How can a country which controls the flow of information within its borders and represses freedom of speech host the largest telecommunications exposition in the world? Despite the apparent contradiction, it's happening right now. The ITU Telecom World exposition, which took place in Hong Kong from Dec. 4 to Dec. 8, was the first to be held outside Geneva, Switzerland, since the convention was first held in 1971.
This location gives us a chance to consider several implications of its influence on the development of modern China.
International corporations review themselves and their operations based on their business interests. When faced with a totalitarian government, international corporations are always the first to make concessions for the sake of the large commercial interests that they represent. Before US and European condemnations of the massacre at Tiananmen Square in 1989 had even dissipated, businesses were already sneaking back into China.
The situation today hasn't improved.
International telecom and Internet companies like Yahoo and Microsoft have looked after their business interests by leaking users' personal information to the China Internet Network Information Center, one of the main departments under China's Ministry of the Information Industry. These divisions have coordinated with the police and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to monitor speech on the Internet and persecute Internet authors. Every international corporation that wants to enter the expanding Chinese market to produce, sell or trade must accede to the government's demands.
We must consider the effect that the information society could have on China's prospects for democratization. The plugged-in society created by telecommunications and the Internet has changed China's economic, cultural and political landscape. Statistics show that more than 700 million people have fixed and mobile telecommunications equipment and more than 100 million people are Internet users.
Observers have begun to expect that the information society will shake the foundation of the CCP's grip on power and possibly usher in a new era of Chinese democratization. But in reality, things aren't going so well. Just as information technology can be used as an effective means of mobilizing people for social movements and protests, Beijing can also use it as a new tool to consolidate its power.
China continues to be pulled apart by its politics and economic development. Beijing has continued to open up economically following the country's entry into the WTO, just as the exposition in Hong Kong proves that economic globalization has the power to change China. But politically its reform agenda has been stalled since the 1990s. Movies, publications, news and other broadcast media are still tightly examined and regulated, while all sensitive or political terms are blocked on the Internet. China has fallen 30 years behind Taiwan in terms of freedom of speech.
But there are always chinks in the government's armor through which people can find a channel to spread their voice.
There is great significance to China's hosting of the ITU expo. Two thousand years ago, China began construction of the Great Wall to prevent foreign nomadic peoples from invading China. Now, China is building "The Great Firewall" to prevent its people from knowing too much about democracy, human rights and other information that could jeopardize government control. The ITU expo brings with it business, capitalism and globalization. As China dashes madly to embrace them, there are many lingering questions that deserve our consideration.
Jackson Yeh is a freelance writer.
Translated by Marc Langer
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