Age of ambition: Chasing fortune, truth, and faith in the new china

Like others his age, Tang Jie lived largely online. When the riots erupted in Lhasa in March, he followed the news closely on American and European news sites, in addition to China’s official media. He had no hesitation about tunneling under the government firewall. He used a proxy server—a digital way station overseas that connected a user with a blocked website. He watched television exclusively online, because it had more variety and he didn’t have a TV in his room. He also received foreign news clips from Chinese students abroad, a population that has grown by nearly two-thirds in the previous decade to some sixtyseven thousand people. Tang was baffled that foreigners might imagine that people of his generation were somehow unwise to the distortions of censorship. “Because we are in such a system, we are always asking ourselves whether we are brainwashed,” he said. “We are always eager to get other information from different channels.” Then he added, “But when you are in a so-called free system you never think about whether you are brainwashed.”