At war with China

A few weeks from now, for the first time ever, a man will go on trial for political activities on the Internet. For a crime against the s...

A few weeks from now, for the first time ever, a man will go on trial for political activities on the Internet. For a crime against the state, he will face either a death sentence or a minimum of 10 years in prison. Lin Hai is 30 and until his arrest in April, ran a software company in Shanghai. His crime: sending the e-mail addresses of 30,000 users in mainland China to a pro-democracy Internet magazine. They would probably have been used for a direct mail campaign.

Born in the USA, the Net grew up to believe strongly in free speech. No respecter of national borders, it has now taken the First Amendment to the US Constitution global. It lets organisations reach out and touch people everywhere, and the comebacks are few and far between. Small wonder, then, that it has become the billboard of choice for political groups that are not in favour in their own countries. Modern wars are won by propaganda, and the Internet has turned into its most powerful vehicle.

When the Peruvian group Tupac Amaru occupiedthe Japanese embassy in Lima, they talked to the media through a server located in Denmark, thousands of miles away users.cybercity.dk/8211;tilde17427. The separatist movement in Kashmir uses the Islamic gateway8217; at ummah.org.uk. The LTTE is at eelamweb.com, two continents away. And the self-proclaimed Republic of Bougainville, which regularly fights guerrilla wars with the government of Papua New Guinea, operates out of Sydney, Australia, at magna.com.au/tildesashab.

The latest battlefield is Chinese cyberspace. It8217;s a heavily policed neighbourhood 150 new Netcops went on the beat just after the Clinton visit, just to show the US what8217;s what after it asked China to free its wires. However, they may not be able to keep the peace for much longer. The very fact that Lin Hai could muster the courage to stand up to his government shows that times are changing. Other people are dialling out to servers in Hong Kong to get past the government8217;s censorship filters. The process is being helped by aset of international hacker groups which have targeted Chinese computer networks, like the Yellow Pages, formed by Cal Tech students, and the Hong Kong Blondes. The Blondes, led by a Toronto-based astrophysicist who goes by the name of Blondie Wong on the Net, claims to have crippled a Chinese comsat last year. Understandably, Beijing refused to comment on the issue at the time.

The groups have recently diversified and gone scouting for talent in several countries. Now, they intend to target the networks of western corporates which are investing heavily in China despite its human rights record. Notable among the companies which may face destructive attacks are Motorola and Sun Microsys-tems. Also, there are the search majors Yahoo and Excite, which have started Chinese versions to catch the coming Internet wave in China, where 7 million people are expected to be online by 2001.

But the fact remains that knight-errantry has gone out of style. In the contemporary world, change is forced by technology, notindividuals. When Internet access in China is no longer restricted to the scientific community and the political elite, local laws will automatically relax their grip somewhat.

Not that China will have complete freedom of expression in the foreseeable future, but at least it can look forward to access on the same levels as people in Singapore have learned to live with and often be grateful for. The filters that stop access to controversial sites will always be in place. That8217;s China for you. But people will soon learn to use technology like anonymisers and remailers to get past the restrictions. That8217;s the Internet for you. It8217;s an obdurately inventive place.