In China It’s ******* vs. Netizens
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: June 20, 2006
To test the limits of the Internet in China, I started a couple of Chinese blogs – in which I huff and puff as outrageously as I can.
For a country that employs some 30,000 Internet censors, that turned out to be stunningly easy. In about 10 minutes, I started Ji Sidao’s blog – that’s my Chinese name – on two Chinese Web hosts, at no cost and without providing any identification.
Writing in Chinese, I began by denouncing the imprisonment of my Times colleague, Zhao Yan, by the Chinese authorities. I waited for it to be censored. Instead, it promptly appeared on my blog.
In frustration, I wrote something even more provocative: a call for President Hu Jintao to set an example in the fight against corruption by publicly disclosing his financial assets. To my astonishment, that wasn’t censored either.
Desperate, I mentioned Falun Gong, the religious group that is the Chinese government’s greatest enemy: “In Taiwan, the Chinese people have religious freedom. So in the Chinese mainland, why can’t we discuss Falun Gong?” That instantly appeared on both my blogs as well, although on one the characters for “Falun” were replaced by asterisks (functioning as pasties, leaving it obvious what was covered up).
Finally, I wrote the most inflammatory comment I could think of, describing how on June 4, 1989, I saw the Chinese Army fire on Tiananmen Square protesters. The two characters for June 4 were replaced by asterisks, but the description of the massacre remained intact.
These various counterrevolutionary comments, all in Chinese, are still sitting there in Chinese cyberspace at http://blog.sina.com.cn/u/1238333873 and http://jisidao.blog.sohu.com. (When State Security reads this, it may finally order my blogs closed.)
All this underscores, I think, that China is not the police state that its leaders sometimes would like it to be; the Communist Party’s monopoly on information is crumbling, and its monopoly on power will follow. The Internet is chipping away relentlessly at the Party, for even 30,000 censors can’t keep up with 120 million Chinese Netizens. With the Internet, China is developing for the first time in 4,000 years of history a powerful independent institution that offers checks and balances on the emperors.
It’s not that President Hu Jintao grants these freedoms, for he has arrested dozens of cyberdissidents as well as journalists. But the Internet is just too big and complex for State Security to control, and so the Web is beginning to assume the watchdog role filled by the news media in freer countries.
A year ago, I wrote about a blogger named Li Xinde who travels around China with his laptop, reporting on corruption and human-rights abuses. I hailed Mr. Li as an example of the emerging civil society in China – and the government promptly closed down his Web site. I wondered if I had overstated the challenge.
But today Mr. Li is as active as ever. His Web sites are constantly closed down, but the moment a site is censored he replaces it with a new one. An overseas master site, www.lixinde.com, tells people the best current address.
“They can keep closing sites, but they never catch up,” Mr. Li told me. “You can’t stop the Yellow River from flowing, and you can’t block the bloggers.”
In today’s China, young people use proxy software to reach forbidden sites and Skype to make phone calls without being tapped – and the local Web pornography is relentless and explicit, ranging from sex videos to nude online chats.
“We’re very relaxed now on pornography, but on politics it’s very tight,” said Yao Bo, a censor at a major chat-room site in China. He explained how the censorship works for a chat room:
Filtering software automatically screens the several hundred thousand comments typically posted on his Web site every day. Comments with a banned word go into a special queue, but Mr. Yao says he ends up posting all but the most subversive of these – his Web site, after all, wants to be provocative to attract visitors. State Security periodically scolds him for his laxity, but he seems unconcerned: “I just tell them I’m dumb about politics.”
China’s leaders decided years ago to accept technologies even if they are capable of subversive uses: photocopiers and fax machines at first, and now laptops and text messaging. The upshot is that China is much freer than its rulers would like.
To me, this trend looks unstoppable. I don’t see how the Communist Party dictatorship can long survive the Internet, at a time when a single blog can start a prairie fire.
1
By Mr. Right
Although the author did a very impressive work on testing China’s so called ‘Great Firewall’, but I doublt the conclusions he draw from the article is any convincible.
As matter of fact, currently there are four major Chinese sub-Internets (correct me if I am wrong) which include China’s Internet (ChinaNet), China Golden Bridge Network (Chinagbn), the China Education and Research Network (CERNET) and China Science and Technology Network (CSTNET). Filtering can be easily set up under the co-efforts of state-level ISPs. The CCP can block the unfavored IPs as soon as they want. Why the website is not banned though there are some sensitive words in it. I think the answer is the website is ignorable. As long as the Netter unfind it, it ok.
well, what I want to say is:don’t too optimistic to techonology or a dictator untill people are wake up and overthrow the bad system.
June 20, 2006 @ 2:59 am | Comment
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By Laurie
Hey, not to bring us too off topic, but was this written by the same Nicholas D. Kristov that wrote ‘China Wakes’ – i have been trying to see what the two authors of that book have been doing since
June 20, 2006 @ 5:30 am | Comment
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By OtherLisa
Yes, it’s the same Kristof.
I’ve noticed some of the weird gaps in State control myself. For example, buying a cellphone. You can totally buy a SIM card with no record of who is buying it – I had a record because I used a credit card, but whether that credit card is ever associated with that particular phone number in a way that someone could put the two together, who’s to say? And if I’d paid cash?
