China’s controversial Green Dam has been damned for now. “Net nanny”, the web-content filtering software that was to be mandatorily installed in every new computer sold after July 1, 2009 following a directive by China’s Ministry of Industry and Technology, has been stalled after a surprisingly furious public backlash. In the eye of the storm was not the censorship attempt per se, but the larger issue of its netizens’ right to information. China has the world’s largest online population of 300 million and its internet penetration is 22.6 per cent, slightly higher than the world average of 21.6 per cent.
The official version is that the software, also called Green Dam/Youth Escort, seeks to block “unhealthy and vulgar content”, or pornography. Since the Open Door in 1978, the Communist Party has been struggling with what it calls “spiritual pollution” and reiterating time and again its commitment to building a “socialist spiritual civilisation”—but given the realities, the objective is more of a rhetoric today. But this did not prevent the Communist Party to sync netizens with “socialist spiritual” by blocking “inappropriate” sites. However, experts claim that the primary intention of the software is to sieve and sift out politically-taboo content. In the software zealously clamping down on inappropriate content, unwittingly trapped (by the filter) was the hapless cartoon character Garfield—which presumably even had the Party chuckling.
Critics, however, say that the reach of the software is no laughing matter. The software would automatically update blacklisted topics downloaded into the user’s computer. This would also open the floodgates to hackers, cause intrusion into personal data and even facilitate cyber-spying. Advocates of gay and lesbian rights say that the software would prevent access to sites that discuss alternative sexuality. Experts also argue that if the intention is indeed to block adult content, then existing tried and tested software would have served the purpose. And, therefore, there was no need to specially commission this from two domestic companies—Jinhui Computer Systems Engineering and Dazheng Language Technology.
Some observers say that it smacks of protectionism. On the other hand, Solid Oak, a California-based software company that makes a similar software—Cyber-sitter—has accused the two Chinese companies of infringing intellectual property rights. Foreign PC makers are concerned that it may damage operating systems. Thus far, only Acer (the Taiwan-based world’s third-largest computer maker) has agreed to install the software. Others such as Dell, Sony and HP have not opposed this, but have expressed reservations.
However, China’s 300 million booming and flourishing netizens were not the ones to take this measure lying down. They were alarmed and up in arms—bloggers and social networking sites registered angry voices and a cross-section of well-known public faces such as Ai Wei Wei (artist) and Han Han (writer) protested the directive. Hackers flouted norms by posting the list of banned content online, right under the establishment’s nose. The attempt at arm-twisting the ever-growing, enthusiastic bloggers and netizens—who are happily accessing social networking sites such as YouTube, Face-book, Fanfou (China’s Twitter) and many others—boomeranged.
Search engines Baidu, Sohu.com and Sina.com have ushered in a sea change in access to cyberspace. Quite clearly, the younger, post-socialist generation, which is already armed with anonymizers (for surfing anonymously), are unfazed and getting better at getting ahead in the cat-mouse game in China’s internet policing vis-a-vis guarding their personal freedom.
Popularity of the net in China has already made the Communist Party wary. But China, it seems, has acted on its concerns. China’s cyber-policing has grown. The “Great Firewall”, which prevents access to various sites, already exists. Critics allege that China’s cyberspace is manned by internet volunteers and censors, some of whom blog and comment to impact public opinion.
Among other unconnected incidents relating to cyberspace control, which nevertheless raise questions, is the controversy in March 2009, when researchers of the University of Toronto unearthed a cyber-espionage, “GhostNet”, hacking into confidential information of the Tibetan Government in Exile (TGE), which though not proven, raised hackles. China’s adeptness at tracking down in 2004 journalist Shi Tao, who used Yahoo! to send mails to a Chinese pro-democracy website in the US, is still fresh in public memory. Ahead of the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen in June this year, Hotmail and Twitter were blocked. Given the ongoing crises in China’s western province Xinjiang, Google has been ordered to cut access to foreign websites from its local Chinese service.
Ironically, just a decade or so ago, China was waking up to the information technology (IT) revolution. While IT is helping China embrace the 21st century, it has also become a bane. The Communist Party is visibly loosing control over the spread of information—and as the recent handling of the rioting in Xinjiang shows, it wants to manage information in as open a manner as possible, in its best interests. Censorship is proving increasingly counter-productive.
For now, the decision has been postponed and netizens have got a reprieve. But this is a sign of changing times—the complexity of dealing with an increasingly affluent and information-based society by an authoritarian regime that cannot possibly control everything today. The Party’s discomfort and dilemma in negotiating and accommodating societal forces, it has itself unleashed, will only increase.
(Anurag Viswanath is a Visiting Fellow, Institute of Chinese Studies, Delhi. The views expressed are his own.)
