LoungeMachine
01-15-2006, 10:39 AM
JANUARY 13, 2006 Kids
•
By Bruce Einhorn
How China Controls the Internet
Nicholas Bequelin of Human Rights Watch in Hong Kong explains, and he says U.S. companies need to take a stand against Beijing
The news that Microsoft (MSFT ) shut down a Chinese blogger's site at the request of Beijing officials is bringing a renewed focus on the role U.S. companies play in helping China control the Internet. It's no secret that Western businesses that want to enter the Internet market in China have to do some unsavory things. The Chinese government, determined to prevent dissidents from using the Net to promote taboo subjects such as the Falun Gong religious movement, formal independence for Taiwan, or an end to Communist Party rule, pressures providers to play by Chinese rules and control the content that's available for local Net surfers (see BW Online, 1/12/06, "The Great Firewall of China"). Advertisement
When companies do restrict what their Chinese users send or read on the Net, however, they face howls of criticism from activists, bloggers, and ordinary folks abroad who think that multinationals should not be helping Beijing police the Net. Nicholas Bequelin, the China research director for Human Rights Watch in Hong Kong, recently spoke with Bruce Einhorn of BusinessWeek's Hong Kong bureau about censorship and the Net in China. Edited excerpts follow:
How big a role do foreign companies play in helping China control the Net?
China would not have succeeded in censoring the Net without the support and cooperation of foreign IT companies. This is the inescapable truth. This is the problem that has to be addressed.
Yahoo! (YHOO ) got slammed last year for cooperating with a Chinese government investigation that led to the imprisonment of a journalist. Do you think Yahoo acted irresponsibly?
One of the main problems with the Internet debate in China is that people stretch their case too far and lose credibility. The whole Yahoo thing is objectionable on moral and ethical grounds, but nobody could say that it was improper for Yahoo to give the information about the user.
But couldn't Yahoo have refused to cooperate?
The idea that a company operating in China could say, "Oh well, I'm not giving you this information" is not sustainable in the end. The Yahoo case was a tragic illustration of the cost of doing business in China. We know abstractly that you have to make compromises when you operate in China, but this case showed what it means. People really end up in jail. But the vilification of companies for being complicit is self-defeating.
So do you think Western companies are doing anything wrong?
The fact is that foreign IT suppliers and companies are willingly, knowingly assisting the Chinese police in suppressing political dissent.
What should people concerned about human rights do about that?
The business interests are so large that you will never stop this. What do you say? Pull out of China? "If we don't sell, someone else will," that's what people respond. And in the case of IT, China is definitely going to get it because of their own companies and the nature of the IT industry.
Even if Yahoo is not there, they will have something else. Iif Google is not there, they will have something else. What is objectionable is the stonewalling that companies do. They don't take any responsibility, admit that there are certain grey areas and that their technology can be used for repression, or mitigate this.
On your last point, what could they do?
They could mitigate this first by being more open, by having a firmer commitment to their corporate responsibility charters and their codes of conduct, or by being willing to comply with things such as the U.N. global norms for businesses and the world summit for information systems. They could try to address this. If all companies did this, there would be nothing that China could do about it.
Back in the 1990s, when the Internet was first getting established in China, many people in the West thought that the Chinese wouldn't be able to control it. What happened?
The assumption was that the Internet is impossible to control and censor. [President] Clinton said that it's like trying to nail Jello to the wall. Well, they managed to nail the Jello pretty well. Year after year, we see that China is gaining control of Internet content.
How?
One thing that was totally overlooked by the optimistic talk in the U.S. is that the control of the Internet doesn't rest so much with technology, but with the classic methods of press and media control. The person who manages is the person who bears responsibility. The keystone of the censorship system in China is that basically ownership is censorship. If you own something -- Web site editor, newspaper editor, press group owner -- you are responsible for what is there.
There is no grey zone: If you operate this portal, this BBS, you are responsible for what is on it. The key thing is you make the decision. It's not the party that makes the decision. They are not going to scrutinize every BBS. You make the decision, they tell you. Companies responsible to shareholders and staff will, of course, err on the side of caution and self-censorship.
But there's no way to prevent people on bulletin boards and blogs from commenting on news when it happens, right? Weren't there lots of people who were writing about the benzene spill in China's northeast last month that contaminated the water supply of Harbin and other cities in northern China?
Reading the BBS during Harbin episode, you could find a lot of outright criticism of the party. But every single major incident is the same. For all these incidents you have a wave of Internet discussion, and it gives an impression that the party doesn't really control this anymore. But this is omitting a fundamental characteristic of how information works. Information is not only circulation. Archiving and retrieval is even more important. But none of the information stays.
Why not?
