Pressing China for More Internet, Media Reform Urged

The Chinese government’s response to “sensitive” news events this year has indicated some changes in Beijing’s strategy for controlling the media, Commissioner Daniel Blumenthal said. But reviews about the impact and effectiveness of these reforms have been mixed, said Chair Carolyn Bartholomew, pointing to China’s new media policies for foreign journalists that were made permanent in 2008. Meanwhile, the emergence of the Internet in China has challenged the Chinese government’s monopoly on the public flow of information, she said. In response, the Chinese government has maintained a sophisticated, multilayered system for filtering online content that’s partially reliant upon technology imported from the West, and also requires the compliance of many western companies which are Internet service providers in China, she said. She noted two potential policy responses to Chinese censorship: The draft legislation of the Global Online Freedom Act and the Global Network Initiative, a voluntary industry code of ethics and best practices.

Although reforms were made, the Chinese government hasn’t otherwise lived up to its pledge to make lasting change in the media environment as a result of the Olympics, said Madeline Earp, Asia research associate with the non- profit Committee to Protect Journalists. She urged the U.S. and the international community to press China to end the pattern of violent retribution meted out by local Chinese officials and others angered by critical media coverage, stop censoring the news, release all imprisoned journalists, allow Chinese journalists to work as reporters for foreign news outlets and end the use of state secret and national security laws to imprison journalists. But some comparatively independent media outlets like Caijing are growing, said Victor Shih, assistant professor of politics at Northwestern University. But he warned that there might be political forces behind some of these publications.

The most heavily targeted are dissidents or government critics who report online, Earp said. The apparatus of China’s Internet repression is considered more extensive and more advanced than in any other country, said Robert Guerra, project director for Internet Freedom with Free House. The Internet censorship system, which includes service providers, content providers and software developers, not only blocks Web content, but also monitors Internet access activities, said Robert Faris, research director with Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. Other tactics include funding individuals and groups posting pro-government content online and creating technical infrastructure to better monitor online activities, Guerra said. Faris noted a directive by the Chinese government that requires the installation of a specific filtering software product, Green Dam, with the publicly stated intent of protecting children from harmful Internet content. Yet the filtering options also include blocking of political and religious content normally associated with the Great Firewall of China, China’s sophisticated nationwide filtering system, he said. If implemented as proposed, the effect would be to increase the reach of Internet censorship to the edges of the network, adding a new and powerful control mechanism to the existing filtering system, he said. The fear is that this kind of censoring software could be shipped and used in other parts of the world, Guerra said.

With the growth of Internet subscribers, Chinese officials also increasingly worried that online tools like Twitter may pose threat to social stability, said Lawrence Liu, senior counsel with Congressional-Executive Commission on China. Authorities appeared to block nationwide access to Twitter and YouTube, remove unfavorable comments about incidents like the Uighur protest and the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and filter Internet searches for information, he said. Additionally, on the Chinese Internet, the state has sought to suppress discussion of Charter 08, a citizen’s manifesto that calls for constitutional democracy, human rights, rule of law and republican government, said Perry Link, professor of comparative literature and foreign languages at the University of California.