<DOC>
[107th Congress House Hearings]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office via GPO Access]
[DOCID: f:79770.wais]
WIRED CHINA: WHO'S HAND IS ON THE SWITCH?
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ROUNDTABLE
before the
CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
APRIL 15, 2002
__________
Printed for the use of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China
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CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA
LEGISLATIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS
Senate House
MAX BAUCUS, Montana, Chairman DOUG BEREUTER, Nebraska, Co-
CARL LEVIN, Michigan Chairman
DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California JIM LEACH, Iowa
BYRON DORGAN, North Dakota DAVID DREIER, California
EVAN BAYH, Indiana FRANK WOLF, Virginia
CHUCK HAGEL, Nebraska JOE PITTS, Pennsylvania
BOB SMITH, New Hampshire SANDER LEVIN, Michigan
SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio
TIM HUTCHINSON, Arkansas NANCY PELOSI, California
JIM DAVIS, Florida
EXECUTIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS
PAULA DOBRIANSKY, Department of State
GRANT ALDONAS, Department of Commerce
D. CAMERON FINDLAY, Department of Labor
LORNE CRANER, Department of State
JAMES KELLY, Department of State
Ira Wolf, Staff Director
John Foarde, Deputy Staff Director
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
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Page
STATEMENTS
Opening statement of Ira Wolf, Staff Director, Congressional-
Executive Commission on China.................................. 1
Kaufman, Edward E., member, Broadcasting Board of Directors...... 2
Hom, Sharon K., Acting Executive Director, Human Rights in China. 4
Mulvenon, James C., Deputy Director, Center for Asia-Pacific
Policy, RAND................................................... 8
Hauser, Kathryn, Senior Vice President, Technology and Trade,
Information Technology Industry Council........................ 12
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements
Kaufman, Edward E................................................ 34
Hom, Sharon K.................................................... 35
Mulvenon, James C................................................ 39
Hauser, Kathryn.................................................. 40
Submissions for the Record
Prepared statement of Bobson Wong, Executive Director, Digital
Freedom Network................................................ 43
Prepared statement of David Cowhig............................... 47
Center for Social Development, Chinese Academy of Social
Sciences, Frequency Questionnaire of the Survey on Internet
Usage and Impact in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu, and
Changsha....................................................... 51
WIRED CHINA: WHO'S HAND IS ON THE SWITCH?
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MONDAY, APRIL 15, 2002
Congressional-Executive
Commission on China,
Washington, DC.
The roundtable was convened pursuant to notice, at 2:45
p.m., in room SD-215, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Mr. Ira
Wolf (Staff Director of the Commission) presiding.
Also present: John Foarde, Deputy Staff Director; Michael
Castellano, Office of Congressman Levin; Jennifer Goedke,
Office of Congresswoman Kaptur;Todd Rosenblum, Office of
Senator Bach; and Alison Pascale, Office of Senator Levin.
OPENING STATEMENT OF IRA WOLF, STAFF DIRECTOR, CONGRESSIONAL-
EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA
Mr. Wolf. On behalf of Senator Baucus, the Chairman of the
Congressional-Executive Commission of China, and Congressman
Doug Bereuter, the Co-Chairman, I'd like to welcome all of you
to the fourth roundtable that we've held at the staff level on
issues before the Commission. Today we will be discussing the
Internet and free flow of information in China, critical issues
related to the mandate of the Commission which is to monitor
human rights and developments in the rule of law. I was going
to go down a list of the future hearings and roundtables, but I
just refer everyone to the Commission Web site, www.cecc.gov.
We have four participants today. First we have Ted Kaufman
who is a member of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, Sharon
Hom who is from Human Rights in China, James Mulvenon from
RAND, and Kathryn Hauser from the Information Technology
Industries Council. We will run this as we do all the
roundtables. We start from left to right, no ideological
implications here, call it window to wall.
There are 10 minutes for each opening statement. The yellow
light in front of you goes on at minute 9, so please try to
finish up, although we are flexible on this. Once all four of
you have finished, the staff of the commissioners will ask you
questions. We hope that it is not so much a question and answer
format as we will throw out an idea and we'd like to have
discussion among the panelists. Ted, why don't you begin.
STATEMENT OF EDWARD E. KAUFMAN, MEMBER, BROADCASTING BOARD OF
GOVERNORS
Mr. Kaufman. Thank you and thanks for having me here.
My name is Edward Kaufman, I am a member of the
Broadcasting Board of Governors [BBG]. The BBG is a bipartisan
group of eight private citizens, plus the Secretary of State,
who oversee all U.S. Government, non-military, international
broadcasting. This consists of Voice of America [VOA], Radio
Free Europe, Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia [RFA], World Net
Television and Radio and Television Marti.
Our budget is approximately $526 million, we have 3,432
employees and we broadcast in 65 languages around the world. We
were created by the United States International Broadcasting
Act of 1994 as an independent part of the United States
Information Agency [USIA]. We became an independent Federal
agency in 1999 when USIA was subsumed in the State Department.
The lack of free flow of information in China has strongly
concerned the board since the BBG's inception. The Chinese
policy regarding the Internet is just an extension of the
country's policy toward any objective source of information
about what is occurring in China or the rest of the world. All
levels of the Chinese Government are committed to controlling
any information that might reach the Chinese population.
The government controls from Beijing all radio, television,
and Internet dissemination of news throughout China. This is
done in what has become a media rich environment. There is the
illusion that there are many voices in China, but in reality
there's only one.
Wherever you travel there are many newspapers but only one
story. Many of the media outlets no longer receive subsidies
from the government and must compete for advertising revenue to
ensure their financial viability. However, competition does not
extend to the news and analysis, which is closely monitored and
controlled by the government.
The Chinese Government has become skilled at giving
visiting Western policymakers and business representatives the
impression of a free press in China. CNN and BBC television are
available at most first-class hotels, and the International
Herald Tribune and the Asian edition of the Wall Street Journal
are sold in hotel lobbies. However, none of these are available
to most Chinese.
In an attempt to overcome China's internal censorship and
to bring truth and objectivity to China, United States
international broadcasting provides comprehensive news and
objective information to the people of China every day through
radio, television, Internet, and satellite broadcasts. These
services are offered in Mandarin, Cantonese, and Tibetan
languages by VOA and RFA. Radio Free Asia also has a Uyghur
service.
It brings information to millions of eager listeners and
viewers. However, these channels are often systematically
blocked either by direct jamming or broadcast interference from
local stations or other government policies that frustrate free
access. It was hoped that China's acceptance in the WTO [World
Trade Organization] would result in reduction of jamming.
However, since the start of the Chinese New Year the jamming
has increased.
This is especially discouraging because the United States
has given unprecedented access to Chinese Government
international broadcasting. China Government television [CCTV]
has wide dissemination in the United States, including
California's largest cable network and Washington, DC cable. It
will soon be on Time/Warner's cable systems, including New York
City and Houston. China's international radio, CRI, broadcasts
into the United States without jamming, and is available on AM
and FM radio stations across the country.
The lack of reciprocity extends beyond broadcasting to
news-gathering. The Chinese Government has allowed VOA only two
reporters in China, both for the English service, and no RFA
reporters. In addition, they have yet to approve the addition
of two Mandarin-speaking reporters for Beijing and Shanghai.
The Chinese Government complains about their coverage, but will
not allow native speaking reporters to serve in China.
At the same time, China's CCTV and CRI have numerous
bureaus and reporters in the United States. CCTV has offices in
New York and Washington, DC with two reporters each. CRI has
two reporters in their Washington, DC office, two in their New
York office, and one in their Los Angeles office.
Because the Internet could provide a new means to transmit
information, Beijing fears its threat to their information
monopoly. At the same time they recognize the Internet's
economic and educational importance. The government has
instituted draconian regulations and conducts widespread
electronic blocking of particular Web sites, usually
international news sources.
Once again, the government choreographs all this activity
beautifully. When President George W. Bush visited Shanghai to
attend the meeting of Pacific Rim Nations in October 2001, the
Chinese Government stopped blocking a number of Internet news
sites including those of ANN, the NBC, Reuters, and the
Washington Post. These blocks were reactivated immediately
following President Bush's departure.
As a result of these governmental measures the Chinese
people are woefully short of objective information on the
United States and its people. Ironically they believe that they
understand the United States quite well from syndicated
sitcoms, movies and music videos. Over the long term this
prevents the development of a healthy China-United States
relationship. In the short term, it is a policy disaster.
The Chinese people's responses to the May 1999 bombing of
the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade and the April 2001 captured
spy-plane incident are notable. The Chinese Government's
monopoly of information media enabled it to orchestrate Chinese
public reactions to both incidents. In May 1999, rock-throwing
demonstrators attacked the United States Embassy. In April 2001
Chinese domestic media presented a one-sided version of what
happened to the United States spy plane but deliberately toned
down its rhetoric and the demonstrations were minimal. Finding
anyone in China who has heard the United States version of
either case is difficult. Ultimately, in a time of crisis with
China, the United States president has no way to communicate
directly to the Chinese people.
The Chinese people are in the place of an old saying, ``the
trouble with most folks isn't so much their ignorance, as
knowing so many things that ain't so.'' One of our recent
surveys found that 68 percent of the urban dwellers in China
consider the United States to be their nation's No. 1 enemy.
The United States cannot afford to have 1.2 billion people,
almost 18 percent of the world's population so ill-informed.
What can we do about this?
First, President Bush, State Department officials, and
Members of Congress can demand reciprocity from the Chinese,
and stop jamming international broadcasts and allow more United
States journalists into China.
Second, United States Government pressure can be brought on
neighboring countries that are reluctant to allow VOA and RFA
to broadcast into China from their countries because of Chinese
Government pressure.
More money can be allocated to the infrastructure required
to get our signal through. The United States needs refurbished
short-wave facilities, access to additional satellites, and
leasing of additional medium-wave facilities.
As today's hearing shows, the Internet can be key. Regular
use is now at 5.8 percent in China and growing rapidly. Among
better-educated 21 percent use the Internet regularly. The
Internet is the perfect medium for the United States to
communicate directly with individual Chinese citizens. And the
United States has to be single-minded in putting pressure on
the Chinese to stop blocking our Internet sites. In the
meantime, we should spare no expense in finding ways to
penetrate the blocking.
The debate on the bill that established the Congressional-
Executive Commission on China is full of rhetoric that free
trade and economic parity for China would lead to the free flow
of ideas. If anything, since the passage of that bill, the
Chinese Government has done even more to slow or stop the free
flow of information in China.
It is essential for healthy Chinese-United States relations
that all levels of the United States Government demand that
China end the censorship and the jamming and blocking and
deliver on the promise of free flow of information. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Kaufman appears in the
appendix.]
Mr. Wolf. Thank you very much. Next is Sharon Hom.
STATEMENT OF SHARON K. HOM, ACTING EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, HUMAN
RIGHTS IN CHINA
Ms. Hom. Thank you, Ira. I want to start by thanking Ira
Wolf and John Foarde for inviting Human Rights in China [HRIC]
to participate in this roundtable.
The inclusion of an international human rights and Chinese
NGO [non-governmental organization] perspective, together with
business, government, and national security perspectives, will
hopefully contribute to a productive and lively exchange and
sharing of views.
Founded after the June 4 crackdown, HRIC is an
international, non-governmental organization dedicated to
promoting a growing rights consciousness among the Chinese
people; supporting the development of civil society; empowering
peaceful grassroots activism; advocating effective
implementation of China's domestic laws and practices in
compliance with international human rights obligations; and
acting as a catalyst for democratic social change.
The rapid development of the Internet in China presents
significant opportunities and challenges for advancing these
human rights goals. We also recognize there are multiple
stakeholder interests, including the Chinese Communist Party
[CCP], competing PRC [People's Republic of China] ministries
and various organs all claiming a piece of what they view as
lucrative regulatory territory, domestic Chinese telecoms,
foreign investors, media and foreign telecom companies and
domestic and international NGO's.
Yet there is probably a point of convergence at this
roundtable on the importance of promoting freedom of expression
and the free flow of information. From the United States
Government's perspective, these are integral to the development
of rule of law, democracy, and promotion of civil society
initiatives. From the perspective of the private telecom
sector, the uncensored flow of free information is at the
normative core of free market and exchange values.
From our perspective, the free flows of information,
uncensored debate and discussion, and freedom of assembly, are
critical for promoting the accountability of government,
exposing and addressing corruption, and promoting the emergence
of a genuine democratic civil society. However, because
political and legal controls constrain the independence of
civil society within China, the nurturing of an uncensored
virtual civil society through the use of Internet and wireless
technology becomes an essential challenge.
In the past 7 years, the astonishing development of the
Internet can be seen in the laying of the backbone of thousands
of kilometers of fiber optics--longer than the Great Wall--the
exponential growth in bandwidth, and now more than 33 million
Internet users. The number of people online in China has been
rising rapidly in the past 3 years, surging to rates of 152
percent growth.
In terms of wireless technology, currently China has the
largest wireless market in the world, nearly 200 million users.
Yet, these numbers also reflect a serious digital divide.
The demographics of these users raise concerns about breathless
accounts of the capacity for the Internet to allow China to
leapfrog other countries. Internet users and their geographic
distribution are not representative of China as a whole. The
vast majority of Internet users are young, male and college
educated. However, I just want to note, the arrest of Internet
activists seems to be geographically distributed throughout
China in all the provinces. The Internet, however is mainly
diffused over the three big cities, Beijing, Shanghai and
Guangzhou. By the end of 2000, only 0.76 percent of the
Internet users are in rural areas where 80 percent of China's
population resides.
This digital divide reflects and contributes to the
widening economic and social gap between rural and urban, and
underscores the failure of China's economic modernization
policy to ensure equal access and treatment in political,
economic, social and cultural life to the vast majority.
Together with rising social dislocations and growing violent
unrest among the millions of unemployed workers, these growing
inequalities threaten to undermine the security, stability and
fairness of China's modernization and reform efforts.
If the promise of the Internet reaches only the current
demographics and growing middle class elite--then the Internet
will not be a real tool for democracy or building civil society
in China. Inherent in visions of democracy and freedom are
broad-based non-discriminatory access and opportunities for
participation. Whether in cyberspace or otherwise, freedom of
expression, an independent press, and freedom of assembly are
meaningless if they can only be exercised by those connected,
rich, educated, or powerful enough to claim these rights.
It is also important to note that during this period of
impressive technological advances, the overall human rights
situation in China remained--and remains--serious and urgent.
Ongoing human rights abuses include the systematic and
continued use of torture, the arbitrary administrative
detention system, and the ongoing impunity for the violent June
4, 1989 crackdown on unarmed civilians.
The post-September 11 global and domestic focus on anti-
terrorism has also allowed China, in the name of security, to
continue its violent crackdown on peaceful Muslim and Tibetan
advocates for self-determination, political dissidents, labor
and democracy activists, and on vulnerable groups, such as
rural and migrant populations. At the end of 2001, China
imprisoned more journalists than any other country in the
world.
And specifically relevant to our discussion today, China
has adopted a range of low- and high-tech strategies, including
implementation of extensive regulations to censor and control
Internet content and access, a network of informers, and the
construction of an extensive and sophisticated surveillance
system, with the assistance of the foreign telecommunications
corporations, notably Canadian and including major United
States companies. These strategies have also resulted in self-
censorship on the part of commercial Internet service providers
and others.
Despite mounting government sophistication at proactive
propaganda strategies to use the Internet to promote State
interests, the Internet is also a vehicle for human rights
activism by mainland and exile groups such as HRIC, the China
Democracy Party, the Falun Gong, and the Tibetan exile
community. However, individuals within China that seek to
deploy Internet strategies are met with arrests and detention.
There are at least 20 or more individuals who have been
detained in the past year, that's 2001, for alleged illegal on-
line activity, that include printing out pro-democracy
materials, distributing information on Falun Gong, publishing
articles of arrests of Internet activists, promoting political
reforms and calling for the reassessment of June 4, and posting
information about local human rights violations. These were all
deemed to be violating State security.
Increasingly restrictive Internet regulations make it clear
that freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, and right to
petition the government guaranteed in the Chinese Constitution
are not real freedoms at all when the regime views their
exercise as a challenge to its monopoly on political power.
The legal, technological, and policy responses of the PRC
Government to control and counter the potential political
impact of the Internet also raise important questions regarding
conventional wisdom that the Internet will act as an inevitable
force for democracy. When Jiang Zemin and current leaders call
for the informatization of the economy, the military, and the
government bureaucracy , it is clear this does not include any
perceived challenges to the monopoly of political and
information power held by the Party.
As an example from the NGO trenches, perhaps an example of
what the RAND current report refers to using the Internet as a
force multiplier, I want to end by briefly describing HRIC's
Internet-related initiatives. Our work features a proactive
role for mobilizing technology for human rights activism from
the base of our interactive Web site. At the end of last year,
HRIC re-launched an expanded database driven bilingual Web site
that provides easy-to-search functions, direct links to HRIC-
sponsored projects such as the June 4 Fill the Square, on-line
issues of HRIC's journal China Rights Forum, daily human rights
news updates, and an archive of HRIC reports prepared for U.N.
bodies and international conferences, and the design of a
comprehensive data base on political prisoners in China. HRIC
also is currently working with a former student leader of the
1989 Movement and now a professional Internet data base
developer to construct a comprehensive, interactive, and
authoritative Web site focused on establishing reliable
accounts and facts of the June 4 massacre and the subsequent
persecutions. This Web site will include the diverse
perspective of students, concerned citizens and the government
and archival materials such as dazibao--the ``Big Character
Posters''--pamphlets, meeting records and decisions, photos,
audio and videotapes, government announcements and internal
documents--wenjian--reports, and interviews on newspapers, and
TV and radio coverage.
Together, this Web site and the archive will make
historical materials about this pivotal event in contemporary
China available to human rights activists, researchers,
educators, journalists and the evolving pro-democracy movement.
Looking ahead, we recommend the following areas for ongoing
attention by the Commission.
First, identifying and monitoring possible opportunities
for intervention and engagement by the United States
Government, the private sector, and NGO's.
For example: In October 2002, Shanghai will host the ICANN
conference. The complexities and internal debates aside, how
can concerns about Chinese Internet censorship, free flow of
information, and freedom of association and assembly, be
constructively and appropriately raised?
In the lead-up to the 2008 Olympics, we urge the Commission
to monitor several human rights concerns, including violations
of labor rights, the cleaning-up of areas of Beijing through
detention of undesirables, tighter control of the media to
maintain a positive domestic picture, shut-downs of media and
Web sites, and the continued use of security and anti-terrorism
measures to silence legitimate peaceful expression.
With respect to information and surveillance technology,
the testing and implementation of security systems during site
construction, including digital surveillance cameras, biometric
authentication systems, should be carefully monitored to avoid
leaving behind the architecture for technological repression
and control when the games are finished.
We also end by respectfully noting that the roundtable
themes are interrelated and it may be useful for the Commission
to consider at some future point, hearings or roundtables that
examine the interface between them, for example, the
implementation of the WTO and human rights, or in the context
of the digital divide, Ethnic Minorities and the Internet.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Hom appears in the
appendix.]
Mr. Wolf. Thanks very much. James Mulvenon.
STATEMENT OF JAMES C. MULVENON, DEPUTY DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR
ASIA-PACIFIC POLICY, RAND
Mr. Mulvenon. Good afternoon. Again I'd like to thank Ira
Wolf and John Foarde for inviting me to come today. My name is
James Mulvenon. I'm a China researcher at the RAND Corporation
which is a non-profit, federally funded research and
development center, that primarily does most of its work for
the United States Government, half of which is on national
security matters. In other words I'm the representative of the
defense industrial complex on this panel.
RAND in particular has spent the last 5 years or so doing
Chinese open source research on a variety of topics between the
nexus of the information revolution in China and United States
national security.
We've looked at a number of different issues. Export
controls--which is now becoming an increasingly vibrant debate
here in Washington, particularly on information technologies--
China's national information security strategy; the nexus
between the Chinese military and Chinese I.T. development,
particularly as it effects China's military modernization; the
use and monitoring of the Internet by the Chinese Ministry of
public security and State security. And last what I'd like to
talk about today which is dissident use of the Internet and
Beijing's counter strategies. In the back of the room we have a
copy of RAND's report by that title, and my co-author, Michael
Chase, is with me here today.
It is clear that all around the world from Saudi Arabia to
Cuba to Myanmar to the People's Republic of China, dissidents
are using the Internet increasingly to organize and communicate
with each other, to access banned information, and draw support
from a global network of activists and other NGO's. At the same
time, however, these governments are struggling to prevent
these activists from using the Internet to erode government
controls over the flow of information and promote political or
social agendas that these regimes find threatening. This has
raised an interesting question, the answer of which depends on
whether you favor the optimistic or pessimistic scenario. The
optimistic scenario is that the Internet is a liberalizing
force that will bring greater freedom and openness to these
societies and therefore give greater opportunities to its
citizens.
But there is a pessimistic scenario that we cannot
overlook, which is that these telecommunication and
modernization programs favor those organizations within
countries that have economies of scale. Having economies of
scale these states can use this technological modernization to
further the ends of State coercion and repression. And I think
we see that balance in China in particular and I'd like to talk
about some of the dynamics of that.
Clearly the arrival of the Internet in China has altered
the dynamic between the Beijing regime and the dissident
community both within China and outside. For the State,
political use of the Internet further degrades the Chinese
Communist Party's ability to control the flow of information
that it deems politically sensitive or subversive into China or
within China. The Party however, also has the additional
benefit of being able to use Leninist methods to crush
potential organized opposition, and as a result, no
organization with the capacity to challenge the Chinese
Communist Party's monopoly on political power in our view,
presently exists in China.
But, however I would point out that the Internet only
provides two-thirds of what I would regard as the necessary
criteria for political change in China. Those criteria are the
ability to coordinate activity, the ability to motivate
activity, and then the ability to actually achieve agency with
that activity, to actually achieve coercion. If you think about
it, the Internet allows activists all over the world to
communicate with one another and to coordinate with one another
and to provide motivation for one another. But when the
Ministry of Public Security kicks in the door of your apartment
at 4 o'clock in the morning, that activist is alone. And to
that extent there is a limit on the power of the Internet to
provide a mechanism for political change short of actual
organization and mass activity.
I would point out that there are two different dynamics in
terms of dissident use of the Internet that we discuss in the
report. Two-way communication on the one hand and one way
communication on the other. And they have very different
results and motivations. For dissident students and members of
groups like Falun Gong, the Internet, especially two-way
communication like e-mail and bulletin boards in particular,
permit the global dissemination of information for
communication, coordination and organization with an ease and
rapidity that is unmatched in the history of the world. And it
also allows them to do this without attracting the attention of
the authorities. The perfect example of that is the 10 to 15
thousand Falun Gong practitioners that showed up uninvited
outside the central leadership compound in Beijing in April
1999.
However, the dissident community has also made extensive
use of what we deem one-way Internet communication,
particularly what's known as e-mail spamming, which has been a
particularly successful form of this type of communication. It
enables groups to transmit uncensored information to an
unprecedented number of people within China and to provide
those recipients with plausible deniability. And how they do
this is that they don't solicit information via e-mail--you
don't have to sign up to be a subscriber to this. They simply
buy mass e-mail lists with millions of names on it and they
make sure to send those e-mails also to low-level and mid-level
Ministry of Public Security officials. So anyone who receives
these e-mails honestly can say that they didn't solicit them
and therefore they have plausible deniability about receiving
the information. In its simplicity, it is actually quite
brilliant. The PRC is unable to stop these attempts because in
many cases these groups never use the same originating
organization or unit IP address more than once. And there is a
trend, I think, toward more groups and individuals becoming
involved in activities of this type, which some people have
dubbed a form of Internet guerrilla warfare.
Unfortunately the Chinese Government also has recognized
this in their own internal writings and it is one of the
reasons that they're so scared about it because the activity
very much resembles the way they organized themselves in the
1930s, into cells where individuals not necessarily have
organizational linkages to other members of the organization.
And thus we argue that small groups of activists can therefore
use the Internet--as Sharon has pointed out--as a force
multiplier to exercise influence disproportionate to their size
and financial resources. However, we would also point out that
enhanced communication does not always further the dissident
cause. We've spent hundreds of hours in dissident chat rooms
and bulletin boards and other forums both inside the United
States and around the world, and what's clear is that a
significant percentage of the communication on these bulletin
boards shows us that the Internet is also a new forum for
discord and rivalry within the dissident community; and that a
significant percentage of these communications are accusations
and counter accusations that one or other participant, at any
given time in the forum, is an agent of the Ministry of State
Security. So there's an awful lot of counterproductive,
destructive, destabilizing discussion that's going on amid
admittedly positive discussion.
In terms of counter strategies, the Beijing regime, I would
argue, has used a combination of what we call high- and low-
tech methods. On the high-tech side, this includes blocking of
Web sites and e-mails, monitoring, filtering, denial,
deception, disinformation, and even in some cases--we document
in the report--official hacking of dissident and Falun Gong Web
sites. In the past couple of years you could use proxy servers
if you were located in China with some ease to get to nearly
every site you could possibly want to visit on the global
Internet. But we would note that there have been some technical
trends in the last year or so that show that the Beijing
Government has become increasingly sophisticated at ending the
use of proxy servers. In addition, there are a number of other
proposals on the table for various flawed ideas for using
various types of peer-to-peer networking to be able to enhance
the flow of information, and we can talk about that more in the
discussion.
The other half of Beijing's strategies which we dub low-
tech Leninist--and I would argue make up the bulk of their
strategy and also account for the majority of the success of
their strategy--are the traditional things that we associate
with Leninism which was described once as an organizational
weapon. In other words, surveillance, informants, searches,
confiscation of computer equipment, regulations and even
physical shut down of large sections of telecommunications
infrastructure during crisis.
In this case we've often found in going back through
examples of arrests, that the Beijing authorities would cue on
a particular dissident through non-Internet means, through
informants or other methods, then cue on their communications.
But in many cases they would simply kick in the door at 4
o'clock in the morning and these articles related again and
again that the first thing they do is they grab the hard drive.
And often they reconstruct a case against a person in terms of
what they've done on the Internet, through this type of
physical confiscation rather than anything sophisticated or
technology-related. What's key, though, about this strategy on
the part of Beijing is that they understand that the center of
gravity is not necessarily the information itself. Like all of
us, people in China are absolutely drowning in information in
the 21st century. But they realize that the key center of
gravity is the organization of information and the use of
information for political action and that's where the focus of
their coercion has been thus far.
The strategy of the security apparatus, I would argue,
strives less to actually stamp out every case of the use of the
Internet for subversion but instead to create a regulatory and
political climate of self-censorship and self-deterrence. A
perfect example of this are the regulations about the running
of Internet Service Providers [ISP]--who are responsible for
the actions of all of their subscribers--which is why the ISP's
are the ones who put the monitors within the chat rooms to make
sure that people aren't criticizing the Party, rather than the
Ministry having to do it all by itself. One Ministry of Public
Security official was quoted as saying that, people are used to
being wary in the general sense that knowing that you are under
surveillance acts as a disincentive. The key to controlling the
Net in China is managing people and this is a process that
begins the moment you purchase a modem, and one at which the
Ministry is very comfortable. And thus in a sense they are in a
partnership with Western and other companies in China in that
they are looking to make an environment in which people seek
profits, not politics.
Now, to conclude, I would argue that to this point,
Beijing's countermeasures--to the Internet--have been
relatively successful. Far more successful than most of the
Internet champions would have said 5 or 10 years ago about how
the Internet was going to single-handedly overturn the regime
in Beijing. In fact I would offer a surfing metaphor, to close,
as the reason why. Which is to say that everyone on the beach
is fascinated that the amateur, who's never surfed before
actually got up on this monstrous wave. Which reflects the
feeling of many people, I think, of their surprise that the
Beijing Government has been successful thus far in being able
to shape the information environment in China. But the hope for
the future is that everyone on the beach also remains supremely
confident that that amateur surfer is going to be crushed
mercilessly against the coral reef over the long term. And thus
is our hope for liberalization within China. Thank you very
much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Mulvenon appears in the
appendix.]
Mr. Wolf. Thanks very much. Kathryn Hauser.
STATEMENT OF KATHRYN HAUSER, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, TECHNOLOGY
AND TRADE, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY INDUSTRY COUNCIL
Ms. Hauser. Good afternoon, I'm Kathryn Hauser. I'm the
Senior Vice President of the Information Technology Industry
Council, otherwise known as ITI. Thank you for inviting me to
speak today on behalf of the 30 member companies of my
association. ITI members are the leading providers of
information technology products and services and span the
entire I.T. industry, from infrastructure to computer hardware,
software, services, consumer electronics, e-commerce and
Internet services.
Our companies operate globally and are heavily invested in
ensuring open international trade, as over 60 percent of their
revenues come from foreign sales. China is obviously a key
market for ITI members. Many of our companies have longstanding
investments and operations there and others are relatively new
to the market. But all agree that China represents the most
significant growth market for I.T. products and services and we
at ITI are actively working to improve our companies' access to
this market.
We are hopeful that China's membership in the World Trade
Organization will advance domestic economic reforms and expand
China's openness to the rest of the world.
The focus of this roundtable on ``Wired China, Who's Hand
is on the Switch,'' is timely. We've all observed as have other
panelists, the rapid expansion of the Internet in China as well
as the steady increase in Chinese domains and Web sites. The
China Internet Network Information Center estimates that there
are 33.7 million Chinese Internet users and many are predicting
that China will soon overtake Japan as the Asian country with
the most Internet users. Already, China is the world's largest
market for cell phones with nearly 160 million users. As the
technology evolves to allow inexpensive Internet access from
cell phones, China is likely to have more Internet users than
any other country.
All of us are questioning what this means for China, its
people, governments, businesses and consumers and for our
countries doing business there. As with any issue in China, the
role of the government is paramount. Through telecommunications
policies beginning in the 1990s, the Chinese Government shaped
the growth and diffusion of the Internet and continues to
support its expansion today. At the same time the Chinese
Government is attempting to control use of the Internet by
filtering or blocking access to certain Web sites with
objectionable content.
We in industry believe in the power of information
technology to generate higher productivity and economic growth,
to increase the flow of information, and to better the lives of
those that can access it. I want to speak for a moment about
the Chinese Government's support for the development of the
Internet.
Internet expansion in China is due, we believe, to direct
support by the Chinese Government and it continues to support
and promote the use of information technology and the Internet
to serve its economic goals. Nearly a decade ago in the early
1990s, the Chinese Government began a process called
informatization, which was to drive industrial development. It
initiated the so-called ``golden projects'' which established a
new Internet protocol communications network linking government
ministries and state-owned enterprises. The goal was to use
information technology as a vehicle to modernize the economy,
centralize decisionmaking, create a more transparent
administrative process between and among government ministries,
and establish e-government capabilities. The Chinese Government
also deployed broadband technologies, particularly in high-
density urban areas, and put a plan in place to rapidly build
out the country's telecom infrastructure. These actions paved
the way for State Council support for the development of the
Internet in China.
In 1996, the State Council set up a Steering Committee on
National Information Infrastructure to coordinate Internet
policy, taking it out of the hands of the Ministry of Posts and
Telecommunications and the Ministry of Electronic Industries. A
further restructuring occurred 2 years later in 1998, with the
consolidation of functions into the Ministry of Information
Industries, known as MII. High-tech and telecom issues became
the responsibility of Vice Minister Wu and the MII Minister,
with Premier Zhu Rongji, occasionally taking a role.
Last August, the State Informatization Leading Group was
formed to provide top-level coordination of intra-agency issues
related to the I.T. and telecom sector. Under this leading
group, the State Council Informatization Office launched a
major initiative to broaden decisionmaking and communication
links through e-government.
Chinese Government officials are eager to learn about the
United States experience with e-government. We at ITI have
forged a link between the State Council Informatization Office
and USITO, the United States Information Technology
Organization, which is comprised of six United States I.T.
associations and serves as our collective voice in China. Vice
Minister He of the State Council Informatization Office was in
Washington last month and discussed e-government and e-commerce
issues with ITI member companies. We will continue this dialog
through USITO in Beijing.
The United States should welcome China's e-government
initiative. It has the potential to significantly increase
transparency of China's governance for its own people. Some of
our members believe it will also be the major driver of the
growth of the use of the Internet in China, as government
information, decisions, and services remain important if not
paramount in China. Finally, U.S. companies, including ITI's
membership, are best positioned globally to benefit from this
growth.
We have already heard from other speakers about how, as the
Internet continues to expand in China, the government continues
its attempt to tighten controls on on-line expression. What
kind of content is the Chinese Government really trying to
limit? Much of their attention seems focused on the same issues
that have troubled regulators in other countries--exploitative,
sexually inappropriate, or criminal uses of the Web. Beyond
that, Chinese officials want to limit politically offensive or
regime-threatening subjects.
Since 1995, when China first began permitting commercial
Internet accounts, the authorities have issued at least 60 sets
of regulations aimed at controlling Internet content. The
regulations are often vague and broadly worded, but nonetheless
form an elaborate regulatory framework that serves as a
statement of policy, justification for monitoring or
surveillance, and a set of guidelines for what constitutes
illegal activity and a deterrent to Internet users.
When industry has pressed Chinese officials for details,
regulators have a hard time or simply refuse to describe
precisely what sort of subjects fall into these categories. The
very vagueness of Chinese regulations concerning political or
religious issues has a chilling effect on all dialog relating
to these topics.
We have already heard from other speakers about the recent
survey conducted in China about Internet use. I would like to
refer the staff to that Web site which is
www.worldInternetproject.org. It talks about the use of the
Internet in China and the ways in which users of the Internet
are trying to get around the blocking activities of the Chinese
Government.
I think, to conclude, there is a strong role for the United
States industry in this debate. First, we must continue to work
closely with the Chinese Government to help China expand
Internet access broadly throughout the country and to help them
benefit from the use of information technologies. Our USITO
Office in Beijing is well-positioned to advance this dialog and
ITI member companies will actively participate and share their
experience with e-commerce and e-government.
A key objective will be to develop a process whereby
companies that will be affected by proposed regulations will be
permitted to comment on them before they are implemented. In
addition, we hope to share information about how other
governments are dealing with these problems, encourage Chinese
participation in e-commerce occurring around the world, and
support government-to-government exchanges on these issues.
We anticipate that this discourse will enable both industry
and government to work together to address the regulatory
structure and other key issues such as privacy and security.
Whether one considers the Internet primarily a method of
mass communication or a product of the telecommunications
network, the fact remains that the Chinese leadership continues
to see the development and promotion of the Internet as a
vehicle for cultural, educational, and economic development in
China. This does not mean that the government will not try to
control objectionable content, just as many other countries are
doing. But it is clear that China is making more information
available to more and more people. the United States I.T.
industry needs to be part of this effort. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Hauser appears in the
appendix.]
Mr. Wolf. Thanks, Kathryn, and thanks to all of you for
getting us off to a really good start this afternoon. I'll
start out if I may. I'd like to talk a little about reciprocity
with a question to you, Ted, about what kind of discussions
there have been in recent years between the United States
Government and the Chinese Government on the issue of
reciprocity that you've raised. At least between the radios,
the government radios or TV, or in this case cable usage. And
then I'd like to get any comments from any others on how we
could use the concept of reciprocity more broadly in terms of
trying to help open up the Internet inside China.
Mr. Kaufman. Well, we've been talking about it with the
Chinese Government both directly and also through our Embassy
for a long time. We've been talking about jamming specifically
and now blocking the Internet for a long time and we've
documented with the ITU the fact that China's doing it. Many
times the discussion won't go very far because they allege they
are not jamming. So it really hasn't been a discussion. It has
been one-sided complaining on our part and not much discussion
on theirs, because when it comes to reciprocity they know, and
none of us ever would suggest, that we would curtail their
ability to broadcast in the United States. That's not what
we're about, and they know that that's not something that we'd
be willing to do. So the discussions are pretty one-sided.
We did make a formal request to the Chinese Government that
they expand the number of reporters we have in China. This has
been turned down. Right now we have in our English service, two
reporters in Beijing. We wanted to open up a Shanghai office
and have a Beijing office with two reporters that were Mandarin
speakers. The irony is that when you talk to them, one of their
complaints is that there isn't enough coverage of what goes on
in China, but at the same time they don't want to have more
reporters who are Mandarin speakers in the country. So it has
really been more of a one-sided discussion. I think this
Commission can play a major role in changing that. The Chinese
Government is embarrassed about the unfairness of it. In fact,
when I first started talking to the government they would say
things like ``How would you feel if we were broadcasting in
your country?'' Well now they're broadcasting in our country
big time. The response I always give is ``how would you feel if
you invite someone to your house but they would not invite you
to their house?'' Without some indication that this is on the
agenda of the U.S. Government through the Congress or through
the Executive Branch, this is not going to go anywhere.
Recently we have talked to the Embassy and the Embassy is in
the process of once more going back to them and talking about
the whole area of reciprocity. I think it is a good issue to
talk about with the Chinese. But I think it has to be done by
people other than us.
Mr. Wolf. This has not been very high up on the agenda of
the executive branch?
Mr. Kaufman. Yes, I think there's been a concern, but
you've been doing this for a while now, you know that there's
so many issues with China. When do you get to broadcasting?
When do you get to free flow of information? That's why the
passing of PNTR [permanent normal trade relations] was a
wonderful opportunity. Clearly PNTR was based on Kathryn's
comment which is if we have the free exchange economically, we
will have free exchange of ideas. And I went to China after
passage of PNTR thinking that we're going to do this, we're
really going to start talking about this. However, it has been
very discouraging. I talked to some folks at Voice of America
last week and they said, in fact, the jamming since the Chinese
New Year has increased, and Radio Free Asia says the same
thing. The Chinese Government seems to feel that now that
they've gotten PNTR, and they're in WTO that they can stop any
progress on free flow of information. The final thing I'll say
is it goes back to what happened when President Bush went there
in 2001. They removed all the Internet blocks while he was
there and replaced them as soon as he was gone. It is a public
relations thing. There's got to be some meat behind our
efforts. There has to be some real concern in the Congress and
the Executive Branch for anything to happen.
Mr. Wolf. Any other thoughts on the use of reciprocity?
Ms. Hom. Not on reciprocity--but I would like to comment on
Ted's PNTR comments. I think one obstacle that comes right up
is that trade liberalization, the WTO, and China's being
willingness to be part of the international economic regime,
does not necessarily translate into willingness to pursue
political reforms because China has very clearly bifurcated
economic and political reforms. So I think that's the policy
wall you hit. But in the context of WTO, WTO membership
reflects signing onto general principles and an objective,
independent dispute settlement mechanism that is not a national
mechanism, but an international one. These principles arguably
support movement toward a rule-based system.
Mr. Wolf. Thanks. Let me next go to John Foarde.
Mr. Foarde. First of all, thank you all for fascinating and
profound statements that will really help us grapple with these
issues and I've got a zillion questions but we have colleagues
here that will also want to ask. So let me address one to Jim.
In an exchange on an Internet discussion group last Fall
someone suggested to me that for a Chinese Internet user to
bypass blocked sites was ``technically trivial''. But your
comments suggest that maybe not so much now as in the past and
the Chinese Government may be increasing its sophistication to
prevent the use of proxy servers. Could you comment on that and
also on the use of peer-to-peer methods to bypass blocks?
Mr. Mulvenon. I would say 2 years ago it was quite trivial
to go around the blocks. In many cases you would go into an
Internet cafe in China and the Netscape or Explorer browser
would be pre-configured with the proxy server to go around it.
And the top three bookmarks were lists of proxy servers that
you could use to go around and all you had to do was figure out
how to program the proxy.
The Chinese Government is pretty slow on the uptake on many
of these things but they finish well. In the sense that they've
pursued a variety of technical means over the last year, which
have allowed them to track proxy server use and much more
quickly add those proxy servers to the routing lists to ban
them on the routing tables. In a way it becomes a communication
problem because the problem with any sort of peer-to-peer or
proxy blocking scheme, is you have to be able to communicate to
large numbers of people in a very short amount of time, how to
get around it or what proxy server to use. Unfortunately, the
government is on the same communication channel. And thus you
have what in my mind are fundamentally, systematic system
flaws, like the idea of Triangle Boy. Where, if you are in
China currently, you have to send an e-mail to the Triangle Boy
people to get the current list of where the Triangle Boy
servers are. Well there's nothing that has stopped the Ministry
of Public Security, from simply sending the same e-mail to
Safeweb to get the list and to add those proxy servers or those
Triangle Boy servers to the blocked routing tables.
So communicating to people within China, in a secure way,
about how to get around this stuff without also communicating
the keys to that, to the Chinese Government is a fundamental
design problem. And I haven't seen anything yet in a technical
realm that solves it.
Mr. Wolf. Thanks. Jennifer Goedke with Congresswoman
Kaptur.
Ms. Goedke. I'd also like to thank each of you for
testifying today. My first question would be--when we were
considering passing PNTR, we had companies begging us to
support this legislation because they thought, great, now we
can get into China and everything is going to change. Now that
PNTR has passed and more foreign-owned businesses are able to
get into China, how can they support some of the reform for the
Internet; whether it is through human rights or whether its
access, is there anything that some of these companies can do?
Mr. Kaufman. There isn't much interest in doing that. In
fact, some of the people that are providing the very technology
that we're talking about here, to allow the Chinese to block
the Internet, are these companies that got in because of PNTR.
It seems that what we have is the worst of all worlds, and that
is, we've got American corporations in there helping them block
the Internet sites and then talking about legitimate objections
that the Chinese Government has to politically sensitive
material. So I see very little being done by American
corporations to do anything but exacerbate the problem.
Ms. Hom. I would basically agree with that assessment--but
at risk of sounding somewhat naive--I would like to point out
one recent development--a U.N. initiative--The Global Compact,
although the NGO community views it quite skeptically at this
stage. China hosted a Global Compact meeting in December 2001
attended by large telecom and other companies, including Cisco,
Microsoft, and Nokia. As of January 2002, at least 25 foreign
companies with a substantial business or investment presence in
China have formally indicated their participation in the Global
Compact. Basically, the Global Compact is premised on a
``learning model,'' to involve various actors--governments,
companies, labor, civil society, and the U.N.--to promote good
practices by corporations in three areas: Human rights, labor
rights, and the environment. The standards for developing and
promoting advocacy approaches are measures by internationally
recognized documents and standards set forth in human rights,
ILO, and the RIO documents.
So one way that these companies--I think that market power
is on the side of security--market power is just on the side of
this $80 billion dollar industry. But privacy and the
protection of human rights is not going to generate a lot of
profits. But it will ultimately affect the bottom line by
affecting the stability of the investment climate.
But on the business side, market power is on the side of
security concerns that are generating an industry of billions
of dollars. Privacy concerns and the protection of human rights
are not going to generate a profit that outweighs these market
incentives. However, the human rights situation will ultimately
affect the bottom line by affecting the stability and viability
of the investment climate. So human rights should be of concern
to the private sector. I think some of the key companies
joining the Global Compact understand this.
I think one area for the Commission members to pay
attention to would be the monitoring of the implementation of
the Global Compact. The Global Compact Web site is:
www.globalcompact.org. It would be good to pay attention to the
overlap of companies that are Global Compact participants,
Olympics 2008 sponsors, and I.T. companies represented on the
Industry Council. I don't think any of the Olympics corporate
sponsors would want their names associated with human rights
violations and keeping somewhat of a clean public face would be
important to these companies. The Commission can also help to
ensure that NGO civil actors are at the table. For example, at
the Beijing meeting held in December 2001, no independent NGOs
were invited.
Ms. Hauser. I would just add to that by saying: One of the
challenges of doing business in China is the need to constantly
meet with Chinese Government officials. And what many of our
member companies are finding out is they have to broaden and
deepen the range of government officials with whom they talk.
So that we're no longer talking just to the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs but we're getting into very deep discussions within MII
or other Ministries depending on the issue. And I mention that
because the Chinese Government really wants to implement the
WTO, at least that's what they say. But to get them to
understand why we need transparency, why global companies need
to be at the table participating in the formulation of
regulations, is critical. It is not going to be acceptable for
the Chinese to hand pick those companies that they want to get
input from and then dismiss everyone else and say that they
have consulted. That's one of the key points that I wanted to
stress in my remarks and I think it is going to be very slow
going, but it is the incremental process of speaking to the
Chinese Government at all levels where we're really going to
begin to see some change.
Mr. Wolf. Do you want to add something, James?
Mr. Mulvenon. Obviously, the Chinese regulatory environment
is very hostile in the sense that they are constantly moving
the goal posts to allow experiments to go forward just to
identify the negative outcomes and then revise the regulations.
The one thing United States companies can do to help the
situation over the long term is to export more and more
advanced technology not to Chinese producers. But let me just
give you one example. We are talking about drowning people in
volume, much as we are drowned every day with our cell phones,
PDA's, e-mail, Internet, everything else. A Sysco gigabit
router of which there are hundreds in China transmits a gigabit
of information every second. The possibility that the Chinese
Ministry of Public Security can filter that rate of data
transfer becomes increasingly improbable. No matter what the
level of sophistication of their filtering technologies. So in
a sense, the more United States companies and other Western
companies get in China and modernize that infrastructure, the
more increasingly difficult it becomes for a relatively
atavistic bureaucracy to really keep up. And if you look at
Moore's Law and other technological curves, it becomes
increasingly difficult.
Mr. Wolf. Thanks. I must say the Chairman, Senator Baucus,
throughout the PNTR debate and going back probably to the
beginning of the annual MFN [Most-Favored Nation] extension
debate, has always been skeptical about trying to get business
to do something that is not clearly in its interest. This
discussion, in answer to Jennifer's question, was something I
hope we can follow up on. How can there be human rights
activities, human rights reinforcing activities, done by
business that's also in business's own interests. Otherwise we
continue down a road that has been proven fruitless for the
last decade.
Todd Rosenblum, with Senator Bayh.
Mr. Rosenblum. I want to touch on what I thought was
disappointing testimony in terms of the assessment you are
giving in a few areas.
One is in the area of the Chinese Government's ability to
control Internet usage versus those trying to work around the
government controls. What I'm hearing today is that in fact, at
the moment at least, the government has the upper hand. James,
you mentioned that in 5 years the government would not at all
be able to play a controlling role on Internet usage.
The second area I think I heard some disappointing comments
on was in China's initial implementation of PNTR and its WTO
commitments in terms of how it has not at all led to a change
by the Chinese of openness for industry and allowance for open
communication. Looking to the future, knowing what the
assessments were 5 years ago, where are the trend lines going?
James, you mentioned a minute ago sending faster routers to
China is helpful but I imagine the government purchases those
same routers and its own filtering speed can increase. Given
that the political walls cannot stay so high if China truly
wants to compete globally in an economic sense, how does this
correlate to the Internet question.
Mr. Mulvenon. Well I would just say that from the beginning
you have to understand I think that we're not looking at
revolution anymore. Tiananmen has certainly soured a lot people
on the revolutionary model of political change. And so when I
think about how the Internet is actually going to change the
situation in China--whether telecom modernization or e-
commerce--is it will facilitate the creation of a large body of
people who are reasonably affluent, what we might even call
under the Chinese definition of a middle class, who like their
counterparts in South Korea and Taiwan over a 30-year period
began asking themselves the question: Why can't I enjoy the
same autonomy in my personal political sphere that I enjoy in
my personal economic sphere?
We've already begun seeing many of those trends. The
government in my mind doesn't control the Internet. The
government has shaped the regulatory and political and coercive
environment in China in a way that many people simply self-
censor and self-deter themselves. If the Chinese Government
strategy from the beginning was to control the Internet, I
think it would have failed miserably. But in fact it came up
with a much more realistic strategy that was much more tuned to
Western business strategy and Western government strategy for
dealing with China.
All of those things aside, there are some inevitable forces
here. And the inevitable force in my mind is the increasing
affluence of the society that will be the engine. And to the
extent to which they can use the Internet and the elements of
the telecom revolution, to be able to facilitate that, over the
long term it will cause people to ask that very uncomfortable
question that the Communist Party doesn't want them to ask.
Which is, is single party rule the way to continue economic
prosperity in China? And for a lot of people it will simply be
incongruent with their understanding that competition and
variety is what's driving the market dynamism in the economy,
but yet the government there's only one-stop shopping.
Mr. Kaufman. I couldn't agree more with what Sharon said.
If you look at it in the long term, you can't have economic
freedom and not have political freedom. But as you know Keynes
said ``in the long run we'll all be dead.'' In the meantime,
there are some very bad things developing in terms of the
Chinese public's opinions about America. You talk to Chinese
about America and the Belgrade Embassy and you talk to Chinese
about the spy plane and they have distorted views of what
happened. They're getting a very distorted view about America.
The point is many really do believe the TV sitcoms and music
videos are America. So in the interim we may say yes, you know
20 or 30 years from now it will all work out. But, if 4 or 5
years from now we have a real problem over something, and we
expect that the Chinese people are going to be sympathetic to
our situation, understand our situation, anything about our
situation, we're making a mistake. I think the Chinese
Government is making a mistake. It is not in their interest to
block out Voice of America and not have the Chinese people know
more about America, what Americans are about, and how Americans
view things. I think it is good to know each other in all
cases, and it is not happening. And in fact I think WTO and
PNTR has--if you ask for trends--has stopped this flow. They've
just decided they don't have to do it. They are extremely,
extremely, extremely good at making it look like a media-rich
society. Everybody has access to TV, 83 newspapers in Shanghai,
competition over the economy, everybody thinks it is all going
along fine. But when you get to the bottom line and you do some
surveys about what the Chinese people think, it should curl
your hair if your hair isn't already curled. [Laughter.]
And it is not getting any better. It is not in the United
States or Chinese Government's interest. The only way things
will change is if this Commission, if Members of Congress, and
if President Bush say, ``This is not acceptable.'' Not because
of any other reason but from the United States and Chinese
standpoint it is just not good to have 1.2 billion people have
an incredibly distorted view of the United States. We talk
about the Muslim world, why do they hate us? If we're not
careful we're going to end up in the same place with the
Chinese.
Mr. Wolf. Thanks, Ted. Alison Pascale is with Senator
Levin.
Ms. Pascale. Hi, thank you for your testimony. It is a very
interesting subject. I wanted to ask about whether we could use
the WTO in any way, to try to break down this wall that the PRC
has put up between economic freedoms and political and
informational freedom. And I guess my first thought was maybe
it would have to come from businesses saying that they are
being shut out. And it sounds from your comments like that may
not happen. Although the comments that you just made maybe
could lead us to think that it might be in our government's
interest to insist on fairness and reciprocity in terms of what
is accessible to the Chinese public in terms of their shaping
their views and all of that. So I'd welcome your comments on
whether we can use the WTO dispute settlement in any way and
who would initiate that.
Ms. Hauser. I'd just like to offer that in addition to the
WTO dispute settlement route, there's another factor affecting
change: The increasing strength of the local Chinese industry.
The Chinese Government has supported its I.T. industry over the
years, and they now have three, four, five major world-class
I.T. companies. Great Wall is one of them; Legend is another.
These companies will soon be exporting to other countries in
Asia. We have to anticipate that the United States I.T.
industry will encounter a competitive threat from these local
Chinese companies, but this may actually advance some of the
market reforms in China. Because once Chinese firms start
exporting themselves, they're not going to want to put up with
non-transparency in other countries. They're not going to want
to put up with tariff barriers or non-tariff measures. We are
already seeing some export of high technology products from
China to the Asian region, and as this continues, we will see
change come.
Ms. Pascale. Do you mean they'll complain to their
government that they're being shut out of Asian markets that
they are trying to do business with?
Ms. Hauser. They could quite well. They're going to have to
comply with international standards for the I.T. industry. It
is kind of a technical point but it is important. Right now the
Chinese develop their own Chinese national standards for a wide
variety of products. They do that to the exclusion of
international product standards--safety certification and so
forth. Once they start exporting, in order to build a market in
other Asian countries, they're going to have to build their
products to that international standard. Those international
standards require openness, transparency and adoption of
technical specifications that make products saleable around the
world, or connectable. They are not quite there yet.
Ms. Hom. On the WTO, I think that China's entry will test
the commitment of the WTO members to certain principles, such
as liberalization. After China's entry, and especially in the
next 3 to 5 years in light of member implementation schedules,
I think there will be some interesting fallout when China's
exports increase exponentially onto the market. The second
point I want to make is that it is useful to be more specific
when we are talking about the WTO and its potential usefulness
in promoting human rights, civil society, or democratic
concerns. Even recognizing that there are still debates on the
human rights and trade--dis--connections, it is useful to
distinguish between reference to the WTO as reference to the
agreements themselves, the WTO member states--and the different
points of intervention or leverage--the WTO Secretariat--
primarily viewed by developing countries as a U.S. and E.U.
dominated body--or the dispute settlement mechanisms. In
addition, it might be helpful to focus on specific sectors,
including telecommunications, financial services, and
insurance.
