When China’s prodigious tech influencer, Naomi Wu, found herself silenced, it wasn’t just the machinery of a surveillance state at play. Instead, it was a confluence of state repression and the sometimes capricious attention of a Western audience that, as she asserts, often views Chinese activists more as ideological tokens than as genuine human beings.
That’s a possibility, but throughout the article she sounds like she is attributing herself an unreasonable importance. I am not saying that in a derogatory manner, just pointing out that the kind of public she generally appeals to is a very small minority, definitely not the mainstream, and definitely not a bunch I would expect to hold a lot of geopolitical power.
What was she actually expecting a fraction of a fraction of the 3D Printing/OpenSource firmware hacking community to do for her when she was detained by the police?
The world doesn’t bat an eye when national celebrities like Jack Ma or Fan BingBing disappear for weeks, because this is all a show of power by the CCP, doubled with the implication that such things will keep happening to those who refuse to toe the party line. She admitted knowing for many years that her content and social presence were “outside of the norms”, but if she was indeed solely counting on her viewership to keep her out of trouble, this is beyond candid…
To me, this is very sad, because I want her to keep doing whatever she likes, but I wish I could say I was surprised.