Wednesday - Jun 9, 2010
“A crystallization of human wisdom, the Internet is a significant technological invention of the 20th century and a major symbol of contemporary advanced productive force.” So begins a white paper issued by the Chinese government on the status of the Internet. Meant to elaborate its basic policy to Chinese citizens and to provide “the peoples of the rest of the world of the true situation of the Internet in China,” the report appears to be more PR than a change to official policy.
First some backstory: The Chinese government actively censors the Internet, employing a veritable army of people to monitor online communications. Sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are blocked in China. Search engines are required to filter terms specified by the government, one reason why Google decided to pull out of China earlier this year. According to Amnesty International, China “has the largest recorded number of imprisoned journalists and cyber-dissidents in the world.”
Yet the report released yesterday contains this: “The state protects citizens’ online privacy. The protection of online privacy is closely connected with the people’s sense of security and confidence in the Internet.” Is this just spin or a policy realignment? If it’s the latter, there will soon be hordes of unemployed Chinese cyber-snoops.
China’s approach to free speech also has a unique twist, as “no organization or individual may produce, duplicate, announce or disseminate information having the following contents: being against the cardinal principles set forth in the Constitution; endangering state security, divulging state secrets, subverting state power and jeopardizing national unification; damaging state honor and interests; instigating ethnic hatred or discrimination and jeopardizing ethnic unity; jeopardizing state religious policy, propagating heretical or superstitious ideas; spreading rumors, disrupting social order and stability; disseminating obscenity, pornography, gambling, violence, brutality and terror or abetting crime; humiliating or slandering others…” Does questioning government policy, arguably the right of every free citizen, violate these restrictions? Ask dissident artist and political provocateur Ai WeiWei, whose blog has shut down after he challenged the government over the death of students during the earthquake in Sichuan Province. Under the above policy, this blog post could land me in jail for criticizing the government.
Despite having an Internet police force estimated at over 30.000, the government is keenly aware that the Internet has been an engine of growth for China, not only for IT, but also e-commerce, gaming and education. It realizes that the Internet has become the nervous system of the global economy and China cannot exist in isolation as it once did. So it faces a dilemma. It must promote the Net as a powerful tool for growth, yet restrict it as an agent for societal change. As more of the population logs on, it will become ever more difficult to stem the flow of information. Can the Great Firewall hold back the onslaught? My prediction: Just as the austerity of Mao’s Socialist Republic yielded to Deng Xiaoping’s “To be rich is glorious,” so too will the Internet erode the State’s control of information. What do you think?
