2. Large wave of resignation from the Chinese Communist Party is happening
More than 35 million Chinese have quit the CCP till Apr. 2008, people are continue quitting at a rate of 44,000 to 56,000 per day in April 2008.
- China: 35 Million Chinese Quit the Communist Party
10.Videos: Tiananmen Square Massacre - June. 4, 1989
Thousands of students shot to death by tanks and soldiers on Tiananmen square in capital city Beijing in 1989
Reporters Without Borders said in it’s 2005 special report titled “Xinhua: the world’s biggest propaganda agency”, that “Xinhua remains the voice of the sole party”, “particularly during the SARS epidemic, Xinhua has for last few months been putting out news reports embarrassing to the government, but they are designed to fool the international community, since they are not published in Chinese.”
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As US President Barack Obama used the Shanghai leg of his China visit to call for an end to online censorship, it emerged that a Chinese court has sentenced Tibetan writer and photographer Kunga Tseyang to five years in prison on various charges including posting articles on the Internet. Two days before, literary website editor Kunchok Tsephel has meanwhile been sentenced to 15 years in prison on a charge of “divulging state secrets”.
“Was this the Chinese government’s pre-emptive response to the US president’s very clear defence of the free flow of information,” Reporters Without Borders asked. “Either way, we hope the central government will overturn such heavy prison sentences, which two Tibetan writers have been given just for expressing their views. We deplore the increased repression since the major protests in Tibet in March 2008.”
Reporters Without Borders has learned that Tseyang, who is also know by the pen-name Gangnyi (Snow Sun), was given the five-year sentence by a court in the western province of Gansu on 14 November 2009 after being found guilty of writing “separatist” articles, posting them online and having contact with a Buddhist monk based in India. The authorities objected in particular to his posting articles on the website Zindris……. (more detailsfrom Reporters Without Borders)
Reporters Without Borders calls on US President Barack Obama to put 10 questions about freedom of expression to his counterpart, Hu Jintao, during his visit to China. “If President Obama asks these questions and gets answers and undertakings from the Chinese leader, the cause of free expression and press freedom will have progressed,” the organisation said.
Why are the websites of the US companies Twitter and Facebook blocked by the Chinese authorities?
Why do the Chinese authorities jam the programmes that are broadcast in Mandarin, Tibetan and Uyghur by the US-funded stations Radio Free Asia and Voice of America?
Is he going to pardon the hundreds of imprisoned journalists, intellectuals and bloggers, including Liu Xiaobo, Hu Jia, Shi Tao and Qi Chonghuai, who did nothing but express their opinions peacefully?
Why are foreign journalists, including American journalists, unable to visit Tibet without a permit?
Why is the Tibetan filmmaker Dhondhup Wangchen being tried on a charge of subversion when all he did was film interviews with Tibetans?
Why are international news agencies, including US news agencies, unable to sell their services directly to Chinese news media?
Why does the Propaganda Department routinely censor international news reports, including some aspects of the growing dispute with Iran over its nuclear programme?
Why do the Chinese security forces prevent journalists from freely doing investigative reporting in the area along the border with North Korea?
Why have the communication services (including Internet and telephone services) of the inhabitants of Xinjiang been blocked or kept under close surveillance for nearly four months?
Why are investigative journalists, especially those trying to cover business and corruption cases, still being harassed by the police and Propaganda department, a problem that led to the recent joint resignation of many of the editors and reporters employed by the leading magazine Caijing?
Reporters Without Borders has surveyed access to websites dedicated to the Uyghur community, including sites in the Uyghur language, in Mandarin and sometimes in English. These sites, operated by Uyghurs for Uyghurs, are for the most part inaccessible both to Internet users based in Xinjiang and those abroad. More than 85 per cent of the surveyed sites were blocked, censored or otherwise unreachable.
“The discrimination to which Uyghurs have been subjected for decades as regards their freedom of expression and their religious and economic freedom now applies to their Internet access as well,” Reporters Without Borders said. “Four months after the violence in Urumqi, the Chinese authorities continue to keep the province cut off from the rest of the world. We must not be duped by the illusion of normality. Most Uyghurs still cannot go online, send SMS messages or even make phone calls.”
The press freedom organisation added: “The official reason given for this blackout, that ‘terrorists used the Internet and SMS messaging,’ is unacceptable. Do the Pakistani or Afghan authorities suspend the Internet because terrorists sent email messages? No. The Chinese government seems more interested in preventing Xinjiang’s inhabitants from circulating information about the real situation in the province, especially about the crackdown after the July riots.”
