But porn on the Internet is a bore, all static images or small-frame videos. It's not nearly as much fun as watching a good video. As for 'reactionary propaganda,' I'm just not interested in it. I don't even go looking. It's also where the virtuous realities of Comrade X and talk about Singapore models give way to the down-to-earth facts of market forces and resourceful practicalities.
Pan Weimin, a thirtysomething electrical engineering graduate from Shanghai's prestigious Fudan University, runs the day-to-day operations of the PaCity Computer Company, which makes and sells computers and peripherals. It's a two-way highway. If the Net becomes a national net, limited to a certain culture, then what's the long term use of getting wired?
But there's another thing: if we started charging, we'd have to get every user, casual or not, to register with China Telecom and the PSB. As is, we can pretend we're demonstrating our computers and training potential buyers. So we're free of control. Otherwise, both the police and the entertainment bureaucracy would be on our backs. And whatever kind of loopholes he or others can find are a long way from letting real Net genies out of the bottle:.
When push comes to shove, the authorities don't have to restrict themselves to imposing a NetWall around China. They can use tried and true traditional methods: one administrative order from on high and everything can be shut down. It's simple and effective. It should not surprise anyone that the Chinese authorities see the Net's opportunities, along with its threats.
Time and again, the 20th century has proven the value of information technology for building a heaven for bureaucrats - or for secret police. For Communist Party cadres, that means a network devoted to the transmission of party directives, government orders, and local bureaucratic folderol - in other words, an intranet. The ever-vigilant PSB already has one, linking it to every major hotel and guest house where foreigners stay. The minute you register at your five-star joint-venture hotel, Comrade X and his associates know you're there.
Elsewhere, such efforts are still mostly works in progress. In Guangdong province, for instance, few local-level party offices have the bandwidth - meaning more than a single phone line - to keep their computers permanently online.
So headquarters first has to telephone to say that a document is on the way, then local officials turn on their modem to receive it, along with the relevant party secretary's seal of office - suitably encrypted - and signature.
Clunky and primitive it may be, but it works. And an infrastructure that will wire the whole province is well under way - Communist Party offices first, of course. One university computer specialist we talked to in Guangzhou has been called in to help with several of what he waggishly calls "DocuNets":. The bureaucrats don't give a damn about the Net or connecting with the outside world.
What everyone is really getting into - as long as they have the money to do it - is establishing their own local networks. When they receive a telex from Beijing, they get their secretaries to type it into the computer, and then use the DocuNet to distribute it. It's the latest in paperless offices, and they want it. There's an old saying in south China: "The heavens are high and the Emperor is far away. Will the Net follow a similar path?
One affluent electronics buff in Guangzhou, the provincial capital, is looking for new opportunities after making a killing in the last few years selling computers made with pirated processors from Taiwan.
He offers a classically hedged south China viewpoint:. Then a major political issue was the direction you pointed your TV antenna - toward Hong Kong or inland.
The struggle went on for years - the police carried out door-to-door checks, people were ordered to pull down their aerials, and party members were warned they'd be expelled if they watched.
Then underground factories that produced signal boosters mushroomed, and soon everyone was watching Hong Kong TV without a visible, external aerial. It became such a farce that in the end the authorities simply gave up. But these days, it's not only this side that is different. TV stations in Hong Kong have been changing. They want to reach the massive market that covers the whole Pearl River Delta.
And to get that, they are making compromises about content - they won't show anything that's too provocative. It's the nature of business; if you want it, you have to make concessions.
If the Net's going to be a success in China, people will just have to accept the fact that the Chinese government blocks some things. If the foreign media makes a big stink about it, don't worry, it'll pass.
The people interested in the Net's commercial possibilities will carry on regardless. Let's face it: Be it China or America, the government's voice is not as loud as that of business. Those who are willing to put up the money will have the last word. The computer cordon sanitaire that Chinese authorities are trying to build around China is called the fanghuo qiang, or "firewall," a direct translation from English. But a more popular phrase for it is wangguan , literally "NetWall" - a name harking back to an earlier effort to repel foreign invaders.
