China Digital Times

China news tagged with: Internet censorship (228)

• China Shuts Sex Health Websites to Ordinary Users

  
  

  Image from Shanghaiist

  In an effort to curb poronography and other illicit web content with the Green Dam filter, the Chinese government has come up against battles with WTO regulations, Google, and increasingly angry netizens. Now the Ministry of Health (MOH) is cracking down on sex-health web content. From Reuters:

  Ordinary web users in China will be banned from surfing sex-related medical and research websites from next month, amid an Internet crackdown on pornographic online content, according to new regulations.

  Medical information service providers must install software to ensure only professionals can access sites that carry information and research about sex, the regulations on the website of the Ministry of Health (www.moh.gov.cn) said.

  “It is prohibited to spread pornographic content in the name of sex-related scientific research,” the regulations said.

  The rules do not specify exactly what is covered by “scientific research” into sex.

  Also from the Wall Street Journal:

  Sex is a taboo subject in China, but rising incomes and increasing freedom of choice for how people behave have created more interest in sexual issues and reproductive education. Many experts say education on the subject remains inadequate.

  Pan Suiming, director of the Institute of Sexuality and Gender at Renmin University in Beijing, says people should have the freedom to find information about sex for themselves. The new policy on sex Web sites “is mistaken,” he says.

  Liang Peiding, who runs a site that offers information on issues such as sexual dysfunctions and medicine, says the health ministry shouldn’t have the jurisdiction to monitor online content. The regulation “is not supported by the law and I think they are making a mess of it,” he said. “Currently in China, parents never talk about sex with their kids, who instead gain sexual content through pornographic films. … We can use the Internet to guide them properly.”

  Under the new restrictions, sex-related sites must only use testimony from specialists in the field. Violators of the rules can be fined up to 30,000 yuan (about $4,400).

  Follow the ongoing saga with CDT’s Green Dam and Internet Censorship tags.

  » Read more
  • June 25, 2009 12:14 PM

• Google Site Access in China Briefly Disrupted

  

  (Update: this post was previously entitled: Censorship 2.0: China Blocks Google Search, Apps, Gmail, And More.)

  From TechCrunch:

  The People’s Republic of China has apparently barred its citizens from visiting a host of Google properties, including the main search engine, Google Apps, Google Reader and Gmail. A search on Twitter (preferred hashtag seems to have become #fuckgfw) reveals that many Chinese are complaining, particularly about not being able to use the search engine, although it appears Google.cn can still be reached at this point.

  The block of the services appears to have become apparent to users around 10 AM Eastern Time.

  And from the Telegraph:

  It seems that access to Google.com and Gmail, Google’s web-based email service, could not be accessed through proxy servers, indicating that the websites had been centrally blocked.

  In Beijing, there are reports of patchy access, but access appears to have been largely reinstated, though other areas of China remain in a Google blackout.

  The move is part of an ongoing campaign by the Chinese government, which last week started to block access to Google after accusing the search engine of displaying links to “pornographic” websites among its search results, according to Xinhua, China’s official news agency.

  Also from Reuters:

  Internet users in China were unable to open the main site of Google, the world’s biggest search engine, late on Wednesday evening, and the company’s China chief asked users for patience while it investigated.

  Users in Shanghai and Beijing said they got an error message when they tried to reach the U.S. company’s (GOOG.O) main search page (www.google.com), its Chinese search page (www.google.com.cn) and mail service (www.gmail.com) between around 10pm (1400 GMT) and 11pm local time.

  It was not clear how widespread the blockage was, but the company’s China chief Kai-Fu Lee put a posting on his twitter page after news of outages began to spread within China asking China users for patience while the company investigated.

  “We have received your feedback, we are just investigating, please be patient and wait for feedback from Google overseas, thanks for your support,” he wrote.

  A company spokeswoman at Google in the U.S. said the firm was checking reports of problems with access in China. Most users appeared to get access again by 11 p.m.

