Many regard this declaration of adapting to local censorship laws as a pragmatic move as Twitter expands into an increasing number of countries. As the blog post said, “As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression.”

It is important for it to respect the cultures and ideas of different countries so as to blend into local environments harmoniously. This is normal practice. To some extent, it is a necessary step in the evolution of Twitter. But many of its users, particularly some political activists and dissidents, have found it unacceptable.

…

It is impossible to have boundless freedom, even on the Internet and even in countries that make freedom their main selling point.

The announcement of Twitter might have shown that it has already realized the fact and made a choice between being an idealistic political tool as many hope and following pragmatic commercial rules as a company.

The Global Times’ Twitter endorsement didn’t stop at its editorial pages – It’s editor-in-chief, Hu Xijin, has started an account on Twitter. From The Wall Street Journal’s China Real Time Report:

While the editorial may have been expected, the appearance on Twitter of Mr. Hu, a staunch defender of China’s need to censor the Internet, was something of a surprise. A number of China-based Twitter users, including long-time Chinese media watcher Jeremy Goldkorn, immediately questioned what Internet proxy the Global Times editor had used to access the service.

…

Mr. Hu faced additional questions from Twitter users, including whether the account was real and what he thought of the use of guns in putting down recent protests by Tibetans.

The editor didn’t immediately answer those questions, but he did offer a job description: “I regard my work as reporting a complicated China and commenting on a complicated world,” he wrote in English.

Reached Monday afternoon, a man surnamed Yin and identifying himself as Global Times’s office director confirmed to China Real Time that the account was real but said Mr. Hu was in meetings and therefore not available to offer details about how or why he started using Twitter.

See also “Inside China’s Censorship Machine” via CDT.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Global Times, Hu xijin, Internet freedom, Twitter
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A number of Chinese dissidents have already left homegrown social media sites, choosing to create a community on Twitter that is beyond the reach of government censorship. The artist Ai Weiwei posts prolifically on Twitter.

On her Seeing Red in China blog, the writer Yaxue Cao on Monday described spending a month following posts by members of that vocal dissident Chinese-language community on Twitter. She writes that some dissidents also post to weibos, where the audiences are much larger, though less intimate.

Because Twitter is blocked in China, its small number of mainland users tend to be those with enough technological know-how to get around the Great Firewall, she observes, creating a debate-filled conversation that she likens to a vibrant tea house. Some of the accounts followed by Ms. Yaxue belong to former student organizers who took part in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and others who were forced to leave the country for political reasons:

When one of them (@wurenhua) tweeted about his recent conversation with his 80-year-old mother over the phone and why the mother and son had avoided video chatting (so that they can hide sadness from each other), you get a glimpse of what this exile entails.

While the 140-character limit constrains writing to one or two thoughts in alphabetic languages, Ms. Yaxue says, whole paragraphs are possible in China’s character-based language. The same could also be said of Sina Weibo and other China-based social networks. But on Twitter there is not the same risk that posts will be censored — or “harmonized,” according to the official term of art — and a dissident user’s account terminated.

One of the bloggers in question, Yaxue Cao, writes that the Chinese Twitter universe offers certain freedoms but nothing goes unnoticed:

But that nobody deletes your message doesn’t mean nobody is watching over what you say. Somewhere over a dim table, state security police are scanning every word. In November 2010, Wang Yi (@wangyi09), a well-known rights activist, was sentenced to one-year “reeducation through labor” for jokingly challenging angry “patriots” demonstrating against Japan to storm the Japanese Hall of the Shanghai Expo. She was the first person punished for a tweet, a tweet that consisted of 5 characters.

Even I, a newcomer and an outsider to this community, am beginning to have inklings. For example, who is that ID that signed on to follow me the day before yesterday that has a dozen or so tweets in a language I can’t identify but follows a hundred or so Chinese dissidents and intellectuals? How come those a couple of IDs, very vocal and widely known, always have “inside news” that happens to help deescalate pressure for the government? Who are they really?

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: censorship, information control, Internet freedom, microblogging, netizens, sina weibo, Twitter
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The official, Wang Chen, said at a news conference that registration trials in five major eastern Chinese cities would continue until wrinkles were worked out. But he said that eventually all 250 million users of microblogs, called weibos here, would have to register, beginning first with new users.

Mr. Wang indicated that under the program, users could continue to use nicknames online, even though they would still be required to register their true identities.

The announcement was long expected. Because the registration rules apply to Internet companies — most of which are in Beijing or the other four cities covered under the trial — the practical effect is to certify that the government will now formally require those companies to register all users of weibos eventually. Some users and analysts had suggested that such a requirement would be met with a public outcry. In fact, the response has been comparatively muted.