Reporters Without Borders urges the authorities to restore Internet and phone connections in Xinjiang without delay. “The dozens of websites in the Uyghur language and websites about Xinjiang that have been closed must be allowed to reopen and those who edit them must have freedom of movement,” the organisation added.
Carried out in October, the survey examined around 100 Uyghur websites, portals, forums, blogs and other kinds of online platform. Various factors were considered, such as the country in which the site is based, the type of site (such as forum or blog), the type of content (such as news, politics, culture or sport), the language, and the problems encountered when the attempt was made to visit the site (such as change of address, overly long delay in opening or error message)……. (more details)
Reporters Without Borders calls for the release of three young Tibetans from the village of Dara who have been held in Nagchu county since 1 October, when they were arrested in nearby Sogdzong county for allegedly sending information about Tibet to contacts abroad via the Internet.
The police have not allowed the three – identified as Gyaltsen, 25, Nymia Wangchuk, 24, and Yeshe Namkha, 25 – to have any contact with their families since their arrest.
“The Internet is monitored, censored and manipulated more in Tibet than in other Chinese provinces,” Reporters Without Borders said. “Despite the risks, Tibetan Internet users continue to transmit information, especially to the diaspora and human rights groups. It is deplorable that the Chinese police devote so much energy to identifying and arresting ordinary Internet users.”
The three young people allegedly used QQ, a Chinese instant messaging service, to send photos of the Dalai Lama and speeches by him. It appears that the Bureau of Public Security had been monitoring their online activities for some time. The population of Sogdzong country complain of police harassment, including frequent ID checks.
The monks in Sog Tsandan monastery, for example, were forced by the police to attend patriotic meetings with the authorities and were forbidden to observe their end-of-summer retreat (in which they stay within the monastery to avoid harming the insects that emerge at that time of the year).
Several bloggers and other Internet users have been arrested in Tibet in recent months. They include Pasang Norbu, arrested in Lhasa on 12 August for looking at online photos of the Tibetan flag and Dalai Lama, and Gonpo Tserang, a guide sentenced to three years in prison in June on charges of inciting separatism and “communicating outside the country” for sending emails and SMS messages about the March 2008 protests in Tibet.
A former Chinese judge and university professor has been found guilty of “subversion of state power” and given a 10-year prison sentence. Guo Quan had challenged China’s one-party rule.
Guo had been detained several times since 2007 for things like posting articles on the Internet that called for a democratic system in China. In 2008, he founded the New Democracy Party of China.
Guo’s online postings eventually became a target of China’s Internet police, and he was fired from his job at Nanjing Normal University. Last November, he was arrested in Nanjing and has been detained ever since.
On Friday, the Suqian Intermediate People’s Court in Jiangsu Province found Guo guilty of so-called “subversion of state power.” The ill-defined charge is often used by the communist regime to suppress political dissidents.
One legal expert told Sound of Hope Radio that the verdict is against China’s own constitution.
[Professor Zhang Zanning, Chinese Law Expert]:
“This is like the modern literary inquisition. Legally, it doesn’t have a foot to stand on. Doesn’t China’s constitution allow the freedom of expression and the freedom of association? So this verdict violates the constitution.”
More insidious has been an indirect form of economic intimidation, whereby publications, event organizers or governments engage in self-censorship on topics deemed sensitive to the mainland, a dynamic some have dubbed “pre-emptive kowtowing.” Given their small size, proximity and relationship to the mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan are particularly vulnerable to this phenomenon.
This June, the Hong Kong edition of Esquire magazine, published by South China Media, pulled a feature story by journalist Daisy Chu on the Tiananmen Square massacre slated to run on the 20th anniversary. In 2008, a prominent legal journal in Hong Kong made a last-minute decision not to publish an article on Tibetan self-determination. A blackout on independent coverage of the Falun Gong is believed to be practiced among certain Hong Kong and Taiwanese outlets whose owners have close ties to Beijing or significant business interests on the mainland.
As China’s economic clout and role on the global stage grows, it will inevitably exert greater influence beyond its borders. However, the issue is not whether China—which features one the world’s least hospitable environments for free expression—will project influence but what shape this growing power will take. The CCP plans, for instance, to spend billions of dollars on expanding its overseas media operations in a potentially massive show of “soft power.” But whether this enormous investment will simply project the deeply illiberal values that characterize China’s domestic media scene to a wider playing field is a question advocates of free expression should seriously ponder.
