While Web 2.0 is already transforming the way people live and work in the U.S., China is still struggling to absorb the impact of the most basic form of the Internet. E-mail, chat rooms, message boards, and Web sites all provide ways for people to communicate instantly and openly. As a result, the Internet represents both an opportunity for its growing economy, and a threat to its political stability.
Because the Web is an essential tool of commerce, China can’t simply ban the Internet, as other dictatorships, such as North Korea and Cuba, have done. In fact, China has encouraged its people to get on the Web as a way of fostering business growth. Access there is cheap and can be found almost anywhere. According to an article in The Christian Science Monitor, in addition to the 134 million Chinese who are already on-line, there are 2 million cyber-cafes in the nation.
But the Internet, as we know it in North America and most of the rest of the world, is just too free and open for a Communist government to handle. Like the capitalism that China is attempting to embrace, the first version of the Internet simply doesn’t fit naturally with China’s traditional ways. And now that Chinese Internet users are embracing Web 2.0 through blogging, the threat to China’s leaders has intensified.
As a result, even though China is engaged in an attempt to control what may ultimately be uncontrollable, some of its strategies are working. Thus far, its efforts have included intimidation and censorship. China has demanded that its bloggers register with the government. And it pressured Microsoft to block “blog titles” that included words such as Freedom and Democracy.
New filtering techniques may enable more effective restrictions than most people realize. So, the question is whether all those millions of Chinese will be surfing the real Web or some highly-censored look-alike created by the Chinese government. According to Slate, China is filtering not just Web content but the very tools that drive the Internet, such as search engines, chat rooms, blogs, and e-mail.
For example, it instantly deletes postings that refer to holding democratic elections in China. And it makes sure that Chinese Internet users can’t access sites like Democracy Times, even when they enter those words in a search engine. With billions of sites out there, it will be difficult for the average Chinese citizen to tell if a search engine fails to turn up a few sites that are not approved by the government.
Not only that, but Google and others are cooperating with the Chinese effort. Google will actually shut down for a few minutes if a Chinese user searches for forbidden words. And Yahoo gave the Chinese government private e-mail information that helped put a Chinese reporter in jail.
In fact, last year China began requiring manufacturers to include an encryption standard with all electronic devices that forces wireless users to register with the government before they can communicate. That would, in effect, make Wi-Fi in China a closed system, controllable by the government. At the last minute, under pressure from the U.S., China backed off. But it’s now trying to get the encryption technology adopted as a universal standard around the globe.
But the most frightening step the Chinese government has taken is to build its own Internet called “Next Carrying Network,” or CN2, which will be much easier to control and filter. The communication standard it uses is not compatible with the Internet that other nations use, and so it may effectively create the “Great E-Wall of China,” preventing any unwanted content from getting inside the borders. China can unplug the Internet, while keeping its people shopping and communicating on a proprietary network and giving the illusion of free and open access.
What’s worse, by creating this high-tech wall, China has created a market for a new kind of censorship and information control that other countries may want. Other nations with dictatorships could adopt the same standards to control their citizens.
It’s clear that what China wants is its very own version of the Internet. This Internet seems to be open and free, but it simply a vehicle for economic growth that extends the information and power monopoly that the Communist Party now enjoys. Despite these efforts, many observers from the West believe that there’s simply nothing China can do to stop the Internet or limit access. So, it’s no surprise that predictions of the demise of the Chinese Communist party itself have become rampant.
This has given rise to a heated debate. On one side are political analysts who concede that the Communist party has already won. Chinese companies are censoring themselves in order to make money and even co-opting American companies with business ventures. The lure of profit from this Chinese scheme is too great, they contend.
On the other hand, many technologists and political analysts argue that people who’ve had a taste of on-line democracy are going to get it at almost any cost. And history has shown that if a computer system can be beaten, it will be. Encryption and proxies are just two of the tools available to users. And the more restrictive the government’s efforts become, the more motivated people will become to circumvent them. When that happens, an intractable entity, like the Chinese Communist party appears to be, is doomed.
In light of China’s efforts to control the Web and the efforts of its people to circumvent those controls, we offer four forecasts for your consideration:
First, China’s current Internet censorship efforts are a success and will continue to be largely successful through 2010. Empirical testing done as early as 2002 by researchers from the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School found that China was successfully blocking about 20,000 Web sites.
Those sites included content related to news, politics, health, commerce, pornography, and entertainment. The authors of the study concluded that China had successfully managed to install those censorship systems. Those systems have only become more refined since that study, and will rapidly advance in the next few years.
Second, as China’s ability to filter and block Internet content becomes more sophisticated, so will the individual users’ abilities to get around those technologies. In this effort, they will have a great deal of help from the rest of the world. In a 2003 incident, China blocked Blogspot, a popular Web log site, and an international uproar resulted that forced China to restore the connection, though it is still partly filtered.
The same sort of furor resulted when China blocked Google for 10 days in 2002. Now with more sophisticated technology, the Chinese can allow access to Blogspot, for example, but not to specific Web logs, such as Dynaweb. Dynaweb is a blog specifically dedicated to helping Chinese citizens circumvent Internet controls. This is just one early indication of a battle over Internet access that is only going to escalate.
Third, Google may be useless in China for anything other than shopping, but by 2015 or sooner, we expect to see Chinese whiz kids build their own search database that will provide access to forbidden sites. Just as young Americans grabbed whatever technology was available in the 1970s and built their own computers, Chinese entrepreneurs will cobble together their own networks to communicate freely. Expect to see many government reprisals and efforts at repression, but there will be too many fires for them to put out.
Fourth, in the next five to 10 years, organizations such as the Open Net Initiative will grow in prominence, putting international economic and diplomatic pressure on countries ? such as China ? that employ state-sponsored filtering and
surveillance practices. The U.S., the E.U., and other democratic powers will recognize that efforts such as China’s can do damage to the global integrity of the Internet, harming economies worldwide. Indiscriminate blocking of Internet addresses could fragment the Web into countless networks dedicated to maintaining the agenda of any nation or private entity. With that threat looming, powerful governmental and non-governmental forces will be aligned to keep the Internet open and free of tampering by dictatorships.
References List : 1. The Christian Science Monitor, September 22, 2005, “Chinas Model for a Censored Internet,” by Kathleen E. McLaughlin. ⓒ Copyright 2005 by The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved. 2. To access the article “Chinas Bid to Divide the Internet,” visit the Slate website at: www.slate.com/id/2122270
