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China's Orwellian Internet
By John J. Tkacik, Jr.
October 20, 2004
The Internet once promised to be a conduit for uncensored information from
beyond China’s borders, and for a brief, shining instant in modern
Chinese history, it was a potential catalyst for political and human
rights reform in China. However, for China’s 79 million Web surfers—the most
educated and prosperous segment of the country’s population the Internet is now
a tool of police surveil lance and official disinformation. If a stable,
democratic China remains a key goal of America’s global strategy, the Bush
Administration and Congress must consider ways to penetrate China’s “Great
Firewall.” The United States must restrain the transfer of sensitive and
often proprietary cybertechnology from Western—including American—firms to
Chinese police agencies. Just as the United States established Radio Free Asia
to provide a source of uncensored news, so too must the U.S. minimize the
obstructions that the Chinese face in acquiring and disseminating news and
information via the Internet.
The Democratic Imperative
In 2003, President George W. Bush declared, “We welcome the emergence of a
strong, peaceful, and prosperous China. The democratic development of China is
crucial to that future.” This imperative of a democratic China has been a
feature of America’s strategic plan for nearly six decades. President Harry S.
Truman said that a “strong, unified and democratic China” is “of the utmost
importance to world peace” and consequently “in the most vital interests
of the United States.” Yet two out of three is not good enough. A strong,
unified, and undemocratic China is a greater potential threat to the
region and to America than a weak and undemocratic one.
If the U.S. truly believes that a peaceful China evolving along democratic
lines is in America’s interest—as well as in the interest of the Chinese
people—then the U.S. should recognize that the Internet could be a most
effective tool. Moreover, it requires no special informational input from the
U.S. government. Key elements of democratic thought, free market economics, and
concepts of a civil society are all freely available on the Internet. Yet
regrettably, the Internet has an even greater potential as an instrument of
Orwellian thought control. With the help of foreign—including American
high-tech companies, Internet technologies have enabled China’s Big
Brother to keep a close eye on its citizens and to identify and arrest those
who spread democratic ideals.
Democratic reform in China is highly unlikely to come from the top down, that
is, from the Chinese Communist Party. It will have to emerge from the
grass roots. If the Internet is to be a medium of that reform, ways will need
to be found to counter China’s official censorship and manipulation of digital
communications. The cultivation of democratic ideals in China therefore
requires that the U.S. adopt policies that promote freedom of information
and communication by funding the development of anti-censorship
technologies and restricting the export of Internet censoring and monitoring
technologies to police states.
Naïve optimism about China’s Internet fills the pages of America’s leading
papers and scholarship, giving the impression that an increasingly wired China
will necessarily evolve into an open and free society. One recent editorial in
The Wall Street Journal optimistically claimed, “By searching for new
measures to clamp down on its increasingly high-tech citizens, the Communist
Party has taken on a battle it is bound to lose.”
For Chinese Communist Party leaders, domestic “stability” is a prerequisite to
national goals, but by stability they mean unchallenged Party rule. Thus while
cosmopolitan urban Chinese—who perhaps number as many as 50 million (out of
China’s 1.3 billion people) and have an average annual family income in excess
of $5,000—increasingly enjoy the electronic gadgetry of modern life, they have
learned that the price to be paid is the unquestioned rule of the Party.
As the central propaganda organs and police agencies maintain and tighten their
grips on information flow and private digital communications, the average
Chinese citizen now realizes that political speech on the Internet is no longer
shrouded in anonymity: Private contacts with like-minded citizens in chat
rooms, or even via e-mail text messaging, are not likely to escape police
notice.
Big Brother Is Watching
For several years during the 1990s, Chinese Internet users gained increasing
amounts of information from the Internet. By 1998, according to an
insider’s account of China’s Internet development, the Chinese Public Security
Ministry and its police stations around the country found that their resources
for monitoring the Internet were becoming overwhelmed. Several major U.S.
firms came to the aid of the Chinese security services by constructing a
new Internet architecture that enabled China’s cyberpolice to monitor Internet
sites in real time and identify both the site owners and visitors.
The inevitable result is that suppression of Internet dissent has
increased in recent years. China is said to have the largest prison population
of “cyberdissidents” in the world. As of June 2004, the Reuters news
service reported there were 61 cyberdissidents in jail for criticizing the
Chinese government. In January 2004, Amnesty International documented 54 cases
of individuals arrested for “cyberdissent,” but concluded that the 54 cases
were probably just “a fraction” of the actual number detained. According
to another report, 13 Internet essayists were tried, sentenced, and denied
appeals between October and December of 2003 alone.
In April 2004, The Washington Post described a typical cyberdissidence case
involving a group of students who were arrested for participating in an
informal discussion forum at Beijing University. It was a chilling report that
covered the surveillance, arrest, trial, and conviction of the dissidents and
police intimidation of witnesses.
Yang Zili, the group’s coordinator, and other young idealists in his Beijing
University circle were influenced by the writings of Vaclav Havel, Friedrich
Hayek, and Samuel P. Huntington. Yang questioned the abuses of human rights
permitted in the “New China.” His popular Web site was monitored by police, and
after letting him attract a substantial number of like-minded others, China’s
cyberpolice swept up the entire group. Relentlessly interrogated, beaten, and
pressured to sign confessions implicating each other, the core members
nevertheless withstood the pressure. The case demonstrated that stamping
out cyberdissent had become a priority state function. According to the Post,
Chinese leader Jiang Zemin considered “the investigation as one of the most
important in the nation.” In March 2003, the arrestees were each sentenced to
prison terms of between eight and ten years—all for exchanging opinions on the
Internet.
Then there is the case of Liu Di, a psychology student at Beijing Normal
University who posted Internet essays under the screen name of Stainless Steel
Mouse. She is an exception among cyberdissidents—after a year behind bars,
she is now out of jail. The then 23-year-old Liu was influenced by George
Orwell’s 1984 and became well known for her satirical writing and musings on
dissidents in the former Soviet Union. She defended other cyberdissidents,
supported intellectuals arrested for organizing reading groups, attacked
Chinese chauvinists, and, in a spoof, called for a new political party in
which anyone could join and everyone could be “chairman.” Arrested in
November 2002 and held for nearly one year without a trial, she became a cause
célèbre for human rights and press freedom groups overseas and
apparently gained some notoriety within China as well. Although she had been
held without trial and was never formally charged, she was imprisoned in a
Beijing jail cell with three criminals. In December 2003, she was released in
anticipation of Premier Wen Jiabao’s visit to the U.S. Yet nine months after
returning to the Beijing apartment that she shares with her grandmother, Liu
still finds police security officers posted at her home. She has found it
impossible to find a regular job, and police monitors block her screen
name Stainless Steel Mouse from Web sites.
One reason Ms. Liu was released was the incessant prodding of another
Internet essayist, Du Daobin (identified only as a 39-year-old civil servant
from Hubei province), who condemned Liu’s jailing. In turn, at least 1,000
people signed a petition in support of Du that urged the government to
stop using anti-subversion laws to hinder free speech. Of course, Du was
charged with subversion and jailed. In June 2004, a Chinese court
announced that Du would get a suspended sentence instead of a long prison
term. Du’s case, says The New York Times, may not be one of government
magnanimity, but rather an example of what can happen to other cyberdissidents
in “a quiet but concerted push to tighten controls of the Internet and
surveillance of its users even though China’s restrictions on the medium are
already among the broadest and most invasive anywhere.”
On July 31, 2004, hundreds of villagers of Shijiahecun hamlet in rural
Henan province demonstrated against local corruption. Provincial police
from the capital at Zhengzhou dispatched a large anti-riot unit to the village,
which attacked the crowd with rubber bullets, tear gas, and electric prods.
Propaganda officials immediately banned media coverage of the incident, and the
outside world might not have learned of the clash if an intrepid local
“netizen” had not posted news of it on the Internet. The Web correspondent was
quickly identified by Chinese cybercops and arrested during a telephone
interview with the Voice of America on August 2. While the informant was
on the phone with VOA interviewers in Washington, D.C., he was suddenly cut
short, and the voice of a relative could be heard in the background
shouting that authorities from the Internet office of the Zhengzhou public
security bureau (Shi Gonganju Wangluchu) had come to arrest the interviewee.