  Reaction from Chinese netizens? Here is a typical one:

  

  

  » Read more
  • June 24, 2009 11:48 AM

• US Lodges China Censorship Complaint

  

  The U.S. has lodged a formal complaint to the Chinese government over Green Dam software. From the Financial Times:

  The development is a rare direct intervention by the US over internet freedom, which has steadily risen in importance as an issue between the two countries in recent years. US technology companies see it as a back-door way of keeping them out of the Chinese market.

  China has ordered PC makers to load internet filtering software from a Chinese company, Green Dam, on all machines on sale from July 1. The order, officially directed at filtering pornography, could give officials far more power to block political content as well.

  “We view with concern any attempt to restrict the free flow of information,” said Ian Kelly, a State department spokesman.

  [...] The US embassy in Beijing said representatives had met officials at the ministry of industry and information technology and the ministry of commerce on Friday.

  » Read more
  • June 21, 2009 7:24 PM

• Regulators Target Google for Pornographic Content, CCTV Airs Fake Interview, Netizens React

  

  As previously reported on CDT, Chinese government regulators have ordered Google to suspend some of its search functions due to the pornographic content available through its search engine.  More details from the New York Times:

  The Chinese government disabled some search functions on the Chinese-language Web site of Google on Friday, saying the site was linking too often to pornographic and vulgar content.

  Government officials met with managers of the Chinese operations of Google on Thursday afternoon to warn them that the company would be punished if it did not remove the offending material from the Web site, according to a report on Friday by Xinhua, the state news agency.

  [...]On Friday evening, the associative-word feature of the Web site appeared to have been disabled. That is the function that displays a drop-down menu of words related to a search word that is typed into the search engine. The previous evening, reporters on China Central Television, the state television network, showed how typing in the Chinese word for son, erzi, could pull up associated terms that have lewd connotations.

  Additionally, the government has ordered Google to block links to foreign websites from search results on its China Google page.  From the Dow Jones Newswires via Total Telecom:

  Chinese regulators have ordered Google Inc. to suspend search services for foreign Web sites via its Chinese Web site, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Friday, a day after the company was warned over pornographic content available through its search engine.

  It wasn’t immediately clear if the order applies to all foreign Web sites or just certain sites. Currently, foreign Web sites are still searchable and accessible from Google’s Chinese home page.

  Google was also ordered to suspend searches for certain key words when summoned by unspecified regulators Thursday afternoon, the report said.

  On June 18, CCTV aired a report on Google’s pornographic content which has drawn swift criticism from Chinese netizens, particularly for a false interview with a supposed ‘college student’ named Gao Ye.  (Watch the full CCTV segment, including the Gao Ye interview, on Sina.com.)  EastSouthNorthWest translates a post by Xiao Tian at Oxn.in (Chinese) summarizing netizen skepticism:

  On the same day, netizens began to question quickly.  Search engines frequently offer likely search terms because these are popular with other users.  As such, the search engines are not responsible because they are only reporting what users are “voting” on with their searches.  Thus, when Google.cn proposes certain relevant search terms, they are merely informing you what other netizens are most commonly searching for.  They are reflecting the facts of life, and it shows that Google.cn is being fair and objective.  Rather than blaming the search engines, we should be blaming people for wanting to look up pornography which proliferate on the Chinese Internet.

  Similarly, other search engines such as Baidu and Bing contain the same kinds of pornographic information, but CCTV completely ignores them.  Netizens made screen captures to show that Baidu is no less vulgar than Google.cn …

  

  Soon after this CCTV segment aired, the Southern Metropolis Daily (Chinese) reported that the interviewed university student Gao Ye was in fact a CCTV intern.  Netizens have launched the human flesh search engine.  Again translated by EastSouthNorthWest:

  Yesterday morning, a netizen discovered that there was a user named “Gao Ye” at the social networking site Xiaonei.  Based upon the photos, this is the same Gao Ye who appeared the day before on <Focus Interview>.  According to a conversation with a friend on June 17, Gao Ye is presently an intern with the CCTV program <Focus Interview>.  Also, other netizens found Gao Ye and his friends’ Sina.com blogs which said that he was going to become an intern at CCTV.  This information was later posted at Cat898 Forum, Tianya Form and other websites.  The reporter confirmed with a worker at CCTV’s <Focus Interview> program group that Gao Ye is indeed an intern there.

