Opinion Im banned in Beijing
Experimenting with Chinas Internet censorship.
Psst. Dont tell the Chinese government,but I started a Chinese-language blog here in China,with counterrevolutionary praise of dissidents. Now lets count 1,2,3… and see how long my blog stays up. My hunch is that State Security will harmonise it quickly. In Chinese,websites are mockingly referred to as harmonised when the government vaporises them so as to nurture a harmonious society.
China now has about 450 million Internet users,far more than any other country,and perhaps 100 million bloggers. The imprisoned writer Liu Xiaobo,winner of the Nobel Peace Prize,has said,The Internet is Gods gift to the Chinese people. I tend to agree,but its also true that Chinese cyberspace remains a dictatorship. In November,the government sent a young woman, Cheng Jianping,to labour camp for a year for posting a single mocking sentence.
I decided to conduct my latest experiment in Chinese Internet freedom. I started with blogging and microblogging,the Chinese version of Twitter. But,in an ominous sign,I discovered that the Chinese authorities had tightened the rules since my last experiments. These days,anyone starting an online account must supply an ID card number and cellphone number. That means that the authorities can quickly track down nettlesome commentators.
Once I got started,though,the censors were less aggressive than I had expected,apparently relying more on intimidation than actual censorship. Even my microblog posts about Liu,the imprisoned dissident,went up. A similar post mentioning the banned Falun Gong movement triggered an automatic review,but then a moderator approved it. (A Chinese moderator once explained that grunt-level censors are mostly young computer geeks who believe in Internet freedom and try to sabotage their responsibilities without getting fired.) Still,there are limits. I posted a reference to the June 4,1989, Tiananmen massacre. It went up automatically,and then was removed by a moderator 20 minutes later.
The challenge for the authorities is that there is just too much to police by moderators,and automatic filters dont work terribly well. Chinese routinely use well-known code phrases for terms that will be censored (June 4 might become June 2+2,or May 35). Likewise,Chinese can usually get around the great firewall of China by using widely available software,like Freegate,or by tunneling through a virtual
private network.
Most Chinese arent overtly political seeking out banned pornography is typically regarded as more rewarding than chasing down tracts about multiparty democracy. Still,Internet controls are widely resented. My bet is more young Chinese are vexed by their governments censorship than by its rejection of multiparty democracy. Michael Anti,a prominent Chinese blogger,says the government may increasingly allow Chinese netizens to criticise abuses by local governments,even as it blocks disparagement of the central leadership. Since the worst human rights abuses are often by local authorities,that would be a modest step forward.
Frankly,my experiments had mixed results. My microblog quickly attracted notice,partly because a Chinese friend with more than one million followers directed readers to it. An hour later,it had been harmonised. Meanwhile,I published my separate Chinese blog. It was just as edgy and included a slightly veiled birthday greeting to Liu in prison. But I didnt promote it,so the authorities didnt care,or didnt notice. It has remained up for several weeks but now that Ive mentioned it in this column,its doomed.
To me,the lesson of my experiments is that the Chinese Internet is too vast for the government to monitor fully. It can toss individuals in prison. But it cant block the information revolution itself.Nicholas D. Kristof
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