After several seconds of noisy struggle, the telephone connection went dead.
Popular Web Sites Shut Down
In other cases, when it is difficult for the state to discern whether or not
certain Internet activity is a clear and present danger, the cyberpolice simply
shut down Web sites. For example, on September 13, 2004, officials from the
State Council News office, the ministry of information industry, and the
ministry of education suddenly appeared at Beijing University to announce the
closure—for no stated reason—of Yi Ta Hutu (One Big Mess), a popular university
bulletin board system (BBS). It was understood that the BBS was shut down for
“disseminating political rumors.” At the same time, the government ordered all
Web sites in China to delete Internet links to One Big Mess. Six days later,
three Beijing University law instructors wrote an open letter to Chinese
President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao praising the closed BBS site as “an
important channel by which the party and government can understand the feelings
of the people.” The professors then condemned the BBS closure as “suppressing
freedom of speech” and decried the state action as “illegal” and
“regrettable.” Needless to say, the professors’ open letter was not
published on Chinese sites and had to be e-mailed to correspondents outside
China.
One Big Mess was host to over 800 separate discussion boards, boasted an
average of 20,000 page viewers at any one time, and had over 300,000 regular
viewers on its list. Instead of being a vehicle for democratic reform, Chinese
security services now use the Internet to identify and eliminate networks
of dissent.
Surveys conducted by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences show that in
metropolitan areas more than one in three people has Internet access. Even in
small cities, 27 percent of residents have access to the Internet. Given
these numbers and the determination of the Chinese Communist Party to stamp out
each and every vestige of dissent and opposition, it is not surprising
that China has the most extensive Internet censorship in the world.At last
estimate, access was blocked to 19,000 political Web sites considered
threatening. These blocked sites include popular foreign news, political,
religious, and educational Web sites, including fairly innocuous Web sites of
church and religious organizations serving foreign businessmen and residents.
Clampdown Aided by U.S. Firms
In addition to blocking sensitive Web sites, the government also controls the
sites that appear in popular global search engines such as Yahoo and Google.
For instance, a search for “Jiang” in the Chinese version of Yahoo returns only
24 sites, all of which are flattering to Chinese leader Jiang Zemin. Moreover,
e-mail subscription services are blocked and the government can and does
monitor personal e-mail and “erase online content considered
undesirable.”
Some American Internet portal companies assist the Chinese government in
limiting information available to the Chinese people. In 2001, Yahoo signed an
agreement with Chinese security authorities to block critical content from
its Chinese language servers. Yahoo further promised to avoid “producing,
posting or disseminating pernicious information that may jeopardize state
security and disrupt social stability.” By contrast, the search engine Google,
which has not signed such an agreement, has been deemed “unselective” and
“unsupervised” by the security authorities and has consequently been censored.
Google is especially feared by China’s cybercensors because of its cache
feature that makes available saved copies of Web pages that have been deleted
and Web sites that have been taken down. Since 2002, Chinese visitors to
Google.com have been re-routed to a local search engine.
Surveillance of the Chinese Internet is greatly enhanced by the custom design
of China’s Internet portals. All Chinese Internet traffic is routed through
five major channels using devices sold by a U.S.-based corporation. American
engineers developed special routers, integrators, and a “special firewall
box” programmed to monitor Internet traffic and detect selected keywords. China
Telecom bought “many thousands” of these special firewall boxes from a
U.S. firm for $20,000 each. These boxes allow the Chinese government to search
for, identify, and intercept potentially subversive transmissions, which
had theretofore been considered difficult to track. By exporting sophisticated
communications technology to China, North American telecoms and software
companies facilitated the construction of the “Great Firewall of China” against
the world and provided the Chinese government with a means to conduct
surveillance against its citizens.