  The human flesh search quickly located and published Gao Ye’s school, QQ number, mobile phone number and other personal information.  His Xiaonei page was flooded with scornful comments.  Not satisfied with direct personal attacks, some netizens began a human flesh search on his girlfriend.  Her blog, Xiaonei page, QQ number and other information were published.  Her photos with Gao Ye were posted all over the place alongside personal attacks.

  Faced with the pressure from the powerful human flesh search, Gao Ye and his girlfriend deleted their blogs.  Gao Ye’s Xiaonei space now only has the message: “Account canceled by the user.”

  ChinaSMACK has translations of netizen reactions to the CCTV report and also a translation of a sarcastic letter to the ‘university student’ Gao Ye from Hudong Baike (Chinese):

  A Letter To Gao Ye

  Schoolmate Gao Ye, hello: You probably do not know me, but I know you from Focus Interview. I attentively listened to you talk about the “Google China using yellow pictures [pornography] and vulgar content to poison your schoolmate” thing, and was deeply touched and learned a lot. Whether or not that schoolmate is really yourself is not important, but I hope to give you some sincere advice.

  One, you must not look at pornography and vulgar content too much, Schoolmate Gao Ye. I do not know if you with your schoolmate have reached pornography and vulgar content through links on Google China, but as a big brother who has matured from youth, let me say to you that normally you must not watch too much A片 and avoid vulgar content. These are bad for your skin. These past two days, did you stay up all night going online to find 毛片 ["hand films", pornography films] look at pornography doing your homework in preparation for the CCTV interview? Look at yourself, just two days and you no longer look human: slackened eyes; wrinkles on your forward; gaping mouth. That’s why big brother is offering you a piece of advice: look at less porn and go outside more, wouldn’t that be good? Another thing, there are always at least a few girls in your classes, right? Occasionally molesting them a little is definitely more exciting than porn.

  Two, you must not accept interviews from CCTV about vulgar content, Schoolmate Gao Ye. It is not that I am jealous of you getting on CCTV, really. It is because after 60 years of studying CCTV’s programs I have discovered that every schoolmate that has gone on CCTV to interview about vulgar content always eventually has a bad fate. Let us use schoolmate Zhang Shufan from the year before last as an example. Just days before Teacher Edison Chen’s photo exhibition, CCTV’s “Xin Wen Lian Bo” broadcast “Schoolmate Zhang Shufan’s interview about pornography and vulgar content”. At the time, Schoolmate Zhang Shufan only said “very yellow, very violent” these few words, but do you know what happened to her? There were even more wretched/perverted pictures but I will not post them here. You as a good young lad currently studying in university should know what accepting this kind of interview will do for your future prospects.

  » Read more
  • June 20, 2009 2:31 PM

• Green Dam Filter Software ‘Not Compulsory’

  

  The Green Dam filter that has caused much controversy over the last week may not be a “compulsory” addition for computers. Cui Jia of China Daily reports:

  The authorities are only requiring PC makers to include the porn-filtering software, the Green Dam-Youth Escort program, in their products and not making it mandatory for consumers to use the filter, officials said Monday.

  “The PC makers only need to save the setup files of the program on the hard drives of the computers, or provide CD-ROMs containing the program with their PC packages,” said an official of the department of software service under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, who did not want to be named.

  PC users have the “final say” over installing the filter and recent reports of the government compelling them to use the software was “a misunderstanding”, the official said.

  Oiwan Lam from Global Voices Advocacy writes about the government’s push back against the anti-Green Dam sentiment:

  On June 10th, the central propaganda department issued a notice reminding all the media to report positively on Green Dam, Youth Escort, the filter and spyware to be installed in all PCs sold in China.

  [...] Given the propaganda department’s notice, people were surprised to see that the government’s mouthpiece people.com.cn’s nationalistic “strong country” forum had created a special page (removed) and criticized the Ministry of Information Industry and Technology for taking the decision without consulting the public. Moreover, a poll in the forum showed that more than 80% of the netizens is against the introduction of the compulsory filter on their PCs.

