"Is the Web 2.0 leading to a new sense of collectiveness in China?"

I managed to attend the last session of Web 2.0 in China: What's Next in China? by OrangeLabs. Due to my meeting and work on Monday and Tuesday, I could not make it for most of the sessions prior to 51.com's presentation on the topic of "The Typical China Web 2.0 User".

When I arrived, it seemed it just reached the hype of the afternoon sessions as there were so many people attending. It really looked great. Because of the tons of work I finished previously plus the heated venue, foggy weather and dim lighting, it seemed to me a perfect place to fall asleep. However, the interesting topics kept me awake, which was good.

I think the last session, a panel discussion about "Is the Web 2.0 leading to a new sense of collectiveness in China?" was pretty interesting. Although "collectiveness" seemed too broad a word there to discuss in a one-hour panel with 9 panelist, there are still a lot more to think about and talk about. It was just the beginning to look into the concept of changing collectiveness.

Moderator asked about the audience and speakers about their answers to this question:
so about 26 people agreed with the change, 13 disagreed and another few made a point of no conclusion on Yes or No.

Guess what? I was in the disagreed group. Here is my thinking and reasoning.
1. Collectiveness is such a broad topic. Collectiveness means " done by people acting as a group". Thus, it is pretty much an emphasis on 'collaboration'.
It is different from 'collectivism' meaning the practice or principle of giving a group priority over each individual in it. Chinese society is lead by the socialists and their party. Collectivism is definitely the value and principle in managing the society.
Some speakers did mentioned about collectivism v.s. individualism. China is a society that skipped the capitalistic societal structure and jumped to the more futuristic societal structure (in comparison to capitalism where a more individualistic society is common). [Of course this understanding is based on some societal progression theory. ] Let us put the theory aside and look at the collectiveness.

2. Looking at the context: we are talking about the collectiveness in China. What's so special about China? A oriental society with 5000+ years of history, distinct culture, a tough language, a mysterious country to many in the world, a rising dragon in the east, 3rd largest country by landscape in the world, 1/4 of the world population.... ya da ya da ya da ya...
In my view, oriental societies are more collective than western societies. Japan is a very good example that you might want to look into. There are many studies compared the cultural differences among various societies. The stronger collectiveness in oriental societies is a general impression made from those studies.


3. Referencing
Right now, the Web 2.0 is so hyped up in the western societies especially North America and Europe. Has it changed the collectiveness in their society? Maybe not. They bettered the existing offline practices by utilizing the advanced web technology to actualize something can never happen in a WWW-less world. That is removal of the sense of physical constraints, like space, location, surroundings etc. That's the empowerment of the Internet. So, how did Web 2.0 contribute to the betterment of the collaboration? I think it is through organizing information, filtering information and distributing information in a quicker, nicer and more accurate way.

4. Draw conclusion from reference?
so... Web 2.0 is going to do the same thing for the Chinese society for sure - so much to do with information. If allowing me to say that's the nature of the Web 2.0 (better organizing), the people, the content, the channels are just so different!
If we were to just make a exact copy of MySpace, Facebook etc, would it work just as it worked as the original copy of MySpace and Facebook? NO!!! It is a No-No. There are a lot of premises, assumptions and constraints we have to discover and start looking into them, because these made the Chinese version of Facebook distinct even though it is still Facebook (facing the Chines audience). Just sidetrack a little here, who understand the Chinese Internet users? References are good but they cannot help draw any conclusion in such context.

5. How I looked at it?
I made a short comment at the end of the panel discussion.
I said, the web 1.0 maybe a realizing process for us to get to know the power of the Internet. It was the milestone of human beings in understanding the new stuff.
Thus web 2.0 might be the defining stage after we have understood the power. We need to find out what we can do on the web. Thus, in answering the question maybe what Web 2.0 led in the end was a better and clearer definition of collectiveness among the mass Internet users.
what I did not say was the continuation of the definition. It is then the so-called Web 3.0 stuff which we will figure out how eventually the Internet is best utilized in various aspects and domains in the world.

Food (questions) for thought:
1. what are the Chinese natives doing on the web?
2. what are the real niche markets in China which might not exist in other parts of the world?
3. Is the Internet utilization high enough to generate more and more revenue in considering the top internet connection infrastructure?
4. what works here and what does not work
5. what are the great business models that tailored for the Chinese Market?