Big Brother’s Eyes at Internet Cafes
The Chinese government has also installed elaborate monitoring systems at
all Chinese Internet cafes. For example, the Shanghai Cultural Broadcast
and Film Management Bureau is installing software in 110,000 computers in the
city’s 1,329 Internet cafes for comprehensive long-term surveillance. This
software allows the government to monitor, in real time, the identities of
Internet users and the sites that they access or attempt to access. New
regulations require all Internet users at cafes to register in their real names
and provide identification cards before log-on. Press announcements of
Shanghai’s new Internet regulations indicate that the local security
services expect all Internet cafe proprietors to cooperate—and pay for the new
software upgrades. China’s large eastern province of Shandong has also
reported adoption of an “internet real names” project to track cybercafe
Web surfers.
Online conversations are subject to constant eavesdropping, and Web surfing is
scrutinized. Yahoo-China, for example, reportedly hires supervisory “big
mamas” for the teams of censors assigned to every Yahoo-hosted Internet chat
room in China. One American expert in the Chinese Internet describes the big
mamas’ mission as deleting politically undesirable chat room comments in
real time and sending warnings to violators in cyberspace. All Chinese chat
rooms, according to this expert, are watched by surveillance teams who can also
monitor e-mails, including Web-based accounts, and may use unblocked Web sites
as “tripwire” stings to locate and trap possible agitators.
Chinese censors periodically and inexplicably block and unblock foreign news
sites that inquisitive surfers may try to access. There is a special task
force of some 30,000 “cybercops” who patrol the World Wide Web, block select
foreign news sites, and terminate domestic sites with politically sensitive
information. Coupled with the ability to log viewers of sensitive sites,
security agents may record names of surfers who attempt to access
forbidden sites or selectively unblocked sites for further
monitoring. In this way China’s Internet has increasingly become a tool for
security agencies to identify, monitor, arrest, and imprison potential
dissidents.
Censorship Under the Guise of Moral Propriety?
The Beijing government emphasizes the dangers of corrupt influences on children
and says that in one survey 60 of 100 juvenile delinquents in a Beijing
courthouse were frequent visitors to pornography sites. In what appeared
to be a commendable effort to bolster youth morals, Chinese authorities
shut down over 30 pornography sites between June and July of 2004.
Although President Hu’s anti-porn crusade has superficially lofty goals, the
nationwide crackdown conveniently tightens state control over the spread of
digital information. In fact, more than 90 percent of the articles in
China’s legal regime governing Internet sites is “news and information,”
and less than 5 percent is “other inappropriate content.” Recent reports
indicate that authorities in Shanghai intend to restrict Internet
communications for religious groups. China maintains restrictions on
religious expression and does not permit religious activities coordinated
between Chinese and religious groups from abroad. As digital communications
present a potential gap in Beijing’s scope of supervision, the crackdown
against pornography appears to be a smokescreen for increased surveillance of
political dissent.
Mobile Phone Text Messaging Tracked
For several days in late September 2004, a Chinese-citizen researcher for the
Beijing bureau of The New York Times was—unbeknown to him— hunted by Chinese
police for providing his employer with news that China’s leader Jiang Zemin was
planning to retire. The researcher had been visiting friends in Shanghai and
had turned off his mobile phone. When he switched on his phone again a few days
later, it took secret police less than an hour to track him down at a
restaurant and arrest him. It was just the latest evidence that
China’s mobile phone network has become a means of police surveillance. Yet for
several years, Chinese citizens had used mobile phone text messages to
disseminate information.
In February 2003, a mysterious virus swept through the southern Chinese
province of Guangdong, decimating the staffs of hospitals and clinics.
According to The Washington Post, “there were 900 people sick with SARS [sudden
acute respiratory syndrome] in Guangzhou and 45 percent of them were health
care professionals.” The Chinese media suppressed news of the disease,
apparently in the belief that the public would panic, but:
[News] reached the Chinese public in Guangdong through a short-text message,
sent to mobile phones in Guangzhou around noon on Feb. 8. “There is a fatal flu
in Guangzhou,” it read. This same message was resent 40 million times that day,
41 million times the next day and 45 million times on Feb. 10.
