Chinese Internet Censorship Machine Revealed
The Chinese government has instituted an elaborate system for Internet censorship that employs tens of thousands of censors and police responsible for maintaining control over the flow of information, a report released by international free press advocates showed.
Entitled "China: Journey To The Heart Of Internet Censorship," the report issued by Reporters Without Borders outlines the inner workings of a bureaucracy that effectively clamps down on dissent, quashes articles the communist government deems unsuitable for publication, and uses online companies to distribute its own propaganda.
The report, much of which is based on information provided by an unidentified Chinese technician who works for the government's Internet sector, was published Wednesday, five days before the start of the 17th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, the nation's biggest political event in five years.
The Chinese have embraced the Internet in a big way, creating a market second only to the United States. The phenomenal market growth has attracted an army of U.S. technology and online companies, many of which have partnered with Chinese businesses in order to navigate the country's political system.
As of July 1, about 12.3% of China's population, or 162 million people, used the Internet, according to the China Internet Network Information Centre. In addition, there are at least 1.3 million Web sites, and 19% of Chinese Internet users have their own blogs.
Troika Of Control
To control the information flow over such a vast network, three leading government agencies have evolved over the last several years: the Internet Propaganda Administrative Bureau, the Bureau of Information and Public Opinion, and the Internet Bureau, the report said. In Beijing, where most of China's leading commercial Web sites are based, a powerful local agency has been established called the Beijing Internet Information Administrative Bureau.
In general, the Internet Propaganda Administrative Bureau issues licenses to commercial Web sites, which entitles them to provide news stories and reproduce reports disseminated by official media. The licenses, however, do not allow for independent news gathering and publishing.
The Bureau of Information and Public Opinion is responsible for organizing weekly meetings with commercial sites to discuss online public opinion and to pass along reports on the meetings to Communist Party officials. The organization also publishes periodicals on its monitoring of online news, and sends the publications to a variety of security and propaganda officials.
Finally, the Internet Bureau, created by the Communist Party in 2006, exercises ideological control. Employees of propaganda agencies take bureau-sanctioned courses on censorship, and executives and editors of online companies are required to take an annual historical field trip on the birth of communism in China and then publish an article on the trip. A total of 18 companies were invited on the trip; Yahoo is the only U.S. company listed. Yahoo's partner, Chinese marketplace Alibaba.com, runs the online company's operation in China.
Chinese supervisory bodies often use instant messaging and text messages sent via mobile phones to communicate quickly with commercial Web sites. The purpose is to tell them which articles or comments are not to be published, and which events or issues are taboo.
The Beijing Internet Information Administrative Bureau holds weekly meetings with 19 of the leading Web sites based in the capital to evaluate the subjects that Internet users find most interesting that week. Based on those meetings, the bureau decides the subjects to be covered in the coming week, the articles to be written under its supervision, and the articles to be eliminated.
Despite self-censorship and the filtering of government-banned words or phrases from articles, sites do occasionally broach subjects inadvertently. Penalties for such mistakes range from criticizing the site, imposing a fine, ordering the dismissal of the employee responsible, or closing down the site section or the entire site, the report said.
One incident that led to a section closure involved the Web site Netease, which published a 2006 poll asking that if their readers were reborn, would they want to be Chinese again. Of the 10,000 respondents, 64% said they would not want to be Chinese. The main reasons were being Chinese is not honorable, you can't buy a house in China, happiness is too inaccessible, you can't crack jokes in China, and you can't see good cartoons.
To elude government censorship, Reporters Without Borders advises the Chinese to use a proxy server that sits between a user's computer and a Web site to hide the user's Internet Protocol address. For people looking to post sensitive articles, the advocacy group suggests using smaller Web sites outside Beijing that aren't as closely monitored by authorities. In addition, the group recommends the use of new Internet technologies, such as blogs, discussion forums, Internet telephony, peer to peer, and VPNs.
Chinese censorship, and the use of information gathered on the Web to arrest and jail dissidents, has become a public relations nightmare for U.S. Internet companies, which are forced to abide by Chinese laws in order to do business in the country.
The U.S. State Department last year established a task force to investigate the problems posed to the Internet by repressive regimes, such as China. The move followed a call for help by Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo.