april 7 , 2006

China’s Great Firewall

The Internet seems to be a giant paradox.  It’s supposed to connect us to the world, but it can also make us more isolated.  We can buy clothes online without trying them on, groceries without standing in line at the store, and movie tickets without going to the theater.  You can even make virtual friends or fall madly in love with someone you’ve never met in person!  

But the over 111 million of China’s Internet users have an additional dynamic to deal with: the watchful eye of the government.  On the one hand, the widespread use of the Internet offers substantial freedom and access to publications and material that were never available in China before, like the New York Times, BBC, and even our own cbn.com.  On the other hand, within China, government officials use the “Great Firewall of China” to monitor Chinese Internet users and censor politically sensitive material. 

Most Chinese Internet users aren’t really affected by the Big Brother watching their online behavior, because their activities are fairly innocuous.  Surveys from the China Internet Network Information Center show that most Chinese users use the Internet for news, search engines, email, instant messaging, and essentially the same things users in the U.S. do. 

Recently the Chinese blogging community has really taken off.  Bokee, a blogging service provider, registers 50,000 new bloggers every day!  In 2005 China registered 30 million bloggers, twice as many as the year before.  While only a few million of these are estimated to be active bloggers, (versus the 15 to 30 million active bloggers in the U.S.) this mechanism provides a powerful new voice for Chinese citizens.   Through blogging, they have a new freedom of expression, where they don’t just read the material of others, but are able to respond and voice their own opinions.

Unfortunately this freedom and access doesn’t come without restrictions.  Reporters Without Borders notes that the Chinese has currently imprisoned 49 cyber dissidents and 32 journalists for posting online information that was critical of the government.  While many human rights groups and members of the U.S. Congress use statistics like these to criticize the Chinese Internet policy, in the larger context, 81 arrests out of the over 111 million users is an extremely small percentage.  What’s more noteworthy, but difficult to quantify, is the self-censorship among Chinese journalists and bloggers, combined with the many obscure government regulations.

There are so many sensitive government issues, ranging from the politically significant relations with Taiwan and Tibet, to the seemingly absurd restrictions against talking about the mascots of the 2008 Olympic Games in blogs.  Seriously.  The Beijing government now monitors the word “mascot” from blogs because people were making fun of them.  

While these regulations seem ridiculous from our Western perception, Chinese users generally follow them and fill their blogs with safe topics like pop culture or their daily lives.  They have to be especially creative if they want to bring up controversial issues, but it’s impossible to know what opinions or content would come out of China without the censors.  Who knows the extent to which bloggers feel the need to self-censor?  Although only a few Chinese journalists are imprisoned because of their writing, a mystery lies within the silent majority that refuses to challenge the status quo.  

American activists and politicians often fuel to their arguments against the Chinese government with various instances of Internet censorship, but at the same time, when observed in a larger context, the Internet has actually been a powerful catalyst for social change in China.  The sentiments about China’s Internet policy are so strong because it is the most salient example of its constant tension between liberalization and control.    

Perhaps it will take a strong external force to rock the delicate balance between the Chinese government’s grip over Internet content versus the millions of Chinese voices who are publishing their ideas online.  While China still has a long way to go before its Great Firewall crashes down, it’s important not to overlook the progress it’s made in awakening the potential for freedom. 

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