The SARS epidemic taught the Chinese security services that mobile phone text
messages are a powerful weapon against censorship and state control of the
media. The Chinese government announced in 2003 new plans to censor text
messages distributed by mobile telephone. China Mobile, the country’s
largest service provider, alone tallied 40 billion text messages in 2002. With
over 220 billion text messages sent each year via all China’s telecom
providers, the Chinese government has had to establish 2,800 centers
across the country to conduct routine text monitoring. However, interception of
personal messages may not be peculiar to China for long. The Ministry of Public
Security recently permitted the manufacturer of these low-cost
surveillance systems to sell them on the open market, leading to their possible
proliferation worldwide.
A Faustian Deal for an Orwellian Future
Without innovations in technology provided to China by Western telecoms,
networking, Internet portal, and software firms, the Chinese government could
not have gained its current stranglehold over Internet information. The “Great
Firewall of China,” designed in large part by North American firms, is
increasingly effective at monitoring and censoring online speech in a medium
that had for a few short years carried a lively debate about democratic ideals.
Chinese filtering systems have removed politically provocative Web sites and
postings and have redirected Web surfers to search engines that show only
content favorable to the regime. China’s Internet now serves to disseminate
propaganda and block the flow of information and the proliferation of
democratic ideas. Contrary to conventional wisdom, which holds the Internet as
a great propagator of information and ideas, China’s electronic communications
are heavily censored and are increasingly used as an instrument for
surveillance, repression, and propaganda.
Recommendations for U.S. Policy
A democratic China is indeed “in the most vital interest of the United States,”
and fostering an environment in China conducive to the free expression of ideas
should be a primary objective. The Bush Administration and Congress must
consider strategies to break through the Great Firewall. Specifically, the
Administration and Congress should:
Designate Internet censorship and monitoring systems as “police equipment.”
Since the Chinese telecoms and police agencies are using custom designed
Internet hardware and software primarily for police purposes and because this
equipment has been used broadly to apprehend and arrest political dissidents
these types of software should be designated “police equipment” for the
purposes of the Export Administration Regulations (which regulate the export of
dual-use items for foreign policy and national security purposes). U.S.
exporters should be required to file adequate descriptions of their custom
designed systems with the U.S. government. License applications for
exports of these systems to China should be treated in the same way as other
police equipment exports to China.
Renew research into anti-censorship technologies. A few years ago the
Voice of America briefly sponsored a network of servers, code-named “Triangle
Boy,” which was beyond the reach of Chinese censors. Although reportedly
successful, the system failed due to inadequate funding and over-cautious
handling of the contracts. Rather than funding its expansion, VOA decided to
pursue “safe-haven Web sites,” but these are now blocked on a real-time basis
by Chinese censors. There should be renewed efforts to create an information
network that would permit Web surfers in China to access accurate news beyond
China’s Great Firewall.
Establish an Office of Global Internet Freedom. Legislation—like the Global
Internet Freedom Act of 2003 (H.R. 1950) is already drafted that would create
an Office of Global Internet Freedom under the International Broadcasting
Bureau (the parent agency for the Voice of America) to coordinate U.S. efforts
to develop counter-censorship technologies. The need for a concerted,
U.S.-backed campaign to promote democracy in China is urgent, and authorizing
legislation should be included in the next State Department authorization bill.
Conclusion
Chinese police surveillance of Internet communications has increased as Chinese
citizens have gained more access to the medium. The censors’ reach extends to
each computer terminal, and even personal mobile phones and personal digital
assistants. As Chinese citizens found during the SARS outbreak, mobile phone
text messaging and access to the Internet were their only conduits for the
truth.
Support for a democratizing China must be a primary objective of American
policy. This should be done by challenging the Chinese Communist Party’s
monopoly on information in that country. U.S. firms that have provided the
tools of censorship and surveillance to a police state should also help in
defeating those tools. The United States established Radio Free Asia to provide
Chinese shortwave radio listeners with uncensored sources of information about
what was really happening in China and the world, but shortwave broadcasting is
now obsolete. A similar effort on the World Wide Web would have a far greater
impact.
John J. Tkacik, Jr., is Research Fellow in China Policy in the Asian Studies
Center at The Heritage Foundation. Augustine T. H. Lo and Emily Ho, interns at
The Heritage Foundation, contributed to this paper.
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