China fights to control the net

Published: June 7, 2005
Updated: June 7, 2005

Following hot on the heels of Rich’s advice about this article by Imagethief responding to a question about how far any criticism of China could be taken in his blog is this article from Australian IT which states:

A CHINESE government threat to close down unregistered websites has convinced just 430,000 to make themselves known at the Information Ministry - suggesting that most of the country’s estimated 4 million web loggers, or bloggers, are choosing to stay out in the cold.
Australian IT - (Catherine Armitage, JUNE 06, 2005)

I have placed the rest of the article in “more” in case it becomes archived on the Aust. IT site. Just expand it to read below.

“There’s a bit of a chill blowing through right now,” said Duncan Clark, managing director of Beijing-based media consultancy BDA China. The campaign for registration is “obviously an effort to impose control” on web activities, said Mr Clark, who has moved his website offshore to avoid the regulators.

Li Xinde should be more worried than most.

The freelance investigative journalist is gaining fame for his site, www.yuluncn.com, which targets official corruption. The site, known in English as Chinese Public Opinion Surveillance Net, was shut down last year when it carried pictures of the allegedly corrupt vice-mayor of a major Chinese city on his knees apparently begging not to be exposed.

The official was arrested soon afterwards and awaits trial on accusations of stealing $530,000. But the woman who first accused him, and whom he allegedly tried to kidnap and intimidate, has already been sentenced to five years in prison in a case Li believes was mounted in revenge by the vice-mayor’s government cronies.

But Li says his site was shut down only because the vice-mayor’s younger brother worked in the Public Security Bureau. “We’ll register according to the regulations. Similar websites by my friends have all passed registration so far. I don’t think anyone will tell us not to post corruption-fighting content.”

By confining his writings to factual exposures of corruption, and never questioning the party’s rule, Li minimises his risks. He is a Communist Party member. He believes he has the support not just of the general public, but of the party too. In an anonymous Beijing hotel room with his tools of trade - an IBM laptop and a digital camera - he says they share the same aims.

“There are many people (with grievances) who go around from department to department without result, and they come to me very upset and scolding the party loudly,” he said.

“I tell them, ‘If you believe in the party, tell me what happened. if you don’t believe in the party don’t tell me, because everything that follows depends on the party for a solution’.”

Li lives by the creed of “publish or perish”, keeping one step ahead of corrupt local officials by working quickly and in secret, travelling in and out of places before he can be detained by the local officials he specialises in exposing. “I could not do what I do without the internet,” he says.

The site gets an average of 15,000 hits a day. Even if he does have tacit official backing, Li’s activities are highly risky. He claims no one is immune from his attention, yet he must also know that he will be abandoned to his fate the moment his investigations sail too close to the true centres of party power.

“Netizens” who use the web to question China’s authoritarian rule quickly discover that the Party’s long arm reaches deep into cyberspace.

There are said to be some 40,000 “internet police” working to maintain the “Great Firewall of China” to block access to sites the party doesn’t like and cleanse chat rooms of subversive content, often within minutes of posting.

According to Reporters without Borders, at least 61 people are in Chinese jails for posting illegal messages or articles on the internet.

But Guo Liang, one of China’s leading internet researchers, said the main targets of the drive to register websites were online gambling, pornography and some game sites.

“There is still space for individuals to go online and (not) say who they are,” he said. “I think maybe the Government will do something on bloggers but up to now nothing has happened.”

On the other hand, he points out, a 1997 regulation requiring registration of all internet users is not enforced.

“It is a cat and mouse game. I think every government wants more control but the question is how, and whether conditions allow it.”

# Internet users in China, January 2005: 94 million
# Growth on previous year: 18.8 per cent
# Broadband users: About 42.8million
# Officially registered sites (.cn suffix): 668,900
# Average use per week: 13.2 hours
# Increase in average weekly use over previous six months: 56 minutes
# Moobile phone users in 2004: 330 million
# Fixed line telephone subscribers: 310 million
# Short message service users: 237 million
# SMS sent: 250 billion

The Australian

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