Monday, in a white paper released by China’s State Council called “
The Internet in China,” the government made clear its Internet policies are not changing, stating the obvious: “Laws and regulations clearly prohibit the spread of information that contains content subverting state power, undermining national unity [or] infringing upon national honor and interests.” The State Council is the highest policy-making body in
China, and its reports are official state policy. The document has six sections, and a foreword and concluding remarks, but the section “
Basic Principles and Practices of Internet Administration” will give you the government’s guidelines for making decisions about everything that will be considered acceptable online.
The regulations are not aimed at stifling China’s Internet growth: It’s worth noting that
there are more online
users in China than there are Americans—the government estimate is 348
million people—with more coming online every day. The penetration rate—the
percentage of people online—is about 30 percent (in Hong
Kong, it’s closer to 70 percent) which gives the industry plenty
of room for growth. The aim, the State Council’s paper said, is to get that
rate up to 45 percent within five years.
Those sorts of figures are the best indicator that the value
of the Internet is not lost on the government, as the report points out in its opening
paragraph: “A crystallization of human wisdom, the Internet is a significant
technological invention of the 20th century and a major symbol of contemporary
advanced productive force. The Internet has brought about profound impacts on
the world economy, politics, culture and social progress, and promoted the
transformation of social production, daily life and information dissemination.”
How is China
going to generate such growth while monitoring the content it deems might
subvert state power, undermine unity or infringe on national honor and
interests? The approach in China
involves much more than the use of technology in what the government calls the
Golden Shield Project, which a lot of people call the “Great Firewall.” As we
said in our report on media in China,
Falling Short: Olympic
Promises Go Unfulfilled As China Falters on Press Freedom,
“technology’s partner in Internet censorship is an old-fashioned
one—regulations, strict and thick, imposed on service providers. In the five
years after China first allowed private Internet accounts, in 1995, the
government issued more than 60 sets of regulations to tighten its control of
online content” and those regulation shave not stopped.
And
when laws fail, the system of self-censorship is the backbone of the
government's control of Web-based information. The government relies on service
providers to filter searches, block critical Web sites, delete objectionable
content, and monitor e-mail traffic. ISPs and Web site operators answer
directly to government censors if a posting is deemed offensive. Too many
warnings and the host is in trouble. All providers understand their
responsibility and monitor their sites daily.
The State Council knows that controlling dynamic online
content requires a dynamic response: “Internet administration is a process of
continuous practice, and the Chinese government is determined to improve its
Internet administration work.”
Last year, CPJ’s Shawn Crispin and I wrote about China’s influence on Internet policies in other
parts of Asia in our year-end essay, “Media Freedom Stalls as
China Sets the Course.” Prior to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, a chapter
called “Online Rules: A study
in Paradox” in Falling Short contained
a lengthy section on China’s
Internet policies. As we’ve pointed out, you can expect China’s attitude to expand through the rest of Asia and around the world in the coming years.
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