Although suffering a steady and growing censorship, more and more Chinese use the Internet to express their opinion using the great ease to write good articles, and at the same time circumvent government control.

“The Chinese bloggers are the smartest in the world. In addition to writing a good and interesting article, they should think how to evade the government,” said the journalist Wang Xiaofeng, author of the blog Bu Xu Lian Xiang, which receives an average of 40 thousand visits per day.

Also editor of a weekly cultural magazine in Beijing, Wang explains that a major difficulty is moving in so-called “sensitive words” so that they are not identified by the filter control.
Although censorship is strong, the Internet is the preferred means of expression among many Chinese. The network has helped uncover corruption among local authorities and served to organize protests, but the main function is to be a mural for writing articles criticizing or mocking the communist government.

China topped the list of countries with censorship omnipresent on the Internet, according to a series by the NGO Reporters Without Borders (RSF) in 2007. The list includes other schemes such as Myanmar, Cuba, Iran, Vietnam, Maldives, North Korea, Syria, Tunisia and Uzbekistan.

Imager credit.

Via: Folha.

Chinese Internet users, despite their skillful dribble into the censors are more angry than ever.

China is trying to force the installation of a program of censorship in all new personal computer, while Iran has succeeded this week in virtually eliminate the spread of the Internet reports of protests in the streets against a possible fraud in the presidential election.

This restriction on freedom of the Internet is being accompanied by new means to combat “enemies”. These methods vary from technological attacks to the dissidents sites and the use of employment of a large number of paid commentators who advocate the position of the government in supposedly independent blogs.

Both have the additional attraction to be denied: many systems are using advanced techniques of repression are difficult to identify in action. Experts in Internet from more open societies fear that this will lead to greater self-censorship by organizations and individuals.

The number of countries reaches tens, say the researchers. The strongest evidence of impending change is the theocratic regime of Iran which is in a fight against the free flow of information and communication from their urban population in large part young, from the day following the contested election this month.

Part of the technology used in surveillance and censorship in Iran and China is largely Western. According to laws of United States and other countries , the telecommunications industry must facilitate agencies in maintaining law (such as FBI) access personal informations from Internet users.

But according to some researchers, the technologies developed to respond to insidious attacks as these only serve to promote the advancement of techniques for control of information – at the expense of future popular revolts against oppressive political forces.

Via: Financial Times

The study by Freedom House further shows that the decline occurred in all continents of the globe, with particular severity in Eastern Europe, Middle East, North Africa, and South American nations such as Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala.

Of the 195 countries surveyed, 70 have a free press (36 percent), 61 have ‘partially free’ press (31 percent), and 64 do not have a free press (33 percent). Reporters are said to encounter more problems in China, Cuba, Eritrea, Burma, Iran, Syria, Equatorial Guinea, Belarus, Libya, Vietnam, Laos, North Korea, the Palestinian territories, Tunisia, Rwanda, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Zimbabwe.

Moreover, freedom of information is threatened not only in totalitarian states, but also in democratic nations such as Italy and Israel. Hong Kong is likewise affected by the censorship of the Beijing regime.

China remains the biggest prison in the world for thought because it keeps in its prisons and psychiatric facilities more than 60 journalists, dissidents, human rights activists, and bloggers.

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Via CPJ

Quite stupendous but figures show that the number of Internet users in China is nearly equal to the population of the United States – somewhere in the area of 298 million. The figure is not really astounding if one sees it within the general scheme of things: the Chinese internet users total means that only 23 percent of Chinese use the Web. In the US, 73 percent of the entire population use the Internet. Worldwide, 22 percent of all peoples on earth go online.

Use of the Internet is one of the hallmarks of a free world that is, perhaps, why the China Internet Network Information Center is surprised that 88 million people went online in China last year, with 90 percent of them using broadband connection. This translates to a 42 percent increase from the country’s Internet usage in 2007.

The figure may seem amazing if one considers that there is such a thing as Internet police in China. The country’s government is known to regularly block web sites, even jail bloggers and writers. Internet use is restricted in the country. Nonetheless, China has already topped the US as the biggest user of the Internet. Online, China has become a ‘superpower.’ The field of e-commerce is expected to flourish even more in China.

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Via Information Week

China has accused both Google and Baidu as peddlers of filth. Baidu is known as China’s Google. According to the Chinese government, the country has “decided to launch a nationwide campaign to clean up a vulgar current on the Internet.” 19 Internet operators and websites that were previously identified have not removed their “vulgar” contents, according to officials. They have also ignored warnings from government censors.

Baidu has already apologized for the pornographic material published on its sites, while Google has been said to be attempting to take down obscene content. These two search engines have probably realized that it can be futile to simply ignore China. Not only is the population of users huge in this country; obscene content is obscene content any place on earth. There is still a general, though oftentimes unspoken, ground rule over websites of general patronage not to feature harmful material to children and youth.

Besides, giving in to China’s demands can only bring good business. The January-September 2007 period saw a 75.8 percent year-over-year growth in China’s online search market. This translates to US$682.37 million. Baidu.com, the world’s biggest Chinese-language search engine, saw a market share growth in China of up to 62.9 percent from January to September 2008 alone. This translated to US$332.85 million for the period mentioned. From January to September 2008, Google, the second-largest online search engine in China, grew by 26.9 percent in market share. It pays to follow rules.

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Via TweakTown

China has left the repressive shackles of Communism but vestiges of state control are hard to shake off. One of these lingering practices is censorship. Fairly recently, China censored the information on the melamine tainted milk scandal which government authorities had known even before the Beijing Olympics. For fear of tarnished image that could wipe out the fervor of the Olympic season, it waited till after the international games before the issue of melamine was even heard of.

Since last month, China has again been wielding its flair for censorship, this time on the World Wide Web. It has earlier clamped down on and blocked the websites of the BBC and the New York Times. Now, it accuses Google for displaying pornography and vulgar content. China earlier claimed that it had alerted Google about its many links to immoral sites, but according to state officials, Google has not lifted a finger to address the issue.

If the trend of its warnings being ignored continues, China threatens to punish and even close down the sites. The country feels strongly against vulgar content because it claims that these deeply harm the health of the youth. The government has responded to the clamor among parents in China to save their children from such vulgar trend. Is China just dreaming that it can lock horns with something whose nature defies the boundaries of geography? Surely, it knows what the World Wide Web really means.

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Via Inquirer