Peking block

Everyone knows that the government of the Peoples Republic of Chinas deluded belief that it can manage capitalism to perpetuate its rule has an even less tenable corollary: that it can manage the Internet to that end. That accounts for many of the more graceless actions that have aroused anger worldwide,and bewilderment in freer societies such as Indias: the blocking of Wikipedia,the monitoring of Internet usage at the Olympics media centres,the pressure on hosting services to release names of independent bloggers,and even the absurd attempts to prettify censorship by having cute little animated cops Little Brothers? pop up to remind Chinese surfers that Big Brother was watching them.

But rarely has a more direct linkage between Chinese online authoritarianism and its repressive internal politics been on display than in the past few days,when the government blocked access to the popular video-sharing website YouTube. At first nobody seemed to know why,precisely. Perhaps because of the videos that the US navy had posted of five Chinese ships harassing one of their vessels? But it appears that the reaction might be to something internal: Xinhua,Chinas official news agency,on Thursday attacked widely-watched videos posted by the Tibetan government-in-exile,showing what appeared to be security officers brutally beating Tibetan monks and bystanders in a crackdown. Xinhuas attack on the videos authenticity came across as relatively unpersuasive they quoted an unnamed government official as saying unnamed technology experts had found that the video was,horror of horrors,edited together.

Even if thats the proximate reason for Chinas over-reaction,theres something that the Partys political managers should learn from this latest humiliating gaffe. The official response,a ban followed by a pointless denial,is blatantly unconvincing. The reaction of pro-government bloggers who deconstructed the video frame-by-frame should instead have been much more to their taste. The problem with old-style authoritarians is that they just dont understand the kids.