[Note from the author: this on-line version of the article which appears in the September 2000 issue of Current History is provided for those who wish to pursue some of the original sources or do their own exploration of sites mentioned. Live links to the main pages of major sites are provided in the text. Footnotes in the printed version have been reproduced here using the original numbers. A separate set of endnotes for notes, bracketed and numbered with prefixes of * -- e.g., [*1] , has been added to provide source information eliminated from the printed version to economize on space. Thank heaven the WWW allows relatively boundless space! I've also added, or will be adding, links to some images, graphs or figures to help illustrate points mentioned in the essay. Readers who do not have Chinese-character-reading capability on their systems may also want to view some of the screenshot images of Chinese web sites, links to which are represented by the "[@]" character next to the links to the actual sites.
I wish thank Merry White for her comments and very helpful suggestions on an earlier version of this essay. And I couldn't wish any author better editors than William Finan and Susan Finkelstein, who made the final results so much better.]
Kathleen Hartford is a professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and a research affiliate at both the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research and the Program on Information Resource Policy at Harvard University. Source notes for this article are available at www.pollycyber.com/pubs/ch/.As I begin this essay, Radio West Lake's [@] broadcast from Hangzhou streams through the global Internet to play on my computer in Cambridge, Massachusetts. People's Daily [@] is on-line and allows keyword searches for stories going back at least two years. Nasdaq lists the prices of several Chinese Internet companies. And I can read, on-line, webmaster Huang Qi's announcement of his own arrest [@] as it unfolded.[*1]
Clearly the Internet has taken root in China. Industry experts predict that China's Internet market will be the world's largest by 2010, while psychologists warn Chinese newspaper readers about the dangers of Net addiction. Bandwidth has expanded rapidly, and Chinese-language content has proliferated. Just about everyone foresees grand potential. Telecom and media giants expect a juicy new market. Human rights activists predict the collapse of the state's information monopoly. Chinese planners envision new tools for control. Which--if any--of these many possibilities will be realized, and how?
How the Net Grew in China
Chinese Internet users have proliferated rapidly since networks opened
to the public in early 1996. The latest survey by the official China
Network Information Center (CNNIC) [@]
estimated 16.9 million users by June 2000, up from a mere 600,000 in late
1997. The number of users has been doubling every six months. Although
that rate is unsustainable, predictions of 30 million on-line by 2002 may
be too conservative.[*2]
Pundits outside China sometimes assume both the inevitability of the Internet's growth and the inexorability of the political opening-alternative sources of information, communications channels beyond government control-that may follow.[*3] But Internet growth is anything but inevitable, and in China, the government's efforts have both nurtured and structured the country's Internet. Although the state sometimes overestimates its ability to control users, outside observers often underestimate the potential of networked information as a tool for centralized control.
Getting seriously networked makes a big difference to a country's economic fortunes. The earliest arrivals on the Internet, especially the earliest big arrivals, shape the architecture of the whole: its values, its technological standards, the uses it supports or impedes, and the places in cyberspace that attract the largest flow of resources. Being last would be fatal for a country that, like China, aspires to catch up with the major players in the world economy. China's economic strategists realized their country had to accelerate Internet growth to avoid falling among the laggards, and have made network development an important piece of the country's economic strategy for the early twenty-first century.
The strategy builds on a foundation established by two decades of a government push in high tech, including information technology and telecommunications. Two crucial results of that push were the installation of internal networks in vital businesses, especially banking, and the growth of a competitive domestic computer industry that put pcs within the reach of smaller businesses and the Chinese urban family.[*4]
As in the United States, the Internet in China began as a largely academic and research-oriented network. International scientific exchanges gave Chinese researchers their first glimpses of the Net's potential. The early growth of Internetworking in China owes much to their efforts.[*5]
The big Internet boom in China grew not out of throwing the Net open to the private sector--as was the case in the United States--but rather out of a state-centric strategy for comprehensive "informationization," envisioned as essential to China's future growth and international competitiveness.[*6] A series of decisions between 1993 and 1996 brought the massive expansion of network infrastructure, largely under the aegis of state-owned China Telecom. Hoping to use networked information to improve economic efficiency, and no doubt seeing potential direct benefits to the high-tech sectors, key leaders pushed informationization policies that culminated in adoption of the "Three Goldens" projects in 1994. Golden Bridge would build networked economic information, Golden Customs would network international trade information, and Golden Card would network financial and banking information. These proved golden in so many ways that other "golden" projects have since sprung up to join them.[*7]
But government agencies, businesses, and individuals had to be on the networks if they were to create and use the networked information. As the Internet boom hit the United States, Chinese policymakers concluded that linking with the global network of networks was essential to the overall strategy. Central state agencies worked out the ground rules. Despite frequent policy changes and institutional restructuring, the main tenets of China's approach to Internet development remained constant: the state will retain ownership and control of the main infrastructure (backbone networks); ownership and control of access provider services should remain in Chinese hands; and on-line information and activities must conform to Chinese Communist Party restrictions. The three principles combined have brought intense involvement of state agencies in all aspects of the Internet's development.
Several central government organs have played formal roles in Internet policy. The most important is the Ministry of Information Industry (MII) [@], formed in 1998 by merging the Ministries of Electronics Industry and of Posts and Telecommunications. The more conservative officials of Posts and Telecommunications ended up in control of MII, which now has the major responsibility for guiding the country's informationization.
Absent a comprehensive telecommunications law (promised for some time this year), regulatory policies for the Internet have emerged piecemeal. The MII now holds sway over the physical networks (including Internet service providers or ISPs), while the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) [@] rules over some content issues but shares that role with the State Council Information Office. Other agencies claim some say on matters related to networks or content. The Ministry of Public Security [@] has issued regulations concerning network security and the guarding of "state secrets" on computer networks; the People's Liberation Army has lobbied for a role in security matters.[*8] E-commerce will no doubt bring in a host of other interested parties, all jostling to stick a thumb into the policy pie.
State-sanctioned access
China's Internet backbones began by building on a telecom system that was laboring mightily just to meet the demand for telephone services. At the outset of the reform era, almost no private households had telephones. As late as 1990, China still had fewer than 7 million phone subscribers, mostly businesses and government agencies. The 1992 opening of urban market opportunities after Deng Xiaoping's "southern speeches" sparked a stampede for telecommunications services. By 1996, landline telephone subscribers had jumped to nearly 55 million, and by June 2000, to more than 100 million. (Mobile phone use has seen similarly rapid expansion: a mere 18,000 in 1990 grew to nearly 7 million by 1996 and more than 58 million by this June.) The high costs of building the infrastructure to absorb this demand were borne by subscribers, and those costs have spilled over into the Internet arena.[*9]
For the first backbone networks, the government authorized only four: two offering access to business and the general public, and two reserved exclusively for educational and research institutions. Several additional networks have since gained approval to offer Internet services, usually limited as to the technology or service they can provide.[*10]
Initially, virtually all of these networks' international traffic had to go through gateways controlled by China Telecom, which also owns the ChinaNet backbone. Only this year have other backbone networks opened their own smaller gateways.[*11]
All these networks are state-owned, in line with the government's insistence that the country's communications infrastructure remain solidly under government control. Their overall structure reveals the attempt to create a "designer" competition cut to patterns set by state specifications. Which company may offer what services in which markets has been the subject of a great deal of bureaucratic politicking. Foreign observers on the alert for signs of government repression sometimes misread government moves restricting China Telecom competitors as ideologically inspired, but they are more likely to be economically motivated.
Internet service providers connected to the backbones provide users with Internet access, maintain the modems and servers, furnish technical support, and administer the local networks as subscriber needs, operating costs, and government regulations dictate. Backbone networks have formed their own ISPs. ChinaNet, in fact, claims about two-thirds of the country's total subscribers through its access networks.[*12]
Other Chinese companies, which need not be state-owned, provide Internet connections through the backbones; 520 companies held ISP licenses by late 1999.[*13] Competition among ISPs has helped lower costs, but most find their operating expenses determined by the ChinaNet backbone charges. Noisy objections to high charges have prompted central government decisions requiring China Telecom to slash fees.[*14]
Still, few ISPs are turning a profit, and most may be in the red.[*15] Some ISPs sought help through foreign funding in violation of the rules against foreign investment. MII's efforts to enforce the rules in 1999 led to complaints from foreign companies, including some of the world's telecom giants. Investment rights in the telecom sector consequently became a key negotiating point for China's bid to join the World Trade Organization. China finally agreed to a phase-in that will eventually permit up to 50 percent foreign investment.[*16]
Meanwhile, the other method used by ISPs to make themselves more profitable--provision of on-line content--could run into regulatory barriers on another front. The MII maintains that, as Internet content providers (ICPs), such companies must first gain the approval of other authorities before they can be licensed as ISPs.[*17] Their delicate financial situation makes ISPs all the more vulnerable to control, and the emerging regulatory regime is costing some of them heavily.
Building a "Safe" Sandbox
People are drawn to the Internet for two reasons: communication and information. Communication has been the Net's most popular feature since the invention of e-mail. Other forms of communication have attracted millions worldwide, such as "threaded discussions" like Usenet and bulletin boards, and the real-time on-line discussions conducted in "chat rooms." Information includes the conventional meaning and a much broader range of content materials: software, images, videos, and music.
Until a network offers communication and information in significant quantity and variety, few people become serious Internet users. A critical mass of content, however, draws a critical mass of users, and Metcalfe's Law ("the value of a network grows by the square of the size of the network") kicks in. More people gravitate to the network, generating more information and communication, which draws even more to the network. Traffic explodes exponentially.
The prospect could give an authoritarian government sleepless nights--unless it preempts the content creation, which is what the Chinese government has attempted, with some success. Early users of the internationally connected networks gravitated to the largely English-language content generated abroad, but Chinese-language content was needed to attract, or distract, the potentially much larger domestic audience. Construct a safe sandbox, and few users would venture outside it to explore the wider world.[*18]
Official statements have made obvious the concerns about "unhealthy" influences that might seep into China through the Internet: pornography, violent games, and, yes, politically inappropriate materials. Authorities in Beijing continue to issue variations on the list of no-no's, usually seen from the outside as indications either that another crackdown on dissent is in the works, or that the old guard just doesnít get it, or both.
The lighthouse effect-attention focused only intermittently when the light comes round again-distorts the true picture. The Chinese authorities, like most governments, are capable of behaving reactively. But on the whole they have pursued a pragmatic approach to constructing content on their terms. Several facets have been key: official encouragement and sponsorship of Chinese-language content creation; control of channels of influx of foreign content; and assignment of responsibility for content to ISPs and ICPs.
Creating Content
In January 1998, while many foreign media were announcing another Chinese government crackdown on the Internet, I visited the Beijing offices of an ICP that was a joint venture with a Rupert Murdoch-owned company. The American design director came from a Disney-movie web job. The Chinese partner: the Chinese Communist Party's flagship newspaper, People's Daily. Just this summer, the newspaper Beijing Youth News, affiliated with the Beijing Communist Youth League, opened its jazzy new web site, Ynet.com, touting its partnerships with foreign firms like Coca-Cola.
The migration of the heavyweights of Chinese state media to the Internet is an extension of their marketization.[*19] For some ventures they have found willing partners; companies such as aol and those owned by Murdoch collaborate with the likes of Xinhua, China's central news agency, and People's Daily to produce Chinese-language content for the hip new Chinese Internet user (www.chinabyte.com [@], www.china.com [@])--including many outside the mainland. Meanwhile, the major news media within China, such as Guangming Daily [@],People's Daily, Central Television [@], and several key regional papers and broadcasters, went on-line long ago; official estimates recently put the number of news sites as high as 700.[*20]
The media led the charge in creating content acceptable to party politicos while attracting an audience. Few government departments provided substantial on-line content until last year, when "Government Going On-line" became the first key Internet content project under state sponsorship.[*21] The aim, China Daily reported an official as saying, was "to enrich Chinese information and provide an efficient way of doing business through the Internet." National agency and then provincial and city web sites went up one by one. The results are uneven. A recent exploration of the Gansu provincial government web site [@] revealed sparse and largely useless content. But this province had fewer than 30,000 Internet users by the end of 1999, according to CNNIC, and is one of the country's poorest. Contrast the sites created by the government of prosperous Shanghai, which can boast a local user base of nearly 1 million--and which for several years has been making the construction of local networks, from infrastructure through content, the keystone of its development efforts.[*22]
Shanghai has built several major web sites. One (www.shanghai.gov.cn [@]) serves largely as a window for the outside world, with Japanese, English, and Chinese versions. The Shanghai Community Service Network (www.sq.sh.cn [@]) is pitched to Shanghai's Chinese residents, offering detailed information on local social services and neighborhood networks, with links to local and national laws and regulations. The Shanghai People's Congress has its own site (www.spcsc.sh.cn [@]), with bulletins on matters under consideration by the legislature.
No government site at the national or local level yet offers the cornucopia of information that United States government agencies have put on-line. But surprising amounts are now available, including the on-line text of ministry publications, the text of some laws, regulations, and judicial decisions, numerous news bulletins, speeches, and reports of meetings. Information is there in abundance, although communication is still largely one-way.
Business is next. This year the government plans to put a million companies on-line, especially the largest state-owned companies. Companies whose shares trade on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges are on notice that they must post their financial reports on-line.[*23]
Control of Foreign Channels
Not all content is state-sponsored, of course. The Chinese government is keenly aware that individuals and businesses going on-line will create their own content. The state's dilemma is how to encourage private content creation without allowing the Chinese Internet to careen beyond its control. A major avenue has opened to it because of average users' need for navigational help.
Once content on a network reaches a certain point, most users feel overwhelmed by an undifferentiated mass of information. That situation offers a market for a type of Internet content to attract, and guide, the audience: portals. A portal often functions as the starting page for users, whose browsers load the portal's home page automatically when an Internet connection opens.
The portals highlight the screening problem posed by the Internet. Early in the reform era, when Deng Xiaoping proposed an open window to the outside world, he stipulated that the country should employ a screen to keep out "flies," or undesirable influences from abroad. Net enthusiasts exult that any web site can teleport users beyond the screen through the links it provides. Clicking on a link, a user can cross borders and ideological divides instantaneously. Click, you're in Taipei. Click, you're looking at the Dalai Lama. Click, you're wallowing in porn.
The Chinese government has tried several approaches to prevent such border crossings. The early dearth of international bandwidth already functioned as a deterrent, since download times for foreign sites exhausted many users' patience. For good measure, though, the government also put sites like CNN, The New York Times, and Playboy off limits by blocking their IP addresses (the series of numbers that identify each host computer on the Internet).
These blocks have come and gone, depending on the government's concerns of the moment. Sometimes those are ideological; at others they are economically driven, as with the blocking of some foreign economic news sites that competed with Xinhua's efforts to peddle economic news to Chinese users. Backbone networks might block differently, too; someone on a ChinaGBN-based service, for example, might whiz right through to the Washington Post while a ChinaNet user clicked in vain.
The IP blocking, however, is a blunt instrument. Used too much, it provokes foreign complaints that could repel investment or embarrass China internationally. It could also spell missed business opportunities for Chinese firms. At the same time, for the Net-savvy the blocks are relatively easy to circumvent.
More recently, the government has tried to keep less-sophisticated Chinese users inside the screened area by pressuring the web sites they turn to as guides. Enter the portals, the commercial sites that offer a buffet service of search engine, selected links to sites in various subject categories, news stories, discussion pages and chat rooms, e-commerce links, and sometimes free e-mail. Several of these have been launched by young Chinese who after years abroad decided to take advantage of the new opportunities in China, with the help of foreign venture capital. Several companies sponsoring these portals have already listed on Nasdaq. The portals have attracted Chinese users by the millions. But as their users have multiplied, so have their woes.
The regulators keep an eye on portals' links to other sites, as well as the news they furnish on their own sites. Where are the limits? The answer is not entirely clear. Reuters reported that Sohu.com [@] closed its office briefly in early 1999 after a Chinese journalist found on its site a link to pornographic materials. Hearing government rumblings in late 1999 about links to foreign news sites, several portals removed those links from their pages.[*24]
Portals have been whipsawed by rapidly changing government positions on the provision of news by any but the official news media sites. Late last year an internal party document apparently prompted Sinanet.com, then a popular news-oriented portal, to abandon its news content. In February 2000, ICPs were told that they needed State Council Information Office approval to publish news on-line, and learned that they might have to hire "media professionals" designated by the government to manage their on-line news. Two months later, an Internet News Management Bureau was created under that office to guide on-line news publication, including "resisting harmful information." ICPs that want to secure their registration must first be vetted by this agency before providing on-line news. And the young dot-coms hoping to list on Nasdaq have been forced to turn over ownership of the portal part of their businesses to Chinese companies over which they have no direct control.[*25]
Some of these control measures may be pushed by the party's ideological zealots. But the self-interest of state-owned media organizations and their bureaucratic patrons, who see revenue potential in the popular portal sites, plays an important role too. The existing portals could also run into greater problems in the near future. Plans are afoot to construct portals around five government-owned sites: People's Daily, Xinhua, China Radio International, China Daily, and CNNIC. They will have powerful patrons behind them.[*26]
Self-policing
New guidelines and regulations will no doubt emerge. But will they bring clarity? Ambiguity can be a powerful weapon of control, because it forces those with money, reputation, and jobs at stake to censor both themselves and those who connect through their networks.
That censorship is exactly what the ICPs have been engaged in. ICPs face fines, suspension, or license revocation if they post, or allow users to post, objectionable material. But what is objectionable? The rules are broad indeed. The "Regulations on Management of Computer Systems on the Internet" forbid users to "produce, retrieve, reproduce or disseminate information that would hinder public security." The December 1997 Internet security regulations prohibit use of the Internet to "create, replicate, retrieve, or transmit" information "making falsehoods or distorting the truth, spreading rumors, destroying the order of society;" or "promoting feudal superstitions, sexually suggestive material, gambling, violence, murder;" or "injuring the reputation of state organs." ISPs or others maintaining network sites must remove offending material and report to Public Security any possibly criminal infractions.[*27]
Content providers have responded to the broad lists of the objectionable by erring on the side of caution. The larger portals, Reuters reports, use both full-time employees and "armies of volunteers" to remove from their popular on-line discussions any "risky political commentary, foul language, and unwanted advertisements."1 Despite occasional exceptions to sanitized discussions--for example, Beijing students' outcry this spring over the murder of a woman student housed in a dormitory far from campus--anyone who wants to use on-line discussion for sustained criticism of the system must use a forum based outside China.[*28]
The End of Big Brother?
Optimists will say the availability of these international sites allows freer discussion and permits information contradicting The Official Story to flow in. They cannot stop all e-mails. They cannot intercept every piece of suspect literature. Although that is true, it matters much less than optimists hope, especially when they leap to the conclusion that the end of authoritarian control is near.
Certainly, some types of discussion, in some contexts, may change people's opinions. But anyone who believes that on-line discussion is a great way to enlighten the participants should spend some time on Usenet, the medium that introduced us to terms like "flame wars." Or inquire into the fate of the discussion fora that many United States news media sites used to provide.
Information? Well before the Net, social psychologists had documented people's propensity to filter information challenging their beliefs. Recent on-line behavior in the United States, where the Internet provides nearly effortless access to a wide spectrum of political information, demonstrates that people gravitate to the sites whose information confirms their pre-existing views (if they even bother much with the news, which is far from the most popular attraction for American Net users preoccupied with pornography sites, music downloads, on-line auctions, and on-line stock trading).2 Similar auto-infofiltering seems to be at work in China. Chinese users definitely know how to get to United States government information on-line; they gleefully downloaded the Starr Report as soon as it went on-line. But when NATO bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, one saw scant evidence that Chinese users posting to on-line discussions (including those outside China) had paid any attention to the NATO and United States government information available on the Net.[*29]
Individuals will no doubt deviate from the generalization, but this does not spell a failure of authoritarian control. Smart authoritarians do not try to control everything; they focus on controlling what really matters. What really matters for China is keeping the vast majority from politically sensitive areas, and preventing the nonconforming small minority from organizing enough to mount a challenge. The imperfect controls that already exist, even applied with the velvet glove outermost, are sufficient to move the vast majority.3
But what of the small minority? The Communist Party in the post-Mao era has drawn a sharp demarcation line between talking and organizing. It most wants to prevent organizing anywhere but under its watchful eye. Does the Internet erode control in that arena?
Some have pointed to the astonishing ability of the now banned Falun Gong sect to stage demonstrations that caught the authorities by surprise as an indication of the organizing potential of Internet technology. The sect has publicized its beliefs through web sites, and the Chinese government itself has pointed to Falun Gong's use of e-mail and the Internet as organizing tools.[*30] But these are scattered allusions; we have no evidence that Net communications played an important part in the sect's overall organizing efforts within China. The allusions in the Chinese media could be akin to the demonizing mantra that still recurs in the United States (recall the references to Internet use in the aftermath of the 1999 Littleton, Colorado school massacre). Or they could be government agencies' ploys to attract more resources by dramatizing a danger that has yet to materialize.
Of course, activists in many settings have used the Net effectively. But just how much resistance can they offer to a government determined to forestall them? Even among experts, opinions differ somewhat about the ease of surveillance. Certainly, the battery of technologies available to state intelligence agencies is increasingly sophisticated and increasingly well equipped to automate the monitoring of all forms of modern telecommunications: fax, telephone, and Internet transmissions among them. Any digitized communications can be recorded, categorized, and searched. If the thought that they cannot possibly read every e-mail message gives you comfort, keep this in mind: they don't need to.
A report on surveillance technology submitted last year to the European Parliament underscores this point.[*31] Although that report sketches the capabilities of American and other Western intelligence agencies, it describes technologies and techniques that Chinese agencies are keenly aware of. Sophisticated search software can pluck a handful of potentially suspect messages out of millions. Traffic analysis--a technique that Chinese security agencies already use--can identify communication hot spots or trace messages emanating from particular sources. Encryption, hailed by some as the ultimate individual protection, is by no means invulnerable against detection, decoding, or built-in back doors.[*32]
Surveillance will get more sophisticated. It can play a role in identifying people like Lin Hai, the young entrepreneur tried and convicted for selling 30,000 Chinese e-mail addresses to a dissident organization abroad. Surveillance, though no doubt requiring little technical effort except web surfing, certainly led to the arrest in Chengdu of Huang Qi, whose 6-4tianwang.com [@] site had attracted numerous political postings that were bound to raise official ire (Huang, according to a Hong Kong human rights organization, has been formally charged with "subverting state power.")[*33]
Where surveillance fails, it is nearly always for human reasons. Where resistance succeeds, it is nearly always because the resisters possess courage, not the latest in technology.
Increased communication with the outside world and increased information flow from the outside world have been part of the transformation of China since the beginning of the reform era. Millions of Chinese have long had access to BBC or Radio Free Asia broadcasts, to Hong Kong satellite TV stations, and to direct meetings with foreigners or Chinese students returned from abroad. The screen let in plenty of flies before ChinaNet signed up its first subscriber. We can consider the Internet an addition to the panoply of media that are gradually increasing China's connections with the outside world. But we should never consider it a political magic wand--any more than the Chinese government should.
In fact, as Internet use and applications expand in China, with the assistance and encouragement of the Chinese state, we may well find that its greatest impact lies in intensifying existing social contradictions.
China's Digital Divide
Future projections suggest that the Internet is just the beginning of a new era of networked information. Those who first adopt and adapt the technology to their ends will probably have a major economic advantage in this brave new world. How many people in China will really have access to this opportunity?
China's annual per capita GNP in 1998 was $750. The country had 70 telephone lines per 1,000 people, compared to 661 lines in the United States. It had 9 personal computers for every 1,000 people, compared to 459 PCs in the United States. While China has been climbing rapidly in all such indicators for the past 20 years, it still has hundreds of millions without personal telephone access, let alone computers and modems. Moreover, inequality has widened tremendously since the mid-1980s. Typically, the coastal and urban areas have benefited enormously from the market reforms; vast areas of the countryside, especially inland, have stagnated, or worse.[*34]
Will Internet expansion in this environment mean a better life for all? Or better opportunities for a small percentage of the population to pull even further ahead of their compatriots?
The former is not entirely absurd. Newer technologies offer less expensive options for connecting to the Net. Several major Chinese manufacturers are producing the set-top boxes that adapt television sets (which are widespread even in rural China) and video players for Internet access.[*35] The boxes are considerably cheaper than personal computers, although the prices of these also continue to fall. In addition, major new network backbones in China are experimenting with the use of mobile phones for Internet access, using wireless application protocol (WAP). Given that mobile phone subscribers may outnumber landline subscribers in a few years, WAP may make at least limited Internet access feasible for a much larger percentage of the population.[*36] Interactivity and functionality will suffer with such options, but they offer something when the alternative may be no access at all.
Even PC-based access could be structured to allow many to benefit from the presence of one networked computer in a community, as public-access terminal experiments in some wealthier coastal cities suggest. Schools, government offices, more prosperous families, and even companies in hinterland and rural communities could possibly offer community access, if resources supporting connection costs were available.
That if is the issue. Wealthier regions pour their own resources into the networking infrastructure because they see beneficial returns. Central government resources fall far short of poorer regionsí needs, and Internet access comes low on their list of priorities. We can expect to see some experiments, some positive models, and a widening have/have not gap compounded by the access-to-technology gap.
What Might Be
What will wired China look like?
Neither the planocracy nor the democratic utopians are likely to see their dreams realized. The authorities will no doubt see some improvement in their capacities to track people and products. But in a setting where it has taken years just to negotiate bank agreements to a single standard for debit cards,[*37] bureaucratic turf battles will no doubt keep the theoretical control potential from ever being realized.
Incomplete control does not, however, spell greater freedom. Indeed, the growing economic significance of networked information and the exploitation of real or imagined threats (from minor hacker damage to web sites to national security perils) may elicit--as it already has in the United States--user acquiescence to tighter government controls. And in China few have ever assumed that privacy was an option. As an entrepreneur in Beijing's high-tech zone once remarked to me, "Why worry about networked databases? They already know everything they want to about me!"
Too often, we expect technology to save us from ourselves. Technology is a tool that must be selected and used for particular, and preferably human--and humane--ends. Its effective use requires an appropriate social and economic context, and a policy environment that identifies the social, political, and economic priorities toward which the technology should be aimed.