After the crisis all of this will be wiped out. In two months, you won't find anything, because the censors will have gotten to it. The owners, the editors of the Web sites, receive instructions from the propaganda dept of the party. Everything is washed away. READER COMMENTS
Einhorn is a correspondent in BusinessWeek's Hong Kong bureau
:mad:
•
By Bruce Einhorn
How China Controls the Internet
Nicholas Bequelin of Human Rights Watch in Hong Kong explains, and he says U.S. companies need to take a stand against Beijing
The news that Microsoft (MSFT ) shut down a Chinese blogger's site at the request of Beijing officials is bringing a renewed focus on the role U.S. companies play in helping China control the Internet. It's no secret that Western businesses that want to enter the Internet market in China have to do some unsavory things. The Chinese government, determined to prevent dissidents from using the Net to promote taboo subjects such as the Falun Gong religious movement, formal independence for Taiwan, or an end to Communist Party rule, pressures providers to play by Chinese rules and control the content that's available for local Net surfers (see BW Online, 1/12/06, "The Great Firewall of China"). Advertisement
When companies do restrict what their Chinese users send or read on the Net, however, they face howls of criticism from activists, bloggers, and ordinary folks abroad who think that multinationals should not be helping Beijing police the Net. Nicholas Bequelin, the China research director for Human Rights Watch in Hong Kong, recently spoke with Bruce Einhorn of BusinessWeek's Hong Kong bureau about censorship and the Net in China. Edited excerpts follow:
How big a role do foreign companies play in helping China control the Net?
China would not have succeeded in censoring the Net without the support and cooperation of foreign IT companies. This is the inescapable truth. This is the problem that has to be addressed.
Yahoo! (YHOO ) got slammed last year for cooperating with a Chinese government investigation that led to the imprisonment of a journalist. Do you think Yahoo acted irresponsibly?
One of the main problems with the Internet debate in China is that people stretch their case too far and lose credibility. The whole Yahoo thing is objectionable on moral and ethical grounds, but nobody could say that it was improper for Yahoo to give the information about the user.
But couldn't Yahoo have refused to cooperate?
The idea that a company operating in China could say, "Oh well, I'm not giving you this information" is not sustainable in the end. The Yahoo case was a tragic illustration of the cost of doing business in China. We know abstractly that you have to make compromises when you operate in China, but this case showed what it means. People really end up in jail. But the vilification of companies for being complicit is self-defeating.
So do you think Western companies are doing anything wrong?
The fact is that foreign IT suppliers and companies are willingly, knowingly assisting the Chinese police in suppressing political dissent.
What should people concerned about human rights do about that?
The business interests are so large that you will never stop this. What do you say? Pull out of China? "If we don't sell, someone else will," that's what people respond. And in the case of IT, China is definitely going to get it because of their own companies and the nature of the IT industry.
Even if Yahoo is not there, they will have something else. Iif Google is not there, they will have something else. What is objectionable is the stonewalling that companies do. They don't take any responsibility, admit that there are certain grey areas and that their technology can be used for repression, or mitigate this.
On your last point, what could they do?
They could mitigate this first by being more open, by having a firmer commitment to their corporate responsibility charters and their codes of conduct, or by being willing to comply with things such as the U.N. global norms for businesses and the world summit for information systems. They could try to address this. If all companies did this, there would be nothing that China could do about it.
Back in the 1990s, when the Internet was first getting established in China, many people in the West thought that the Chinese wouldn't be able to control it. What happened?
The assumption was that the Internet is impossible to control and censor. [President] Clinton said that it's like trying to nail Jello to the wall. Well, they managed to nail the Jello pretty well. Year after year, we see that China is gaining control of Internet content.
How?
One thing that was totally overlooked by the optimistic talk in the U.S. is that the control of the Internet doesn't rest so much with technology, but with the classic methods of press and media control. The person who manages is the person who bears responsibility. The keystone of the censorship system in China is that basically ownership is censorship. If you own something -- Web site editor, newspaper editor, press group owner -- you are responsible for what is there.
There is no grey zone: If you operate this portal, this BBS, you are responsible for what is on it. The key thing is you make the decision. It's not the party that makes the decision. They are not going to scrutinize every BBS. You make the decision, they tell you. Companies responsible to shareholders and staff will, of course, err on the side of caution and self-censorship.
But there's no way to prevent people on bulletin boards and blogs from commenting on news when it happens, right? Weren't there lots of people who were writing about the benzene spill in China's northeast last month that contaminated the water supply of Harbin and other cities in northern China?
Reading the BBS during Harbin episode, you could find a lot of outright criticism of the party. But every single major incident is the same. For all these incidents you have a wave of Internet discussion, and it gives an impression that the party doesn't really control this anymore. But this is omitting a fundamental characteristic of how information works. Information is not only circulation. Archiving and retrieval is even more important. But none of the information stays.
Why not?
After the crisis all of this will be wiped out. In two months, you won't find anything, because the censors will have gotten to it. The owners, the editors of the Web sites, receive instructions from the propaganda dept of the party. Everything is washed away. READER COMMENTS
Einhorn is a correspondent in BusinessWeek's Hong Kong bureau
:mad: