Chinese Hackers: Voices Walking the Gray Web--Wan Tao Interviews (Late 1990s-2010s)

Chinese Hackers: Voices Walking the Gray Web--Wan Tao Interviews (Late 1990s-2010s)

Wan Tao, a central figure in Chinese hacker culture, entered the world of hackers not through a flashy fuse, but through a minor incident in his college days when the computer he was using was infected with a virus. There is no dramatic element in his family environment either, and his time as an only child growing up quietly surrounded by his liberal arts relatives is described as having fostered rather an inner curiosity. He sees the era of transition from paper to the Web as a new structure in which media of different speed and depth coexist, and calmly points out that in China, as in Japan, the fault line of values between generations is widening. The anecdote about a Japanese restaurant in Beijing where the restaurant suspended the event because the customers ate up all the beikyosai clams symbolizes the uninhibited side behind the calm analyst. In the background was China's cyber situation during the turbulent period of rapid Internet penetration, increased state survei
llance, and the rise of the Red Cross, and Wan Tao quietly walked the boundaries between the two. His narrative reexamines the tension between technology and freedom, and between the state and the individual, and has a weight that resonates in today's Internet society.