  However, the special topic page only stay[ed] online for two days, it was removed today (June 15), together with the poll.

  » Read more
  • June 16, 2009 1:36 AM

• Unofficial Fan Club for Party Leaders Closed

  

  Grassroots Internet ‘fan clubs’ for Party officials are meeting with official censure.  Zhang Feifei writes a special report for the Global Times:

  He came hunting for news of “handsome Wang”, officially Wang Yang, the Party secretary of Guangdong Province. Mao Rui instead found a notice on the homepage of the Fans Club for PRC Officials: “Closed ‘for personal reasons’” on February 5.

  [...]Both Zhejiang Province and Yiwu information offices declined to explain the closure.

  “It looks like the local government still think it’s too early to have such fans’ things,” said Professor Mao Shoulong, associate dean of the Academy of Public Policy in Renmin University of China, Beijing. “They may still worry about some radical comments and reactions of fans on the Internet will endanger the stability of local society.”

  Said Professor Liu Qinglong of the School of Public Policy and Management at Tsinghua University in Beijing, “A site based on pure grass roots usually lacks efficient management, and communication can easily get out of control.

  » Read more
  • June 14, 2009 1:57 PM

• Technical, Legal, and Political Blunders: Ingredients of the Green Dam Debacle (Updated with Cartoons)

  

  China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) announced earlier this month that all PCs sold inside China must come pre-installed with the Green Dam-Youth Escort Internet filtering software.  This new regulation has drawn considerable public backlash for several reasons.

  On the technical front, and as previously reported on CDT, the Green Dam software poses serious security risks to computer users.  Read the whole Analysis of the Green Dam Censorware System by researchers from the Computer Science and Engineering Division at the University of Michigan.

  In Academics: Five Obstacles for “Green Dam”, Justrecently summarizes and translates some challenges Chinese lawyers have brought against the legality of pre-installing Green Dam:

  Shanghai’s Xin Min Evening News (新民晚报) reports that Profs Zhou Ze (周泽), a lawyer with China Youth University for Political Sciences in Beijing (中国青年政治学院), and Wei Yongzheng (魏永征, probably often pronounced in a Cantonese way, as Wei is from Hong Kong) have applied to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, for information disclosure and for a hearing.

  [...]Zhou’s and Wei’s case is not about contents, but about legality: they believe that the ministry’s notice of prior installation of internet filtering software on computers of June 9 violates several laws, among them the anti-monopoly law. All in all, their analysis spells out five legal obstacles for the software.

  One is that the plan violates the Anti Unfair Competition Law. Zhou and Wei refer to its article 7:

  And in Imagethief’s opinion, Communication is the real lesson from the Green Dam Youth Escort fiasco:

  But despite what you may think, the government’s real problem wasn’t in the procurement process or obviously less-than-rigorous technical evaluation. It was in the public communication, which was nonexistent. This is a bit of surprise because on average, Chinese government bodies have become significantly better at public communication in the past few years, developing a level of responsiveness to public opinion that would have been unthinkable a couple of decades ago. But the radar was definitely switched off in this situation.

  [...]It’s conceivable that the authorities could have pulled this off if they had taken a few basic steps. First, it would have been good to have a period of public consultation. At least that would have provided a chance to assess public reaction and respond appropriately prior to making a commitment. They also could have used that period to defuse some of the negative reaction from the PC manufacturers, all of which are publicly walking a fine diplomatic line, and privately lobbying like Jack Abramoff on poppers and Red Bull.

  [...]Instead, the authorities mandated bad software by fiat without warning anyone. In the face of the entirely predictable backlask, they are reduced to their usual double-pronged approach to managing public opinion, telling the mainstream commercial media to tone down the criticism and running a happy-banner up the trusty Xinhua flagpole. Good luck with that. Imagethief stands by his original judgment: In six months, this will all be conveniently flushed down the memory hole. You might want to order a new PC soon just for the souvenir value.

  See also some of the words and phrases filtered out by Green Dam on Wikilinks. Following cartoons are some examples of netizens’ reaction to the Green Dam. They call it “Green Bully Lady.”

