my life as a uni student

Introduction

With the 50th year of reign for the Communist Party of China, Tiananmen Square is a perfect example of the control that is exerted by the Government today. Since the arrival of the Internet to China in 1995, the massacre of the peaceful protesters in the Square is just one among many other events and issues that is blocked by sophisticated Internet software. It is almost like the incident never happened. It is a matter of Big Brother letting information that is deemed appropriate to be available to the public. One Great Wall comes down but is replaced and some Chinese resident’s are managing to defeat “The Great Firewall of China”, but at their own peril.

Research

All incoming and outgoing data sent to and from China is thoroughly searched by a team of internet police of an estimated 40, 000 people (McDonald, 2004). The main controlling organisation of internet content is the Communist Party’s Central Propaganda Department (CDP) who co-ordinate with other parties such as General Administration of Press and Publication and the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (Zissis, 2006).These departments are there to monitor specific words and to block or filter sites that deal with sensitive issues and key words such as, Taiwan; human rights; Tibet and Falun Gong Meditation Group (McDonald, 2004). The ‘Great Firewall of China’ uses technology that is built into the basic web infrastructure that enables the Government to block undesirable sites, disable links that may lead to restricted sites, scan for key words in web sessions like ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’. It also has censoring software that automatically deletes words. They also have the power to hijack web sessions when these taboo words are being used. The most common is to freeze the computer until the offending party corrects or deletes the words themselves (Pan, 2005).

In any country the Internet service providers are just that, they provide the service and the person who takes up that service is held accountable for their actions. In China this is not the case, any service provider is held directly responsible for objectionable material and makes them liable for the content (Pan, 2005).

In 2006 there were a reported 111 million internet user in China (Zissis,2006) and with the closing of over 8600 unauthorised internet cafes around China, every person in China must log onto the internet with their official identity card when using internet cafes (McDonald, 2004). It would also seem that private blogger sites also must comply and publish the full identity of the persons responsible for the site, with heavy fines of up to one million Yuan being dealt to publishers and advertisers for not complying with Government regulation (BBC News, 2005). It was estimated that in 2004 over 47,000 internet cafés were closed, to help the Government have more control over the users of the net (Pan, 2005).

China as of September 2006, was rated 159^th out of 167 on the 2005 index of press freedom by Reporters Without Borders (Zissis,2006) and has 32 journalist and 49 cyber dissidents imprisoned for criticising the regime over the internet and in print media (Smith, 2006). By exerting harsh penalties for not complying with the strict media controls the Chinese Government has censorship tactics that cross over all forms of media for Chinese journalists. These include dismissal and demotions in the work place, libel, fines, complete closure of media outlets and imprisonment (Zissis, 2006).

Yahoo provided personal information to the Chinese Government which led to the arrest of a Chinese journalist Shi Tao, by giving authorities the telephone number where an email was sent from, to a Chinese dissident in the U.S about the Propaganda Department’s direct orders not to write or have any media coverage about the Tiananmen Squares 15^th Anniversary. Yahoo defended itself by saying that they were following the laws and customs for that country, but when it came from a subsidiary located in Hong Kong, which China has no rule over, it was more for capital gain rather than following the law(Taipei Times, 2005). Microsoft has barred a blog that is critical of the Chinese Government and has blocked words like freedom and democracy and Google have self censored their website as have most of the major players(Times, 2006). In 2002 all of the majors were told to sign a ‘self discipline’ or self sensor document which asked them all to follow China’s censorship laws to enable them to operate within China ( Taipei Time, 2005) & (Zissis, 2006) Alibaba.com is one of China’s leading e-commerce auctioning groups and a 40 percent share was successfully purchased by Yahoo for $1 billion in August of 2005 (Pan, 2005).

It seems that these multi national companies are in it for the all mighty dollar. They are all aware of just how massive the Chinese portion of internet use is today and what it will be in the very near future. It is estimated that in the next few decades there will be over 750 million internet users in China alone (Pan, 2005).

Conclusion

There are many creative ways that are currently being used in China to get around the censors. With more than 350 million mobile phones in China in 2005, SMS is widely used but is rather risky as it can be tracked to a single phone. The government can also send a single text messages to every mobile phone in an area if they are aware of a protest or gathering and SMS back to warn the people/protesters not to attend (Pan, 2005).

Hackers and savvy computer users are using tricky passwords as the censoring systems do not always work. Typing in words like ‘elgoog ‘ which is google spelt backwards, this lead to free internet searches, but was found and shut down by authorities. Hacking is a time consuming method and is really only for the high tech and advanced users (Pan, 2005).

The use of overseas service providers is said to be one of the safer ways to access information that is censored by the Government.

The technology firm Anonymizer is currently in the process of developing anti-censorship software that will enable any citizen, Chinese or anyone anywhere in the world the ability to search the entire internet free from filters (Smith, 2006). To get around the standard internet restrictions, some computers with the help of Electronic Frontier Foundation allows Windows to be used as a proxy server for internet users so they can use servers that are outside the confines of the Chinese government (Smith, 2006).

Even when an internet site gets shut down, another will arise as it seems that political critics have strong feelings that their words need to be heard (McDonald, 2004). It is necessary to say that this article itself, when posted on my blog, would not meet the current government regulations and would be inaccessible to anyone located in China.

Bibliography

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