Another important trend at the WTO, in response to strong
pressures from the international NGO community, is the
increasing space for NGO voices, although very small at the
moment. So when we think about WTO related issues, we should
keep in mind that it is not a static organization or process,
especially in terms of China's implementation.of the regulatory
structure in place. NGOs, governments, and business can use
this opportunity to contribute to the development of a trade
regime that incorporates human rights concerns. NGOs can
continue to show that we can play a proactive, positive, and
productive role in this process.
Mr. Wolf. Mike Castellano with Congressman Levin.
Mr. Castellano. First off thank you very much for your
interesting testimony and the useful back and forth here. A
couple of you mentioned that we're perhaps in the worst of all
worlds in terms of the impact of the role that United States
business is having in China. I wonder if you could elaborate on
that just in terms of how the United States businesses
community in China is contributing to making the worst of all
worlds.
Mr. Kaufman. I just think they're doing what they do. Which
is they're going to the Chinese Government and someone has said
here they have to face all of these different regulations. None
of the media companies are going in there and saying we're
going to really be tough about what we're broadcasting in here.
They are saying if you do not want us to broadcast this, we
will not broadcast this. I don't see any indication that
they're going to play tough with the Chinese Government because
you can't play tough with the Chinese Government. They've got
the whole game.
And the second thing--I agree with James--technology can
help. But it can also hurt if technology to set up filters is
sold to the Chinese for Internet filtering. The press is full
of information of corporations helping the Chinese set up the
same kind of filters that they've set up in the United States
to filter out pornography. They just take those same techniques
to distort the free flow of information.
The final thing I'd say is the WTO was something that was
debated in this country--and there was a great deal of
discussion about how economic freedom was going to lead to
political freedom. I think the world is beginning to deliver on
the economic freedom and I believe the Chinese are committed to
delivering on the economic piece. I think they are really
dedicated to trying to make WTO work economically. But
politically, it is like a dark hole. There is no end and it is
not in any corporation's interest to get sideways to the
Chinese about these political issues when they've got bigger
fish to fry in the economic issues.
Mr. Castellano. Right. I wonder though, do you think it is
possible to sort of separate out what we might call legitimate
business activities versus--I don't want to use the word
illegitimate--but the maybe more troubling activities in terms
of the assistance to the Chinese Government of enabling
censorship, enabling filtering that we'd view as a violation of
First Amendment rights, or as a violation of international
human rights?
Mr. Kaufman. Sure you could do it--the same way we don't
sell strategic weapon systems. Things that we think are
strategically sensitive we don't allow American corporations to
sell those things to other countries. Clearly, is it in the
realm of possibilities? Yes. Could you say that you're required
to help with these kinds of things? Yes. I don't recommend it.
But I think there is some way you could go down. I think if the
United States Government decides that they are going to make
this a higher priority than they have in the past, considering
the plethora of priorities every time we sit down with the
Chinese, then I think the Chinese will come along. But they are
only going to do it to the extent that they believe the United
States Government is really serious and has it as a priority.
As I said in my statement, they are very good. You talk to
American businessmen that go over there, they say hey, what are
you talking about China? I go to my hotel room I've got CNN, I
go down to the lobby there's the Asian Wall Street Journal,
what's the problem? They are very, very good at what they do.
And they give the people that go over there not just business
people but also policymakers, the impression that there is free
flow of information.
However, they've got it all under control.
Mr. Castellano. I need to give the ITI a chance to respond
to my previous question about your views on the idea of trying
to distinguish between legitimate activity and more troubling
activity by the United States business community in China.
Ms. Hauser. Well I think we'd be making a real mistake if
we were to go down the slippery slope of trying to restrict the
information technologies that American firms can sell in China.
I think it would be very short sighted. We've had this long
debate in this country about export controls and controlling
technologies that we can sell overseas. When you look how
quickly technology is evolving, yesterday's supercomputer is
today's laptop. And it is just getting more and more that way.
So trying to specify technology is crazy in my view.
I think it is also important to look at the experience of
American companies when they've invested in China. Once a major
American corporation, makes its investment decision to set up
business in China, whether manufacturing or setting up sales
organizations, it treats its Chinese employees as corporate
employees of that company. Companies don't make a distinction
between how they treat a Chinese employee and how they treat an
employee elsewhere, say Denmark. They are all employees of the
same corporation. So the same rules for salaries and bonuses
and 401K's and all of the other corporate benefits apply,
allowing only for differences in local wage levels and culture.
And we've seen in a number of ITI member companies a very
positive experience by the employees in China. All of a sudden
they work for an American company or a multinational and they
have regular, high-wage salaries. That means better wages,
better housing, better schooling for their children, etc. It is
the whole experience that we've all had in this country. And
the same thing goes with the way that corporations adhere to
environmental rules. It really is a positive story. The
difficulty is in something Sharon mentioned earlier is in small
pockets in China.
I think the biggest trend problem that we have facing us is
the digital divide issue--the fact that economic development is
so uneven throughout that huge country. And that means that the
greatest inhibitor to the increased use of the Internet is not
government regulation or control or censorship, it is the cost.
Can people afford computers? Can they afford to go cyber cafes?
Can they afford to get on the Net? And unless we work with the
Chinese to help broaden out economic development across the
country, the chances of more political difficulties and
difficulties for our companies doing business on the East Coast
zone there are going to be greater. It is a huge economic issue
and political.
Mr. Wolf. Thanks, Kathryn. James even though the red light
is on I see you want to add something.
Mr. Mulvenon. No, no, it is just an ADD disorder that I'm
not taking medicine for. I would just push back a little bit on
some of the characterizations that have been made about the
Chinese media environment, the Chinese publishing environment
and the relationship between American companies and the Chinese
Government in terms of regulatory apparatus.
I'd be the first to say that American and Western companies
are operating in an extremely uneven regulatory environment.
The Chinese Government can move the goal posts in many cases.
In many cases the Chinese Ministry of Information Industry,
which is the main regulator of the I.T. industry is also the
parent of some of the most important economic players in the
I.T. industry. A lot of these Chinese companies that Kathryn
was talking about like Huawei and Datang and Julong and
Zhongxing. These powerhouses which are all becoming globally
competitive are all very closely affiliated with the Chinese
military, with the Chinese Ministry of Information Industry.
These are powerful companies and it is difficult to compete
against these companies particularly in an environment like
China where there are language barriers and everything else.
Nonetheless, there are some success stories of American
companies and groups of American companies pushing back
seemingly against insurmountable odds, to change the
environment in ways that are very positive. One that I would
point to is that there was an episode a few years ago that RAND
has written a report about the formation of a set of encryption
regulations in China. And once you peeled that a little bit,
you found out that this so-called State Encryption Management
Commission was in fact controlled by the Ministry of State
Security, which is the foreign and counterintelligence service
in China.
There were a variety of motivations for them to set up this
Commission. They wanted to control all encryption products in
China including 56-bit encryption in Web browsers all the way
down to that level. On the one hand, these people were very
concerned about the proliferation of encryption. They also
wanted to get in on the front end of what was going to be a
very lucrative e-commerce market. Now when you control the
regulatory apparatus, you get to decide whose products are
certified first. This is a very powerful position in China. But
the American Chamber of Commerce and the United States-China
Business Council and the good people at USITO got together long
before the Commerce Department got out of their easy chair and
mobilized a very aggressive campaign against this. Going all
the way to the highest levels of the Chinese Government and got
the regulations modified so that it didn't include Web browsers
and other sorts of low level encryption enabled software. But
in fact only involved the very high end e-commerce related
applications.
So there's a perfect example of where the Chinese
Government for a variety of commercial and political and
security reasons, tried to corral and regulate an important
section of the information technology realm. And by banding
together, American companies were able to push back in a very
successful way.
We should view WTO the same way. The Chinese view WTO as
the opening bargaining position. Long Yongtu has said in public
on many occasions that he's going to put a hundred dispute
resolution people in Geneva. My response to him is that will be
sufficient for your claims against us, you better put another
200 in for our claims against you. It is going to be a very,
very acrimonious negotiation like all negotiations are with the
Chinese Government. But those are forums where we can really
have a lot of progress. And I agree completely with Sharon. The
international flavor of that and the fact that those mechanisms
are multilateral plays to our advantage. And we are going to be
able to exploit those mechanisms to have some pretty
interesting fights with the Chinese.
Mr. Wolf. Thanks. Let's start another set of questions if
you don't mind. Many Chinese companies use the Internet as a
fundamental tool of business. Whether it is marketing,
research, developing their own global supply chains, they need
an unfettered Internet. Is there any sign that the Chinese
Government activities to monitor and control are having an
impact on the commercial sides ability to use the Internet? In
other words are they able to bifurcate the economic use of the
Internet from the political and informational use of the
Internet?
Mr. Mulvenon. I would just say that it is difficult for a
lot of companies to make money on these types of things right
now in China. So we have to sort of distinguish what we mean by
economic benefit. The dot com implosion affected the Chinese as
much as anybody, although it hasn't been written as widely
about as others.
To a certain extent I would argue that they rely more on
this self-deterrence model, which is to say you have a lot of
effective portal activity, for instance, in China. Some are
economically lucrative and as long as those Internet service
providers and those portals have the so-called ``big mamas''
sitting in these chat rooms kicking off people who criticize
the Communist Party and Jiang Zemin and others--and even that's
not as successful as they would like--there's a tremendous
amount of economic activity as well as flow of ideas and
discussion going on in China that goes on unfettered.
I spend a lot of time on the Internet in China looking at
these discussions and it is pretty clear to me that there are
large sections of people's daily lives that have simply been
abandoned by the Chinese Communist Party in a tacit compact
with the population. There is bifurcation between political
control and economic prosperity. And I think we miss the point
if we focus on the fact that they continue to crack down on
investigative journalists and other people who are trying to
push the envelope.
But look at the other side of the debate. Here's this
fireworks explosion at this children's school in Southern China
and the Chinese Government came out with their typical response
which is they weren't making fireworks there and shut down
their local investigative journalists who are looking at it.
But there was such a national outcry via other investigative
journalists from newspapers, from television, and from the
Internet, that the Premier of China had to go on television and
apologize for lying to the Chinese people about what happened
in that school. And that's not just the Internet, that was the
entire media environment that made the Chinese Government lose
face and have to reverse itself in public on television. These
kinds of things didn't happen 5 years ago, 10 years ago, 15
years ago, 25 years ago. And it is because of this
liberalization of the media provided that you don't criticize
the Party and Jiang Zemin.
Mr. Wolf. John.
Mr. Foarde. Ted, let's pick up the whole question of
jamming for a minute, which I'm interested in. Partially
because I was involved in complaining to the Chinese Government
about jamming of VOA in mid-1989, just weeks after Tiananmen.
VOA is telling you that jamming is redoubled since the first--
--
Mr. Kaufman. It has increased.
Mr. Foarde [continuing]. Of the, since the Lunar New Year.
Has it been uniform across the whole country or just in some
parts of it. In other words can I hear VOA if I'm out in the
wilds of Gon Zhu, or not in Shanghai or what's the situation?
Mr. Kaufman. It varies. Essentially, Mandarin is strongly
jammed but you can hear it in lots of parts of the country.
Cantonese is strongly jammed. Tibetan is strongly jammed. You
can hear it outside Lhasa. Radio Free Asia, even more strongly
jammed. It doesn't mean you can't pick it up, but going back to
the same thing mentioned earlier about the proxy sites. If you
listen 5 nights and it is jammed, are you going to turn up the
6th night?
One thing that's kind of insidious about this is, I've
talked to students at a number of universities, and they think
it is our not caring enough to broadcast properly. The
government says they don't jam. So when people have bad
interference or they don't have a good signal, they attribute
it to our lack of interest in communicating with them. The
government uses different ways to jam. They can jam by
broadcasting on the same channel. The big thing now is music
that they broadcast over the same stations that we're using.
But we're willing to take on the battle with them in terms of
jamming and trying to get around jamming. We went through the
same thing with the Soviet Union. The problem here is that
there is the illusion of a media-rich environment.
I've heard about the fireworks factory and I know about the
fireworks factory, but there's stuff that goes on everyday in
China. And when you talk to people, I talk to the head of a
bunch of newspapers and he said that their news and analysis
comes from Beijing. They can have ads, they can compete, they
can go after advertisers. They can do all these things, so if
you look at it, it looks like a pretty healthy environment
economically. It is always healthy economically. But
politically, they've been very, very talented at separating the
two out. Like the group that went and obtained the change in
the encryption law. I don't have any doubt that if four or five
American corporations who are major players in China went,
because of an economic concern, to the Chinese Government and
expressed their concern, they would get some reaction.
But no one is going to go to the Chinese Government about a
human rights violation and no one is going to go to China about
the lack of information about America. And every time I hear
that over there, it is just like here. Small business people in
chat rooms, people listening to radio. It isn't like here.
Here, when you turn on your television set, you don't know what
you're going to get. Over there, if you want to find out what
the government thinks just turn on your television set wherever
it is in China. Now, is it 100 percent? No. Is it better than
it used to be? Yes. And will it eventually be solved by
economic growth and the Internet? I totally agree with it. But
in the interim there are some years in here where it could be
very dangerous for the United States to have this many people
feeling they know what America is, it is even worse. It is not
so much what you know, it is what you don't know.
And so that's why we will continue to fight on the jamming,
we will continue to fight on blocking the Internet and getting
around blocking the Internet and working to do all those sorts
of things. But it would sure make life a lot easier if the
United States Government said that it was partly their
responsibility. We're not going to get it somewhere else.
Unless the United States Government steps in and says, jamming
is not good idea, Internet blocking is not a good idea, lack of
reciprocity is not a good idea. I don't see things changing.
Ultimately will it all work out? Probably.
Mr. Foarde. Anybody else want to comment?
Ms. Hom. I want to pick up on Ted's comment about the
diversity of voices but really in fact only one story is
presented. I agree that there is a warped perspective by a
majority of Chinese about the United States and Americans. But
I also think there is a dangerously limited and inaccurate
Chinese view about their recent Chinese history, especially
since the crackdown in 1989.
There are a number of sensitive issues within China that
need healthy debate and discussion, which need more than one
story told. These include June 4 and its aftermath, religious
freedom, Tibet, Xinjiang, and Taiwan, issues where the only
permissible view and the dominant view is the official story.
Mr. Kaufman. I just want to say one thing. I've been
talking about Voice Of America and I think that's really
important, but I could not agree with Sharon more. It is just
an easier argument to make about America. But if you think they
don't like Voice of America, they hate Radio Free Asia. They
hate the fact that someone is over there telling what is
actually going on in some of these communities.
It is like what happened with the fireworks factory, except
every day there are demonstrations, there are concerns, there
are labor violations and that's what Radio Free Asia reports.
They really go after Radio Free Asia in terms of jamming which
is some indication of what they think about it. I couldn't
agree with Sharon more. The Chinese people don't know about
China. They don't know what's going on in China. And I believe
in freedom of the press. I believe that what they are doing is
creating a time bomb so that when the people do find out,
there's going to be a massive explosion. I happen to think it
is in China's interest to have Radio Free Asia and Voice of
America in there. But the Chinese Government surely does not
agree.
Mr. Wolf. Mike.
Mr. Castellano. I'd like to go back to the idea of there
being some synergy besides just in theory between WTO
obligations and the advancement of freedom of communication in
China. And I'm just trying to think and I guess this is just
more sort of a comment--I am just trying to think of ways in
which concrete WTO obligations which might dovetail nicely. And
one example I'm thinking of is the across-the-board provisions
of services. We've got a pending WTO round of negotiations and
to the extent that we can come up with commitments by China
which might make it a lot more difficult for them to do some of
the things that they are doing. It would be a situation where
the business community would be on board with something that
also is helping human rights and could be a sort of a virtuous
partnership.
Ms. Hauser. I think one of the key problems that China is
going to face in this next round of WTO negotiations is to meet
their international obligations while ensuring a high level of
domestic economic growth. And we can question what percentage
of economic growth they've had in recent years, but the
stability of the current Chinese Government really depends on
them growing that economy. And the political issues we can keep
separated as long as there is the perception if not the reality
of high economic growth. So I think the Chinese are going into
the round--the key thing on their mind is how to keep the
economy growing while going through all of these very difficult
changes.
Ms. Hom. I want to add to that--I think the stability of
the current regime is based upon maintaining economic growth
and providing economic prosperity. However, in the sectors that
are seriously adversely impacted by WTO accession, e.g., the
agricultural and subsidized heavy industry sectors, we are
already seeing massive unemployment in the hundreds of
millions. The official Chinese response to these dislocations
appears to say, let's bite the bullet, these are the losers
that we have to write off for WTO entry. But the reality of
hundreds of millions of unemployed, angry, hopeless workers and
peasants storming government offices, or organizing huge
protests that can and have turned violent--this undermines
overall stability and economic modernization. Operating on a
very short event horizon, the official view is really short-
sighted if it does not take into account the need to put the
human suffering and social costs back into the immediate and
long-term picture.
Mr. Mulvenon. We also have to realize one thing about the
Chinese Government. It took a long time but we were able to
convince Zhu Rongji and a number of his key allies in the State
Economic Trade Commission that joining WTO was good for them to
use as a weapon against their recalcitrant opponents in the
bureaucracy.
To the extent to which we have built alliances with Chinese
Government officials in using WTO to change China, it is by
pointing out the self interests that the two sides had, in
breaking up people in the sort of backward-looking, backward-
thinking, sort of atavistic, Li Peng camp that wanted to slow
everything down and make sure that China didn't move forward
fast.
And we've been able to make a lot of alliances on key
issues: Intellectual property rights has been an area where we
haven't had as much success as we would have liked. But there
have been other areas like these encryption regulations that we
can point to where WTO, the United States Government, and
United States businesses actually were able to change the way
things were done in China for the better, by pointing out the
self-interests of certain progressive people in the Chinese
bureaucracy.
Mr. Wolf. I know that surveys in China are very suspect.
But there was a recent survey by the Chinese Academy of Social
Sciences that said, of the people surveyed, 25 percent of the
time that they spent on the Internet was on sites outside of
China. It was 9 percent on non-Chinese language sites, and 16
percent on Chinese language sites outside of the PRC. It didn't
analyze what those sites were. The statistics for teenagers in
another survey was that 15 percent of their time was spent on
non-Chinese language sites outside of China and 25 percent on
Chinese language sites outside of China, that is 40 percent on
non-PRC sites. Does that have implications?
Mr. Mulvenon. Nor should we view it that way. There is a
global Chinese diaspora of information out there. And we've
tracked a lot of that traffic that goes to Chinese language
sites outside the country and it is to news sites in other
places in Taiwan and Hong Kong. And so I would argue that,
whereas in the early days in the Internet we had the potential
for Chinese Web surfers, because there was so little good
quality content, to actually go to a lot of foreign language
sites to look for information or just to look around.
From my discussions are with Chinese who spend a lot of
time on the Internet, you can spend almost all of your time
within a Chinese language Web world. That's not to say that if
we put together efforts that are in Chinese they might not go
to them, but there's a Chinese world you can stay in.
The level of English language penetration isn't as high as
it should be either. But there is a fundamental question here,
which is there seems to be this underlying assumption that if
only they went to English language materials that somehow they
would grasp onto this theoretical truth.
I had the misfortune of landing in China the day we dropped
five JDAMS on the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia. And of course
all my meetings with the military were canceled but I spent my
4 days out in the protests. Sixteen hours a day engaging in
Hegelian dialectic with the protesters asking them what they
were upset about. And what I found was very curious because I
had gone over there saying if you just go to Newyorktimes.com
or Washingtonpost.com or Le Monde or Deutche Welle or
something, you'll get an account of what really happened.
And the response I got at all levels from students to
teachers to cadres to government officials to friends was,
Western media and VOA are tools of Western hegemonism and
imperialism. And what they're saying is not truth. We're more
inclined to believe the government that has been lying to us
about Tiananmen, about the Great Leap Forward, about the
Cultural Revolution. And I was baffled. I really was, because I
kept saying but that government has been lying to you for 30
years, and you know they've been lying to you. They lied to
your parents. And they're going to continue to lie to you and
these are urban college kids, your most progressive end of the
spectrum in terms of their worldliness and cosmopolitanism. And
I said there's this world of truth out there and they said
``CNN is a tool of the United States Government.'' And so for
me, what it taught me was one thing which was that we can't
ignore the function of nationalism. And no one would deny that
the major force in China right now replacing all these other
ideologies that are bankrupt, is nationalism, which is a filter
that they use to process all outside content. And to simply
assume that if we provide it, that therefore it will be
acknowledged as truth and what the government says is a lie, is
overly simplistic in my mind.
Mr. Kaufman. I don't know where to start. First off they
don't have access--all they know about Voice of America is
through reputation because the broadcasts are being jammed. The
students you are talking to in the street, the vast majority of
Chinese people still don't have access to the Internet, and
when they do--they have blocking of sites. They're living in a
world where what they hear about outside sources like Deutche
Welle and Voice of America and BBC is what the government tells
them about Deutche Welle and BBC and Voice of America.
There is the illusion because they can watch TV, they can
listen to radio, they can read the newspaper that somehow
they're getting objective information but they're not.
When I talked to thoughtful Chinese, when I was over there
after the Belgrade bombing, it was appalling. They thought
there was no genocide. I said, well, why do you think America
is in Kosovo? Why do you think they're there? Is it because of
the natural resources? Is it because they want to colonize the
country? I could find no one who would believe there was any
genocide going on in Kosovo before the American troops went in.
All the media in China said there was no genocide in China.
Because of jamming they couldn't get it on Voice of America,
they couldn't get it on the Internet. The couldn't get it
anywhere. So I say this is a situation where they are not
getting access to the outside and I think it is beginning to
tell. That's why the kids are in the streets, and think the way
they do. These students can't listen to Voice of America. They
tell me that they can't pick up the reception, they don't
listen to other sources and they don't have access to the
communication, but they think they do. They think they're
living in a media-rich environment.
Mr. Mulvenon. The question I would have though, is if they
don't believe the U.S. Government's statements about the
bombing of the Embassy, if they believe that we are lying. If
there is a secret CIA, Pentagon conspiracy that actually bombed
it intentionally. We do have to ask ourselves a difficult
question. Why would they believe VOA's account?
Mr. Kaufman. I'm just saying they're not seeing any U.S.
statements. There are no U.S. statements. I haven't seen U.S.
statements in the People's Daily. I was over there during that
period. I didn't see a U.S. statement on what happened in the
People's Daily or anywhere. Nobody hears what the American
President says. There's no access to that kind of information.
Ms. Hom. And Beijing took its time releasing information
about the apology.
Mr. Kaufman. The apology was not released.
Ms. Hom. I wanted to add to James' point about nationalism
because I think that's an ideologically powerful way in which
the Chinese Government shapes and manipulates the story. But it
is not just the government that plays the nationalism card.
Last Fall, during the Olympics bid, I noticed that there were
huge banners in Chinese displayed in various McDonald's in
Beijing. the banners proclaimed: If China wins, we all win.
This is part of the whole corporate positioning that McDonald's
is in fact a ``Chinese'' company.
In other words, if we look at transnational companies as
vehicles for opening up the cultural or other space, the real
move, at least in the food sector, is to adopt the
nationalistic rhetoric that plays well with the local Chinese
customers, and to present these companies as ``local''
companies.
Mr. Mulvenon. There was a particularly embarrassing
incident involving the general manager of the Microsoft Office
in Beijing who very shortly after the Belgrade bombing
organized a rally in which the Chinese workers in that office
denounced the United States Government for its bombing of the
Embassy in Belgrade. Now, Microsoft had the foresight to get
rid of her after that rally. But this is symptomatic maybe of
the sort of clientitis that unfortunately in as difficult a
regulatory and economic environment as China is, it is an
understandable instinct. To sort of say, Washington is a hell
of a long way from here. And they're not here to protect us
everyday when we are trying to do our business. But it is
insidious in that respect.
Mr. Kaufman. If the feeling is that Voice of America, Radio
Free Asia, BBC are some relic of the cold war, and we cannot
affect behavior the feeling is wrong. While we were bombing
Serbia, during Kosovo, 26 percent of the people in Serbia were
listening to Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty and in the Kosovar
camps over 80 percent were listening to Voice of America. The
broadcast affected what happened in the streets in Belgrade.
This is not something that's a holdover from what we did in the
cold war. This is an incredibly effective way to have people
learn what's going on. Not just the American point of view, but
what's going on in their own country. But I tell you, if we are
not listened to, there is no way we are going to have the
impact in China. The idea that somehow the United States
Government position will just get through because there are
television sets and so many people in China listen to
television and so many people listen to FM or so many people
listen to AM or so many people read the newspaper or use the
Internet or so many people have satellite dishes, is just not
factually correct.
It is an illusion which has very broad appeal. It is a
media-rich environment, but not an idea-rich environment, and
not an area where the United States will be understood.
Mr. Wolf. John.
Mr. Foarde. Just a comment that this has been an extremely
rich conversation and thank all of you for joining us this
afternoon and being so generous with your time.
Mr. Wolf. I do have one more question and this goes back to
what you were saying earlier James about the effectiveness of
spamming from the outside. Could you distinguish for a second
between Chinese Government policies vis-a-vis access to Web
sites versus their activities or their practices vis-a-vis use
of e-mail. Receiving e-mail, mass e-mail from overseas however
the technology is done in spamming, as well as use of e-mail
within China. We all give the example of the fireworks factory,
but there are, as you said, chat rooms and e-mail within the
PRC with an enormous and diverse discussion and debate going
on. Could you distinguish between those two: E-mail per se and
access to Web sites?
Mr. Mulvenon. I would say that until about 6 months ago, e-
mail was a much better way of communicating. Because it was
very difficult to filter e-mail content. You can filter the
headers, so that's why it is critical for people who run VIP
Reference like Richard Long and those people to change the
``From'' line every time they send an e-mail because the
Chinese would very assiduously mark the originating address
every time. But there's billions of potential IP addresses that
you could forward things from.
I would point out that in the last 6 months the real
challenge is that American Internet service providers have
begun cutting the links to the Chinese Internet domain because
China is now the world's largest source of all the annoyance
spam that shows up in our AOL inboxes and all of our other
inboxes. It is being routed through badly protected Chinese
servers and Korean broadband servers to the point where major
ISP's in the United States are no longer permitting e-mail from
Chinese domains to enter the United States because they assume
it is spam. And they are getting so many complaints from their
subscribers about China-origin spam. So we are cutting off our
nose to spite our face in a sense--all the cliches you want.
ISP's are deciding in the greater good to throw the baby
out with the bath water. And what it means is in many cases in
the last 6 months, I've had e-mail from Chinese friends that
just never arrived. And they came to DC and they said I e-
mailed you about my trip and I said well I never got it. And it
turns out it was because Qwest or somebody had deleted it
before it got to me because they thought it was going to be
some rerouted porn spam from Estonia.
Mr. Wolf. Well, thanks. And thank the four of you very
much. I didn't mention the specific roundtables that we were
going to have and I said to look at our Web site. On June 24 we
are going to have one on journalistic freedom in China and we
will try to look at that a little more broadly perhaps than we
were going to.
We were going to focus on the print media. We will still do
that, but we will also try to spread out a bit. And, again,
thanks to all four of you, and thanks to all of you who stayed
throughout this very interesting session.
[Whereupon, at 4:22 p.m., the hearing was concluded.]
A P P E N D I X
=======================================================================
Prepared Statements
----------
Prepared Statement of Edward E. Kaufman
april 15, 2002
My name is Edward Kaufman and I am a member of the Broadcasting
Board of Governors (BBG). The BBG is a bipartisan group of eight
private citizens plus the Secretary of State, who oversee all U.S.
Government non-military international broadcasting. This consists of
Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Radio
Free Asia (RFA), Worldnet Television, and Radio and Television Marti.
Our budget is approximately $526 million, we have 3432 employees,
and we broadcast in 65 languages around the world. We were created by
the Broadcasting Act of 1994 as an independent part of the United
States Information Agency (USIA) and became an independent Federal
agency in 1999 when USIA was subsumed into the State Department.
The lack of free flow of information in China has strongly
concerned the Board since the BBG's inception. The Chinese policy
regarding the internet is just the extension of their policy toward any
objective source of information about what is occurring in China or the
rest of the world. All levels of the Chinese Government are committed
to controlling any information that might reach the Chinese population.
The government controls, from Beijing, all radio television and
internet dissemination of news throughout China. This is done in what
has become a media rich environment. There is the illusion that there
are many voices in China, but in reality there is only one. Wherever
you travel there are many newspapers, but only one story. Many of these
outlets no longer receive subsidies from the government, and must
compete for advertising revenue and financial viability. However,
competition does not extend to the news and analysis which is closely
monitored and controlled by the government.
The Chinese Government is especially good at giving visiting
Western policymakers and business representatives the impression of a
free press in China. CNN and BBC are available at most first-class
hotels, and the International Herald Tribune and the Asian edition of
the Wall Street Journal are sold in the lobby. However, none of these
are available to the most Chinese.
In an attempt to overcome China's internal censorship, and to bring
truth and objectivity to China, U.S. international broadcasting
provides comprehensive news and objective information to the people of
China every day through radio, television, internet, and satellite
broadcasts. These services offered in Mandarin, Cantonese, and Tibetan
languages by VOA and RFA bring news and information to millions of
eager listeners and viewers. However, these channels of communication
are often systematically blocked, either by direct jamming of
broadcasts, interference from local stations, or other governmental
policies that frustrate free access. It was hoped that China's
acceptance into WTO would result in a reduction of the jamming.
However, since the start of the Chinese New Year, the jamming has
increased.
This is especially discouraging because the United States has given
unprecedented access to Chinese Government international broadcasting.
China government television, CCTV, has wide dissemination in the U.S.
including California's largest cable network and Washington DC cable.
It will soon be on Time/Warner's cable systems including New York City
and Houston. China's international radio, CRI, broadcasts into the U.
S. without jamming, and is available on AM and FM radio stations across
the country.
The lack of reciprocity extends beyond broadcasting to news
gathering. The Chinese Government has allowed VOA only two reporters in
China, both English-only, and no RFA reporters. In addition, they have
recently turned down a request for the addition of two Mandarin
speaking reporters for Beijing and Shanghai. The Chinese Government
complains about their coverage, but will not allow native speaking
reporters to serve in China.
At the same time China's CCTV, and CRI have numerous bureaus and
reporters in the U.S. CCTV has offices in New York and Washington, DC
with two reporters each. CRI has two reporters in their Washington DC
office, two in their New York office and one in their Los Angeles
office.
Because the internet could provide a new means to transmit
information, Beijing fears its threat to their information monopoly. At
the same time they recognize the Internet's economic and educational
importance. The government has instituted draconian regulations and
conducts widespread electronic blocking of particular Web sites,
usually international news sources . Once again, the government
choreographs all this activity beautifully. When President George W.
Bush visited Shanghai to attend the meeting of Pacific Rim nations in
October 2001, the Chinese Government stopped blocking a number of
internet news sites including those of CNN, the BBC, Reuters, and the
Washington Post. The blocks were reactivated following Bush's
departure.
As a result of all these governmental measures, the Chinese people
are woefully short of objective information on the United States and
its people. Ironically, they believe that they understand the United
States quite well from syndicated sitcoms, movies, and music videos.
Over the long-term this prevents development of a healthy China-U.S.
relationship. In the short term it is a policy disaster. The Chinese
people's responses to the May 1999 bombing of the Chinese embassy in
Belgrade and the April 2001 captured spy-plane incident are notable.
The Chinese Government's monopoly of information media enabled it to
orchestrate Chinese public reactions to both incidents. In May 1999,
rock-throwing demonstrators attacked the U.S. embassy. In April 2001,
Chinese domestic media presented a one-sided version of what happened
to the U.S. spy plane, but deliberately toned down its rhetoric, and
the demonstrations were minimal. Finding anyone in China who has heard
the U.S. version in either case is difficult. Ultimately, in a time of
crisis with China, the U.S. president has no way to communicate
directly to the Chinese people.
The Chinese people are in the place of the old saying, ``the
trouble with most folks isn't so much their ignorance as knowing so
many things that ain't so.'' One of our recent surveys found that 68
percent of the urban dwellers in China consider the United States to be
their nation's No. 1 enemy.
The United States cannot afford to have 1.2 billion people, about
18 percent of the world's population so ill-informed.
What can we do about this?
President Bush, State Department officials, and Members of Congress
can demand reciprocity from the Chinese. Stop jamming international
broadcasts, and allow more U.S. journalists into China.
U.S. Government pressure can be brought on neighboring countries
who are reluctant to allow VOA and RFA to broadcast into China from
their countries because of Chinese Government pressure.
More money can be allocated to the infrastructure required to get
our signal through. The U.S. needs refurbished shortwave facilities,
access to additional satellites, and leasing of additional medium wave
facilities.
The internet can be key. Regular usage is now at 5.8 percent in
China and growing rapidly. Among better-educated 21 percent use the
Internet regularly. The Internet is the perfect medium for the U.S. to
communicate directly with individual Chinese, and the U.S. has to be
single-minded in putting pressure on the Chinese to stop blocking U.S.
internet sites. In the meantime we should spare no expense in finding
ways to penetrate the blocking.
The debate on the Bill which established the Congressional-
Executive Commission on China is full of rhetoric that free trade and
economic parity for China would lead to the free flow of ideas. If
anything, since the passage of that bill the Chinese Government has
done even more to slow or stop the free flow of information in China.
It is essential for a future of healthy China-U.S. relations that
all levels of the U.S. Government demand China end censorship, jamming
and blocking and deliver on the promise of a free flow of information.
______
Prepared Statement of Sharon K. Hom
april 15, 2002
introduction
Thank you to Ira Wolf and John Foarde for inviting Human Rights in
China (``HRIC'') to participate in this Internet and Freedom of
Expression round-table. The inclusion of an international human rights
and Chinese NGO perspective, together with business, government, and
national security perspectives, will hopefully contribute to a
productive and lively exchange and sharing of views.
Founded after the June 4 crackdown, HRIC is an international non-
governmental organization dedicated to the promotion of universally
recognized human rights and the advancement of the institutional
protections of these rights in China through our education, advocacy,
and activist- research programs. HRIC is dedicated to:
<bullet> promoting a growing rights consciousness among the Chinese
people;
<bullet> supporting the development of civil society and empowering
peaceful grassroots activism;
<bullet> advocating effective implementation of China's domestic
laws and practices in compliance with international human rights
obligations; and
<bullet> acting as a catalyst for democratic social change.
The rapid development of the Internet in China presents significant
opportunities and challenges for advancing these human rights goals. We
also recognize there are multiple stakeholders interests, including the
Chinese Communist Party (``CCP''), competing PRC ministries all
claiming a piece of what they view as lucrative regulatory territory,
domestic Chinese telecommunications companies, foreign investors, media
and telecommunications companies, and domestic and international NGO's.
Yet there is probably a point of convergence at this round-table
discussion on the importance of promoting freedom of expression and the
free flow of information. From the U.S. government's perspective, these
are integral to the development of rule of law, democracy, and
promotion of civil society initiatives. From the perspective of the
private telecom sector, the uncensored flow of free information is at
the normative core of free market and exchange values.