June 20, 2006 @ 10:01 am | Comment
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By Raj
Lisa, same happened when I got a temporary SIM card. And that was just as me being a tourist, not even having a long-term visa.
June 20, 2006 @ 10:52 am | Comment
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By bellevue
Richard: You may not aware that bingfeng is among Kristof’s readers, and he lashed out on him right away, labeling this essay to be full of bullsh*t.
He is not alone. Many cynical urban ‘middle-class’ actually are quite happy about the reality in China, since they know how to maximize their gain through the sophisticated corrupt Chinese system and live in bed with CCP. Democracy or not is not a concern. If the control over the Internet works their way, i.e. to prevent to rural revolt destablize China, then keeping it is actually good from them, in their view. That’s why all Kristof’s predications on China failed to realize, and CCP even survived the Internet.
June 20, 2006 @ 1:56 pm | Comment
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By Johnny K
CCP even survived the Internet.
It’s a weeeee bit premature to proclaim that, don’t you think?
I too got a prepay SIM in China no questions asked. What’s more I called people in and out of China blabbering about democrizzle and tianmizzle and T-bizzle and nothing came of it.
Oddly, here in Singapore they DID require my registration for a prepaid SIM, and they are deactivating anyone with a prepaid SIM who did not need to register when they purchased it..
June 20, 2006 @ 6:58 pm | Comment
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By David
I found a reply from a Chinese reader of the NYT online on Kristof’s blog. The reader said that while he, like Krisoff is relatively optimistic about the development of the internet, he wants to make a few points.
1) Kristoff is using a web blog with very low traffic. Moreover, the few words on the blog might not be seen by the censor as particularly threatening.
2) There really isn’t a definite line that can be determined on what you can say and what you can’t say and suggests a web link. http://club.cat898.com/newbbs/list.asp?boardid=1
3) Cautions that the word 30,000 web censors has been circulating after it was used in an article in “The Guardian” but there could well be many more than that.
4) Proxy servers aren’t that easy to use in China these days.
Another reply in Chinese, translated:
Among some middle class young people in China’s cities, Mr. Kristoff’s article was greeted with what, one might say in a polite way was “a snort of derision”. http://blog.bcchinese.net/bingfeng/archive/2006/06/20/75736.aspx
At least among those people, China’s governing gang won and as Mr. Kristoff knows well, American ideals lost.
June 20, 2006 @ 7:08 pm | Comment
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By David
I found a reply from a Chinese reader of the NYT online on Kristof’s blog. The reader said that while he, like Krisoff is relatively optimistic about the development of the internet, he wants to make a few points.
1) Kristoff is using a web blog with very low traffic. Moreover, the few words on the blog might not be seen by the censor as particularly threatening.
2) There really isn’t a definite line that can be determined on what you can say and what you can’t say and suggests a web link. http://club.cat898.com/newbbs/list.asp?boardid=1
3) Cautions that the word 30,000 web censors has been circulating after it was used in an article in “The Guardian” but there could well be many more than that.
4) Proxy servers aren’t that easy to use in China these days.
Translation: Among some middle class young people in China’s cities, Mr. Kristoff’s article was greeted with what, one might say in a polite way was “a snort of derision”. http://blog.bcchinese.net/bingfeng/archive/2006/06/20/75736.aspx
At least among those people, China’s governing gang won and as Mr. Kristoff knows well, American ideals lost.
June 20, 2006 @ 7:10 pm | Comment
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By bellevue
Well, J.K., that assertion could be ‘premature’, but you have to admit that they handled the censorship thing pretty well. And we can’t just blame them for being stubborn, refusing to die voluntarily.
One of Kristof’s Chinese blogs is gone, while the other is still kicking.
June 20, 2006 @ 9:16 pm | Comment
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By Brendan
Both gone now. Just as well; his Chinese is crap.
June 21, 2006 @ 3:38 am | Comment
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By bellevue
Yeah, no one is working. Don’t you see the Mission accomplished banner?
June 21, 2006 @ 5:06 am | Comment
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By stephen
I am starting to blog for a Chinese language news service. Can anyone recommend any good hosts or dissident online communities that would be good for promoting the blog?
June 21, 2006 @ 1:58 pm | Comment
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By stephen
I am starting to blog for a Chinese language news service. Can anyone recommend any good hosts or dissident online communities that would be good for promoting the blog?
June 21, 2006 @ 1:59 pm | Comment
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By stephen
I am starting to blog for a Chinese language news service. Can anyone recommend any good hosts or dissident online communities that would be good for promoting the blog?
June 21, 2006 @ 2:00 pm | Comment
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By davesgonechina
Kristof says: “All this underscores, I think, that China is not the police state that its leaders sometimes would like it to be; the Communist Party’s monopoly on information is crumbling, and its monopoly on power will follow.”
No, no, no, Nick. All this underscores that China is not the police state that Nicholas Kristof thought it was. Publishing some rants on the internet doesn’t prove a thing about what China’s leaders would like or believe. I guess Kristof is a good writer – he managed to misdirect the reader from noticing he’s full of shit.
June 23, 2006 @ 12:47 pm | Comment