Freedom of the web in China
Posted on 20 September 2005
There's been a fair amount of pessimism recently about China and how the internet is being censored. The London Daily Telegraph reports that Rupert Murdoch has accused the Chinese authorities of being "paranoid" and that he has come close to admitting defeat in China. George Monbiot in The Guardian is rightly disappointed by the arrest of Shi Tao, a journalist imprisoned for ten years in China after passing details of a censorship order to the Asia Democracy Forum and the website Democracy News. The arrest was made possible after Yahoo! obeyed Chinese authorities and gave them the journalist's address and phone number (he had been using a Yahoo! e-mail account).
China attempts to censor the internet by forcing search engines to restrict what is in search results (in the Chinese editions of their sites). It also attempts to restrict access to some websites where the Chinese internet connects with the rest of the world.
And yet, I am optimistic about the future of free speech and freedom of net access in China. The reality is that the internet is just too big to censor in a practical way, without shutting China off from the rest of the world. As Wikipedia says:
The banning appears to be mostly uncoordinated and ad-hoc, with some sites being blocked and similar sites being allowed. The blocks are often lifted for special occasions. One example was the New York Times which was unblocked when reporters in a private interview with Jiang Zemin specifically asked about the block and he replied that he would look into the matter. During the APEC summit in Shanghai during 2001, normally-blocked media sources such as CNN, NBC, and the Washington Post suddenly became accessible. Since 2001, the content controls have been further relaxed on a permanent basis, and all three of the sites previously mentioned are now accessible from mainland China. In fact, most foreign news organisations' web sites are accessible, though a small number (including the BBC) continue to be blocked.
So the ability to find out what the overseas press is saying is indeed possible, but you might not be able to get it from your preferred broadcaster. The Wikipedia entry goes on to explain how Chinese authorities have bureaucratic turf battles between themselves over internet regulations and have to keep issuing new regulations because the previous ones have been ineffective.
But it's not just the ineffectiveness of Chinese regulations that make me optimistic. It's the fact that China is getting richer, and as it gets richer, there will be a burgeoning middle-class. There are already fifty thousand Chinese students studying at British universities, experiencing a free society and unrestricted access to the internet. Many of those students will go back to China with the knowledge that it is possible to have a society that both avoids chaos and yet allows freedom of expression. Middle-classes tend to be a powerful counterweight to rulers. China's increasing economic freedom will lead to social freedom.