Shi Zhan, "Trump and Twitter"

Shi Zhan, “How Many Tweets Would a Trump Thumb Tweet if a Trump Thumb Could Tweet Tweets?!”[1]
 
Introduction and Translation by David Ownby

Introduction
 
Shi Zhan (b. 1977) is Professor of Political Science and International Relations and Director of the World Politics Research Center at China Foreign Affairs University.  He is one of many Chinese scholars attempting to rethink the world order on the basis of China’s rise, and is the author of many well-received volumes, including The Hub:  Three Thousand Years of China 枢纽：3000年的中国 (2018), discussed at some length by Liang Zhiping in his essay on tianxia and ideology translated on this site.  As he mentions in the text translated below, Shi has published a more recent volume, Breaking the Cocoon 破茧 (2020), [2] which appears to address the issue of China’s role in the construction of a post-modern era more directly.
 
The text translated here is the equivalent of a blog post on Shi’s own site, in which he participates in the avalanche of discussion (see this New York Times article) provoked by the decision by Twitter, and other American social media, to close Trump’s Internet accounts in the wake of the January 6 storming of the Capitol in Washington.  Much of this discussion followed similar partisan lines as in the United States, with Chinese Trump supporters (egged on by China’s official media) denouncing Twitter’s action as a violation of free speech, while those opposed to Trump pointed out that in constitutional terms, only government authorities can violate free speech—Twitter, as a private company, can refuse service without incurring legal consequences. 

Shi’s nuanced argument is that neither of these stances is correct, because the laws as currently constituted need to be rethought in the wake of the rise of the Internet, which has changed power dynamics throughout much of the world in startling ways.  What is a “virtual right,” Shi asks, and who is empowered to define and enforce such rights?  In a short blog post, Shi does not pretend to provide an answer, but his discussion is highly pertinent.  

My thanks to Xu Jilin for suggesting this text to me, and to Jane Winn and Freya Ge for help with technical details related to the text.
 
Links to other texts on this site

Click here for texts related to the theme of constitutional rule.

Click here for texts related to the theme of democracy.

Click here for texts related to Donald Trump.

Click here for texts related to the Internet.

Click here for texts related to the theme of liberalism.
 
Translation
 
Recently Twitter took the lead and other online giants followed, deleting the Trump’s online accounts and even those of members of his family, leading to Trump's death in virtual space and the obliteration [团灭, a term from video games] of his entire family. This matter provoked a huge debate online, with one side arguing that this violates freedom of speech, and the other side stating that freedom of speech is an individual right employed against the abuse of public power, and that Twitter is a private company that can refuse to provide commercial services to customers it doesn't like, so there is no violation of freedom of speech. 

In fact, both sides of the argument miss the point, not realizing that today, the meanings of "power" and "right" invoked in the argument must be revisited.

The meaning of these terms as currently understood is that the state possesses a monopoly on the use of violence within its national borders and thus has public "power," the proper use of which should be to safeguard private "rights" as defined by law, thus creating public order, which is the public good provided by the state. Individual rights take on concrete form in the use of various public goods.
 
Today, digital giants provide public goods in a virtual space and in that sense acquire public power; but their legal identity is defined in a physical space and they are again private companies in terms of property rights, with the right to decide whether they serve specific customers.
 
As a result, digital giants exercise their power in virtual space based on their legal rights in physical space, deciding the life and death of people's virtual identity, and people's virtual rights cannot be protected. Consequently, what we see in the case of digital giants is that they exercise public power in virtual space, and private rights, which normally should be used to fight against abuses of public power, instead serve as a cover for the internet giants to fight against constraints on their private power. 
 
There are all sorts of misalignments here, and the reason for these misalignments is that the digital giants use the rights of physical space to justify their own power in virtual space. This can be understood as a kind of institutional arbitrage in a certain sense. To be more precise, it is not even an arbitrage, but a constant shuttling between the "real" and the "virtual," the "rights" in the virtual space and “power” in virtual space, neither of which has yet been defined and are in a chaotic state of disorder.

Modern politics in all countries discusses the legitimacy of "power" in terms of "rights," and the legitimacy of power is based on the authorization of the subject of the right (that is, the individual), so if "rights" are not defined, "power" cannot be defined either. Saying that "power is not defined" does not mean that a relation of domination does not exist, but that this relation of domination has not achieved normativity, and thus there is no way to discuss legitimacy. Rule without legitimacy is not power, but violence, and it cannot bring order, but only destruction and chaos.
 
