Guest blogger Frederick W. Marrazzo comes to the State Department via Silicon Valley in Northern California, where he helped recruit for a variety of technology companies before starting to produce his own public access television program in 2004. In 2007, Frederick completed a book project on the local Italian community in the Santa Clara Valley. He has a degree in East Asian languages and literature from the University of Maryland at College Park and an MBA from the Thunderbird School of Global Management in Glendale, Arizona.
As a Franklin Fellow with the Bureau of International Information Programs, which was part of the United States Information Agency until 1999 when the agency merged with the State Department, I have the opportunity to work as a member of the Chinese blogging project where I scan blogs in both English and Chinese.
The goal of digital outreach is meant to help the United States government carry out the mission of public diplomacy by communicating with audiences from different countries. Social media tools such as blogs give voice to more people than ever before.
As I read through some of the stories and comments that are highlighted on Chinese blog postings, I am reminded of why freedom of speech is so important to the American way of life and why we should encourage China to be more tolerant of different points of view.
A blog post on the China Digital Times points out a story in which the Xinhua News Agency, China’s official news outlet (i.e., Communist Party approved), conducted an interview with the police chief of a small county in Inner Mongolia, an autonomous region of China. In it, he talks about what is known as the “Three Ones” program, which recruits police informants from local citizens.
The meaning of “Three Ones” is derived from the numbers 10,000, 1,000 and 100. The 10,000 figure represents the number of informants that every police division is expected to recruit from their communities, villages, work units and other areas. The 1,000 figure comes from informants recruited by the actual combat units that include criminal investigation, economic investigation, Domestic Security Departments, Public Information Security Supervision, public safety and police stations. Finally, the 100 figure includes additional special criminal intelligence gatherers that come from the groups just mentioned.
According to the police chief, just over 12,000 people serve as informants to the local government in a county of just 400,000 people! Obviously “Three Ones” multiply very quickly.
Another story that I read, about a veteran of the “Counterattack Against Vietnam in Self Defense,” a punitive war between China and Vietnam that lasted just under a month from February to March 1979, clarified for me just how humiliating war can be. This made me realize that the work that we do at the State Department on a daily basis has an impact on world peace. When people die because of actions taken by governments, it underscores the urgency of diplomacy. Diplomacy is dignity.
Needless to say, I’m really glad to be contributing to the public diplomacy mission of the U.S. Department of State.