From our perspective, the free flows of information, uncensored
debate and discussion, and freedom of assembly, are critical for
promoting the accountability of government, exposing and addressing
corruption, and promoting the emergence of a genuine democratic civil
society in China. However, because political and legal controls
constrain the independence of civil society within China, the nurturing
of an uncensored virtual civil society through the use of Internet and
wireless technology becomes an essential challenge.
human rights and the internet in china
In the past 7 years, the astonishing development of the Internet
can be seen in the laying of the backbone of thousands of kilometers of
fiber optics cables (longer than the Great Wall) , the exponential
growth in bandwidth, and now more than 33 million Internet users. The
number of people online in China has been rising rapidly in the past 3
years, surging to rates of 152 percent growth.
In terms of wireless technology, currently China has the largest
wireless market in the world, nearly 200 million users. Estimates
project wireless users in China will total between 350 million and 500
million by 2005.
The digital divide
Yet, these numbers also reflect a serious digital divide. The
demographics of these users raise concerns about breathless accounts of
the capacity for the Internet to allow China to leapfrog other
countries. Internet users and their geographic distribution are not
representative of China on the whole. The vast majority of Internet
users are young ( 70 percent are between 18-35), male (92.8 percent in
July, 1998, now 69.56 percent), and have college education. The
Internet is mainly diffused over the three big cities, Beijing,
Shanghai and Guangzhou. By the end of 2000, only 0.76 percent of the
Internet users are in rural areas where more than 80 percent of China's
population resides.
This digital divide reflects and contributes to the widening
economic and social gap between rural and urban areas, and underscores
the failure of China's economic modernization policy to ensure equal
access and treatment in political, economic, social, and cultural life
to the vast majority, including rural inhabitants, ethnic minorities,
and migrants. Together with rising social dislocations and growing
violent unrest among the millions of unemployed workers, these growing
inequalities threaten to undermine the security, stability and fairness
of China's modernization and reform efforts.
If the promise of the Internet reaches only the current
demographics of urban, educated, male users, and the growing middle
class elite, then the Internet will not be a real tool for democracy or
building civil society in China. Inherent in visions of democracy and
freedom are broad-based, non-discriminatory access and opportunities
for participation. Whether in cyberspace or otherwise, freedom of
expression, an independent press, and freedom of assembly are
meaningless if they can only be exercised by those connected, rich,
educated or powerful enough to claim these rights.
General human rights situation
It is also important to note that during this period of impressive
technological advances, the overall human rights situation in China
remained (and remains) serious and urgent. Ongoing human rights abuses
include the systematic and continued use of torture, the arbitrary
administrative detention system (with more than 200,000 detained in
about 300 Reform through Labor camps, more than 1.7 million detained in
Custody and Repatriation camps), and the ongoing impunity for the
violent June 4, 1989 crackdown on unarmed civilians.
The post-September 11 global and domestic focus on anti-terrorism
has also allowed China, in the name of security, to continue its
violent crack down on peaceful Muslim and Tibetan advocates for self-
determination, political dissidents, labor and democracy activists, and
on vulnerable groups, such as rural and migrant populations. At the end
of 2001, China imprisoned more journalists than any other country in
the world, and stepped up domestic surveillance and censorship.
The reality of surveillance and control
And specifically relevant to our discussion today, China has
adopted a range of low and high tech strategies, including
implementation of extensive regulations to censor and control Internet
content and access, a network of informers, and the construction of an
extensive and sophisticated surveillance system, with the assistance of
foreign telecommunications corporations, such as the Canadian Nortel.
These strategies have also resulted in self-censorship on the part of
commercial Internet service providers and others.
Despite mounting government sophistication at proactive propaganda
strategies to use the Internet to promote State interests, the Internet
is also a vehicle for human rights activism by mainland and exile
groups including Human Rights in China, the China Democracy Party, the
Falun Gong, and the Tibetan exile community. However, individuals
within China that seek to deploy Internet strategies (including through
E-mail and wireless cellular technology), for logistical and mass
organizing purposes, or simply a university study group chat room, are
met with arrests and detention. There are at least 20 or more
individuals who have been detained in 2001 for alleged ``illegal'' on-
line activities, that include printing out pro-democracy materials,
distributing information on Falun Gong, publishing articles critical of
arrests of Internet activists, promoting political and democratic
reforms, calling for a reassessment of June 4 crack-down, and posting
information about local human rights violations.\1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ For a list of individuals detained, site shut-downs, and
Chinese Net restrictions, see http://dfn.org/focus/china/
chinanetreport.htm
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Increasingly restrictive Internet regulations make it clear that
freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, and right to petition the
government guaranteed in the Chinese Constitution are not real freedoms
at all when the regime views their exercise as a challenge to its
monopoly on political power.
The legal, technological, and policy responses of the PRC
government to control and counter the potential political impact of the
Internet also raise important questions regarding the conventional
wisdom often reflected in the media, government, and business
communities that the Internet will act as an inevitable force for
democracy and free expression. Within China, the Internet and
information technology more broadly, is a powerful arena where the free
flow of information and freedom of expression is competing with
government surveillance, censorship, and control. When Jiang Zemin and
current leaders call for the informatization of the economy, the
military, and the government bureaucracy, it is clear this does not
include any perceived challenges to the monopoly of political power and
information held by the Party.
hric's internet initiatives
As an example from the NGO trenches of what a recent RAND report
describes as use of the Internet as a ``force multiplier,'' I will
briefly describe HRIC's Internet-related initiatives. Our work features
a proactive role for mobilizing technology for human rights activism
from the base of our interactive website, www.hrichina.org. At the end
of last year, HRIC re-launched an expanded data-base driven, bilingual
website that provides easy-to-search function, direct links to HRIC-
sponsored projects such as the www.fillthesquare.org, on-line issues of
HRIC's journal China Rights Forum, daily human rights news updates, and
archive of HRIC's reports prepared for U.N. bodies and international
conferences. HRIC also cultivated relationships with Chinese Democracy
advocates exploring Internet strategies, and designed sophisticated
data base platforms for initiatives such as a comprehensive data base
on political prisoners in China.
Historically, the Chinese government has controlled and manipulated
public access to information on democratic movements in China. Although
13 years have passed since June 4, the importance of the 1989 democracy
movement and the violent government crackdown has not faded with time;
it remains a key issue in the political culture of China. This is
evident in the impact the publication of The Tiananmen Papers had on
both the government regime and the Chinese people earlier this year.
Yet the Chinese government has continued to insist on the legitimacy
and necessity of the government's decisions to call in armed PLA
soldiers and tanks of June 4th on unarmed citizens, and it has
suppressed independent investigation and documentation of the event.
One of the key preconditions for future political transformation in
China is the thorough investigation and rehabilitation of the June 4th
Massacre and the ending of impunity for those responsible.
HRIC is working with a former student leader of the 1989 Tiananmen
Movement and now a professional Internet data base developer, to
construct a comprehensive, interactive, and authoritative website
focused on establishing reliable accounts and facts of the June 4th
Massacre and the subsequent persecutions of the Tiananmen Movement
participants. The website www.64memo.com will include the diverse
perspectives of students, concerned citizens, and the government, and
archival materials such as dazibao (Big Character Posters), pamphlets,
meeting records and decisions, photos, audio and videotapes, government
announcements and internal documents (wenjian), reports and interviews
on newspapers, and TV and radio coverage.
The website will use advanced Internet data base technology to
build a platform that has functions such as whole text reading, full-
text search, catalogue display, catalogue search, linkage among related
texts, annotation by the participants to the texts, multimedia display
of audio-visual materials, and back-end administration. This platform
has the potential to be further developed as an interactive archival
website for other human rights issues. A reference archive will also be
established to maintain historical materials in conjunction with the
website. Together, the website and archive will make historical
materials about this pivotal event in contemporary China available to
human rights activists, researchers, educators, journalists, and the
evolving pro-democracy movement in China.
As an on-line archival web project, www.64memo.com is designed to
serve as a catalyst in establishing a forum for free communication and
reliable information for democratic dissidents and activists who are
now spread across the globe. Finally, it will provide a model for other
democratic struggles on how to use new technologies more effectively to
enhance cohesion, communication, and access to independent and reliable
historical information in support of their movements.
looking forward
We recommend the following areas for ongoing attention by the
Commission:
1. Identifying and monitoring possible opportunities for
intervention and engagement by the U.S. Government, the private sector,
and NGO's For example:
--In October 2002, Shanghai will host the ICANN conference. The
complexities and internal debates aside, how can concerns about
Chinese Internet censorship, free flow of information, and
freedom of association and assembly, be constructively and
appropriately raised?
--In the lead-up to the 2008 Olympics, we urge the Commission to
monitor several human rights concerns, including violations of
labor rights during the construction of the sites, the
``cleaning-up'' of areas of the Beijing through detention of
``undesirables,'' tighter control of the media to maintain a
positive domestic picture, shut-downs of media and websites,
and the continued use of security and anti-terrorism measures
to silence legitimate peaceful expression.
With respect to information and surveillance technology, the
testing and implementation of security systems during site
construction, including digital surveillance cameras, and biometric
authentication systems, should be carefully monitored to avoid leaving
behind the architecture for technological repression and control when
the games are finished.
2. We also urge the Commission to pay particular attention to the
increasingly restrictive Internet regulation and surveillance by
Chinese authorities, especially as these regulations interface with
China's WTO accession obligations, including the Telecommunications
protocols. China's domestic regulatory, surveillance and censorship
system must be measured against China's international obligations--both
its economic and its human rights obligations. China's legal system
must be transparent, accountable, predictable, and fair.
3. We also respectfully note that the round-table themes are
interrelated and it may be useful for the Commission to consider at
some future point, hearings or round-tables that examine the direct
interface and tensions between them, for example, the implementation of
the WTO and human rights, or in the context of the digital divide,
Ethnic Minorities and the Internet.
Thank you.
______
Prepared Statement of James C. Mulvenon
april 15, 2002
From Saudi Arabia, to Cuba, to Myanmar, to the People's Republic of
China, the focus of this report, dissidents are using the Internet to
organize and communicate with each other, to access banned information,
and to draw support from a global network of activists and non-
governmental organizations. At the same time, the governments of these
countries are struggling to prevent these activists from using the
Internet to erode government controls over the flow of information and
promote political or social agendas that these regimes find
threatening. This gives rise to a series of questions about the
political impact of the Internet in authoritarian societies: Does the
Internet provide dissidents with potent new tools that they can use to
promote their causes, break through the barriers of censorship, and
perhaps ultimately undermine the power and authority of non-democratic
regimes? Or on the contrary, is it more likely that those authoritarian
governments will use the Internet as another instrument to repress
dissent, silence their critics, and strengthen their own power?
This report addresses the use of the Internet by Chinese
dissidents, Falun Gong practitioners, Tibetan activists, and other
groups and individuals in the PRC and abroad who are regarded as
subversive by the authorities in China. It also examines the counter-
strategies that Beijing has employed in its attempts to prevent or
minimize the political impact of Chinese dissident use of the Internet.
The arrival of the Internet has altered the dynamic between the
Beijing regime and the dissident community. For the state, the
political use of the Internet further degrades the Chinese Communist
Party's ability to control the flow of information it deems politically
sensitive or subversive into China and within China. The Party,
however, can still use Leninist methods to crush potential organized
opposition, and as a result no organization with the capacity to
challenge the CCP's monopoly on political power presently exists in
China.
For dissidents, students, and members of groups like Falun Gong,
the Internet, especially two-way communication like e-mail and BBS,
permits the global dissemination of information for communication,
coordination, and organization with greater ease and rapidity than ever
before. Moreover, it allows them to do so in some instances without
attracting the attention of the authorities, as exemplified by the
unexpected appearance of an estimated 10,000-15,000 members of Falun
Gong outside Zhongnanhai, the Chinese central leadership compound, in
April 1999.
For the dissident community, even the use of one-way Internet
communication, particularly e-mail ``spamming,'' enables them to
transmit uncensored information to an unprecedented number of people
within China, and to provide recipients with plausible deniability in
that they can always claim that did not request the information. In
part because of dissident countermeasures (such as the use of different
originating e-mail addresses each time), the PRC is unable to stop
these attempts to ``break the information blockade.'' There is a trend
toward more groups and individuals becoming involved in activities of
this type, which some have dubbed a form of ``Internet guerrilla
warfare.''
Small groups of activists, and even individuals, can use the
Internet as a force multiplier to exercise influence disproportionate
to their limited manpower and financial resources. At the same time,
however, enhanced communication does not always further the dissident
cause. In some cases it serves as a potent new forum for discord and
rivalry between various dissident factions.
In terms of counter-strategies, the PRC regime has made limited use
of high-tech solutions, including blocking of web sites and e-mail,
monitoring, filtering, denial, deception, disinformation, and even
hacking dissident and Falun Gong web sites. Some non-governmental
groups have also launched ``vigilante hacks'' against dissident web
sites, which illustrates the difficulty of determining the level of
official government sponsorship for such attacks. Beijing's approach,
however, is predominantly ``low-tech Leninist,'' employing traditional
measures such as surveillance, informants, searches, confiscation of
computer equipment, regulations, and physical shutdown of parts of the
information infrastructure.
The regime understands implicitly that the center of gravity is not
necessarily the information itself, but the organization of information
and the use of information for political action. The strategy of the
security apparatus is to create a climate that promotes self-censorship
and self-deterrence. This is exemplified by the comments of a Public
Security Bureau official: ``People are used to being wary, and the
general sense that you are under surveillance acts as a disincentive.
The key to controlling the Net in China is in managing people, and this
is a process that begins the moment you purchase a modem.''
The government's strategy is also aided by the current economic
environment in China, which encourages the commercialization of the
Internet, not the politicization of the Internet. As one Internet
executive put it, for Chinese and foreign companies, ``the point is to
make profits, not political statements.''
Beijing's countermeasures have been relatively successful on the
whole to date. The current lack of credible challenges to the regime
despite the introduction of massive amounts of modern
telecommunications infrastructure, however, does not lead inexorably to
the conclusion that the regime will continue to be immune from the
forces unleashed by the increasingly unfettered flow of information
across its borders. Indeed, while the regime has done a remarkable job
thus far of finding effective counter-strategies to what it perceives
as the potential negative effects of the information revolution, the
scale of China's information technology modernization would suggest
that eventually time will be on the side of the regime's opponents.
______
Prepared Statement of Kathryn Hauser
april 15, 2002
Good afternoon. I am Kathryn Hauser, Senior Vice President of the
Information Technology Industry Council (ITI). Thank you for inviting
me to speak to you today on behalf of the 30 member companies of my
association. ITI's members are the leading providers of information
technology products and services and span the entire industry: IT
infrastructure, computer hardware, software, IT services, consumer
electronics, e-commerce and Internet services. Our companies operate
globally and are heavily invested in ensuring open international trade,
as over 60 percent of their total revenues come from foreign sales.
China is obviously a key market for ITI members. Many ITI companies
have long-standing investments and operations there; others are
relatively new to this market. But all agree that China represents the
most significant growth market for IT products and services, and ITI is
actively working to improve our companies' access to this market. We
are hopeful that China's membership in the World Trade Organization
will advance domestic economic reforms and expand China's openness to
the rest of the world.
The focus of this Roundtable discussion, ``Wired China: Whose Hand
is on the Switch?'' is timely. We have all observed the rapid expansion
of Internet access in China, as well as the steady increase in Chinese
domains and web sites. The China Internet Network Information Center
estimates that there are 33.7 million Chinese Internet users, and many
are predicting that China will soon overtake Japan as the Asian country
with the most Internet users. Already China is the world's largest
market for cell phones, with nearly 160 million users. As technology
evolves to allow inexpensive Internet access from cell phones, China is
likely to have more Internet users than any other country.
All of us are questioning what this means for China, for its
people, governments, businesses and customers, and for our companies
doing business there. As with any issue in China, the role of the
government is paramount. Through telecommunications policies beginning
in the 1990's, the Chinese Government shaped the growth and diffusion
of the Internet and continues to support its expansion today. At the
same time, the Chinese Government is attempting to control use of the
Internet by filtering or blocking access to certain websites with
objectionable content. We in industry believe in the power of
information technology to generate higher productivity and economic
growth, to increase the flow of information, and to better the lives of
those who can access it.
i. chinese government support for the development of the internet
Internet expansion in China is due to direct support by the Chinese
Government, which continues to promote the use of information
technology and the Internet to serve its economic development goals.
Nearly a decade ago, in the early 1990's, the Chinese Government began
a process of ``informatization'' to ``drive industrial development.''
It initiated the so-called ``Golden Projects'' which established a new
Internet protocol (IP) communications network linking government
ministries and state-owned enterprises. The goal was to use information
technology as a vehicle to modernize the economy, centralize
decisionmaking, create a more transparent administrative process
between and among government ministries, and establish e-government
capabilities. The Chinese Government also deployed broadband
technologies, particularly in high-density urban areas, and put a plan
in place to rapidly build out the country's telecommunications
infrastructure. These actions paved the way for State Council support
for the development of the Internet in China.
In 1996, the State Council set up a Steering Committee on National
Information Infrastructure to coordinate Internet policy, taking it out
of the hands of the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications and the
Ministry of Electronic Industries. Further restructuring occurred in
1998, with the consolidation of functions into the Ministry of
Information Industries. High-tech and telecom issues became the
responsibility of Vice Premier Wu Bangguo and MII Minister Wu Jichuan,
with Premier Zhu Rongji occasionally taking a role.
Last August, the State Informatization Leading Group was formed to
provide top-level coordination of intra-agency issues related to the IT
and telecom sector. Under this leading Group, the State Council
Informatization Office launched a major initiative to broaden
decisionmaking and communication links through e-government.