The regulations, designed to stop the spread of online rumors and aid a more forceful approach to information control on the Internet, require microblog users to give their real names to site administrators before they can post. Such regulations have taken shape amid an increased government focus on containing the activities of China’s growing number of Internet users. The government “is pushing the danger argument hard” in its push to contain Internet chatter, Tsinghua University’s David Lundquist writes in The Diplomat, questioning whether China can control social media:

Beijing might be miscalculating if it thinks it can control social media without dealing it a severe, perhaps mortal blow. Facebook clone Renren might continue to serve students without much controversy (that is, as long as they aren’t Tibetan, Uyghur or Mongolian, some of whom have logged-on during times of social unrest only to find their accounts locked and unusable).

Micro-blogging is different. Brevity and agility allows information to be distributed and consumed in a snap. Its popularity is undeniable, with user numbers more than quadrupling in the last twelve months. Given the sheer speed and volume of information it offers, China might just have no choice but to neutralize it and live to fight another day.

Micro-blogging is primarily a means of social and political communication, but it’s also an indicator of societal discontent. Given that the latter won’t stop any time soon, netizens could move onto other means of communication, further from the controls of the state, like VPNs and other firewall-jumping technology that many Chinese currently find expensive or unnecessary. If that happens, Beijing will rue the day when it leveled a building block of a sturdy, modern civil society, relegating its more engaged and perceptive citizens to the internet’s more distant locales.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: information control, Internet freedom, microblogging, netizens, online rumors, social media, weibo
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The very first response was a simple icon, showing a face with a gag taping the mouth closed. Every now and then, the gag falls away and the mouth opens, as if speaking. The implication seems clear.

Another posting reads: “Microblogs mean people dare speak out – and can speak out. Everything changes when people start to speak the truth.”

…

As the activist Wang Lihong’s son said: “Microblogging is like air-conditioning: once you have it, you don’t know how you managed to survive without it.”

While recent crackdowns on netizens have turned fears of more restrictive Internet policy into reality, one government official has come under fire for his microblog as well. From China Daily:

Liu Weizhong, 54, director of the Gansu provincial Department of Health, was given the nickname “pig foot director” by netizens after advocating the medical benefits of pig feet on multiple microblog accounts.

His microblog posts wouldn’t necessarily draw criticism on their own, but a recent report by the China Youth Daily stated that a local government website posted Liu’s medical articles on its own website.

“These articles might possibly mislead the public, as they may believe that the Gansu provincial government is supporting Liu’s recommendations. Liu Weizhong should be responsible for this,” said Wang Yukai, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Governance.

See also recent coverage of microblogging in China, including new measures passed to oversee microblogs and limit online rumor-mongering.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: free speech, information control, Internet freedom, microblogging, online public opinion, sina weibo
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Wednesday’s discussions about Internet freedom were initiated by U.S. Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman and others in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, tied to Mrs. Clinton’s speech on Internet freedom Tuesday. The embassy has been using microblogs and other online services as public-relations tools in China since 2009, posting information about U.S. customs and policies, among other things.

One post on Tencent Weibo by Mr. Hunstman quoted Mrs. Clinton’s remarks that “Liberty and security are often presented as equal and opposite,” and asked: “What do you think is more important, liberty or security?” Another post questioned whether other users agreed with Mrs. Clinton that “freedoms to assemble and associate also apply in cyberspace.”

The posts were published with keyword tags, such as “Hillary” in Chinese, to enable other users to repost and respond to related comments, a practice that is typical on microblogging services. Some of the embassy’s posts were reposted by Chinese Internet users, but the posts quickly began disappearing as government censors demanded that the sites remove them.

“We are disappointed that some Chinese Internet sites have decided to remove discussion of Secretary Clinton’s Internet Freedom speech from their websites,” Mr. Huntsman said in a statement. “It is ironic that the Chinese are blocking an online discussion about Internet freedom.”

Meanwhile, Reuters reports on the impact of microblogging- and of government censorship- on activism in China:

Beijing’s censors are in control for now, and most Chinese people use microblogs to follow celebrities. But activist users can be wily.

“Those that have potential to shape public opinion are wired and looking for leads, but they also have a keen sense of where the limit is,” Liu Yawei, head of the Carter Center’s China program in Atlanta, said of China’s microbloggers.

Microbloggers on popular Sina.com and other Chinese websites recently spread debate about Egypt, often using oblique references to get around filters attempting to block discussion of the unrest that unsettled officials.

“Initially, the government agencies maybe didn’t expect microblogs would be so powerful,” said Li Yonggang, an expert on society and the Internet at Nanjing University in eastern China.

“Because microblog entries are very brief and fast, people have become adept at expressing themselves so that people in the know understand what’s being said, but those who aren’t can miss the point,” he said in a telephone interview.

Updated: Also related, see Gady Epstein’s column in Forbes on Sina’s microblogging site, which includes an interview with Sina CEO about social networking.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Hillary Clinton, Internet freedom, microblogging, microblogs, online activism, Twitter
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Mr. Xia’s offer to buy flowers for the victims, posted on his microblog, was taken up by thousands of netizens. But he quickly found himself at war with the country’s Internet police. First they deleted his post. It was back up hours later, but then seven of them showed up in person at his home and took him away for questioning. Mr. Xia was released after two hours’ interrogation at the police station by “three or four” men he says belonged to the “Internet security police.” The experience left him angry.