Chinese authorities expect the Internet, along with modern telecommunications and information technology in general, to bring economic prosperity, improved Chinese global competitiveness, enhanced national defense, and heightened efficiency and efficacy of the political system. Chinese dissidents and global democracy advocates expect the Internet to bring new means of evading state control and perhaps even engender a new global civil society that can counter the power of national states and the burgeoning power of transnational corporations. But ultimately people, not technology, will decide the outcome.
1. In-house censorship is not, of course, unique to China. Several services in the United States, including AOL, have also used paid and volunteer labor to exercise control over discussions in forums and chat rooms.
2. See Kevin A. Hill and John E. Hughes, Cyberpolitics: Citizen Activism in the Age of the Internet (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998); Richard Davis, The Web of Politics: The Internet's Impact on the American Political System (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
3. The observations of Lawrence Lessig on the power of imperfect controls to move large numbers should be noted. See Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (New York: Basic Books, 1999), p. 57.
*1. The postings were on the "Zouxiang" forum on 6-4tianwang.com (www.6-4tianwang.com/cgi-bin/forum1/mainpage.cgi?pageno=1) at the time of writing. By the time of publication, postings previous to late July had been removed. I made printouts of the relevant messages when doing the research for this article.
*2. CNNIC has been reporting Net statistics including user numbers every six months since 1998. The most recent report, estimating Internet users at 16.9 million, was issued at the end of July 2000. "Statistical Report on Circumstances of China's Internet Development (2000/7)," www.cnnic.net.cn/develst/cnnic200007.shtml (in Chinese). The first CNNIC report, issued in October 1997, found 620,000 users. Links to all six reports are at www.cnnic.net.cn/develst/report.shtml. English translations of the reports that used to be on-line appear to have been removed or relocated. Estimates of 30 million by 2002 reported by AFP, 1 July 2000.
To be sure, there are far less generous estimates of the number of Internet users in China. The CNNIC figures pertain to "registered users," and rely upon the completion of online surveys for other data such as hours spent online, demographic profiles of users, most popular sites, etc. But "user" could have many different interpretations. At the May 2000 Harvard conference devoted to China's Internet, one industry expert for Asia maintained that, based on China's international bandwidth and estimating users based on the 15-25 hours/week that is standard for Hong Kong and Singapore, China could not, as of January 2000, have been sustaining much more than 1.5 million users -- rather than the 8.9 million that CNNIC counted at that point. Another estimate, based on a survey by a Hong Kong research company that claimed to employ more reliable methods than CNNIC's, put the number of China's users at 12.3 million at roughly the same time that CNNIC was counting 16.9 million. "New Internet Survey Offers Alternative for CNNIC," ChinaBiz, www.chinabiz.org/articles/it/000626.htm.
Others have noted that the CNNIC figures may be too low for the total number of Chinese having access to the Internet, since it is common practice in both businesses and households for several individual to use the same Internet account and the same e-mail address. My own observations of and interviews with Chinese users incline me at least to double the CNNIC numbers to estimate those who occasionally -- and more than rarely -- use the Internet. For many of these, use is still mostly for e-mail. Very few could afford to spend anywhere near the Singapore/Hong Kong hours online; the charges would be horrific by Chinese income standards. Those who do spend longer online have accustomed themselves to very slow page downloads during business and evening hours.
*3. A handful of examples: James Martin, "Political Barriers Can't Stop the Internet," Computerworld 30.13 (25 March 1996), p. 37, via ABI Inform database; Bay Fang, "Chinese 'Hacktivists' Spin a Web of Trouble: The Regime Is Unable to Control the Internet," U.S. News and World Report, Sept. 1998, p. 47 (via Infotrac/Gale Group database); Trudy Rubin, "Cracks in the Cyber Wall," Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service, 19 March 1999 (via Infotrac/Gale Group database); Barbara Crossette, "The World: Out of Control; The Internet Changes Dictatorship's Rules," New York Times Week in Review, 1 August 1999, p. 1, via Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe [News, General News, Major Newspapers]. A far more balanced assessment by scholars who are still somewhat optimistic is Zixiang Tan, Milton Mueller, and Will Foster, "China's New Internet Regulations: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back," Communications of the ACM 40.12 (Dec. 1997): 11-16.
*4. These observations are based on my extensive fieldwork and interviews in China from 1992 to 1999. In my fieldwork in 1994 and 1995, I was struck by the number of systems integration companies, either growing as new business units in major Chinese IT companies that started as primarily hardware or software producers, or as new smaller specialized companies. Major government-funded projects such as bank networking and economic information systems helped spur the growth of these companies. Over the years since the early 1990s, intense competition in the Chinese PC industry drove down hardware prices, and Chinese companies like Legend and Founder outstripped the foreign companies that previously dominated the PC market in China. They owed a large part of their success (though by no means all of it) to their pursuit of the Chinese family market. By early 1999, one market research firm estimated that families bought approx. 30% of the PCs sold in China (Newsbytes, 10 Feburary 1999, via Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe [Company News, Computers and Telecommunications]). Market penetration is still quite low, except in the major coastal cities, but has been rising rapidly. And many of the newer models of PCs aimed at the family market come ready for quick and easy setup of Internet access. In November 1999, Legend did its bit for further popularizing both Net and computers by offering free Internet access and a readymade user-friendly portal for its Conet computer (see Legend's press release, with picture of the model, at www.legend-holdings.com/eng/press/19991124_251.html).
*5. See the accompanying "China Internet Chronology 1: The Academic and Research Networks."
*6. See the accompanying "China Internet Chronology 2: The Academic and Research Networks." Reports on the first national meeting of the National Informationization Work Conference (held in Shenzhen, April 1997) were online in early 1998 but have been removed from the original location on the China Science and Technology Network web site. That conference was opened with an address by Vice-Premier Zou Jiahua, who set out the "24-character direction for China's informationization:" "Overall planning, state dominance, unified standards, joint construction, link up to supply each other, shared resources[tongchou guihua, guojia zhudao, tongyi biaozhun, lianhe jianshe, hulian hutong, ziyuan gongxiang." Lu Qun, "The Developmental Direction for China's Informationization [in Chinese]," www.cstnet.net.cn/cw/magazine/97/6/lq1.htm, accessed 24 Feb. 1998.
*7. A detailed discussion of these projects is contained
in Manuel Fries, China and Cyberspace: The Development of the
Chinese National Information Infrastructure (n.p.: 2000); PDF
version supplied by the author. An earlier incarnation of this report can
be found on-line at www.gip.int/offshore/html/en/thesis/manuel/fries2.pdf.
*8. On some of the behind-the-scenes lobbying by both foreign and Chinese Internet companies trying to affect China's legislation, see Gary Chen, "China Internet: Government Tightens Controls, Clamps down on News," China Online, www.chinaonline.com/issues/internet_policy/newsarchive/secure/1999/november/c9111019-ss.asp. MII's position on its jurisdiction and the jockeying by some other government agencies are discussed in Mark Landler, "Rolling With China's Web Punches," New York Times, 31 Jan. 2000, p. C10, via Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe [News, General News, Major Newspapers]. On the division of responsibilities between SCIO and MII, see Lester J. Gesteland, "China ICPs Need Approval, License before Posting News," China Online, 18 Feb. 2000, www.chinaonline.com/issues/internet_policy/currentnews/open/c00021851.asp. For a profile of the State Council Information Office furnished by China Online, see www.chinaonline.com/refer/ministry_profiles/SCIO.asp; for a profile of the news management office under SCIO (Internet Information Management Bureau), see www.chinaonline.com/refer/ministry_profiles/IIMB.asp. Reports in spring 2000 suggested that local governments would be setting up agencies to inspect "news Web sites" operating within their jurisdiction under local licenses. "China Sets up Internet Propaganda Bureau," China Online, 19 Apr. 2000, www.chinaonline.com/issues/internet_policy/currentnews/open/b200041804.asp, based on a report in 17 Apr. 2000 issue of Zhongguo Xinxi Bao. On the military, see J. Moon, "Chinese Internet Regulations & Network Security Strategies," moons.com/netreg.htm (Moon is a consultant with extensive experience in China); Lester G. Gesteland, "China Military Calls for Import Controls, Info Guardian Role," China Online, 10 Feb. 2000 (www.chinaonline.com/issues/foreign_relations/currentnews/secure/c00020901.asp). The State Secrecy Bureau and related provincial and local agencies received jurisdiction in matters relating to the vague category of "state secrets" under the new regulations issued in January 2000. "State Secrecy Protection Regulations For Computer Information Systems on the Internet," full text in Chinese and English at http://a152.g.akamai.net/7/152/1483/b971b3111359a2/www.chinaonline.com/refer/law_reg/C00012601CE.pdf
While the government departments work out jurisdictional claims, though, one should keep in mind that the final shots on content are likely to be called by the Communist Party, particularly by its Central Propaganda Department. That body has already played a leading role in convening two national-level conferences on the Internet. "CPC Devises Strategy to Develop and Monitor the Internet," Hong Kong Ming Pao, 26 Jan. 2000, p. B14, translated in FBIS-CHI-2000-0126.
*9. Wang Xiangdong, "China's telecom takeoff in the
1990s and telecom policy," Information Systems Engineering (in Chinese)
1998, no. 1, p. 11. China Telecom Group Co. reported that as of May 1,
2000, there were a total of 57.595 mobile phone subscribers,
of which 47.81 million subscribed to China Mobile (spun off from China
Telecom) and 9.785 million subscribe to China Unicom.
Those are currently the only companies officially permitted to offer
mobile phone services in China. For standard, landline phones, there were
124 million subscribers as of May 1, of which 101 million were residential
phones. Altogether 47.535 million beeper subscribers were also counted.
(www.chinatelecom.com.cn/chintelecomnews/new07-09.htm;
last accessed 11 July 2000).
*10. An excellent overall introduction to China's basic Internet infrastructure (although, given the pace of change, now somewhat outdated) is Zixiang (Alex) Tan, William Foster, and Seymour Goodman, "China's State-coordinated Internet Infrastructure," Communications of the ACM 42.6 (June 1999): 44-51.
For the first backbone networks, the government authorized only four. These included:
The definitions of permissible technologies particular backbone networks may offer are sometimes quite narrow. Once China Mobile was spun off from China Telecom, the latter was barred from offering any type of mobile phone services (including mobile-based Internet access -- though some recent news reports suggest that China Telecom is still trying to elbow its way into the mobile market). Other networks, like CERNET and CSTNET, are barred from commercial markets. Although it too is eager to get into the Internet market, China Cable Television (CATV) has been permitted only an experimental collaboration with "convergence" of access technologies, in Shanghai's Infoport project. MII has occasionally suggested that CATV can provide backbone services only after severing its content from its infrastructure. However, CATV has been charging ahead with the construction of a nationwide fiber-optic network that can be used to provide Internet services as well as cable TV transmission, and had linked 14 cities by July 2000. "New Fiber Optic Cable TV Ntwk to Link 5 Key China Regions ," China Online, 10 Sept. 1999, www.chinaonline.com/industry/media_entertainment/newsarchive/secure/1999/september/c9090912.asp; "Shanghai tuning in to foreign investment in broadband networks," China Online, 20 July 2000, www.chinaonline.com/industry/telecom/currentnews/secure/b200071109.asp. Others are positioning themselves to offer cable-based access, and the prime movers for these initiatives are extremely well connected indeed. Legend is partnering with the Hong Kong company Pacific Century CyberWorks (which has been expanding its holdings and partnerships in cable and telephone throughout Asia) to provide broadband Internet access in China. "Pacific Century CyberWorks Ties Up With China's Legend," Newsbytes, 5 March 2000, via Lexis-Nexis [Business, Industry & Market, Computers and Telecommunications]. PCCW is owned by Richard Li, son of Hong Kong's biggest tycoon, Li Ka-hsing.
*11.According to the latest CNNIC report, the international bandwidth for the major backbones includes:
*12. Those are the users counted for ChinaNet's own "163" and "169" access networks.
*13. "China Internet Backbone Gets Upgrade," China Online, 3 April 2000, www.chinaonline.com/issues/internet_policy/currentnews/open/c00033106.asp. However, an MII research center, while reporting somewhat more than that for mid-2000, also noted that only about a half of them were actually offering Internet services. CCID-MIC, "Analysis of the Current Condition of China's ISPs [in Chinese]," 7 July 2000, www.ccidnet.com/market/report/2000/07/07/72_865.html; translation available at www.chinaonline.com/issues/internet_policy/currentnews/secure/C00070703.asp.
*14. Before some of the biggest fee reductions, one
source noted, "Telecommunications authorities in China charge exorbitant
fees for telephone line usage, resulting in those fees comprising 80% of
the cost of doing business for ISPs, compared to just 5.6% for American
ISPs." "China's Internet Users To Protest High Connection Fees With Boycott
Of China Telecom," China Online, 30 Dec. 1998, www.chinaonline.com/industry/infotech/newsarchive/secure/1998/december/it_c8122801.asp.
On fee reductions, see "China cuts Internet access fees to spur online
growth," ChinaOnline, 26 Oct. 1999,
www.chinaonline.com/issues/internet_policy/NewsArchive/Secure/1999/.../C9102207.as,
last accessed 10 July 2000. It should be emphasized that China is not unique
in having a virtual or real telecom monopoly whose phone usage charges
(on top of Internet access charges) discourage Internet use. In June 2000
interviews I conducted in Paris, two editors of magazines aimed at French
Internet users argued that France Telecom's charges constituted a major
obstacle to expansion of French Internet use.
