THE INTERNET IN CHINA

•384 million users by the end of 2009 (Xinhua News Agency, Jan. 15, 2010)

•Top three uses are online music, online news and search engines (China Internet Network Information Center, January)

• China has devoted extensive resources to building one of the largest and most sophisticated filtering systems in the world. As the Internet records extraordinary growth in services as well as users, the Chinese government has undertaken to limit access to any content that might potentially undermine the state's control or social stability by pursuing strict supervision of domestic media, delegated liability for online content providers, and increasingly, a propaganda approach to online debate and discussion. -- opennet initiative, collaborative

partnership of three institutions: the Citizen Lab at the Munk Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto; the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University; and the SecDev Group (Ottawa)

• eg: green dam youth escort: government wanted web-filtering software to be put into every new PC shipped into China to block children from accessing porn, but critics said software also blocked social and political commentary, plans eventually shelved

• filtering: network administrator blocks access to specified web pages by barring entry to designated domain names, Internet addresses and pages containing specified keywords or phrases.

• deletion and removal of content

• deployment of people to track online activity

• hacking and other cyber-attacks: sites run by human rights activists (overwhelming the servers and leaving them inaccessible), chinese exiles and dissidents are increasingly targeted, email accounts are no longer safe, journalists and academics are also coming under attack, possibly endangering their sources

• hiring people to write favorable, positive comments about the government in blogs, social networking sites and blogs

• psychological element, where internet users self-censor for fear of being caught

• control of mobile phone service to prevent attempts to organize and communicate

what’s blocked?•twitter

•youtube

•facebook

•blogs and online video sites

•search engine results for “sensitive” topics like tibet, falun gong, tiananmen democracy protests, charter 08 (online campaign for democratic reforms)

“fan qiang” (scaling the Great Firewall)

• proxy servers -- link computers to overseas servers for unfettered access eg. hotspot shield (shut down by chinese government but people started sending their own copies to friends or posting links on other sites that hosted it)

• anonymity networks -- bounces communications around a global relay of networks, prevents people from learning what sites you visit and what your physical location is eg; tor

• informal gatherings of bloggers and journalists where they teach each other how to use circumnavigation tools and how to access sites like twitter

• download articles, photos and videos on potentially sensitive subjects in case they get taken down, then re-post on other sites and disseminate through social networks and email lists

• loosely organized groups who research china’s censorship mechanisms and uncover companies and organizations that help build the government’s censorship system

• play on words to get around censorship, poke fun at government eg “grass mud horse” which sounds like a chinese obscenity and a photo of a “river crab wearing three watches,” another jab at censorship and a political slogan created by former president jiang zemin, this gives an outlet for venting and broaches the subject in a way that many people can relate to

how has new media changed activism?

• organizing through text messaging in the past few years eg: protest in southern china over construction of a chemical plant, anti-government protests in tibetan communities

• photos and videos show details of events that are otherwise censored by the government -- sometimes even prove that they occurred

• blogs and social networks are speedy ways to spread information to a large number of people and are ideal arenas for discussion

• instead of face-to-face meetings and phonecalls, there was email and now skype, none are secure means but you have to do the best you can

Rebecca MacKinnon, a visiting fellow at Princeton University’s Center for Technology Policy and former CNN journalist. She has been researching Chinese Internet censorship alongside global censorship trends, examining in particular how the private sector assists government efforts to silence or manipulate citizen speech.