Chinese Government officials are eager to learn about the U.S.
experience with e-government. We have forged a link between the State
Council Informatization Office and USITO, the U.S. Information
Technology Organization, which is comprised of six U.S. IT associations
and serves as our voice in China. Vice Minister Liu He of the State
Council Informatization Office was in Washington last month and
discussed e-government and e-commerce issues with ITI member companies.
We will continue this dialog through USITO in Beijing.
The United States should welcome China's e-government initiative.
It has the potential to significantly increase transparency of China's
governance for its own people. Some of our members believe it will also
be the major driver of the growth of the use of the Internet in China,
as government information, decisions and services remain important if
not paramount in China. Finally, U.S. companies, including ITI's
membership, are best positioned globally to benefit from this growth.
As China moves forward with its informatization strategy, including
establishing rules and regulations, U.S. industry believes it has much
to contribute to the formulation of these rules in terms of global and
national practice. We hope and expect that, consistent with China's WTO
obligations, we will have timely and effective opportunities to comment
upon the development of regulations affecting our businesses in China
and look forward to working with Chinese officials toward this end.
This includes regulations ranging from the structure of foreign
enterprises offering Internet services, to encryption to wireless
standards, and much more.
ii. restrictive measures concerning the internet
As the Internet continues to expand in China, the government
continues its efforts to attempt to tighten controls on on-line
expression. What kinds of content is the Chinese Government trying to
limit? Much of their attention seems focused on the same issues that
have troubled regulators in other countries: exploitative, sexually
inappropriate, or criminal uses of the web. Beyond that, Chinese
officials want to limit politically offensive or regime threatening
subjects.
Since 1995, when China first began permitting commercial Internet
accounts, the authorities have issued at least 60 sets of regulations
aimed at controlling Internet content. The regulations are often vague
and broadly worded, but nonetheless form an elaborate regulatory
framework that serves as a statement of policy, justification for
monitoring and surveillance, a set of guidelines for what constitutes
``illegal'' activity, and a deterrent to internet users.
Pressed for details, regulators have a hard time--or simply
refuse--to describe with precision what sorts of subjects fall into
this category. The very vagueness of Chinese regulations concerning
political or religious issues has a chilling effect on all dialog
relating to these topics.
There is an irony in these restrictions, since the broader media in
China--TV, radio and an evolving print sector--are experimenting with
anti-corruption and consumer-oriented stories on a host of topics.
A recent survey of Internet Use in China conducted by the Center
for Social Development of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
suggests that the government's actions may not be sufficient to stop
the flow of information. The survey revealed that 10 percent of the
users ``frequently'' use proxy servers and 25 percent of users
``occasionally'' use proxy servers to get around websites blocked by
the Chinese Government. The survey concluded that the main reason non-
users are not on-line is cost (computer, access to Internet, etc.)--not
fear of government control. Both users and non-users said they have a
positive attitude toward the Internet and believe it will make the
world a better place. (See CASS Internet Survey 2000, directed by Prof.
Guo Liang and Prof. Bu Wei, available through
(www.worldinternetproject.org.)
iii. role for u.s. industry
A key objective will be to develop a process whereby companies that
will be affected by proposed new regulations will be permitted to
comment on them before they are implemented. In addition, we hope to
share information about how other governments are dealing with some of
these problems, encourage Chinese participation in e-commerce fora
around the world, and support government-to-government exchanges on
these issues. We anticipate that this discourse will enable both
industry and government to work together to address the regulatory
structure and other key issues, such as privacy and security.
conclusion
Whether one considers the Internet primarily a method of mass
communication or a product of the telecommunications network, the fact
remains that the Chinese leadership continues to see the development
and promotion of the Internet as a vehicle for cultural, educational
and economic development in China. This does not mean that the
government will not try to control objectionable content, just as many
other countries are doing. But it is clear that China is making more
information available to more and more people. The U.S. IT industry
needs to be part of this effort.
Thank you.
Submissions for the Record
----------
Prepared Statement of Bobson Wong, Executive Director, Digital Freedom
Network
april 15, 2002
Since January 2000, when the Chinese newspaper People's Daily
published new Internet regulations from the State Secrecy Bureau, the
Chinese government has cracked down on Internet use that it considers
dangerous, arresting several individuals, shutting down sites, and
passing new laws that codify existing practice. The Digital Freedom
Network (DFN), a U.S.-based organization that promotes and develops the
use of Internet technology for human rights activism, has been
monitoring the use of the Internet in China. Below is a list of at
least 25 individuals in China currently detained for online activity
(this list is online at http://dfn.org/focus/china/netattack.htm). DFN
also has a page containing the latest news related to Net restrictions
in China at http://dfn.org/focus/china/chinanetreport.htm.
Many of the individuals listed below were detained for months or
even years before facing formal charges, usually subversion. Those who
get a trial are always found guilty and receive multi-year sentences.
The detainees include Falun Gong believers who forwarded material about
the movement and others who e-mailed pro-democracy publications to
others or published articles online that criticized government
officials. Some are not even dissidents. Huang Qi was detained 2 years
ago after several overseas dissidents posted material on a missing-
persons Web site he used to run about the June 4, 1989 pro-democracy
demonstrations. He remains in custody. Wang Jinbo reportedly went on a
hunger strike in January 2002 because prison guards would not allow his
family to see him.
It is imperative that the United States and other nations act
quickly to do everything it can to ensure their release. But even if
these 25 individuals were to be freed, there is no guarantee that
others won't be arrested and convicted on similar charges. China uses a
combination of tough legislation and modern technology to restrict
online information. Any online activity that the government considers
threatening is banned, including using the Internet to incite the
overthrow of State power, topple the socialist system, destroy national
unity, promote ``cults'' (interpreted to mean groups such as the Falun
Gong spiritual movement), or support the independence of Taiwan.
To ensure that individuals such as Huang Qi are not imprisoned in
China, we should continue to promote technological tools that enable
Chinese users to express themselves freely in a reasonable manner.
Supporting efforts such as the anonymous proxy service SafeWeb will
certainly help. But we must also find a way to reach out to China's
young people. Internet users in China today are young, urban, well-
educated--a reflection of how economic reforms since the Tiananmen
Square crackdown have improved the living standards of many Chinese.
But as beneficiaries of official policy, they have little reason to
distrust the government and are incredibly suspicious of the United
States. In the days after the September 11 terrorist attacks, Chinese
bulletin boards were flooded with messages from Chinese users
criticizing U.S. arrogance and claiming that the U.S. got what it
deserved for ``meddling'' in the affairs of other nations. These users
will grow up to become the future leaders of the world's most populous
nation. Reaching out to this generation will require more than
encryption software and other technical solutions. It will require that
we buildup a relationship of mutual trust with China so that its next
generation of leaders will allow its citizens to live in a more open
society.
______
Chinese Individuals Currently Detained for Online Political or
Religious Activity
compiled by the digital freedom network (april 2002)
http://dfn.org/focus/china/netattack.htm
1. Chi Shouzhu, a veteran Chinese activist, was detained on April
18, 2001 shortly after printing online pro-democracy material from a
Web site using a friend's computer, according to the Hong Kong-based
Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy. The center said he
was carrying the material when he was detained at a train station in
the northeastern city of Changchun. Chi was released in June after
serving a 10-year prison term for taking part in 1989 pro-democracy
protests. Leng Wanbao, a dissident living in the northeastern province
of Jilin, was interrogated for more than 2 hours by police on April 18,
2001, according to the Paris-based Reporters sans frontieres (Reporters
without Borders). Police accused him of publishing ``subversive
articles'' on the Internet. Some of Leng's writings were allegedly
found on Chi Shouzhu, who was arrested a short time before. (See also
``China Cracks Down on Cyber-Dissent,'' Associated Press, April 19,
2001; Reporters sans frontieres protest letter, April 20, 2001, http://
www.rsf.fr/uk/html/asie/cplp01/lp01/190401.html)
2. Dong Yanhong, a staff member at Tsinghua University, was
sentenced on December 13, 2001 to 5 years in prison for spreading
information on the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement over the
Internet, according to the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human
Rights and Democracy. In addition to Dong, five others were sentenced
by the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court on December 13: Liu
Wenyu, a professor of electric power at Tsinghua University; Liu's wife
Yao Yue, a microelectronics researcher at Tsinghua University; Wang
Xin, an academic at Tsinghua University; Tsinghua electronics professor
Meng Jun; and Wang Xuefei, graduate student at a Shanghai university.
(``6 Convicted in China Falun Gong Case,'' Associated Press, December
24, 2001, ``China Jails Six for Falun Gong Web Activity--Group,''
Reuters, December 23, 2001.)
3. Guo Qinghai, a friend of dissident Qi Yanchen and also a
freelance writer, was arrested in September 2000 for ``subverting State
power.'' Guo published articles on the Internet that discussed Qi's
case and frequently put on overseas online bulletin boards essays
promoting political reforms in China. On April 24, 2001, the
Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy reported that a court
in Cangzhou, in the northern province of Hebei, tried Guo on April 3
for subversion. According to the center, the court did not inform Guo's
family of the hearing, the group said. On April 26, 2001, he was
sentenced to 4 years in prison. (See also ``China Charges, Tries
Internet Dissidents: Group,'' Reuters, April 25, 2001.)
4. Hu Dalin was detained on May 18, 2001 by police in the
southeastern city of Shaoyang after he published articles online that
were written by his father, retired Beijing strategy scholar Lu
Jiaping, according to the U.S.-based Chinese dissident e-mail
publication V.I.P. Reference. No formal charges have been filed against
Hu, but police told family members that he was arrested because of
``subversive'' activities online, according to the publication. Lu
remains free in Beijing. (See also ``Denial and Detentions,'' Digital
Freedom Network, May 24, 2001.)
5. Huang Qi, 36, an Internet entrepreneur from Chengdu who ran a
site containing information about the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre,
was detained on June 3, 2000 on the eve of the massacre's eleventh
anniversary. One of the items on Huang's Web site (http://6-
4tianwang.com), which was originally a Web site about missing persons,
was a letter from the mother of a young student killed during the
demonstrations. The letter accused police of beating her son to death.
On July 14, 2000, Huang's wife Zeng Li was officially notified that her
husband was being charged with ``subversion. `` Huang's trial began on
February 13, 2001. It was suspended after Huang Qi collapsed in court
on the afternoon of the trial's first day. On June 25, 2001, a relative
of Huang's was notified that his trial was rescheduled for June 27. On
June 26, the Chengdu Intermediate Court announced that the trial was
again postponed indefinitely. On August 14, Huang was tried secretly.
No family members were allowed to attend. (See also ``Trial of Chinese
Website Creator to Reopen This Week,'' Agence France-Presse, June 26,
2001; ``CHINA: Jailed Internet publisher tried in secret,'' Committee
to Protect Journalists, August 16, 2001.)
6. Jiang Shihua, a high school computer teacher in Nanchong, was
arrested on August 16, 2000 after publishing articles online that
criticized the Chinese government. Using the pen name Shumin, which
means ``common citizen,'' Jiang started writing and posting articles on
August 11, 2000 from the Silicon Valley Internet Cafe, which he owns.
Jiang was immediately charged with ``subverting the State power. ``
According to the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy, a
court in Nanchong sentenced Jiang to 2 years in jail in December 2000.
On May 18, 2001, the Higher People's Court in the southwestern province
of Sichuan upheld his conviction. (See also ``Web dissident sentenced
to 2 years imprisonment,'' Reporters sans frontieres Action Alert,
March 14, 2001, ``Chinese Court Turns Down Internet Dissident's Appeal:
Rights Center,'' Agence France-Presse, May 23, 2001.)
7. Jin Haike, a geological engineer, was one of four intellectuals
detained in Beijing on March 13, 2001 and charged with subversion on
April 20, 2001. Jin, along with Consumer Daily reporter Xu Wei,
software developer Yang Zili, and freelance writer Zhang Honghai--had
co-founded the ``New Youth Study Group,'' a discussion group that
discussed Chinese political reform, particularly in rural areas. The
center said that university students participated in the study group's
events and that members posted material on a Web site and sent e-mails
to each other. A fifth intellectual, Zhang Yanhua, was also detained
with the four but was later released. Jin, Xu, Yang, and Zhang were
tried on September 28, 2001. (See also ``China Said to Charge Four of
Subversion,'' Associated Press, May 21, 2001; ``China Charges Four with
Subversion: Rights Group,'' Reuters, May 21, 2001; ``Four Chinese
intellectuals tried for subversion,'' Digital Freedom Network,
September 28, 2001.)
8. Li Hongmin was arrested around June 10, 2001 and sent to a
detention center in his hometown of Shaoyang (Hunan Province). Sources
for the U.S.-based dissident publication VIP Reference and the Hong
Kong-based Information Center of Human Rights and Democracy said that
he was arrested after e-mailing copies of the Chinese version of The
Tiananmen Papers to friends. The Tiananmen Papers are a collection of
documents allegedly smuggled out of China that reveal the decisions of
China's top leaders before, during, and after the bloody June 4, 1989
crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations. (See also ``Chinese Held for
Distributing 'Tiananmen Papers' on the Internet, Agence France-Presse,
July 2, 2001; E-mail with Richard Long, June 27, 2001.)
9. Liu Wenyu, a professor of electric power at Tsinghua University,
was sentenced on December 13, 2001 to 3 years in prison for spreading
information on the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement over the
Internet, according to the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human
Rights and Democracy. In addition to Liu, five others were sentenced by
the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court on December 13: Liu's
wife Yao Yue, a microelectronics researcher at Tsinghua University;
Tsinghua staff member Dong Yanhong; Wang Xin, an academic at Tsinghua
University; Tsinghua electronics professor Meng Jun; and Wang Xuefei,
graduate student at a Shanghai university. (``6 Convicted in China
Falun Gong Case,'' Associated Press, December 24, 2001, ``China Jails
Six for Falun Gong Web Activity--Group,'' Reuters, December 23, 2001.)
10. Liu Weifang was sentenced in northwestern China for posting
articles on Internet chatrooms that criticized the Communist Party, the
Xinjiang Daily reported on June 15, 2001. The paper said that the small
business owner was convicted of inciting subversion against State
power. Liu had posted several articles in 1999 and 2000 that criticized
both the Party and China's top leaders. Although he used the Internet
name ``Lgwf,'' Chinese officials determined that he posted the
articles. (See also ``Chinese Man Sentenced to Three Years in Prison
for Cyber Writings,'' Agence France-Presse, June 18, 2001.)
11. Lu Xinhua was detained on March 11, 2001 in Wuhan, capital of
central China's Hubei province, according to the Information Center for
Human Rights and Democracy. On April 20, 2001, he was formally charged
with inciting to subvert State power. The group said that Lu was the
most active dissident on the Internet in Wuhan. He often posted on
overseas Web sites essays promoting democracy in China and reports on
human rights violations in Wuhan. On January 14, 2002, the Wuhan
Municipal Intermediate People's Court convicted him and sentenced him
to 4 years in prison. Lu was convicted for an article of his in which
he attacked Chinese President Jiang Zemin. The article said that only a
system of ``mutual supervision'' and a more stable system of laws would
reduce corruption in China, according to Agence France-Presse. (See
also ``China Charges, Tries Internet Dissidents: Group,'' Reuters,
April 25, 2001; ``Two More Chinese Fall Afoul of Internet Laws:
Report,'' Agence France-Presse, April 25, 2001; ``Two Chinese political
dissidents jailed for airing views on Internet,'' Agence France-Presse,
January 14, 2002.)
12. Meng Jun, an electronics professor at Tsinghua University, was
sentenced on December 13, 2001 to 10 years in prison for spreading
information on the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement over the
Internet, according to the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human
Rights and Democracy. In addition to Meng, five others were sentenced
by the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court on December 13: Yao
Yue, a microelectronics researcher at Tsinghua University; Yao's
husband Liu Wenyu, a professor of electric power at Tsinghua
University; Wang Xin, an academic at Tsinghua University; Tsinghua
staff member Dong Yanhong; and Wang Xin, graduate student at a Shanghai
university. (``6 Convicted in China Falun Gong Case,'' Associated
Press, December 24, 2001, ``China Jails Six for Falun Gong Web
Activity--Group,'' Reuters, December 23, 2001.)
13. Qi Yanchen, sentenced to 4 years in prison on September 19,
2000, is the first Chinese convicted of subversion for material he
wrote that was published on the Internet. The charges stem from
articles that Qi wrote for the November 1998 and January 1999 issues of
Open magazine in Hong Kong and published under the pen name Ji Li. Qi
was also officially charged for writing articles in the May 6, 1999 and
May 17, 1999 articles of the U.S.-based Chinese dissident e-mail
publication Dacankao (V.I.P. Reference). Qi was arrested on September
2, 1999 in the northeastern Chinese city of Botou. According to V.I.P.
Reference, who spoke to Qi's wife Mi Hongwu, Qi Yanchen's right to
appeal his conviction expired on September 29, 2000. Although Mi wanted
to appeal the conviction, Qi's lawyer decided not to help him due to
pressure from the National Security Bureau at Cangzhou.
14. Wang Jinbo, 29, was arrested on May 12, 2001 for ``defaming''
police on the Internet, according to the Information Center on Human
Rights and Democracy. He was arrested in Junan town in eastern China's
Shandong province. When Wang's father asked for more information about
the charges against his son, police threatened to arrest him as well.
On December 13, 2001, the Intermediate People's Court in Linyi,
Shandong, found Wang guilty of subversion for publishing foreign news
articles on the Internet and posting an online message that urged the
government to re-evaluate the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy
demonstrations at Tiananmen Square. He began a hunger strike on January
9, 2002 because prison guards did not allow his family to see him. (See
also ``Chinese dissident arrested for defaming police online,'' Agence
France-Presse, May 12, 2001, ``Outlawed party member jailed,'' Reuters,
December 14, 2001, ``Rights activist sentenced to 4 years in jail,''
Deutsche Presse-Agentur, December 14, 2001; ``CHINA: China jails
dissident for subversion--HK group,'' Reuters, January 14, 2002.)