  	..

  

  

  更多绿坝娘漫画欣赏，请移步百度绿坝娘贴吧。

  » Read more
  • June 14, 2009 1:39 PM

• China Faces Criticism Over New Software Censor

  

  After the Chinese government announced that all new computers would be required to have pre-installed filtering dubbed the Green Dam, whose main purpose is supposed to block “unhealthy” content like pornography, China is getting resistance from citizens and software makers, like Microsoft. From the New York Times:

  Industry executives, free-speech advocates and many computer users have reacted angrily to the new mandate, which gives manufacturers until July 1 to preinstall the software on millions of new machines.

  “The compulsory installation of filtering software is a whole lot of useless flopping about,” said an editorial in The Wuhan Evening News.

  Computer makers in the United States say it will be impossible to fulfill the requirement by the end of the month and have asked the Chinese government to reconsider the directive. They say it raises thorny questions about censorship and whether manufacturers will be liable if the software — designed by a company with ties to China’s military and public security agencies — conflicts with operating systems or causes computers to crash.

  “To be honest, nobody really knows what this software is capable of,” said one executive at an American computer maker who spoke on the condition of anonymity because his company was still trying to work with the government on the issue. Computer experts fear that it could allow the government to monitor Internet use and collect personal information.

  Also from the Wall Street Journal:

  In a statement Tuesday, four U.S. technology-industry associations urged the Chinese government to “reconsider implementing its new mandatory filtering software requirement.”

  “We believe there should be an open and healthy dialogue on how parental control software can be offered in the market in ways that ensure privacy, system reliability, freedom of expression, the free flow of information, security and user choice,” said the statement, released by the Information Technology Industry Council, the Software & Information Industry Association, the Telecommunications Industry Association and TechAmerica.

  Concern in China also has grown. A commentary Wednesday in China Youth Daily, a major state-run newspaper, argued that information about the government’s deal with the two companies that created Green Dam should be made public, and questioned the ministry’s right to issue a regulation that is “forced into the public’s private life.”

  Moreover, the BBC News reports a possible risk with the new software:

  “We found a series of software flaws,” explained Isaac Mao, a blogger and social entrepreneur in China, as well as a research fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

  For example, he said, tests had shown that communications between the software and the servers at the company that developed the program were unencrypted.

  Mr Mao told BBC News that this could allow hackers to “steal people’s private information” or “place malicious script” on computers in the network to “affect [a] large scale disaster.”

  For example, a hacker could use malicious code to take control of PCs using the software.

  Also from People’s Daily:

  Zhang Chenmin, general manager of Zhengzhou-based Jinhui Computer System Engineering Company, which developed the software, said yesterday only four categories were considered “unhealthy”, namely pornography, violence, homosexuality and illegal activities including drug trafficking.

  But Zhang declined to release his blacklist, saying it was a commercial secret.

  He did say, however, the software does not block sensitive key words or IP addresses.

  A dialog box during installation also claimed the product “cannot guarantee to filter all unhealthy information on the Internet, nor guarantee all information being filtered is completely unhealthy”.

   

  chinaSMACK also has translated some netizens’ reactions.

  See more stories about the Green Dam on CDT.

  » Read more
  • June 10, 2009 9:29 PM

• China Requires Pre-Installed Internet Filter on All New Computers (Updated)

  

  From Xinhua:

  China said Tuesday it would have all new computers in China pre-installed with a filter software, in a bid to protect minors from “unhealthy information” from the Internet.

  All computers produced or sold in China after July 1 would be installed with such software, said the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MITT).

  Mandatory pre-installation of the ‘Green Dam-Youth Escort’ filter has already come under attack from foreign computer industries.  From the Taipei Times:

  China yesterday defended a new requirement that personal computers sold in the country carry a software that filters online content, just hours after Microsoft said the rule raised issues of freedom of expression, privacy and security that “need to be properly addressed.”

  The statement by the US software giant came after a US computer industry association denounced the Chinese move and leading US personal computer makers said they were studying its ramifications.

  Foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang (秦剛) defended Beijing’s administration of the Internet, saying it was in accordance with the law and that the software “is aimed at blocking and filtering some unhealthy content, including pornography and violence.”

  And from BBC:

  Critics have complained that [the new screening software] could also be used to stop Chinese internet users searching for politically sensitive information.

  But Mr Qin, speaking at a regular press briefing, said China promoted the healthy development of the internet.

  [...]The aim is to build a healthy and harmonious online environment that does not poison young people’s minds, according to the directive [issued July 1 by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology].

  Beijing based financial magazine Caijing published the following text on this topic, translated by CDT:

  Notice Concerning Pre-installation of Green Web Access Filtering Software

  Associated Work Units:

  In order to create a green, healthy, and harmonious internet
  environment, to avoid exposing youth to the harmful effects of bad
  information, the Ministry of Information Industry, The Central
  Spiritual Civilization Office, and The Commerce Ministry, in
  accordance with the requirements of “The Government Purchasing Law,”
  are using central funds to purchase rights to “Green Dam Flower Season
  Escort”(Henceforth “Green Dam”) … for one year along with associated
  services, which will be freely provided to the public. The software is
  for general use and testing. The software can effectively filter
  improper language and images and is prepared for use by computer
  factories.

  In order to improve the government’s ability to deal with Web content
  of low moral character, and preserve the healthy development of
  children, the regulation and demands pertaining to the software are as
  follows:

  1) Computers produced and sold in China must have the latest version
  of “Green Dam” pre-installed, imported computers should have the
  latest version of the software installed prior to sale.
  2) The software should be installed on computer hard drives and
  available discs for subsequent restoration
  3) The providers of “Green Dam” have to provide support to computer
  manufacturers to facilitate installation
  4) Computer manufacturers must complete installation and testing prior
  to the end of June. As of July 1, all computers should have “Green
  Dam” pre-installed.

  5) Every month computer manufacturers and the provider of Green Dam
  should give MII data on monthly sales and the pre-installation of the
  software. By February 2010, an annual report should be submitted.

  If pre-installation does not happen on time or reports aren’t made on
  time, given incorrectly, or not given at all, the MII will mandate
  another report or a correction within a limited time period.

  ESWN blog translated following comments from Chinese netizens about the “Green Dam” software:

  - Hello everybody, I am a teacher at a school and I wish to make the following comments. First, the school computers are always restored to their original conditions each time after they are used. Therefore, all monitoring data will be lost every time that the computer is turned off. Therefore, there is nothing to monitor afterwards. Second, this software does not have a network edition. For a school with many computers, it is not easy to administer this software one computer at a time. This is impractical.

  - I don’t want to discuss whether the functionalities of Green Dam are good or bad, but it is a nuisance because of all the upgrading that goes on. We are a rural school, and we are using rural distance learning equipment (namely, Lenovo computers). If we install Green Dam, then we cannot do simultaneous network broadcasts or hard disk protection. Even if Green Dam guarantees safe Internet usage, how are we to maintain the software on our computers? Our computer instructor is going to sit around all day to watch Green Dam being upgraded one computer at a time. I am going to faint! Our supervisory leaders must not know how to use computers!

  - Let me say something here. We were ordered to install the software. So I have to come to this website and curse. After we installed the software, many normal websites are banned. For example, it is normal for students to like games such as 4399, but not any more … many news reports have certain normal words but they are banned … for example, when reports that there is a campaign against pornographic websites, the software bans the story because the term “pornographic websites” was used. Don’t tell me how great the software technology is, because this is a piece of junk. When we need to look up some course-related material, there is always some provocative advertisements on the pages so we can’t access them anymore. Why doesn’t the state just ban those advertisements directly? I want to curse someone out …

  Also from LA Times:

  The order by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology was unprecedented in scope: All personal computers sold in the country as of July 1 would have to include government-sponsored Internet filtering software.

  But just how the plan, which would potentially affect hundreds of millions of computer users, would be carried out remains unclear. The rules, issued last month but made public this week, require computer manufacturers to install software whose stated aim is to shield minors from pornography and other “harmful” material.