This critical question, so far, does not provide an encouraging answer.
China’s attempts to insinuate itself into Taiwan’s media sector, and Beijing’s ongoing efforts to limit the vitality of Hong Kong’s media, are among the examples of this phenomenon in Asia. The CCP has recently demonstrated its willingness to suppress open expression in Germany and Australia. The United States is not immune to this pressure. The Dalai Lama will be waiting a bit longer for his meeting with President Obama.
The Chinese government’s position at the vanguard of efforts to monitor and filter Internet content, using its wealth and technical acumen to devise methods to limit the free and independent flow of information online, also has serious transnational implications for free expression. China effectively serves as an incubator for new media suppression; authoritarian governments around the world carefully watch China’s censorship techniques and learn from its innovations.
The community of democratic states must acknowledge the Chinese government’s growing media ambitions and efforts to censor beyond its borders. Acquiescence in this challenge will only embolden the Chinese authorities.
Christopher Walker is director of studies and Sarah Cook is an Asia researcher at Freedom House.
by Christopher Walker and Sarah Cook, Far Eastern Economic Review, October 12, 2009-
The Chinese government’s effort to prevent dissident authors from taking part in the prestigious Frankfurt Book Fair, an international showcase for freedom of expression, has offered Germany a close-up view of China’s intolerance of dissent.
In September, two Chinese writers, journalist Dai Qing and poet Bei Ling, had their invitations to the fair revoked by German event organizers after China’s organizing committee complained. The Chinese delegation threatened a boycott over invitations to the writers for a September symposium promoting the Frankfurt Book Fair, which begins on October 14. China is the “guest of honor” at this year’s fair. In the face of this pressure, the event’s organizers withdrew the invitations. The writers’ participation was ultimately enabled when the German PEN club of independent writers invited the two Chinese dissidents.
While Beijing’s coercive behavior caught many Germans off guard, it should not have come as a surprise; the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) censorship ambitions are neither new, nor limited to Germany. In fact, this action is just the latest example of an ongoing pattern of interference, cooptation and intimidation beyond China’s borders used to muzzle voices critical of the Chinese government.
Two days after the opening of the Frankfurt Book Fair, a film festival in Taiwan’s second largest city, Kaohsiung, will begin. It, too, has come under pressure to censor. In this instance the issue is a planned screening of “The 10 Conditions of Love,” a documentary about exiled Uighur rights activist Rebiya Kadeer. Chinese authorities assert Kadeer has terrorist links, unsubstantiated claims not accepted by most Western countries or independent analysts. Despite pressure to shelve the film—linked to fears that the city’s growing industry servicing mainland tourists could be hurt—the Kaohsiung Film Archive and the organizing committee of the 2009 Kaohsiung Film Festival announced on September 27 that it would go ahead with the screening. A similar series of events unfolded at the Melbourne Film Festival this summer.
In September, Uighur activist Dolkun Isa, who holds German citizenship, was denied entry into South Korea, to take part in a conference on democracy. China is South Korea’s largest trading partner. Isa, who fled China in 1997 and obtained asylum in Germany, was held at the Seoul airport without explanation for two days after being denied entry to South Korea.
The Chinese authorities have developed an elaborate arsenal of censorship, including an extensive domestic apparatus of information control. Less appreciated and understood are the methods of interference and intimidation employed to muzzle critical voices abroad. Some of the modern authoritarian techniques the Chinese authorities use for this purpose beyond its borders are detailed in a study, “Undermining Democracy: 21st Century Authoritarians,” recently released by Freedom House, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia.
Economic coercion is a principal line of attack in the transnational suppression of issues deemed sensitive by China’s rulers. The coercion is applied directly and indirectly.
Instances of direct economic coercion and censorship typically occur when an event has already been planned or already begun. Pressure is then applied by Chinese government representatives on the organizers or local authorities to suppress certain activities or appearances deemed undesirable by the CCP. In such instances, explicit or implicit threats of boycotts, trade sanctions, or withdrawal of Chinese government funding have been used to force the hand of those in charge. The CCP’s Frankfurt Book Fair gambit fits this model, given the financial implications of the Chinese government’s $15 million investment in the event. (next >>)
Beijing – In China, interest in serious literature is waning. The typical Chinese readers today read mainly to foster their career and pass their time with popular novels and escape into the world of fantasy stories. In China’s still booming economy, business focus and consumerism are the prevailing trends. Many million Chinese, acting as trendsetters for other countries, read mainly on their computers or mobile phones.
