for reporting offending products will set China along a path improving corporate responsibility and consumer trust. 

River Crabs and the Chinese Internet

The majority of what we hear about the Internet in China paints a gloomy picture. Censorship, online police and the planned introduction of real-name registration for microblogs; it’s an Orwellian nightmare. Despite the image of repression, there are a surprising number of ways in which the online Chinese are evading the censors and making themselves heard. Recent events could not be more relevant in showing the huge impact social media can have on social movements and revolutions. It’s no wonder the Chinese government are uncomfortable about the freedom of discussion that the internet provides.

A Chinese Mitten Crab

The internet has given Chinese netizens a taste of free speech, which they will now resolutely defend. In response to the proposed built-in censor ‘Green-Dam Youth Escort’ software of 2009, tens of thousands of China’s online population signed up to proxy servers that allow them to ‘climb’ the firewall. At the last moment, the government pulled the plug on the Green Dam.

A recent glitch in China’s ‘Great Firewall’ allowed netizens access to the normally forbidden social network Google+, which is banned alongside Facebook and Twitter. Swarming towards the leader of the free world, they began a movement to occupy President Obama’s Google+ account. The fissure was sealed up within five days, but the ‘Occupy Obama’ movement continues. His page has become a forum for thoughts that the censored Chinese people want to express; some call for Western style democracy, some the release of China’s victims of conscience, others want tougher reproof of China’s human right’s record.

However there are ways around the firewall that do not need proxy servers or VPNs, that rely on the nuances and complexity of the Chinese language, as well as a bit of humour. If you search expletives or forbidden topics, an error page or forbidden content page will appear. Now, imagine a language where you can find a homophone for anything. Although it sounds the same, it will have a completely different character with an entirely different meaning. When Hu Jintao introduced the ‘Harmonious Society’ (héxié shèhuì) ideology in 2004, its clauses came to justify the growing internet exclusion of topics that ‘undermine social stability’. Before long, it became synonymous with censorship. Under the erratic eye of the censors, ‘harmonisation’ (héxié) became a taboo topic. Chinese netizens circumvented this blockage with a pun, ‘harmonisation’ was substituted with ‘river crab’ (héxiè). Thus the lowly Chinese Mitten Crab arose as the champion in the fight against censorship.

Similar puns have emerged, one former expletive is so popular that there are now cuddly toys of its new rendering as ‘grass mud horse’, an ancient mythical animal resembling an alpaca. As fast and as complex as the firewall is, Chinese netizens have developed a constantly mobile vocabulary ready to adapt to it. With an online population of 300 million and counting, and a language of over 80,000 characters, censorship will be a constant game of catch-up for the government from here on.

Cao ni ma 'grass mud horse' fluffy toys