  Proponents of Internet freedom worry that the plan would expand the reach of one of the world’s most stringent domestic censorship programs. Restricted access to politically sensitive material is a way of life in China. YouTube has been blocked since April.

  Update: See also “The Green Dam, be careful probing” by Hu Yong, translated by Danwei and an article from the English-language version of Global Times.

  Update (6/11/09): Alice Xin Liu writes at the Guardian:

  It is well known that western internet companies such as Yahoo and Microsoft censor content from Chinese blogs. In 2006, Yahoo was lambasted as China’s strictest censor of English language political content; in 2005, Microsoft blocked a popular blog by Chinese journalist Michael Anti for its outspoken content on freedom of speech and press.

  However, the censorship efforts of western commercial blog hosts are not in the same league as the measure made this week by the Chinese government, who ordered that Green Dam Youth Escort – a government-developed software that filters pornographic and violent content from websites – be installed on every mainland manufactured computer after 1 July. Although the software’s designers have attempted to reassure observers that the software will only be used to target five categories of content – “adult/pornography, extreme adult/pornography, violent games, homosexuality, and illegal activities/drugs” – concerns remain that the government will use the filtering system to aid its political agenda.

  [...]Western companies are hamstrung because the legality of the scheme cannot be called into question. The organisations behind the project are Jinhui Computer System Engineering and the Beijing Dazheng Human Language Technology academy. The former was chosen by the government to develop the software. This in itself is a point of contention – it was “chosen”, despite concerns voiced by critics over a “monopoly”, profits go to the government and the company. Although the academy aided in thedevelopment of the software, Jinhui has been the focus for the anger of online commentaters and forums, who have questioned the financial wastage involved in the project. There are suggestions that the 41.7m yuan (£3.7m) might have been better used elsewhere, such as education, healthcare reform or improving the conditions of the poor – especially as sceptics have suggested the software will prove relatively easy to defeat.

  » Read more
  • June 9, 2009 11:18 AM

• Social Networking Returns to China

  

  From the Wall Street Journal China Blog:

  Last Tuesday, at around 5 p.m., Internet users across mainland China began reporting problems accessing popular social networking sites, such as Twitter.com, the Yahoo (YHOO)-owned photo-sharing site Flickr.com, and Microsoft’s (MSFT) Live.com, Bing.com and Hotmail. The sudden unavailability of these sites led many Internet users to suspect that they had been blocked due to sensitivities over the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown on June 4. And on Wednesday, dozens of Chinese Web sites also announced that they would be closed for technical maintenance for several days.

  Now, it looks like most of these sites are back, though some popular sites that were inaccessible before last week remain so. These include blogs hosted on blogspot.com and the video-sharing site YouTube.com, which has been unavailable for several weeks. Blogspot and YouTube are both owned by Google (GOOG).

  Ironically, the move had the effect of drawing more attention to China’s so-called “Great Firewall” among Internet users, and some of those in China were able to continue to access the blocked sites through proxies or third-party software applications. On Twitter, a number of users vented their frustration by adopting obscene variants of a hash tag that included the acronym for the Great Firewall, “gfw”.

  » Read more
  • June 9, 2009 2:18 AM

• Microsoft: China Web Filtering Raises Issues

  

  After a government order announced that all new computers in China would be required to have pre-installed filtering software, Microsoft is denouncing the notice. From AFP:

  Microsoft late Monday said a Chinese rule that personal computers sold in the country include Web filtering software raises issues of freedom of expression, privacy, and security which “need to be properly addressed.”

  In a statement to AFP, a Microsoft spokesperson said “Microsoft believes that the availability of appropriate parental control tools is an important societal consideration for industry and governments around the world.

  “At the same time, Microsoft is committed to helping advance the free flow of information and to encouraging transparency, deliberation and restraint with respect to Internet governance,” the US software giant said.

  Earlier Monday, Ed Black, president of the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA), described the Chinese move as a “very unfortunate development.”

  See also Bruce Einhorn’s piece from BusinessWeek and an article from the New York Times. See also Rebecca MacKinnon’s English summary of the original government order requiring filtering software.

