One inch forward, one foot back
By Megan Shank Posted Jan 1 2006
“Anti-democracy is nothing more than the violation of people's ideas. That's a form of murder.
If the weak continue to have no opportunity to redress injustice, the whole nation will become rigid and uneducated.
Anti-democracy is the root of the ruination of the country, the destruction of the people.
Anyone who tries to stop the democracy revolution should be nailed on the board of shame forever, spat upon and given a stinking name in human history.”
- From www.163.com (translated by Megan Shank)
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Recently released Internet dissident Huang Qi emerged from a five-year incarceration to witness that the Chinese Web had also suffered. Huang, first detained in 2000, angered officials with his Web site, which tracked down people missing after the 1989 pro-democracy movement. From 2000 to 2005, the party enforced surveillance of Web sites, chat rooms and e-mail, and it implemented new real-name registration requirements for Web logs, Internet bulletin boards, instant messaging services and online video games. It remains to be seen whether the tenacity of people like Huang — who upon his release to house arrest this July told Radio Free Asia that he plans to resume his site — can overcome the growing obstacles set up and policed by the party and supported by organizations with economic interests. An old Chinese idiom best captures the march of Internet freedom: advance one inch, retreat one foot.
Greater numbers, greater policing
When it comes to numbers, China never fails to impress. Internet users have grown from 2,000 in 1993 to more than 100 million in 2005 — a runner up to the U.S. online population, which is first worldwide. China possesses the world's largest number of mobile phone subscribers and is overall the second largest computer market. After notorious journalist Muzi Mei blogged about her sexual escapades in 2003, the number of bloggers surged to an estimated 5 to 6 million by 2005.
Faced with a public enraptured by its new access to online information and communication technology, the Chinese government has responded by tightening controls and increasing surveillance. In addition to established Internet control measures, such as the formidable Great Fire Wall, the party demanded in the spring of 2005 that all Internet service providers register their Web sites and blogs with the local government before June 30. This strengthens earlier party regulations that required hosts to personally monitor and self-censor their sites' content or risk being shut down.
Now there's more at stake — real names. In addition to blogs, “real name” systems are being implemented into other Internet services including instant messaging, chat rooms and online video games. This scheme is part of the government's long march to “purify the Internet.” In 2002, the government first implemented a policy that requires customers at Internet cafes to provide identification and register their names on their computers. The cafes retain the information for 60 days should the government wish to view their customers' activity. In 2003, police closed half of the country's 200,000 Internet cafes and installed surveillance equipment that tracks online movement and keeps records of user names and identification in the remaining cafes.
That year, the government also announced plans to implement a nationwide Internet cafe “management system.” Police closed another 8,600 “illegal” Internet cafes in 2004. Municipal and provincial governments around the country began to plant secret Internet police to sit in on online discussions and to guide the discourse away from controversial topics or views. In three months of reading online Chinese message boards, this reporter came across several scenarios in which certain users pop up repeatedly in defense of the government or its policies. These same users might insert photos of sports cars or beautiful movie stars into a message board site when the thread gets hot. Writers thus discontinue discussion of the original topic and begin commentary on the posted photo.
The workaround
Despite these sweeping governmental reforms, Chinese Web users have increasingly discovered new ways to spread otherwise unattainable information, publicly vent their opinions on a diverse array of topics and politically mobilize. Recently, banned stories are finding their way back into the public eye after reporters anonymously post their notes online. Perhaps such courage was first born through a precedent set by whistleblower Jiang Yanyong, a military doctor who published an online letter revealing the true severity of SARS. Increasingly, Chinese are discovering a refuge for truth in the Internet.
Another incident demonstrates the power of Chinese Internet forums to bring national and global awareness to political injustices. After a wealthy, well-connected woman in Harbin, the capital of the northernmost Heilongjiang province, killed a peasant woman with her BMW, Chinese citizens responded with their own online judgments. In the two weeks following the 2003 event, Sina.com, one of the country's most popular Web portals, steamed with more than 300,000 posts. Chinese citizens held a nationwide public discourse on the haves and have-nots in China. The government forced Sina.com to erase the posts, but local, national and international media had already covered the event.
Still others use the Internet to spread their love of country through political organization. Despite the government's warning that it is illegal to spread information about protests online, in the spring of 2005, Chinese used blogs, Web pages, bulletin boards and mass phone messages to circulate a petition of more than 40 million signatures that demanded that the United Nations refuse Japan a seat on the U.N. Security Council. They also organized massive protests against the Japanese in cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Chengdu. In late April 2005, state media reported that a netizen had been arrested for spreading information about a Nanjing protest, but for the most part the government took a passive role during the events. The rules were made more flexible because the people were fulfilling the state's political agenda in the view of the global public.
International misconceptions
As the voices of Chinese netizens grow stronger globally, the international media's interest in reporting on and investing in the Chinese Web has also blossomed, but with mixed results. The nebulous lines drawn by the party, the language barrier and cultural confusion all present a difficult environment in which to make editorial judgments and principled business decisions. What has resulted is a parallelism of philosophies: either average Chinese citizens, brainwashed by nationalism, remain oblivious to their country's internal censorship, or they experience the virulence of censorship's oppression in a profoundly personal way.
Critics point out that foreign media companies, including Yahoo, Microsoft and Google, have taken advantage of the first idea by chalking up questionable ethical decisions to cultural relativism and by playing it overly safe to ensure space for their organizations in the burgeoning Chinese market. In 2005, Yahoo handed over dissident Chinese journalist Shi Tao's user name and password to the government, which resulted in a 10-year jail sentence. MSN Spaces, Microsoft's blogging service, prohibited words like “democracy,” and “freedom” — words, critics point out, that are entirely permissible on other native sites.