*15. MII's Center for Computer and Microelectronics Industry Development reported in July 2000 that only 21% of the "transprovincial" ISPs were operating in the black, while 79% were running at a loss. CCID-MIC, "Analysis of the Current Condition of China's ISPs [in Chinese]," 7 July 2000, www.ccidnet.com/market/report/2000/07/07/72_865.html; translation available at www.chinaonline.com/issues/internet_policy/currentnews/secure/C00070703.asp.
*16. The mechanism used to circumvent the rules became known as "CCF," for China-China-Foreign (Zhong-Zhong-Wai).Under these arrangements, a Chinese and a foreign company set up a joint venture, which then invested in a "Chinese" company providing Internet services. The CCF arrangement was widely used -- particularly by China Unicom -- until Minister of Information Industry Wu Jichuan dropped his bombshell in fall 1999, declaring such arrangements illegal. China Unicom, and other Chinese companies hoping to list on stock markets abroad, were forced to shed all their CCF ventures before they could get permission to list abroad. Numerous telecom/Internet industry trade publications covered these issues in detail. One good summary of the events and issues is Gary Chen, "China’s Booming Internet Sector: Open Or Closed To Foreign Investment?" China Online, Oct. 1999, http://www.chinaonline.com/industry/infotech/NewsArchive/Secure/1999/october/C9100519REV-SS.asp. Details of US-Chinese agreements finally hammered out for the telecommunications industry (including Internet services) can be found in the China Trade Relations Working Group pages, http://www.chinapntr.gov/industry%20fact%20sheets/telecommunications.htm.
*17. The licensing pertains specifically to their provision of news content. The administrative level at which the license must be obatined depends on the intended audience of the site. Lester J. Gesteland, "China ICPs Need Approval, License Before Posting News," China Online, 18 Feb. 2000, www.chinaonline.com/issues/internet_policy/currentnews/open/c00021851.asp. Local authorities may sometimes exceed their jurisdiction in granting such licenses, as Shanghai, in particular, has been accused of doing.
*18. This is sometimes construed as the initial intention of the "China Wide Web," originally hailed as a national intranet constructed under the aegis of China Internet Corporation (bringing together foreign funding and expertise with New China News Agency involvement). However, CWW was also intended as a business information network (with hefty fees for paid subscribers using the business news and other business-oriented content). The response apparently was underwhelming and the web site has been redirected, given the need to compete with other popular portals. CIC has gone on to develop the China.com portal, a considerably more popular content site -- and one hosted outside of China. "Operating with a Net: A Beijing-supported 'Intranet' Firm has an edge," Asiaweek, 14 March 1997; "Sun Opens New Java Center in China," China Online, 8 Oct. 1998, www.chinaonline.com/industry/infotech/newsarchive/secure/1998/october/it_b8100827.asp; "Xinhua News Agency," China Online, n.d., www.chinaonline.com/refer/ministry_profiles/xinhual3.asp.
*19. For a thorough, thoughtful study of the larger marketization process in Chinese media, see Yuezhi Zhao, Media, Market, and Democracy in China: Between the Party Line and the Bottom Line (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998).
*20. "China Sets up Internet Propaganda Bureau," China Online, 19 Apr. 2000, www.chinaonline.com/issues/internet_policy/currentnews/open/b200041804.asp, based on a report in 17 Apr. 2000 issue of Zhongguo Xinxi Bao.
*21. On the project'g goals, content, etc. see "Government Going Online," on the project's official site, www.gov.cn/news/background/zhengfushangwang.htm. For a chronology on the same site, see "Retrospective on Milestones in the Government Online Project (in Chinese)," www.gov.cn/news/dashiji.htm. For a brief overview of the rationale and some general statistics on the project's results, see Jiang Chen, "Nation wired for business," China Daily, 10 Feb. 2000, www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndydb/2000/02/d1-1web.210.html.
*22. The general information on Shanghai is drawn from my joint (with K. Zheng) research in progress on the Shanghai Infoport project.
*23. On disclosures for listed companies: Beijing Xinhua in English, 19 Jan. 2000, transcribed in FBIS-CHI-2000-0119.
*24. Reuters, Beijing, 22 Jan. 2000. Removal of possibly sensitive news links from major Chinese portal sites was reported in an electronic mailing list provided by an office of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. The risks run by web sites that post foreign news stories that excite official wrath were underlined by the announcement this past May that China Finance Information Network's site was suspended and fined for "spread[ing] rumors that damaged the government's image," as the Public Security Bureau in Wuhan put it. Reuters, Shanghai, 14 May 2000. The offensive article had originated in a Hong Kong paper, concerned a "provincial official," and was not only untrue and damaging to the official's reputation but also "affected foreign investment." Another Guangdong-based ICP received a warning from provincial authorities for passing on reports from abroad that "caus[ed] a negative social impacts[sic]." Hong Kong Ming Pao, 27 Feb. 2000, trans. in FBIS-CHI-2000-0228.
*25. Chen, "China Internet: Government Tightens...;"
Gesteland, "China ICPs Need Approval...;" ""China Sets up Internet Propaganda
Bureau." The news management bureau's responsibilities would include "developing
key information sources, studying Internet trends and ensuring a healthy
direction for the dissemination of China's online news." On jettisoning
content operations, see
Rachel Morarjee, "Investors Ready To Join China Internet Market,"
Hong Kong AFP in English, 11 Apr. 2000, transcribed in FBIS-CHI-2000-0411.
According to this report, "Wu Jichuan, head of the Ministry of Information
Industry (MII), was quoted by a state newspaper last month as saying domestic
Internet companies must offload their content-related businesses and assets
if they want to list shares abroad." The actual arrangements used demonstrated
the creativity of all parties. Sina.com,
for example, by the time it obtained NASDAQ listing, had spun off its China
content provision to an "Ad Company" of which it retained 25% ownership
and an "ICP Company" in which it had no ownership. The latter operates
the China portal site, www.sina.com.cn.
(there are also U.S., Taiwan, and Hong Kong portals not covered under this
arrangement). However, majority ownership in both these companies
was held by key managers of Sina.com. "Sina.com Prospectus," pp. 11, 21;
online at finance.sina.com/sina_ipo/f55172_flow113.pdf.
*26. Scattered mentions of these plans can be found in the Chinese press, but details are scarce, and the plans may change dramatically. One press account late last year suggested that all government ownership rights in ICPs would be placed under a new company that New China News Agency controlled. Dow Jones Business News, 10 Nov. 1999.