Chinese writers may have more creative freedom today than in the past and describe the country’s rapid change in many, often very personal, facets.
However, they hardly address the problems caused by the underlying Communist system: Censorship, as well as self-censorship, are clear limits for authors wanting to publish in their home country.
China’s stint as special guest at the Frankfurt Book Fair, the world’s largest book-trade fair, is one of Beijing’s most important attempts to present itself abroad not only as an economic power, but also its cultural “soft power.”
However, this modern approach is visibly at odds with outdated attempts at propaganda. In China, no other industry faces more government scrutiny than publishing, which is overwrought with ideology.
The partner of the Frankfurt organizers is none other than the state-run General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP), China’s top censorship body, which decides what can be published in the country of 1.3 billion.
Beijing’s top censors are also in charge of the official Chinese contribution to the fair.
While the guest nations usually leave translation into German and the marketing of the books presented to German publishing houses, the GAPP had 80 books translated into German by themselves, at great financial cost.
“That isn’t smart, as this becomes a showpiece and not really a cultural product,” said Jing Bartz of the Beijing-based German Book Information Centre, a coordination point which helped prepare the 2009 fair.
They could only convince the GAPP to have 25 other Chinese titles promoted by German publishers.
Despite all these censorship efforts, books by critical or exile authors, much loathed by the China’s censors, will still be found at the book fair – away from the official displays.
GAPP could not exercise censorship in Germany, Bartz said. That had been made clear at the beginning of the talks over Chinese participation.
China’s censors in general blacklist topics like the Falun Gong movement, aspirations for Tibetan or Uighur independence as well as the bloody crackdown on the 1989 democracy movement.
Writers who criticize the Communist Party and demand democracy are often persecuted as enemies of the state.
Liu Xiaobo, the chairman of the independent PEN Club in China has been under arrest since December, waiting for his trial on charges of “undermining state power.”
The spread of the internet and the rising popularity of blogs have created new freedoms, which are however not reflected in literature.
There is a spread of different opinions, but those translate more into aspects of daily life, and not politics, said Bartz, a Chinese-born German passport-holder……. (more fromearthtimes.org)
In an affirmation of its authority, the Chinese government is today celebrating the 60th anniversary of the creation of the People’s Republic of China with fireworks and military parades but there is also a need to evaluate the past 60 years from the Chinese media’s viewpoint and in the name of the Chinese people’s right to be informed.
Reporters Without Borders would like to participate in this anniversary in its own way, by highlighting some dates that shed light on the media’s evolution in China.
The past 60 years have been difficult for journalists as the Maoist regime wanted to turn the media into nothing more than propaganda tools. Journalists and bloggers nowadays are no longer locked in a totalitarian grip but the censorship has never stopped. The Communist Party continues to exercise direct control over the news agency Xinhua, newspapers such as People’s Daily, and the national broadcaster CCTV.
The Chinese media enjoyed a degree of freedom before the People’s Republic of China was proclaimed on 1 October 1949 but diversity of views and privately-owned media were swept away when Mao Zedong seized power. Although China’s journalists had been censored by political parties, above all the Kuomintang, and by Japanese occupiers, there had been a nascent press freedom that was crushed by the Communist Party.
Editorial freedom came to a complete end in 1949. Intellectuals, including journalists, lived in permanent fear of arbitrary repression orchestrated by the regime until Mao’s death in 1976. The toll in human lives was appalling. Many journalists were killed or “committed suicide” and for decades the public had to endure mind-numbing propaganda. Some journalists abandoned professional ethics and participated actively in the all-out promotion of the party’s interests.
The record has been more varied since China embarked on its economic reforms and, overall, the situation of journalists has improved. But the increase in freedom has not so much been bestowed by a generous regime as won by journalists who have risked being fired or jailed in the process.
The Internet has offered new vistas to journalists and bloggers since the end of the 1990s. On the one hand, this new technology is a revolutionary tool for putting pressure on national and local authorities but it has also become a formidable propaganda tool for the government…. (to be cont’d)
As China gears up to mark the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic on Oct. 1, the country’s security watchdogs are on alert for threats to the big celebration. The government is calling for “greater efforts to maintain public order and social stability,” the official Xinhua news agency reported on Sept. 28. In Beijing alone, 800,000 people have offered themselves as “safety volunteers,” Xinhua reports.
