Siyao Xu
Dr. Fisk
CSCI 301
Term Paper Revision #1
24 November 2012
Internet Censorship of the People’s Republic of China 2000 years ago, in Qin Dynasty. The ancient Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huang launched the infamous event "Burning of the Books". He burned all the books from the countries he conquered and thousands of Scholars were killed. Why it happened? The reason is simple, Qin Shi Huang wanted to censor any of the information either threat him or his nation. Today, the speed and the scale of the Internet development in China is incredible. However, development always accompanied with troubles. The globe is connected with the Internet. China is in front of a crossroads, a more open Internet society or another "Burning of the Internet"? The rest of the article will discuss the following points. 1. The background of the Chinese Internet censorship 2. Legal basis and requirements 3. Chinese Internet censorship measures 4. Cases of Internet censorship 5. The impact of Internet censorship 1. The background of the Chinese Internet censorship “The 23rd China Internet Development Statistics Report” released by the China Internet Network Information Center, CNNIC, in January 2009, according to the report, as the end of 2008, the number of Internet users in China had reached 298 million people, the number of mobile Internet had reached 117.6 million people. Internet penetration rate is 22.6%. Chinese netizens more than the United States, are the highest in the world. Internet users in China mainly use the Internet to read news, play online games, communicate through online social network and send emails. Also more and more businessmen chose to use the Internet to run their companies. Commercial activities on the Internet has been increased steadily. The growth rate of Internet users in China is 5-6 percent per month, the number of Internet users in China will soon be up to a quarter of the population, of slightly more than 250 million people around. In recent years, many Internet formulate laws also began to implement in China. The Internet and digital technology-based new media brings opportunities to China’s development, but it also brings problems to the closed-end management of the Chinese Communist Party. Former Chinese President Jiang Zemin, in the interview with Mike Wallace in 2000, said: “I hope that people to learn a lot of useful things from the Internet, but in any case, sometimes there are unhealthy things, especially online pornographic content hurt a lot to our young people. We want as much as possible to limit the development of useless information.” (http://renminbao.com/rmb/articles/2000/9/1/2786.html) As a result, Government decided to implement the Golden Shield Project with the purpose for keep the unhealthy things out. The idea of the Golden Shield Project is build by the former general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, the eldest son of President Jiang Zemin, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China Netcom directors Jiang Mianheng. And the implementation of the most important equipment, the Great Firewall of Internet censorship, is built by the designer Bin Xingfang, Chinese Academy of Engineering, the incumbent president of Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, he also called by netizens, the father of “the Great Firewall of China”. (http://www.aboluowang.com/news/2007/0821/52504.html) In May 2005, co-founded by Harvard Law School, the University of Cambridge and the University of Toronto, “Association for the Promotion of open network” (OpenNet Initiative) published a research report on China’s Internet blockade. The report said: “Chinese government controls and manipulates the information environment in which its citizens live, including websites, blogs, emails, and online discussion forums. ONI’s analysis found that government-mandated filtering in China has reached new levels of sophistication and breadth as it apparently tries to keep pace with evolving uses of the Internet for political expression, group organization, and access to sensitive materials ranging from health information to debates about Taiwan and Tibet.” (http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/node/398) 2. Legal basis and requirements The cause and manner of the Chinese government on the review of web content is diverse, multi-level, and inter-departmental. Review of network is the responsibility for all the levels and relevant departments from Internet service providers to the people’s governments. According to the article 10 of the Convention on the Chinese Internet industry self-regulation. Internet access service providers deal with access inside and outside the site inspection and supervision, refused to release harmful information site access, to eliminate the adverse effects of harmful information on our network users. (http://www.isc.org.cn/hyzl/hyzl/listinfo-15599.html) Article V of the international networking of computer information network security management approach based on 33 Decree of the Ministry of Public Security. Article V any unit or individual may not use the Internet to create, copy, access and dissemination of the following information:
(1) To incite resistance, undermine the Constitution and laws, administrative regulations implemented;
(2) Incitement to subvert state power and overthrow the socialist system;
(3) Incitement to split the country and undermine national unity;
(4) Incitement to ethnic hatred, ethnic discrimination, undermining national unity;
(5) Fabrication or distortion of facts, spread rumors, disturbs social order;
(6) Spread feudal superstition, obscenity, pornography, gambling, violence, murder, terrorism and abetting a crime;
(7) An affront others or fabricating facts to slander others;
(8) Damage the credibility of state organs;
(9) Other violation of the Constitution and the laws and administrative regulations. Resulting in access to illegal information on the Internet is also illegal. These are called “legal” documents; the inherent has legitimacy of controversial issues. 3. Chinese Internet censorship measures Since 1995, the Chinese government has promulgated more than 60 laws and regulations to regulate the Internet. The days when the sensitive political situation in the early 2000s, the government asked the NMS strict blockade of Falun Gong and sixty-four event, and other political themes website, the increasing spread of pornographic information is still not showing enough care and attention. This situation began to change in 2004; the authorities began to aggressively combat Internet pornography. Administrative means includes networking monitoring, implementation of the administrative penalty and judicial accountability, Government and Internet commentators guide online public opinion, the real-name system and filing, requirements of domestic and foreign companies to cooperate, condemnation and punishment of overseas companies and network report. Internet police, national security departments, news management departments, communication management departments, cultural departments, Radio, Film and Television, publishing departments and confidential sector staff to monitor the entire mainland China’s Forums, blogs, chat rooms, emails and any other Internet information. They use the technology domain name hijacking, keyword filtering, network sniffers, the Gateway IP blocking and electronic data forensics, etc… to gain or eliminate the information. The staffs will judge the content, and will delete all kinds are considered harmful information. They will ban and block the sites which may use the Internet to spread rumors, to spread harmful information. Meanwhile, the implementation of the network reviewing is put on certain group of people, and the background network communication of sensitive people is built. In addition, since May 2006, the authorities began recruiting network supervisor. They accept the guidance of the relevant departments on a regular basis and monitor the “uncivilized behavior, illegal and unhealthy information” on the network in their spare time by phone, email from time to time to participate in meetings and other ways to monitor views to the relevant units. Some network security branch, will recruit a network security officer. Network security has no enforcement power, mainly through network monitoring service units in a timely manner to remove all kinds of bad information, timely halt illegal alarm to the network supervision departments. In China, the punishment of violation of the laws of the network is relatively more severe. Not only publish bad information will face punishment, but also have access to relevant information may receive penalties from the Ministry of Public Security. Sichuan police used the clues obtained from the Office of the Commissioner of Provincial Public Security Department and the Supervisor detachment of Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, on 9 Aug 2004, to identify the two men in 2004 March 21 and 2004 July 11 login a pornographic website, access, browse pornographic pictures and leave a message on the site. By users Internet account information and a lot of evidence, they arrested Mr. Han and Mr. Zhong two illegal suspects. (http://news.xinhuanet.com/newmedia/2004-08/25/content_1879691.htm) In addition to the passive censorship, the Chinese Government also vigorously develops the official website, and actively online publicity. City University of Hong Kong, said Professor Li Jinquan, “10% of all Chinese website is created and operated directly by the government, at all levels of Government to create a number of major news websites.” The authorities require network access, Internet cafes, and information publishing site, e-mail or even the game, to provide the real name for the record. Especially since February 2005, the Ministry of Information Industry requirements of all webhosting site provides access, hosting, web hosting services, IDC ISP to registration or login MII website for the record itself. Enterprises, institutions website or personal website, you must provide valid identification number at the time of the filing. The Chinese Government has adopted the technology provided by Cisco, Nortel, Oracle, 3Com and Microsoft and other foreign companies to block the network, and ordered Internet companies to help the government to filter the "sensitive" speech. (http://www.mega.nu/ampp/freespeech.html) The mainland China is scheduled for July 1, 2009, requires comprehensive per-installed Green Dam Youth Escort in the territory of the new production and sales of computer. The Chinese government said the purpose of installing the software is to protect a minor computer users mistakenly broke into the porn sites and other harmful content. The software, however, incur a lot of media and the government’s objection about large-scale implementation of the software pre-installed measures. On the eve of the implementation of the policy in June 2009, China high-profile condemned Google spread of pornography, and for a time blocked Google’s service. According to China Central Television “Focus” in June 2009, in Google, enter the keyword “son”, below it, but will show the option “son mother improper relationship” and so on ten options. The Chinese government requires Internet café provide Internet real-name registration, while cafes must install cafes security management software. Also provinces and cities Internet cafes must install the cultural regulatory system, control and timely block any articles unfavorable to the authorities. Governments and departments at all levels have created a report web site and telephone, used to receive the social harm website, report on politics, sex and violence. For example, the Report of the Ministry of Public Security Public phone is 010-65283344, 010-65207655 Report website is http://www.cyberpolice.cn; China Internet Illegal Information Reporting Centre Association http://net.china.cn/chinese / index.htm. 4. Cases of Internet censorship Most foreign news political class websites are blocked of interference. Wikipedia has been blocked for a long time. All language version of Wikipedia is unavailable in mainland China. Google.com is blocked in the middle of 2006. After reopened, part of the services offered by Google still cannot use normal in China. Some well-known international media: BBC, Voice of America Chinese and Deutsche Welle Chinese network. And so on. Flickr is blocked due to there are some pictures of the Tiananmen Square protests. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/chinese/simp/hi/newsid_6740000/newsid_6746200/6746271.stm) What’s more, websites like niconico, WordPress, Xanga, Opera Community, Blogger, LiveJournal, Dailymotion, YouTube and Plurk are also been blocked. And the famous social networking site Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace. Many sites filter by keywords appear occasionally inaccessible (such as Gmail). Such a filter is bi-directional, meaning that domestic websites containing keywords site inaccessible abroad, the foreign URL site contains keywords inaccessible in the country. 5. The impact of Internet censorship CCP network content review is based on the special nature of the social system, part of the public hold supportive attitude, as well as those who held the opposite view. For the ruling party and some people it seems the implementation of this system is some necessity. But it also produced a certain negative impact. In the eyes of those who pursuit of freedom of expression at home and abroad people, since only few in the world to implement a socialist and one-party dictatorship, censorship is conscious political manipulation. In March 2010, Ars Technica reports that, according to the IETF DNS operations mailing list discussion, a domain name registrar in Chile technicians said, their root name server i.root-servers.net node observed the strange behavior of the response returned when the user queries facebook.com. These sites are blocked in China, the domain name is contaminated, and this means that the Great Firewall DNS domain name pollution and domain name hijacking has affected the Internet. Finally, the root name servers in China because the multiple DNS pollution foreign network, threats to Internet security and freedom is to disconnect the connection with the Internet. (http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/03/china-censorship-leaks-outside-great-firewall-via-root-server/) Network regulation in China has reached a turning point. If the Chinese government blindly takes stringent regulatory regime, there could be no doubt that China will be further and further away from the world. If they can combine the realistic and change of policy to deal with the Internet today, it is undoubtedly not only for the mainland Chinese and the entire world is a boon.

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