From: jzhang@sdcc3.ucsd.edu
Newsgroups: soc.culture.china
Subject: Re: publication of SCC messages
Summary: A book review written about a year ago
Date: 14 Aug 92 22:47:31 GMT
Organization: University of California, San Diego

In article <713789633.19005@minster.york.ac.uk> yong@minster.york.ac.uk writes:
>The messages in SCC (soc.culture.china) from 18 February - 4 July 1989
>are edited and published in Sweden, according to the China Quarterly,
>which are edited by Esbjoern Stahle and Terho Uimonen, published by
>Skifter Utgivna av Foereningen foer Orientaliska Studier, Stokholm,
>vol.I and vol.II, pp.394, pp.424, 1989.

Electronic mail on China. Edited by Esbjorn Stahle and Terho Uimonen.  
   [Stockholm] : Foreningen for orientaliska studier, 1989. 818 pages.

Zhenqin Li (jzhang@sdcc6.ucsd.edu)

This 2-volume publication is very unusual, in the sense that 
it is perhaps the first ever book based almost entirely on 
articles of a Usenet newsgroup (soc.culture.china or SCC). It
should be of interest to a wide readership on the computer networks.
As a frequent contributor to SCC, to be honest, I feel ambivalent 
toward this book: I am, of course, glad about its publication, which 
enables ourselves to relive (and others to comprehend) the hundreds or 
thousands of hours each of us had spent on this newsgroup. But on the 
other hand, I also have the painful feeling that what makes this book 
unique and publishable, may not be due to the intrinsic quality of SCC, 
nor its contributors, but rather, due to the scale of upheaval and 
tragedy happened in China during the fateful period of 1989. 

According to the editors' acknowledgements, the compilation and 
publication of the articles in this book were made possible with 
the help of numerous people who had more experience with computer 
networks. Roughly 4% of their material is based on the ENCS 
(Electronic Newsletter for Chinese Students), while the rest are from 
SCC. In all the articles included, they have chosen to "delete names 
and other means of identification for the sake of the authors' security, and 
that of their families, relatives and friends, many of whom still reside in 
the PRC", while keeping only the subject lines and the dates. In their book, 
the editors have selected about 20% of SCC articles posted between May 8 and 
July 4 of 1989, in chronological order, including most articles "dealing with
democracy, freedom and human rights in China". Articles "comprising purely
personal attacks" have been largely deleted. They have also made some
changes in the text format, e.g., replacing Usenet quotation convention by 
standard quotation marks in the reply articles, to make the format more 
uniform. While such editorial changes do not in general affect the quality 
of news items in the book, I personally believe, the deletion of author
names in the headers and texts, as well as the message IDs, diminishes 
the intelligibility of the original discussions to readers who are 
unfamiliar with the history and context of the discussed subjects. As a 
result, to an uninitiated reader of the book, the thread and rationale of 
a SCC discussion may be lost, leaving behind only an impression of a vast 
number of short messages largely unrelated to each other, all screaming 
for "democracy, freedom and human rights" in China. The editors'
decision to leave out "personal attacks", in some cases, leads to 
omission of debates on controversial issues in SCC -- such debates, 
ironically, were and are still likely to degenerate into personal attacks.

In my opinion, a book of this kind should ideally serve at least one of 
the two purposes: (i) preservation of raw material for historical records; 
(ii) providing lessons and new perspectives based on careful analysis of 
the raw material. The latter does not seem to be an intention of the
editors, perhaps due to their unfamilarity with the evolution of
Chinese students' activities on the computer networks. Unfortunately, 
because of their selection process and deletions, the value of this book 
as a historical record and collective memory is also somewhat discounted, 
despite the fact that it can still give the general public an idea of 
what have been said and when on the computer networks during the student 
movement in 1989. 
Newsgroups: soc.culture.china