Transcript Ms. Audra Ang - East

THE INTERNET IN CHINA
• 384 million users by the end of 2009
(Xinhua News Agency, Jan. 15, 2010)
• Top three uses are online music, online
news and search engines (China
Internet Network Information Center,
January)
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China has devoted extensive resources to building one of the largest
and most sophisticated filtering systems in the world. As the
Internet records extraordinary growth in services as well as users, the
Chinese government has undertaken to limit access to any content
that might potentially undermine the state's control or social
stability by pursuing strict supervision of domestic media, delegated
liability for online content providers, and increasingly, a propaganda
approach to online debate and discussion. -- opennet initiative, collaborative
partnership of three institutions: the Citizen Lab at the Munk Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto; the Berkman Center for
Internet & Society at Harvard University; and the SecDev Group (Ottawa)
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eg: green dam youth escort: government wanted web-filtering
software to be put into every new PC shipped into China to block
children from accessing porn, but critics said software also blocked
social and political commentary, plans eventually shelved
barring entry to designated domain names, Internet addresses and pages
containing specified keywords or phrases.
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deletion and removal of content
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deployment of people to track online activity
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hacking and other cyber-attacks: sites run by human rights activists
(overwhelming the servers and leaving them inaccessible), chinese exiles and
dissidents are increasingly targeted, email accounts are no longer safe,
journalists and academics are also coming under attack, possibly endangering
their sources
hiring people to write favorable, positive comments about the government in
blogs, social networking sites and blogs
psychological element, where internet users self-censor for fear of being
caught
what’s blocked?
• twitter
• youtube
• facebook
• blogs and online video sites
• search engine results for “sensitive”
topics like tibet, falun gong, tiananmen
democracy protests, charter 08 (online
campaign for democratic reforms)
“fan qiang” (scaling the Great
Firewall)
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proxy servers -- link computers to overseas servers for unfettered access eg. hotspot shield
(shut down by chinese government but people started sending their own copies to friends or
posting links on other sites that hosted it)
anonymity networks -- bounces communications around a global relay of networks, prevents
people from learning what sites you visit and what your physical location is eg; tor
informal gatherings of bloggers and journalists where they teach each other how to use
circumnavigation tools and how to access sites like twitter
download articles, photos and videos on potentially sensitive subjects in case they get taken
down, then re-post on other sites and disseminate through social networks and email lists
loosely organized groups who research china’s censorship mechanisms and uncover
companies and organizations that help build the government’s censorship system
play on words to get around censorship, poke fun at government eg “grass mud horse” which
sounds like a chinese obscenity and a photo of a “river crab wearing three watches,” another
jab at censorship and a political slogan created by former president jiang zemin, this gives an
outlet for venting and broaches the subject in a way that many people can relate to
how has new media changed
activism?
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organizing through text messaging in the past few years eg: protest in
southern china over construction of a chemical plant, anti-government
protests in tibetan communities
photos and videos show details of events that are otherwise censored
by the government -- sometimes even prove that they occurred
blogs and social networks are speedy ways to spread information to a
large number of people and are ideal arenas for discussion
instead of face-to-face meetings and phonecalls, there was email and
now skype, none are secure means but you have to do the best you
can
Rebecca MacKinnon, a visiting fellow at Princeton University’s Center for
Technology Policy and former CNN journalist. She has been researching Chinese
Internet censorship alongside global censorship trends, examining in particular how
the private sector assists government efforts to silence or manipulate citizen speech.