Using Social Media to Get Around Beijing's Censors - and Ottawa's!

Yes, I did look for the most banal
social media graphic that I could find.

It was with a great deal of satisfaction that I read this story in the Globe and Mail on how the Canadian Embassy in China is using the Chinese-social media service, Weibo, to communicate with ordinary Chinese people.

After years of seeing Canada’s name dragged through the mud – in both the official media and online – over the refuge granted to Chinese fugitive Lai Changxing, the embassy used Weibo on Wednesday to post the entire Federal Court decision that resulted in the 53-year-old’s deportation to China last month after about a decade-long legal battle.

Unsurprisingly, the post disappeared almost as soon as it went up. (Can't have people finding out 'inconvenient' information, now can we, Beijing!) But what really encouraged me was the social networking strategy that the embassy described in the article.

The embassy's Weibo account is also one of the rare places where Canadian diplomats can write or speak (albeit in 140-character bursts, the maximum allowable length on the site) without having their words first edited and cleared in Ottawa. The frequency of the postings, combined with time differences, make it impractical for each item to be routed through headquarters.
“We [diplomats] are under tremendous pressure to innovate and to really understand who our audience is. We’re pretty convinced that reaching out to this group of largely young people who are interested in the world and interested in Canada relates directly to what we’re doing here,” Canada’s ambassador to Beijing, David Mulroney, said in an interview. The 56-year-old career diplomat said the online interaction with ordinary Chinese citizens was now “the single most important tool we have in understanding what this emerging generation in China is all about.”

In other words, aside from trying to get around Beijing's censors, Canadian diplomats are able to get around Ottawa's! (I'm pretty shocked that no one in the CPC has had a heart attack about this yet. "What!? Canadian diplomats thinking and taking the initiative for themselves?! NOOOOO!!!!")

DFAIT is one of the most competitive programs in the Canadian government. Although I personally find DFAIT employees to often act like they're members of some kind of bizarre religious order, they are also smart as hell and have done wonderful things when Ottawa lets them.

I hope this is not just a new way for Canada to connect with the broader world, I also hope it shows that the Harper Conservatives should give their DFAIT staff a little more free reign. This is creative and awesome diplomacy at its best. The kind of thing we were good at not so many years ago.