Trump's annihilation in virtual space shows us in a very extreme way that "virtual rights" have not actually been effectively defined, and he cannot even raise a legal defense. From this extreme case, we can see that "virtual rights" cannot be a simple reflection of rights in physical space, but must be an independent legal right, because "virtual power" belongs to the digital giant, and is not a simple reflection of power in physical space. The carrier of "virtual rights" should be a "virtual personality", and without "virtual rights," it is impossible to obtain a legal basis to fight against "virtual power," the "virtual personality" cannot obtain legal remedies, and the legitimacy of "virtual power" is actually null and void.

"Virtual rights" and "virtual personality" cannot be established through the guidance of state because: first, virtual space is established by digital giants, which operate across national boundaries, and the virtual space is completely inconsistent with physical political space; second, the legitimacy of the "state" is also based on existing legal rights, and its various boundaries of authority and responsibility are only justified in the physical world, but not in the virtual world; third, this does not mean that the state cannot punish or even shut down digital companies in the physical world, so that the virtual space created by digital companies collapses, but this ability to punish does not automatically translate into the legitimacy of the state's power in the virtual world, just as in the case of Germany's occupation of half of Europe in World War II, where the fact of occupation did not automatically translate into the legitimacy of domination.

For this reason, "virtual rights" can only emerge out of the virtual world led by digital giants. Looking back at the history of mankind, the emergence of power and rights in the physical world actually played out in the process of the interaction and competition between various forces: the coercive power of the rulers, the competition between different rulers, the continuous resistance of the ruled or their decision to vote with their feet, the effect of ideas on people's behavior, etc. This suggests that the evolution of power and rights in the virtual world is likely to be similar. It is possible that the major digital giants will make the rules, while the digital giants compete fiercely with each other, and the users express their agreement or disagreement with various rules by voting with their feet, and the theoretical community will try to construct various new theories of legal rights.
 
The state cannot dominate this process, but it will be an active force in it. The state is constantly adjusting the boundaries of the digital giants' behavior (i.e., their boundaries in terms of physical rights) in various legal and governance processes.  For example, a month ago, the EU adopted the strictest digital privacy protection rules in history, which redefined the boundaries of the physical rights of digital giants and changed the logic of the power of digital giants in virtual space, thus affecting the process of defining and evolving the logic of "virtual rights." 

Here we see that several actors, including the state, private companies, and individuals, are constantly competing in the inter-penetrating virtual and physical spaces, pushing forward the evolution of the linkage of the elements of legal rights, namely "physical power - physical rights - virtual power - virtual rights." In this process, the "global digital governance alliance" I imagined in Chapter 3 of my book, Breaking the Cocoon 破茧, including various business organizations such as the “Global Data Exchange” and the “Global Data Regulatory Alliance,” might contribute to this evolution.
 
All the previous discussion boils down to one sentence:  the advent of the digital age calls for a legal order in virtual space, which cannot be a mapping of the legal order in physical space, and the two legal rights will probably be juxtaposed. This will probably be one of the most important issues in the coming years.
 
For those looking on from the sidelines, this era must look hilarious.  How many tweets would a Trump thumb tweet if a Trump thumb could tweet tweets?!
 
Notes
 
[1] 施展, “川普绑在推特上，推特不让川普绑在推特上,” posted by the author on January 15, 2021. The literal translation of the title of Shi’s post is something like “Trump is Glued to Twitter, but Twitter Won’t Let Trump Be Glued to Twitter,” which is a modified version of a well-known Chinese tongue-twister about wooden benches and shoulder poles (板凳宽，扁担长，板凳绑在了扁担上，扁担不让板凳绑在了扁担上，板凳非要板凳绑在了扁担上), sort of the Chinese equivalent of “how much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood.”  Shi plugged in “Trump” and “Twitter” in the place of “benches” and “poles,” and a direct translation is impossible.  Coming up with my version of the title was the most fun I had all week.
 
[2] Translator’s note:  Discussion of Shi’s 2020 book is beyond the scope of this post, but for anyone interested, a description and table of contents are available here and an interview with the author on the subject of the book is available here (both in Chinese).