A healthy open society demands the free flow of information within and across its national boundaries. When internet use began to take off in China, it became a cliché in the west to announce that it would prove the catalyst for real political and social change: the internet, the argument went, could not be policed and would offer the Chinese user unprecedented access to information and a public space to organise and exchange ideas.
While the internet does, indeed, offer unprecedented access to information, the assistance of western companies such as Google and Yahoo helps ensure that the information available to Chinese users is filtered and censored. Worse, as the Shi Tao case illustrates, far from offering a safe public space to Chinese users, the technology of the internet offers a tool to Chinese cyberpolice that is more reliable and far-reaching even than China’s traditional networks of human informers and secret police.
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