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Microsoft filters 'democracy' in
China
By Fang Yuan
HONG KONG - As China further tightens
state controls over Internet use, overseas rights
groups are criticizing US software giant Microsoft
for agreeing to censor politically sensitive terms
such as "democracy" and "human rights" from
personal online diaries - known as blogs - written
by Chinese citizens.
The Paris-based press
freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said
it had confirmed that certain key words were now
being censored from text posted by Chinese users
to blogs hosted by Microsoft's MSN Spaces service.
"When a Chinese blogger attempts to post a message
containing terms such as 'democracy', 'Dalai
Lama', 'Falungong', '4 June' [the date of the
Tiananmen Square crackdown], 'China + corruption',
or 'human rights', a warning displays saying,
'This message contains a banned expression, please
delete this expression'," RSF said in a statement
on its website.
"Following Yahoo!, here is
a second American Internet giant giving way to the
Chinese authorities and agreeing to
self-censorship. The lack of ethics on the part of
these companies is extremely worrying," RSF said.
Like Yahoo! and Google before it, Microsoft
justified its compliance with censorship
requirements in terms of China's legal system.
"MSN abides by the laws, regulations, and norms of
each country in which it operates," Brooke
Richardson, MSN's lead product manager, told
reporters last week.
Internet
surveillance recruitment under way
China
announced further controls on the Internet this
summer, with a nationwide recruitment drive aimed
at channeling top technological talent into its
Internet policing system and a crackdown on
unregistered websites. "The evening newspapers in
Beijing all carried this story," Beijing-based
lawyer Gao Zhishen told RFA's Mandarin service.
"The reports said that a lot of top technology
talent was being recruited, but it didn't
emphasize the relationship with the police. The
aims were to eliminate undesirable content,
pornographic material, and other unhealthy things.
But they are not going to mention the political
side of this work," Gao said.
Recruits
must be degree-holders specializing in computer
science or related disciplines and will undertake
a rigorous testing and training program before
qualifying as Internet security officers and
taking up their stations in more than 800 Internet
cafes and 3,000 service centers across the
country, according to reports carried in several
state-run Chinese newspapers.
Bloggers
left with little room
Calls to the
Internet monitoring department at Beijing's
municipal public security bureau went unanswered
several times during working hours. Concerns are
growing among China's community of Web users that
a recent drive to enforce registration
requirements first issued by the State Council in
2002 will squeeze all but the most tenacious off
the Web, or force them to migrate to overseas
sites inaccessible to Chinese Web users.
Article 8 of State Council Order No 292,
posted on the Shanghai Communications Agency
website, reads as follows:
All those who engage in non-business
oriented Internet information services shall
carry out filing procedures at the
telecommunications administration authority at
the level of the province, autonomous region or
municipality directly under the central
government or at the authority in charge of
information industry under the State Council.
When carrying out filing procedures, the
following materials shall be submitted: (1)
basic particulars concerning the sponsoring unit
and the person responsible for the website; (2)
address of the website and its services; (3)
where services fall within the scope set forth
in Article 5 hereof, the approval documents
already obtained from the relevant competent
authorities. As well-known Shanghai
blogger Wang Jianshuo wrote in an entry on the
registration procedure: "I found it is almost
impossible for me or anyone like me to meet the
requirements to file." Wang, who is attempting to
legally register his blog, said the requirements
included removing any links to sites not approved
by the Chinese government, which included most
overseas sites and links to most of his friends'
sites. There was also a hefty 500 yuan (US$60)
fee, more than the annual cost of his domain name
and Web hosting service put together.
China has an estimated 600,000 blogs, with
many other China bloggers using overseas servers
such as Blogger and Typepad. Subject matter varies
widely, from personal diary entries to specialized
technological blogs to general social and
political discussions, which often contain
unflattering news or comments about China.
Slipping through the cracks
State-run media say the crackdown is targeted
at online pornography, fraud, and illegal business
activities. But China-based commentators told RFA
the real target of the campaign was freedom of
expression. "A lot of ordinary Chinese people
believe that the Internet is a God-given loophole
for them," Gao told RFA. "So of course it's
horrifying from the point of view of the
authorities."
Gao said the authorities
were responding to a looming crisis of social
unrest, in which the Internet was playing an
increasing role in mobilizing peasants, workers,
and petitioners in anti-government protests. "In
the past, the government ruled by unifying China
by a sort of imperial edict. Today's government is
taking every sort of measure they can, but they
can't entirely control everything. Some things are
slipping through the cracks," he said.
Crackdown likely to intensify
Guangxi-based Internet commentator Yu Zhangfa
said the Chinese Communist Party was concerned
about growing criticism aired on the Internet from
within its own ranks, including a growing wave of
resignations from the party in protest at rampant
official corruption.
"More and more
officials from within the government are posting
articles on the Internet in favor of freedom and
democracy. So the party leadership is going to get
tougher and tougher on these sorts of activities,"
Yu told RFA. "It all hangs on those words,
undesirable content. But any content relating to
democracy and freedom is undesirable to the
Chinese Communist Party."
Yu said the
government had now consolidated its control over
public access to the Internet in cafes and service
centers and was likely to crack down next on
private individuals going online in their own
homes. "It's like the frog in the boiling water.
They will do it gradually, so people won't
notice," he predicted.
Meanwhile, in the
eastern Chinese province of Anhui, freelance
Internet journalist and dissident Zhang Lin
pleaded innocent to charges of subversion, saying
his Internet postings should be protected by
freedom of speech. Among the charges laid against
Zhang by the Bengbu city authorities were that he
"used the Internet, overseas radio transmissions,
and other such media to openly disseminate
language that misrepresents and denigrates the
national authorities and the socialist system, and
which incites subversion of state power". For now
Zhang's future remains unclear, and the court has
refused to say when a verdict would be reached.
Original reporting in Mandarin by Fang
Yuan. RFA Mandarin service director: Jennifer
Chou. English Web story by Luisetta Mudie.
Copyright (c) 2005, Radio Free Asia.
Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free
Asia. |
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