Case Study: China and the Internet

   As the information age comes to China, the government wants the country to become more technologically advanced and it wants to increase global commerce. At the same time, the Chinese government wants to carefully control the flow of information coming into the country through the Internet. For instance, the Chinese government has used firewall technology to prevent access to hundreds of Web sites that the government considers to be objectionable. Objectionable content includes pornographic sites, international news sources (CNN and The New York Times), and sites maintained by human rights groups. Although sites are blocked, Chinese citizens can still acquire censored information through foreign news services. For example, Chinese Internet users can send e-mail requests to receive a daily electronic summary of world news. Additionally, the Web enables Amnesty International to get information into China about Chinese human rights violations.

   The number of Chinese Internet users is growing. According to Eckholm (1999), the official count of Internet users in China was 620,000 in 1997 and that number rose to 2.1 million by the end of 1998. This is a small number considering that China has a population of 1.2 billion people. As college students and young professionals become connected to the network, Internet usage is growing. Additionally, as Chinese-made PC clones and Internet services become available, more people can access the Internet from their homes. Currently, most Chinese Internet users go online at work or school, and a number of Internet cafes have opened in major cities, such as Beijing, to offer people access to e-mail and the Web.

   Dissident Chinese exiles have flooded the country's e-mail addresses with newsletters that include items suppressed by the Chinese media. Many are stories about prodemoc-racy campaigns, worker dissatisfaction, and dissident arrests. One newsletter called VIP Reference distributes its messages to numerous Chinese e-mail accounts. To prevent the Chinese government from accusing recipients of the messages of subscribing to the newsletter, hundreds of thousands of Americans are also sent the messages. Moreover, the VIP Reference newsletter is sent from a different American address every day to make sure the Chinese government does not stop its distribution. Chinese authorities, however, sentenced a computer executive in Shanghai to a two-year prison sentence for providing VIP Reference with 30,000 Chinese e-mail addresses. When Chinese security agents suspect someone of distributing inappropriate messages, they will monitor the individual's e-mail, but although they can monitor certain individuals, they cannot monitor all of the hundreds of thousands of e-mail messages circulating through the Internet. Chinese Web designers must also strictly abide by the government's restrictions on Internet content and must avoid creating links to potentially objectionable Web sites. China is becoming a more open society, however, and the introduction of the Internet into Chinese culture could accelerate this process. Despite the attempts to censor information coming into the country, the decentralized nature of the network makes it next to impossible to stop the flow of unwanted messages in China.