“As a tool, microblogs and things will definitely speed up democratization in China,” he said. “But it’s not as free as you might think.”

Mr. Xia’s experience was a striking illustration of how freedom and repression are spreading simultaneously in China, an apparent contradiction that is growing as individual and Internet- and cellphone-based communications challenge authoritarian norms.

© alicebirney for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: internet censorship. blogs, Internet freedom, Xiao Qiang
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In a growing number of countries including China, domestic Internet companies are enlisted in this effort through regulatory pressures. Laws and mechanisms originally meant to enforce copyright, protect children and fight online crime are abused to silence or intimidate political critics.

In real life, conceiving and implementing an effective set of policies, programs, and tools for promoting a free and open global Internet requires hard work by both the public and private sectors. This work has barely begun.

A range of fast-evolving technical problems requires an array of solutions. Activists around the world need technical assistance and training in order to fight cyber-attacks more effectively. We need more coordination between human rights activists, technology companies and policy makers just to understand the problems, and how they can be expected to evolve in the next few years.

What’s more, existing research indicates that many of the problems aren’t technical, but rather political, legal, regulatory and even social. Other obstacles to free expression are probably best addressed by the private sector: Social networking platforms like Facebook and Twitter should be urged to adhere to business practices that maximize the safety of activists using their platforms.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: anti-censorship tools, Internet censorship, Internet freedom, U.S. Congress
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The Chinese government Sunday released a white paper on human rights in China in 2009, highlighting the role of Internet freedom and the country’s efforts in safeguarding citizens’ legitimate civil and political rights.

“The overall cause of human rights has been promoted in an all-round way,” says the white paper, published by the State Council Information Office under the title “Progress in China’s Human Rights in 2009″.

Chinese netizens’ right to freedom of speech on the Internet was protected and the Internet has become a new channel for the Chinese government to gauge public opinion, and consequently improve its governance, the report reads.

It has become “common practice” for governments at all levels to consult the public via the Internet before formulating some policies, it says.

See also “China Rights Report Cites Improvements, but Also Failings” from the New York Times. The full text of the white paper is here.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: human rights policy, Internet freedom, White Papers
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In this great game of the early 21st century, we see three major kinds of player: states, companies and netizens. It’s not just authoritarian states that have problems with the free flow of information; democratic ones do too. Companies like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft themselves have big questions to answer about the way in which they select, handle and sell the vast information resources at their disposal. I can’t help wondering where Google would be today on the China issue if one of its founders, Sergey Brin, had not been shaped by his parents’ experience in the Soviet Union. And Microsoft might be in a morally better place if Bill Gates had grown up in, say, Poland.

…In thinking about the way information is supplied to us, we have, it seems to me, four possible approaches: (1) the state I live in decides what I can and cannot see, and that’s OK; (2) the big companies I rely on (Google, Yahoo, Baidu, Microsoft, Apple, China Mobile) select what I see, and that’s OK; (3) I want to be free to see anything I like. Uncensored news from everywhere, all of world literature, manifestos of every party and movement, jihadist propaganda, bomb-making instructions, intimate details of other people’s private lives, child pornography – all should be freely available. Then it’s up to me to decide what I’ll look at (the radical libertarian option); (4) everyone should be free to see everything, except for that limited set of things which clear, explicit global rules specify should not be available. The job of states, companies and netizens is then to enforce those international norms.

At the moment, we have a combination of (1) and (2). Developments in technology will give us more of (3), whether we like it or not. (4) currently looks like a pipe dream. Nonetheless, it is to (4) that we should aspire.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Googlecn, Internet freedom, Timothy Garton Ash
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Google is hardly the first American company to stray into the State Department’s bailiwick. Since the bad old days of the United Fruit Company in Latin America, powerful multinationals have conducted themselves like quasi-states, influencing the foreign lands in which they operate by deciding whether to accommodate or resist the unsavory practices of authorities there.

For Internet companies, that choice has been sharpened by the fact that the World Wide Web is no longer just a force for freedom and diversity but also a tool for repression. Governments use it to spy on dissidents, human rights activists, and other troublesome elements.

This change happened so fast that it left the foreign policy establishment gasping to catch up. It also exposed Washington’s deep ambivalence about information technology: while it champions the free flow of ideas in closed societies like Iran, it fears being a target for cyber-attacks by hostile governments and doesn’t want to export technology that could be diverted into military uses. Conflicted and confused, Foggy Bottom has little to offer Silicon Valley by way of support or even guidance.

”What forces Google to have a foreign policy is that what they’re exporting isn’t a product or a service, it’s a freedom,” said Clay Shirky, who teaches at New York University and writes about the Internet’s social effects. “The question is, ‘Are they going to be United Fruit?’ ” For Google, the sinister side of China’s cyberpolicy eventually came to outweigh the economic attraction of China’s market and the putative benefit of opening the Internet to a vast audience.

See also an op-ed from the Financial Times about Google in China.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: foreign IT companies, Googlecn, Internet freedom
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