My mention of CNNIC among the five is probably in error. The "China Internet Network Information Center" referred to in some reports on these portals is probably CINIC, a collaboration of "several dozen industrial newspapers and the Xinhua News Agency's Information Center." "China allows CINIC to offer news on the Internet," China Online, 21 June 2000, www.chinaonline.com/issues/internet_policy/currentnews/secure/b100061605.asp.
*27. "Provisional regulations of the PRC on the administration of computer information systems on the Internet," Feb. 1996, amended and approved by State Council, May 1997 (gbnic.gb.com.cn/engcommands/co195md.html); "Computer information network and internet security, protection and management regulations," approved by State Council, December 1997 (www.chinaonline.com/issues/internet_policy/regulations/c9091660e-ss.asp). The latter source includes some analysis by the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, which also supplied the translated text of the regulations.
*28. Cindy Sui, "Beijing Students Gather To Honor Murdered Classmate," Hong Kong AFP in English, 25 May 2000, transcribed in FBIS-CHI-2000-0525.
*29. In fact, the first of my e-mail correspondents to announce that he had downloaded the Starr report was a Chinese friend in China. On discussions about the NATO bombing, my conclusions are based on the monitoring of several of the most popular BBSes, including a couple based in the U.S. that attract a fair number of posts from within China.
Of course, censorship by the state or by ICPs themselves too can play a role in forestalling such discussion. The U.S. State Department's 1999 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: China (25 Feb. 2000; www.state.gov/www/global/human_rights/1999_hrp_report/china.html) reported the closing of " at least one bulletin board related to the [embassy] bombing...," while just prior to the anniversary of the June 4, 1989 Beijing massacre, "at least one web site based in Beijing closed its chat rooms as a preventive, self-censorship measure."
*30. The main web site for Falun Gong (Falun Dafa) is www.falundafa.org; numerous affiliates have placed copies of founder Li Hongzhi's writings and other information online on other sites. Chinese authorities have charged the sect in general with a number of offenses related to use of the Internet, including using "the internet to spread rumors based on information in their ill-gotten state documents..." Xinhua News Agency, 25 October 1999, via Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe [News, World News, Asia/Pacific News Sources]. Individuals connected with the sect have also been arrested (and some sentences reported) for defending the sect or proselytizing for it, whether on web sites or via e-mail. Xinhua has reported quite a few such cases, as even a quick search on Lexis-Nexis reveals.
*31. "Development of Surveillance Technology and Risk of Abuse of Economic Information," Working Document for STOA Panel, European Parliament (Luxembourg, October 1999) (accessible via Adobe Acrobat icon link for Echelon reports, www.europarl.eu.int/dg4/stoa/en/publi/default.htm). The five-part report was especially heavily publicized for its revelations on "Echelon," a massive program for monitoring private and public sector communications of all kinds, in which the US, the UK, and other English-speaking countries were said to have collaborated. Part 2, with the unwieldy title "The state of the art in communications Intelligence [sic] (COMINT) of automated processing for intelligence purposes of intercepted broadband multi-language leased or common carrier systems, and its applicability to COMINT targetting and selection, including speech recognition" (vol. 2/5, www.europarl.eu.int/dg4/stoa/en/publi/pdf/98-14-01-2en.pdf), makes especially sobering reading. The elements in the title leave no doubt about the many forms of communications for which monitoring is technically possible. For a popularly oriented summary of the Echelon surveillance system, see Matthew Schwartz, "Intercepting Messages," ComputerWorld online edition, 28 August 2000 (www.computerworld.com/cwi/story/0,1199,NAV47_STO48992,00.html).
*32. Certainly the Chinese state apparatus is trying to beef up its surveillance capacity on the Internet, as it has in other modern communications arenas, through the use of state-of-the-art hardware and software that can automate key surveillance tasks to accommodate large volumes of traffic. A case in point: a Texas software startup, InfoGlide, which has developed an extraordinarily powerful technology to search and detect patterns in huge databases (e.g., to spot an individual disguised behind multiple identities), was contacted by buyers whom it came to suspect of fronting for Chinese government bodies. Since it is the company's policy not to license its product to any government agency that might use it for surveillance, it repulsed the buyers. (Author's telephone interview with Jay Valentine, InfoGlide CEO, 17 July 2000.) We only know about this case because the license was refused. How many other suppliers have delivered?
*33. On surveillance of dissidents, see Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, U.S. State Department, "1999 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: China," (25 Feb. 2000) www.state.gov/www/global/human_rights/1999_hrp_report/china.html.On Huang Qi, see "Chinese man faces trial over human-rights website," Reuters, 15 July 2000, dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000715/wl/rights_china_dc_1.html. Many news stories concerning the case are also provided on the 6-4tianwang.com site.
*34. World Bank, World Development Indicators 2000, www.worldbank.org/data/countrydata/littledata/; click on links to country tables for US and China. The Gini index of 21.5 in 1984 had increased to 41.5 by 1995. In the Gini index, 0 means absolute equality and 100 means absolute inequality. Yvonne Ying, "Poverty and inequality in China," Transition Newsletter (1996) online at www.worldbank.org/html/prddr/trans/j&a96/art2.htm; World Development Report 1999/2000, Table 5, online at www.worldbank.org/wdr/2000/pdfs/engtable5.pdf.
*35. The set-top box flurry was touched off by Microsoft's introduction of the "Venus" device that it has developed with Chinese partners. Legend Group has since introduced its own line of set-top boxes. Sunray Liu, "Microsoft China Rolls out Venus Info appliance," 25 Oct. 1999, via Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe [Company News, Computers and Telecommunications]; "Legend Launches Living Room Computer Series," Legend Holdings press release, 11 Jan. 2000, www.legend-holdings.com/eng/press/20000111_258.html; Dexter Roberts, with Bruce Einhorn, "A Legend for How Long?" Business Week, 22 May 2000, p. 72, via Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe [Company News, Computers and Telecommunications].
*36. CNNIC in July 2000 reported that 590,000 users were already connecting to the Internet via "mobile terminals and household information appliances" other than computers. "Statistical Report on Circumstances of China's Internet Development (2000/7)," www.cnnic.net.cn/develst/cnnic200007.shtml
*37. Note, again, that China is by no means unique
in the obstruction caused by turf wars and bureaucratic squabbles. Two
books revealing such obstructions within the U.S. security establishment
are Clifford Stoll, The cuckoo's egg : tracking a spy through the maze
of computer espionage (New York : Doubleday, c1989; soon to be reissued
by PocketBooks) and Tsutomu Shimomura and John Markoff, Take-down:
the pursuit and capture of Kevin Mitnick, America's most wanted computer
outlaw--by the man who did it (New York : Hyperion, 1996). On the lack
of banks' agreement hampering debit card standards, this allusion is based
on my interviews in Shanghai and reviews of the literature on technological
standards on Chinese cards (summer 1998).