  » Read more
  • June 9, 2009 2:02 AM

• China Squeezes PC Makers

  

  From Wall Street Journal:

  China plans to require that all personal computers sold in the country as of July 1 be shipped with software that blocks access to certain Web sites, a move that could give government censors unprecedented control over how Chinese users access the Internet.

  The government, which has told global PC makers of the requirement but has yet to announce it to the public, says the effort is aimed at protecting young people from “harmful” content. The primary target is pornography, says the main developer of the software, a company that has ties to China’s security ministry and military.

  China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology didn’t respond to requests for comment.

  The Chinese government has a history of censoring a broad range of Web content. The new requirement could force PC manufacturers to choose between refusing a government order in a major market or opening themselves to charges of abetting censorship.

  » Read more
  • June 7, 2009 8:25 PM

• Chinese Websites Mark Tiananmen Square Anniversary With Veiled Protest

  

  From guardian.co.uk:

  Chinese internet users are rebelling against an internet crackdown brought in on the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

  Twenty years after the pro-democracy protests that claimed the lives of hundreds – or even thousands – of unarmed civilians in Beijing, a number of websites appear to be making a veiled protest at state censorship by referring to the date sarcastically as “Chinese Internet Maintenance Day“.

  Earlier this week the government blocked access to a number of popular western websites, in what was widely seen as way of controlling access to information about the events at Tiananmen Square. Among the sites that were screened out were photo-sharing website Flickr, Microsoft’s Hotmail email service and the popular online messaging site Twitter.

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  • June 4, 2009 5:00 AM

• Ai Weiwei: Let Us Forget

  

  With Chinese censors blocking Twitter and other online services, ChinaGeeks reports that Ai Weiwei’s new blog is still up and have translated his latest entry:

  Let us forget about June 4th, forget this ordinary day. Life has taught us, under totalitarianism, every day is the same. Every day in a totalitarian society is one day, there is no ‘other day’, no ‘yesterday’ or ‘tomorrow’. We no longer need partial truth, we don’t need partial justice or partial fairness.

  Without freedom of speech, without freedom of news, without freedom of elections, we are not people, we do not need to remember. Lacking the right to remember, we choose to forget.

  Let us forget every instance of persecution, every instance of humiliation; every massacre and every cover-up, every lie, every time we are pushed down, every death. Forget every moment of suffering, then forget every moment of forgetting. This is all just so that they, like ‘men of honor’, might ridicule us.

  Forget those soldiers who fired on civilians, those students whose bodies were crushed by the treads of tanks, the whistle and scream of bullets and blood on big streets and in the alleyways; a city and a Square without tears. Forget the interminable lies, the rulers hoping everyone has forgotten, forget their cowardess, their evil and ineptitude. We must forget, for they must be forgotten. Only when they’ve been forgotten can [we] exist. For the sake of existing, let us forget.

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  • June 4, 2009 1:10 AM

• Podcast: Can the Internet Bring Democracy to China?

  

  From the Council on Foreign Relations:

  Xiao Qiang, director of the China Internet Project and an adjunct professor at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, says the Chinese Communist Party seems increasingly inclined to try to use the Internet as a tool to gauge public opinion on local issues. At the same time, he says, it seems bent on strongly policing online dialogue to keep a handle on public opinion.

  Qiang says strong Internet voices are emerging in favor of democratic reforms in China. He notes that this strain of opinion can at time conflict with nationalistic voices in the country, such as those that emerged in response to last year’s pro-Tibet rallies, which have also been amplified by the Internet. But Qiang says nationalistic and reform-oriented voices also overlap. “The same people who are very nationalistic” on issues like Tibet can be “very vocal to support political reform,” he says. Qiang says the “jury is still out” on what China’s experience with the Internet says about the medium as a democratizing factor. He stresses, however, that the Internet has proved to be a liberal force for the Chinese society, and could, in the long run, lead to a less repressive government in the country.

  Please click here to listen to the interview.

  Image source: Daihua’s Art Space.

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  • May 18, 2009 4:28 PM

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