As every Chinese school kid knows, the original Great Wall failed in its basic mission though it did better as a communication avenue.
Will its digital successor fare any better? The PSB's Comrade X sees both the scope of the problem and the need for what strategists call "defense in depth":. At the moment it is up to the ISP and the individual to be responsible for the regulation of newsgroups and the leaking of state secrets.
The NetWall is something born of a typically Chinese mind-set. Perhaps it's just a matter of face-saving. People in the government feel they've got their backs to the wall.
They're not stupid. They know full well how viciously everyone denounces them every day in private. Digital Islands. In the People's Republic, coded communications are second nature, developed over years of mass surveillance, people reading other people's mail and diaries, tapping phones, and generally being inquisitive about your affairs.
The idea that the walls have ears doesn't shock anyone. In conversation, for instance, com-ments about the weather often carry a political subtext. Low temperatures and storms indicate that the shit has hit the fan; extreme heat can mean that things are precarious for the individual, their company, or inside the government.
The Chinese language's rich imagery and telegraphic allusions can make it hard for censors to discern subversive messages from poetic flights of fancy. The authorities have seen what can happen when the information revolution takes a swipe at its socialist predecessor. Last summer, during a furor - initially encouraged by the authorities - over Japan's occupation of the historically Chinese Diaoyu Senkaku Islands, students used the national university network to organize demonstrations.
They also transmitted news of the protests, much of which was going unreported in the nervous official media. In this case, the censorship was as crude as it was effective: the most prominent online activist was quickly banished to remote Qinghai Province, and for 10 days, all university access to newsgroups was shut down - those in English favored by scientists and in Chinese alike.
The move coincided with an ongoing general crackdown on dissent. Semi independent journals and newspapers have been banned, writers and intellectuals harassed. The few active dissidents who have managed to stay out of jail or, more commonly, exile have had to be even more than usually circumspect about their contacts with the outside world. One who manages is the controversial environmentalist and investigative historian Dai Qing.
Frequently detained by the authorities, she sees the Net as a lifeline to friends and supporters outside China. In Chinese there's a saying: 'The ends of the earth can be brought close to you. To be in constant contact with people throughout the world gives me a sense of security. Since the crackdown, the Net - however problematic - has also become one of the few remaining sources of unofficial news. But anyone with access to the Net and a little skill can find uncensored information - even something as simple as weather-oriented email messages - that fill in the blank spots created by the authorities, whether regarding dissidents, rumors surrounding the demise of Deng Xiaoping, or Islamic separatist bombings in downtown Beijing.
This is to be expected due to the quick information dissemination possible through these social domains. China's primary search engine and most accessed website, Baidu, employs heavy censorship within its own search algorithms.
Baidu "has a long history of being the most proactive and restrictive online censor in the search arena" China Digital Times. They create an encrypted tunnel from computers inside the blockade to networks on the outside, giving anonymous access to the wider web. But more and more, people who develop or distribute software for tunnelling through the firewall are being arrested.
In December , China hosted what it billed as the second World Internet Conference, where Xi set out his vision for the future of the internet. According to Griffiths, a draft declaration was slipped under hotel doors during the night, with just 8 hours to table amendments before the declaration in the morning.
Not surprisingly, delegates cried foul and, facing embarrassment, organisers cancelled the announcement. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone… You have no sovereignty where we gather… You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear. Barlow believed that online communities should be allowed to self-regulate according to the ethical deliberation of their members.
Two decades on, this sounds quaint. In many ways, Barlow, who died last year, was the product of a past era. He was a political activist who also wrote lyrics for the Grateful Dead. According to the Chinese communist party, just as countries police their borders it is legitimate for governments to also regulate online communications and content. Consequently, China has been active in advocating for internet regulation at the United Nations and also promotes efforts by other countries to restrict internet freedom.
0コメント