CIAO DATE: 08/07

Georgetown Journal of International Affairs

Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, Volume 7, Number 2, Summer/Fall 2006

 

The Internet, Censorship, and China
William Thatcher Dowell

 

Excerpt

William Thatcher Dowell, currently based in Europe, worked as a correspondent for Time for more than twelve years and served as the magazine's Southeast Asia bureau chief from 1993 through 1995.

Nothing illustrates the inherent absurdity of China’s efforts to control the flow of information better than the case of Shi Tao, a thirty-seven-year-old Chinese business reporter arrested in November 2004 and sentenced in April 2005 to ten years in prison. Shi Tao’s crime was sending an e-mail to a New York-based Web Site; the e-mail, which was eventually passed around the Internet, included the text of a government warning that the return of a handful of dissidents who had witnessed the Tiananmen massacres might prove socially destabilizing. The memo, the government insisted, was top secret. Shi Tao argued, reasonably enough, that there was nothing particularly secret about the government’s opinions concerning political dissidents and Tiananmen anniversaries.1

Shi Tao’s arrest was not unusual. Human Rights Watch (HRW) estimates in its 2006 World Report that at least sixty political prisoners are now in Chinese jails because they revealed information on the Internet that the government wanted kept quiet.2 Reporters Without Borders claims that roughly forty of those prisoners are journalists. Suggesting that the Chinese government is in need of reform, without first obtaining official permission, is enough to warrant a hefty jail sentence. After a series of crackdowns during the summer of 2005, the government announced a new set of guidelines that ban unauthorized Internet discussions touching on “politics, economics, military affairs, foreign affairs, social and public affairs, and fast-breaking events.”3

As we will show in this article, a number of American corporations dealing with the Internet entered the Chinese market convinced that modern communications would force Beijing into liberalizing. The promise of enormous profits appears to have enabled Beijing to reverse the situation, and to make U.S. corporations willing accomplices in Chinese repression.

The American Internet Giants and the Chinese Market

In an editorial piece published on HRW’s Web Site, HRW’s Asia correspondent, Brad Adams, notes that Chinese leaders “still remain afraid of their own citizens and the healthy diversity of news and views which defines modern society.”4 Unlike other arrests, which typically receive no national or international media coverage, Shi Tao’s case sparked interest because the Chinese subsidiary of a U.S. corporation, Yahoo!, had willingly provided Chinese authorities with the evidence needed for a conviction. The Yahoo! subsidiary insisted that it was merely complying with Chinese law. To break into the burgeoning Chinese Internet market, Yahoo!, in 2002, had voluntarily signed China’s "Public Pledge on Self-Discipline for the China Internet Industry." While many observers had expected the Internet to weaken censorship in China, the opposite appeared to be happening. Instead of opening up China to free thought, the enormous attraction of the Chinese market appeared to be corrupting western companies and enrolling American technological prowess in efforts to further limit free speech. Before long, not only Yahoo!, but Microsoft, Cisco, and Google found themselves under intense scrutiny for allegedly aiding Beijing’s efforts to track down and control dissent. Corporate readiness to sacrifice free speech in order to break into the lucrative Chinese market was not limited to the Internet.

When Chinese authorities briefly closed Bing Dian (“Freezing Point”), the investigative supplement of the popular China Youth Daily in January 2006, and then demoted its editor and chief reporter, the resulting scandal led thirteen former party insiders to write a letter of protest. The deposed editor’s crime had been to publish an article, “Modernization and History Books,” which discussed the foreign occupation of China at the end of the nineteenth century.5

But it is the concessions by U.S. Internet giants that have caught the public’s attention. Google has created a Chinese version of its search engine, Google.cn, which readily filters out Web Sites that Beijing finds politically offensive. Chinese Internet surfers looking for the words “democracy,” “freedom,” or “human rights” on Microsoft’s MSN network are directed to an error message that states: “This item contains forbidden speech.” Yahoo! has come under the greatest criticism so far for agreeing to turn over information to the Chinese police that has played a significant role in the conviction of dissidents. In October 2005, Yahoo! tried to extricate itself from direct responsibility by merging its Chinese subsidiary with a local Internet provider, Alibaba.com. Yahoo! holds one of four board seats for the combined company, and Alibaba.com handles day-to-day operations. The critical issue for all the search engines is whether they can maintain a network server in China...

1Reporters Without Borders, “Information supplied by Yahoo! helped journalist Shi Tao get 10 years in prison,”  Internet, http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=14884, (Date accessed:  6 September 2005).
2 “Human Rights Watch 2006 World Report,” Internet, http://hrw.org/wr2k6/wr2006.pdf (Date accessed:  2 April 2006).
3 The quotation from China’s new law was cited by Jack Krumholtz, Microsoft’s Associate General Counsel and Managing Director, Federal Government Affairs, Microsoft Corporation during Congressional testimony on 15 February 2006.  Jack Krumholz, Microsoft press release, Internet, http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/krumholtz/02-15WrittenTestimony.mspx (Date accessed:  2 April 2006).
4 Human Rights Watch, Internet, http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/09/28/china11798.htm (Date accessed:  28 September 2005).
5 Details of the case are available at The International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX), Internet, http://www.ifex.org/en/content/view/full/72367 (Date accessed 2 April 2006).