I visited China a few years back and was pleased that I could call a local AOL number to get online. The connection flickered weirdly before I received the normal "welcome" screen.
When I tried to get onto the Web, however, nothing happened.
Or, more precisely, I received the standard error message about not being able to connect. I restarted AOL and had the same experience. I had run into the Great Firewall of China.
I was back in China a few weeks ago. This time my AOL connection failed. However, every hotel had a LAN connection, so the World Wide Web beckoned.
I jumped from e-mail to the Web and everything seemed to come up, from the conservative Washington Times to the liberal New York Times. I thought maybe freedom was coming to China after all.
Then I tried to make a blog entry. No go. I tried the second blog to which I contribute. Forget it. I tried in different ways at different times. Not a chance.
The contradiction of Internet availability and tight restriction exhibits China's challenge.
The government wants the economy to grow. It recognizes the importance of easy access to information to educate its population and for its people to discover, research and develop new processes and technologies.
On the other hand, information is power. And Beijing's gerontocracy still zealously attempts to guard power.
Of course, when it comes to human rights, the PRC falls short in a number of areas. Amnesty International recently released a report, "People's Republic of China: The Olympics Countdown -- Failing to Keep Human Rights Promises." Limiting Internet freedom is hardly Beijing's worst offense. Amnesty points to China's system of "re-education through labor," as well as the "arbitrary detention, torture and harassment of human rights defenders."
The media is closely regulated as well. Explains Amnesty: "Over the last year the Chinese authorities have intensified their controls over media outlets, including newspapers, magazines and Web sites."
In September, Beijing required all foreign services distributing news in China to operate through Xinhua news agency, which will censor content that undermines "China's national unity," endangers "China's national security," incites "hatred and discrimination," undermines "social ethics or the fine cultural traditions of the Chinese nation," and more. The purpose of the rules, a government worker explained, was to promote the "healthy and orderly" dissemination of information.
An incredible 30,000 cyber police are said to monitor the Internet in China. Beijing permanently blocks the Web sites of organizations such as Amnesty and similar groups which report on human rights abuses. Some sites face intermittent interruptions. Although the BBC was available when I checked while in China, I was told that Beijing blocks it whenever the news service carries a particularly critical article about the PRC.
Moreover, the Chinese government routinely closes domestic sites which exhibit too much freedom of thought. In May, Beijing launched a crackdown on "unhealthy" postings on Web sites.
In June, the government said it planned to impose "admittance standards" for blogs. More restrictions are likely to come. In July Cai Wu (
Luckily, the battle for information freedom is not static. It's hard for even 30,000 cyber spies to keep up with 37 million Chinese blogs. Moreover, a number of Chinese and Western programmers work to defeat Beijing's censors.
But Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo have cooperated with the Chinese government. For instance, Google has developed www.google.cn, which automatically censors searches (among the disfavored words are apparently "democracy," "freedom" and "human rights").
Microsoft closed down a US-based blog which offended Beijing and limits Chinese uses of MSN Spaces. Yahoo provided account data to the Chinese government for use in prosecuting Chinese citizens for supposed political offenses.
The companies argue that China would be less free and Chinese Internet users would have less intellectual space if foreign Web firms refused to cooperate and were barred from operating in China. Perhaps.
Still, it's hard to see these US companies as anything but enablers of repression. Certainly, as Amnesty International advocates, US concerns need "to address ongoing restrictions on freedom of expression and to avoid contributing to further human rights abuses."
The lack of liberty in China evokes tragedy. Let us hope that some day, soon, they will have the liberty that they deserve. Including the right to enjoy the full intellectual as well as economic fruits of the Internet revolution.
Doug Bandow is vice president of policy for Citizen Outreach and a former special assistant to US president Ronald Reagan.
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