On the other side of the Chinese coin, the media, in their rush to find an oppressed poster child, fell for the charms of a country girl. Shi Hengxia, a 28-year-old native of rural Shaanxi province better known to her Chinese audience as Furong Jiejie, or Sister Hibiscus, posted her way to fame with a litter of vainglorious photographs of herself on university Internet bulletin boards. When interest waned, she gave the media the story they wanted. “They've cracked down on me,” Shi lamented to Reuters in mid-August. Without quoting another source, the article painted Shi as a free speech martyr rather than a young woman ravenous for fame. Yet, spokespeople for Bokee.com deny that any such order was handed down by authorities and point out that Shi's blog remains online and in use. Indeed, most China insiders couldn't understand it. Her posts hadn't trespassed the usual sexual, political or religious territory that would result in government censorship.
Fortunately, some of these China insiders host blogs and Web sites of their own that provide insight into and support for the Chinese Web. Both Roland Soong's zonaeuropa.com/weblog.htm and Jeremy Goldkorn's danwei.org translate Chinese print and online news, bulletin board posts, blogs and Web site information. Instead of reading the international media's summary and selected excerpts of a whistleblower's letter two weeks after it comes out, for example, readers can access the entire letter translated into English on its publication date. Through the translation of these varied media sources, previously inaccessible to non-Chinese readers, Chinese voices may reach a global audience. Through new sites like www.adoptablog.org, these newly discovered Chinese voices might find homes for their ideas on foreign-hosted blogs.
Reporting from China
Journalists reporting on China are now bound by a Web that can tangle them in their own fabrications. Chinese netizens will hold them accountable, because the battles being fought are, after all, their own. In late July, the citizens of the small town Taishi mobilized efforts to recall the village committee director. Despite local bullying, they managed to produce a new ballot with common people's names as opposed to cadres. Along the way, the story was covered by Chinese papers, and the Taishi citizens' efforts were praised by the party mouthpiece The People's Daily for working within the system to make real change.
Yet with increased pressure from district authorities and threats and beatings from local police, the candidates dropped out and the recall was abandoned. Hong Kong, French and British journalists visiting the area were beaten and forced to retreat. Benjamin Joffe-Watt, for The Guardian, reported that during his beating, a man who accompanied him was nearly killed. This turned out to be a gross inaccuracy. The man turned up in a few days with minor injuries.
Chinese bloggers, among them Anti, an advocate for democracy, attacked Joffe-Watt for his negligence. On his blog, he wrote: “Enough already, The Guardian. You are really earning the contempt of your colleagues. For a long time, Xinhua and CCTV were the representatives of shameless media. But your lies today are even more damaging to the Chinese,” (as translated by Roland Soong's ESWN blog site, www.zonaeuropa.com ). Other bloggers and bulletin boards have also recently initiated discussions about whether or not it is responsible for a Western journalist who can't fluently speak the language, such as Joffe-Watt, to put a translator and others in harm's way.
The Chinese Internet, despite government efforts, pants with fury and life. Huang Qi may find the Internet climate more regulated than ever before, but he's also found it to be full of compatriots. Whether this inching forward may transcend into a great leap — or a step back — remains to be seen.
UPDATE: After reporting and commenting on the recent Beijing News reporters' newsroom walkout, Michael Anti's blog, hosted by MSN Spaces, was closed by MSN on New Year's Eve 2005.
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The Great Firewall of China
The Chinese government employs thousands of public and private personnel and numerous state agencies to control the Internet, but the most powerful force lies neither within individuals nor within their organizations. History has established that the Great Wall itself was created not only to keep intruders out but also to keep native citizenry within its walls. The government's most formidable present-day effort to do so is the “Great Firewall,” which guards the nine gateways connecting China to the global Internet, preventing Chinese surfers from accessing banned Web content. That content, according to Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, which conducted a study of Internet monitoring in China from 2004 to 2005, includes material ranging from pornography to political dissent and religious material. Phrases including Taiwan or Tibetan independence, the Tiananmen incident, Falun Gong, the Dalai Lama and communist opposition parties are frequently blocked, the study concluded.
Global Journalist visited three Internet cafes in Dalian, China on three different days and used Chinese to search for these phrases. All sites were blocked. In most cases, the Web crashed and had to be restarted.
Vagueness allows China's blogosphere to thrive under the shadow of the firewall. In the following excerpt translated from an Aug. 18 post on www.163.com, a popular Chinese message board, the writer uses strong language and refers to widely known events, but he does not use specific names. The writer is also careful to define the difference between country and Motherland:
Title: I'm disturbed with China, this country
“To tell the truth, I am disturbed by China, the country of my birth, the country where I grew up.
“I want to tell the important people to please see more clearly. I'm not disturbed by my Motherland. Country and Motherland are not the same concept. I love my Motherland the way a child loves their mother or their father — that naturally…
“I am disturbed by my country. When I see propaganda on the television of innocent children crying with big eyes and big tears on the shot saying, 'I want to go to school,' I am disturbed by my country. So I donate money — even to the donation boxes for engineering projects at the supermarkets, hoping it has use. But I don't know where all those donations really go…
“I am disturbed by my country. Every time I see bread being given to the people and other things — education, hospital care, care for the aged, a place to live, these things, but corrupt officials wind around the roots and run amok in every corner of China, I am disturbed by my country…
“If you are just a normal person and you could easily face being run over and killed by a BMW... would you still love this country? ... Is this country yours? What is your love worth in money? Other people take you and your patriotism for what purpose?”
Replies to this post included:
- I agree. I love my country, but it doesn't love me. So I swear to not love it. – Pick another country then. – Don't you think changing the system would be bad for China? – I heard of a girl who said to a boy, “You're disturbing.” Actually, the feeling was more complicated.