15. Wang Sen, a member of the banned China Democracy Party, was
arrested on April 30, 2001 for seeking to usurp power according to the
Information Center on Human Rights and Democracy. Wang had posted an
allegation that the southwestern Chinese city of Dachuan's medical
center had sold tuberculosis medicine, which was donated by the Red
Cross, at inflated prices. He was arrested in Dachuan, located in
Sichuan province. (See also ``Chinese dissident arrested for defaming
police online,'' Agence France-Presse, May 12, 2001.)
16. Wang Xin, an academic at Tsinghua University, was sentenced on
December 13, 2001 to 9 years in prison for spreading information on the
banned Falun Gong spiritual movement over the Internet, according to
the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy.
In addition to Wang, five others were sentenced by the Beijing No. 1
Intermediate People's Court on December 13: Yao Yue, a microelectronics
researcher at Tsinghua University; Yao's husband Liu Wenyu, a professor
of electric power at Tsinghua University; Tsinghua staff member Dong
Yanhong; Tsinghua electronics professor Meng Jun; and Wang Xuefei,
graduate student at a Shanghai university. (``6 Convicted in China
Falun Gong Case,'' Associated Press, December 24, 2001, ``China Jails
Six for Falun Gong Web Activity--Group,'' Reuters, December 23, 2001.)
17. Wang Xuefei, graduate student at a Shanghai university, was
sentenced on December 13, 2001 to 11 years in prison for spreading
information on the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement over the
Internet, according to the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human
Rights and Democracy. In addition to Wang, five others were sentenced
by the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court on December 13: Yao
Yue, a microelectronics researcher at Tsinghua University; Yao's
husband Liu Wenyu, a professor of electric power at Tsinghua
University; Wang Xin, an academic at Tsinghua University; Tsinghua
staff member Dong Yanhong; and Tsinghua electronics professor Meng Jun.
(``6 Convicted in China Falun Gong Case,'' Associated Press, December
24, 2001, ``China Jails Six for Falun Gong Web Activity--Group,''
Reuters, December 23, 2001.)
18. Wang Zhenyong, a 30-year-old former assistant professor in
psychology at Southwestern Normal University, was arrested in China for
e-mailing four articles about the Falun Gong spiritual group to a
colleague, according to the Chongqing Daily seen by Agence France-
Presse on June 2, 2001. He downloaded the articles from an overseas Web
site in December 2000 and forwarded the articles to a colleague, who
then distributed the articles over the Internet. (See also ``Academic
Arrested in China for Spreading Falun Gong Views Via Internet,'' Agence
France-Presse, June 2, 2001.)
19. Xu Wei, reporter for Consumer Daily, was one of four
intellectuals detained in Beijing on March 13, 2001 and later accused
of unspecified charges. Jin had co-founded the ``New Youth Study
Group,'' a discussion group that discussed Chinese political reform,
particularly in rural areas. Members posted material on a Web site and
sent e-mails to each other. Xu was tried on September 28, 2001. (See
also ``China Said to Charge Four of Subversion,'' Associated Press, May
21, 2001; ``China Charges Four with Subversion: Rights Group,''
Reuters, May 21, 2001; ``Four Chinese intellectuals tried for
subversion,'' Digital Freedom Network, September 28, 2001.)
20. Yang Zili, a software developer known for his outspoken
criticism of communism and a grass-roots activist at Beijing
University, and his wife Lu Kun were detained by security agents on
March 13, 2001. Lu was released 2 days later, but Yang remains in
custody. Yang had co-founded the ``New Youth Study Group,'' a
discussion group that discussed Chinese political reform, particularly
in rural areas. Members posted material on a Web site and sent e-mails
to each other. Yang ran the Web sites http://thought.home.sohu.com,
http://yangzi.00books.com, and ``Yang Zi's Garden of Ideas'' (http://
lib.126.com). Yang received a master's degree in geophysics in 1998 at
Beijing University. Yang was tried on September 28, 2001. (See also
``Dissident Web Writer Arrested in Beijing,'' Free China Movement press
release, March 24, 2001; ``Some Supplementary Information About Yang
Zili,'' Lu Kun; ``China Said to Charge Four of Subversion,'' Associated
Press, May 21, 2001; ``China Charges Four with Subversion: Rights
Group,'' Reuters, May 21, 2001; ``Four Chinese intellectuals tried for
subversion,'' Digital Freedom Network, September 28, 2001.)
21. Yao Yue, a microelectronics researcher at Tsinghua University,
was sentenced on December 13, 2001 to 12 years in prison for spreading
information on the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement over the
Internet, according to the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human
Rights and Democracy. In addition to Yao, five others were sentenced by
the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court on December 13: Yao's
husband Liu Wenyu, a professor of electric power at Tsinghua
University; Tsinghua staff member Dong Yanhong; Tsinghua electronics
professor Meng Jun; Tsinghua academic Wang Xin; and Wang Xuefei,
graduate student at a Shanghai university. (``6 Convicted in China
Falun Gong Case,'' Associated Press, December 24, 2001, ``China Jails
Six for Falun Gong Web Activity--Group,'' Reuters, December 23, 2001.)
22. Zhang Haitao, 30, creator of the only China-based Web site on
the outlawed Falun Gong, was charged with subversion on October 11,
2000 in Changchun, Jilin Province. Zhang, a computer engineer in the Xu
Ri Computer Company, is accused of establishing a site promoting Falun
Gong in May and of posting an online petition urging followers to
protest the government ban on the group. Authorities shut down his site
on July 24, 2000; Zhang was detained on July 29. (``News Update,''
China Rights Forum (Winter 2000/1), http://www.hrichina.org/crf/
english/00winter/00W16--NewsUpdate.html)
23. Zhang Honghai, a freelance writer, was one of four
intellectuals detained in Beijing on March 13, 2001 and later accused
of unspecified charges. Zhang had co-founded the ``New Youth Study
Group,'' a discussion group that discussed Chinese political reform,
particularly in rural areas. Members posted material on a Web site and
sent e-mails to each other. Zhang was tried on September 28, 2001. (See
also ``China Said to Charge Four of Subversion,'' Associated Press, May
21, 2001; ``China Charges Four with Subversion: Rights Group,''
Reuters, May 21, 2001; ``Four Chinese intellectuals tried for
subversion,'' Digital Freedom Network, September 28, 2001.)
24. Zhang Ji, a college student in Heilongjiang Province, was
charged on November 8, 2000 with ``disseminating reactionary documents
via the Internet. `` Authorities say Zhang had e-mailed information to
U.S.- and Canada-based Web sites of the Falun Gong religious group.
They say he also downloaded news about the group and shared it with
others in China. (``News Update,'' China Rights Forum (Winter 2000/1),
http://www.hrichina.org/crf/english/00winter/00W16--NewsUpdate.html)
25. Zhu Ruixiang, a lawyer and former producer of the Shaoyang
Radio Station, was charged with subversion and sentenced to 3 years in
prison on September 14, 2001 after he forwarded e-mail messages to 12
people inside China. The messages, deemed ``reactionary'' by a court in
Shaoyang in the southern province of Hunan, contained copies of V.I.P.
Reference (Dacankao), a daily e-mail publication based in the U.S.
consisting of articles and essays related to democracy in China. Zhu
was arrested on May 8, 2001, and Public Security Bureau officials
confiscated his computer, according to the U.S.-based Free China
Movement. (See also ``China hands 3-year jail term for relaying e-
mail,'' Agence France-Presse, September 15, 2001; ``Official verdict of
judgment of Zhu Ruixiang,'' Digital Freedom Network, September 25,
2001.)
______
Prepared Statement of David Cowhig, Formerly With the U.S. Embassy in
Beijing
april 15, 2002
wired china: many hands on many switches
I would like to share with you some thoughts about China and the
Internet based on my 5 years covering the Internet for the Environment,
Science and Technology Section of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. These
are my own observations and musings about how Internet fits into the
Chinese social and political system. My views expressed here do not
reflect the views of the U.S. Government and are not a policy
prescription of any kind.
When asking the question ``Whose Hand is on the Switch?'' about the
Internet in China we need to bear in mind that there are many hands and
many switches. Chinese provincial and local governments and indeed
various parts of the central government have far greater coordination
problems than we experience among the Federal, State and local
governments in the United States. China might be thought of as a
decentralized de facto Federal State that lacks Federal institutions
that facilitate central control and coordination such as the Federal
court system and regional offices of central government ministries.
China is best understood not so much as a Big Brother State but as a
loose collection of thousands of provincial and local Party and
government little brothers. Many of the provincial little brothers have
only nominal allegiance to Big Brother in Beijing. Local officials want
to control media not just for Beijing's purposes but also to prevent
Beijing to know about their own shortcomings. Many orders and
regulations from the central government are ignored from the outset or
forgotten after only a few months.
One corollary of the China's shortcomings in the rule of law area
is that local governments are not conscientious in obeying orders from
Beijing. The result has been that the central government implements
policies by national campaigns that are intense for a short time but
then swiftly fade away. New regulations are issued not as amendments to
old ones but as de novo regulations--apparently a tacit admission that
the old ones have faded from memory. Government by political campaign
as a Chinese government style is gradually fading as more laws are
written down, as China's leaders keep insisting that ``officials really
should be carrying out their duties according to the law'' and as the
public learns more about the text of laws and about legal procedures.
Improved public knowledge of the law is in some small part one of the
benefits of the Internet for China. Although the movement away from
government by campaign can be seen in that campaigns are much less
disruptive than they were in the past, being aware of the ``government
by campaign'' phenomenon can help us better understand China and the
Internet.
What does this mean for the Internet? New tough rules are issued
each year but are not systematically enforced. Where enforced,
enforcement fades after a few months. Last Spring visiting two dozen
``net cafes'' in Hunan, I was never asked to produce any ID before
using the computer nor was anyone else. Often regulations requiring
identification of users were posted prominently on the wall. Although
web bar management is supposed to check that clients are not surfing
subversive websites, in practice no one pays attention to which sites
net cafe clients are visiting. One could say that the rules were
observed only in the sense that one could observe them posted
prominently on the wall. Most of the clientele were in their twenties
who paid about 3 RMB per hour (25 US cents) to use a computer for
online chat, games watching movies (pirate copies of movies were on the
cafe LAN) and browsing websites. The Changsha, Hunan police estimated
in Spring 2001 that there were 1000 web cafes in the city. Web cafes in
China have a very fuzzy definition that can include not only web cafes
but also computer gaming parlors frequented by truant high school
students and underground locales that show pornographic films on their
computer local area networks. The Changsha police in their spring 2001
crackdown told local newspapers that they were focusing on the
pornographic web bars.
Chinese internet sites are supposed to conform to the same general
guidelines as the media. See the October 2000 State Council Internet
Information Management Regulations.
<bullet> Threatening national security, leaking State secrets,
overthrowing the government, and harming national unity;
<bullet> Harming the reputation or interests of the state;
<bullet> Fanning ethnic hatred, discrimination on the basis of
nationality, and harming the unity of China's nationalities;
<bullet> Harming the State religious policy, propagandizing for
evil religions or feudal superstition;
<bullet> Spreading false rumors, pornography, gambling, violence,
murder, intimidation;
<bullet> Insulting or slandering someone, infringing on the legal
rights of others;
<bullet> Other actions that are contrary to law or administrative
regulations.
These regulations, like most Chinese regulations, are so broad that
they can be interpreted many different ways. Websites are expected not
to originate news--which web managers in turn interpret as meaning
don't originate news that is politically sensitive. Many Chinese
websites carry news gathered from the 100-plus Chinese newspapers that
are online. Thus the news on the web, especially breaking news, is not
much better than found in the print press. Some websites, such as
Sina.com (http://www.sina.com.cn) allow readers to leave their own
comments about a news story. Sometimes these comments are much more
interesting than the news stories themselves. If a newspaper somewhere
in China does print a relatively daring story, the story will often be
picked up by websites throughout the country.
Bad news about corrupt local government in a province often appears
in a local paper in another province since the authorities in the other
province just don't care so much about suppressing bad news from other
provinces. This information can then leak into the first province over
the net. Indeed, local officials suppress information not just to
prevent their own people from knowing about a problem but also to
prevent higher authorities at the provincial or national level to know
that the glowing reports they send upwards are not entirely correct.
One dramatic illustration of the power of the Internet in China
came after local officials in Jiangxi Province tried to suppress news
of an explosion in an elementary school fireworks factory that killed
several dozen schoolchildren. Efforts by local officials to falsely
claim that a mad bomber and not illegal fireworks assembly was involved
was frustrated by a combination of Chinese journalists and the flow of
information around China on the Internet.
Often local officials succeed in keeping information from reaching
Beijing. At other times Beijing knows but pretends not to know for to
reveal that it knows but can do nothing would amount to a confession of
impotence. One example of how news of a local disaster spreads on the
Internet despite efforts by the local government to suppress is the
report ``Revealing the `Blood Wound' of the Spread of HIV/AIDS in Henan
Province'' spread around China on websites and e-mail about the HIV/
AIDS disaster in Henan Province. A translation of the report is
available at http://www.usembassy-china.org.cn/sandt/henan-hiv.htm
Sometimes after a big event in China or abroad, more information
and commentary does leak into China over the Internet from dissident e-
mail publications such as VIP Reference (http://www.bignews.org/) as
well as the Huaxia Digest (from http://www.cnd.org), the VOA's Chinese
language e-mail news service. The sending e-mail servers of the first
two e-mail publications are blocked and so the originating server often
changed. VOA Chinese e-mail news is blocked and unblocked depending
mostly upon the ups and downs of U.S.--China relations but also upon
whether a politically sensitive domestic news event has occurred.
News from some foreign Chinese newspapers, including, interestingly
enough, some critical reports from the Singapore Morning News (Zaobao)
regularly figure prominently on Chinese news websites. The value added
one sees on the web site includes reports from provincial newspapers in
faraway Chinese cities that one ordinarily wouldn't see (out of town
newspapers are not so easy to get hold of unless you subscribe) and the
ability to do searches and compare reports over time and from many
different sources. Just as with newspapers and magazines, for websites
commercial pressures tend to increase the diversity and freedom of
information since more attractive media is also of course more viable
in a highly competitive environment.
A great variety of Chinese language books and periodicals are
available online. The cost of getting online continues to fall,
especially in Internet cafes where the use of a local area network
brings connections costs down even lower than they are at home. Online
bookstores have appeared in China, although severe problems in the
areas of credit (few Chinese have credit cards); distribution and
resolution of consumer complaints still severely constrain the
development of online services in China. Many books, including some
banned publications, are also available at minimal cost on CD-ROM as
well as online. Although web content regulations apply to online forums
as much as anything else on the net, the sheer volume of messages and
it seems oftentimes the reluctance of monitors to cut short interesting
conversations.
Although the 15 million users of the Chinese Internet are very few
compared to China's 1.3 billion population, the Internet is
increasingly arriving in every small town. Together with the rapid
expansion of the inter-provincial highway network, the accelerated pace
of countryside to city labor migration, the Internet is part of some of
the most significant phenomena of the last decade--the shrinking of the
distance between urban and rural China and urban China's penetration of
rural life.
The Chinese Government's ``Government Online'' project (http://
www.gov.cn) has put thousands of Chinese government offices online.
Many Chinese laws and regulations are now available online for citizens
to consult and act on--already an important progress from the days just
a few years ago when ``confidential regulations'' made it very
difficult for citizens to dispute officials on points of law.
Chinese language translations of free market philosophers such as
Frederich Hayek are available online on many web sites such as Issues
and Ideology (http://www.wtyzy.com). Just as discussions in deep or
lengthy Chinese academic books can be surprisingly open (perhaps the
censors give up after the first 20 pages?), so too are direct
contradictions of China's official political and economic ideology
common on the more academic websites. Some of these articles criticize
by analogy. An example is an article reprinted from the January 2002
issue of ``Yellow River'', Li Xianzhi's meditation on the last 10 years
of Lu Xun's life considers Lu's critique of one party dictatorship.
This article is on the Issues and Ideology website at http://
www.wtyzy.net/linxianzhilxunzhou.htm. The analysis fits the Communist
people's democratic dictatorship perfectly but Lu Xun was talking about
Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Party. Of course. For example, These
websites regularly come under pressure,some have closed, but many very
interesting ones are still out there. Forum monitors are required to
delete ``subversive'' messages on China's many open discussion fora,
including the sometimes very lively ``Strong Country Forum'' (http://
bbs.people.com.cn/ ) run by the tongue of the Communist Party of
China--the People's Daily.
The State of the web in China reflects the uncertain State of China
itself. Most Chinese, including most Communist Party members, want a
more democratic and more open society. China's communist leaders fear
that the development and modernization brings will help bring will
shake their hold on power and lead to social instability. A Chinese
provincial vice Governor said a few years ago, ``We are the guardians
of a dead religion but must hold on for the sake of social stability.''
China's Internet itself, much more an emblem of modernity and progress
than in the United States, will likely trace a wavering path
alternating between greater opening as China moves toward greater
modernization and progress and tightening at times when the Chinese
leadership fears that new ideas and news that might tend to weaken the
Party's control.
U.S. Embassy Beijing reports on the Internet in China are available
at http://www.usembassy-china.org.cn/sandt/sandtbak-
hp.html#Internet%20and%20Computers
Several translations and summaries of press clippings from Chinese
news reports about the Internet are available at http://www.usembassy-
china.org.cn/sandt/sandsrc.htm
A list of some of China's more interesting online bookstores and
discussion websites can be found at ``Beijing Bookworm'' at http://
www.usembassy-china.org.cn/english/sandt/bjbkwrm.html
David Cowhig returned to the United States in July 2001 after 9
years in Okinawa, Taipei and Beijing. dcowhig@bigfoot.com
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