Despite an Act of Leniency, China Has Its Eye on the Web

[R. A. Hettinga]

<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/27/international/asia/27chin.html?th=&pagewanted=print&position=>

The New York Times

June 27, 2004

Despite an Act of Leniency, China Has Its Eye on the Web
By HOWARD W. FRENCH

HANGHAI, June 26 - A Chinese court recently announced that an Internet
democracy advocate charged with subversion would get a suspended sentence
instead of a long prison term, with the case drawing criticism from human
rights groups and serving as a rallying cry for this country's growing
number of online commentators.

 Both in China and abroad, some commentators quickly applauded what seemed
like an official show of leniency toward the accused man, Du Daobin, a
prolific author of online essays on issues of democracy and free speech.

 But many among China's rapidly growing group of Internet commentators are
warning that what appears to be government magnanimity in this high-profile
case conceals a quiet but concerted push to tighten controls of the
Internet and surveillance of its users even though China's restrictions on
the medium are already among the broadest and most invasive anywhere.

 Internet cafe users in China have long been subject to an extraordinary
range of controls. They include cameras placed discreetly throughout the
establishments to monitor and identify users and Web masters, and Internet
cafe managers who keep an eye on user activity, whether electronically or
by patrolling the premises.

 The average Internet user, meanwhile, neither sees nor, in many cases,
suspects the activities of a force widely estimated to number as many as
30,000 Internet police officers. Experts on China's Internet say the
officers are constantly engaged in a cat-and-mouse game with equally
determined Web surfers, blocking access to sites that the government
considers politically offensive, monitoring users who visit other
politically sensitive sites and killing off discussion threads on Internet
bulletin boards. The Chinese government has also established a Web site
where people are able to report fellow Web users for suspicious or
provocative behavior.

 Web surfers who try to visit sites being blocked by the government receive
messages announcing a page is no longer accessible, or their computer
screen may simply go blank, or they may be redirected to unrelated sites.
Similarly, people who participate in Web-based discussions on certain
subjects may be warned that in order to log on to a discussion group, real
names must be used, along with genuine e-mail addresses and even telephone
numbers.

 As its first line of defense against what in another era China's Communist
leadership might have called ideological pollution, Beijing controls the
Internet by insisting that all Web traffic pass through
government-controlled servers. Now, coming on top of these measures, which
are all deployed at the national level, China's provincial governments are
getting into the act, introducing regulations of their own that critics say
severely impinge on privacy and freedom of speech.

 In recent weeks, Shanghai, China's largest and most Internet-connected
city, has quietly introduced a series of controls, arguably the country's
most far-reaching yet, and critics fear, a model eventually to be used
nationwide. Described by city officials as a measure intended to combat
pornography and to bar entry for minors to Internet bars, the Shanghai
regulations require customers to use swipe cards that would allow
administrators or others to record their national identity numbers and
track their Internet use.

 The regulations have kicked up little public debate, in part because they
have received little publicity here during the planning stage. But fierce
protests have appeared online, where many active Internet users are
interpreting the new regulations as an extension of the police state.

 "We will hold press conferences during each step of the implementation,
and the public can express their own opinions and the media could discuss
and question it,'' said an official with the Shanghai Municipal
Administration of Culture, Radio, Film and Television, who spoke on the
condition of anonymity. "And we have made a priority of making sure that
our actions are not against the law. That's our bottom line.''

Asked if the privacy of Internet users could be infringed, the official
said that the Shanghai government had noted the issue, but added that
"Internet bars are public areas, and some experts say that what one says in
a public area should not be considered private.''

Speaking in an interview, one online commentator rejected out of hand the
idea that invasive Internet controls had any legitimacy.

 "I can see that China's progress in the area of law is going very
slowly,'' said Su Zhenghua, an economist who frequently posts his thoughts
online. "This is a situation that I really must regret, and I hope the
Chinese government will follow the spirit of the Constitution and protect
freedom of speech and the individual's right to privacy.''

Some experts on China's Internet censorship say that in releasing Mr. Du
recently, the government may have been making a subtle bow to China's own
domestic public opinion, as expressed through online communication and
debate.

 International analysts who follow China's Internet scene say that the
government has been particularly taken aback by the explosion in a new form
of online communication for China - the Weblog, or blog. It started last
year with a celebrated case of a young woman who made a running online
commentary about her own sex life, and now hundreds of thousands of people
take enthusiastically to this form.

 Indeed, Mr. Du himself earned the government's wrath in this way when he
wrote to condemn the jailing last year of another well-known Web
commentator, Liu Di, whose online moniker was "stainless steel mouse.'' In
turn, at least 1,000 people signed a petition in support of Mr. Du that
urged the government to stop using antisubversion laws to hinder free
speech.

 According to the analysts, the country's censors, always eager to contain
waves of public opinion before they get out of hand, particularly in
matters of politics, have become alarmed that despite their intense
efforts, Internet technology is quickly making free expression far harder
to control.

 "With the Du case, the government is saying, 'Look, our actions may be
nicer than in the past, but fundamentally, the judgment of the crime is
unchanged, so don't be fooled, we are also willing to be harsh,' '' said
Xiao Qiang, director of the China Internet Project at the University of
California at Berkeley. "No matter how hard they try, though, it is a fact
that the volume of online information is increasing vastly, and there's
nothing the government can do about that. You can monitor hundreds of
bulletin boards, but controlling hundreds of thousands of bloggers is very
different.''


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R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'