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Begin forwarded message: [See also China Has World's Tightest Internet Censorship, Study Finds Joseph Kahn The New York Times, 4 December 2002 http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=517 and Harvard Law School website "Empirical Analysis of Internet Filtering in China" http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/filtering/china

From: "Randolph Kluver (Assoc Prof)" <trkluver@ntu.edu.sg> Date: Wed Jul 30, 2003 4:24:26 AM America/Winnipeg To: <chineseinternetresearch@yahoogroups.com> Subject: [chineseinternetresearch] Beijing losing censorship war on the Net Reply-To: chineseinternetresearch@yahoogroups.com

Full text @ Straits Times, Singapore © 2003 http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/commentary/story/0,4386,201957-10594295 40,00.html?

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or your shorter link to the full text is:

http://makeashorterlink.com/?O15125075 JULY 28, 2003 Beijing losing censorship war on the Net By JOHN GITTINGS

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[Excerpts] "... LONDON - The Sars crisis in China has provided intriguing new evidence on how the use of modern communications - particularly Internet and mobile technology - can be used to break down the walls of official secrecy.

When Beijing sought to conceal the spread of the virus, millions of Chinese turned to their keyboards and cell phones to access banned foreign reports and censored domestic information. Internet traffic rose by 40 per cent, and cell phone traffic by 30 per cent. The government was forced to issue regulations banning 'rumours about Sars' being circulated by SMS, but to no effect. As the Caijing financial magazine commented later, the choice was between 'listening to back-street gossip or going on the Web'. It was the latest round in an ongoing struggle between a long-entrenched regime and a newly-emerging civil society for freedom of electronic information which has intensified in the past two years. The state apparatus has won some heavy-handed victories. More than 20 journalists and civil rights campaigners have been detained on charges such as 'using the Internet to subvert state power'. Several have been given jail sentences of up to 10 years. Dozens of foreign websites are routinely blocked to anyone attempting to access them through a Chinese server. Discussion groups and news forums are filtered and cleansed of 'inappropriate' material. Some experts calculate that Beijing spent US$200 million (S$350 million) last year on new surveillance equipment. Yet a relatively unfettered traffic in electronic news and comment continues to grow at a pace which no amount of technology can control. Most users observe some common-sense principles of self-censorship: No one is going to criticise a party leader by name or defend the banned Falungong sect.

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..." " ... CHANNELS OF FREEDOM

MATERIAL from Nongyou and other social-action websites is often passed on via individual e-mail or posted on bulletin boards. There is also a crossover of material between these sites and a handful of adventurous print newspapers such as the Nanfang Zhoumo (Southern Weekend). In a recent example, protests at the death in custody of Sun Zhigang, a young man held by the police in Guangzhou, were picked up by newspapers after circulating widely on the Web. Material also flows freely between the social-action groups and a number of academic sites such as Xue er Si (Study and Thought), run by Beijing law professor Yang Zhizhu, who organised the online petition calling for justice in the Sun Zhigang case. These in turn have informal links with sites outside the mainland, such as the 21st Century online magazine run from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and some more radical sites in the US. The result is a continuum of argument and dissent, from the most cautious to the most outspoken, which transcends China's national borders. Current issues now being widely debated include China's extensive use of the death penalty, the alienation of the Chinese intellectual, and the government's mishandling of the Sars crisis.

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..." " ... The controls on foreign media vary in intensity: Some, including The Washington Post and Reuters, were 'liberated' last year, but audio links to the BBC and Voice Of America Chinese-language broadcasts are still rigorously blocked.

Considerable effort goes into barring access to 'proxy servers' that can be used to mask entry to forbidden sites. Use of the Google search engine 'cache' facility for the same purpose has also been blocked. The censor's technology includes key-word recognition which, for example, prevents anyone from searching for the phrase 'Falungong' (except on official government websites). SUCCESS OR SHAME?

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..." " ... THESE blocking actions are no doubt reported to higher authorities as evidence of success in the struggle against 'poisonous weeds' - and will help justify claims for a higher budget. The operation is run by the Ministry of State Security and is an embarrassment to the Chinese Foreign Ministry which refuses to admit that it exists.

Although an intensely irritating form of censorship (especially for foreign correspondents based in China), it is an increasingly futile exercise as far as the Chinese people are concerned. The government is engaged in a losing battle against a news-hungry and increasingly sophisticated people who are finding creative ways to get past the high-tech word-based filters. Chairman Mao Zedong was right when he said that the course of battle was determined not by machines but people.

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..." " ... The writer is a specialist on China at The Guardian and was based till recently in Hong Kong and Shanghai. This article appeared in YaleGlobal Online, www.yaleglobal.yale.edu ..."

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From: "Randolph Kluver (Assoc Prof)" <trkluver@ntu.edu.sg> School of Communication and Information Nanyang Technological University 31 Nanyang Link Singapore, 637718 (65) 6790-5770 Fax (65) 6792-4329 ---------------------- --------------~-> Full text @ Straits Times, Singapore © 2003 http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/commentary/story/0,4386,201957-10594295 40,00.html?

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or your shorter link to the full text is: http://makeashorterlink.com/?O15125075 JULY 28, 2003 Beijing losing censorship war on the Net By JOHN GITTINGS [chineseinternetresearch] To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: chineseinternetresearch-unsubscribe@egroups.com

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(Gandhi)

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[See also China Has World's Tightest Internet Censorship, Study Finds Joseph Kahn The New York Times, 4 December 2002 http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=517 "... "Defying predictions that the Internet was inherently too diverse and malleable for state control, China has denied a vast majority of its 46 million Internet users access to information that it feels could weaken its authoritarian power." That's the conclusion of a new survey of internet use in China done by a team of researchers at Harvard University. The six-month study found that "Beijing blocked thousands of the most popular news, political and religious sites, along with selected entertainment and educational destinations." Because all internet traffic is routed through a group of central servers in China, the internet may be easier to control than other forms of telecommunications such as phones and faxes. - YaleGlobal ..."

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Click here to view the study on the Harvard Law School website "Empirical Analysis of Internet Filtering in China" http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/filtering/china Jonathan Zittrain* and Benjamin Edelman**, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard Law School [ Overview - Methodology - Analysis & Summary Statistics - Conclusions - Technical Appendix ][ Specific Blocked Sites - Highlights - Analysis by Google Keyword (details | chart) ] ..."