A man (center) wears a gas mask to protest a proposed toxic chemical plant in Xiamen

Despite the fact that China has the most elaborate system of internet censorship in the world, creative Chinese activists are still finding ways to use the medium for political activism.

On June 1, one million residents of coastal Xiamen protested against the proposed construction of a toxic chemical plant near the city center. Cell phones and the internet made it possible. The Chinese blogger collective Bullog used the internet and SMS to promote the event.

Because the state-controlled media refused to broadcast details of the upcoming protest, people used SMS, online bulletin boards (BBS), and blogs to get the message out. Not surprisingly, the government blocked the SMS messages and BBS webmasters took down the alerts as soon as they were posted.

Bullog members used this censorship to their advantage, writing detailed posts not about the protest itself (which would have gotten them in trouble), but about how the government was trying to prevent it from happening. Techincally, they weren't taking part in promoting the protest, just reporting on it.

When the protest took place, many members of Bullog attended in order to record what was happening. One member of Bullog stayed home to update the blog while other members sent him SMS updates from the scene. This live SMS account of the protest was the best news coverage available. So many people went to the Bullog site in search of news that their server was soon overloaded. But Bullog members didn't just use SMS. They also created a video of the protest for YouTube (see below) and posted photos on Flickr.

Of course, the government isn't taking this lying down. They have instituted a new regulation by which all people posting messages on websites based in Xiamen must use their real names. This is to discourage people from posting messages that the government would not approve of and to catch the ones that do. But I'm not worried. Chinese activists are creative enough to find a way to work around this. If I were in the Chinese government, I'd be pretty scared.

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Photo credit: hellhell007