Part of the campaign to ensure a smooth anniversary includes an intensified effort to limit access to China’s Internet, say anti-censorship activists outside the country. “They have tried everything they can” to block software that helps people evade censorship, says Bill Xia, president of U.S.-based Dynamic Internet Technology, a company that has developed Freegate, software that enables users to circumvent censors by rerouting traffic through proxy servers. While there’s always a high level of censorship in China, says Xia, the campaign ahead of National Day this year is more comprehensive than usual. “This time they have really put a lot of resources to this,” he says.
Other censorship foes report similar problems. The Onion Router, or TOR, also uses proxy servers to help users gain access to restricted sites. Some half a million people rely on it daily, according to TOR Executive Director Andrew Lewman, who says China is one of the service’s top users. TOR, originally developed for the U.S. Navy, depends on volunteers to run its network and publish addresses to 2,000 “relays” that give people access to servers. “Since Sept. 25 we have seen a number of people saying that TOR has stopped working,” says Lewman. More than half of the relays were blocked.
Some Anti-Censorship Progress
The new campaign against services such as Freegate and TOR comes after critics of online censorship in China won a rare victory. On July 1 the government had planned to force all PC vendors to install or provide filtering software called Green Dam, which was meant to limit access to online pornography. But critics said it also restricted access to politically sensitive sites. After an outcry both abroad and at home, Beijing backed down and announced companies would not have to comply with the requirement.
Since then, though, the Chinese government has taken a hard line in the far western region of Xinjiang, where fighting between Muslim Uighurs and Han Chinese in July led to the deaths of 197 people and injuries to 1,700 others. The local government blamed Rebiya Kadeer, an exiled leader of the World Uighur Congress, for the unrest and said she used the Internet to communicate with “secessionists” in the vast region. After the rioting, the government began blocking the Internet in Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital, and connections are still down, according to the official China Daily newspaper.
On Sept. 29, China Daily reported on new regulations designed to control use of the Internet throughout Xinjiang. “Online activities compromising national security, damaging national and social interests, undermining ethnic unity, instigating ethnic succession, and harming social stability will be severely punished,” the paper reported.
“The Electronic Great Wall”
The renewed efforts to limit access to the Internet inside China, as well as recent attacks against foreign journalists, prompted Reporters Without Borders, the international group that advocates for press freedom, to criticize the Chinese government. “The Electronic Great Wall has never been as consolidated as it is now, on the eve of the 1 October anniversary,” the group said in a Sept. 29 statement.
That said, Lewman says TOR is staying ahead of the authorities. Although access is difficult, TOR “is [working] and has been,” he says. The project’s volunteers regularly change the Internet protocol (IP) addresses that people can use to gain access to TOR, he says. “It’s in constant churn,” Lewman says. “You can block it at one point in time, but by noon 20% of them have already changed IP addresses.”
Unlike other regimes, he adds, there are limits to how far the Chinese government will go to control the Internet. During the upheaval following the Iranian presidential election, for instance, “Iran wasn’t afraid to block secure Web sites across the board, which breaks e-commerce, access to Gmail, everything,” says Lewman. “I don’t think China is willing to do that.”
Einhorn is Asia regional editor in BusinessWeek’s Hong Kong bureau.
“Government security paranoia in the run-up to the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the proclamation of the People’s Republic of China on 1 October has led to a reinforcement of online censorship and abusive behaviour towards foreign journalists,” Reporters Without Borders said today. “A case of police brutality towards three foreign journalists was particularly unacceptable.”
The press freedom organisation added: “What the authorities are trying to portray as a big celebration is turning into a major head-ache for Internet users and a reporters.”
Internet control agencies have redoubled efforts to prevent Internet users based in China, including foreign residents, from using censorship circumvention software such as Freegate and virtual private networks (VPN). Experts have told Reporters Without Borders that tens of thousands of IP addresses suspected by the authorities of using Freegate and VPNs, especially those that are free, have been blocked in the past few days.
“The Electronic Great Wall has never been as consolidated as it is now, on the eve of the 1 October anniversary, proving that the Chinese government is not so sure of its record,” Reporters Without Borders said. The new restrictions are making it even more difficult to access social-networking websites such Facebook and Twitter, or YouTube’s video-sharing sites, which have been blocked since July.
China’s leaders have made combating separatism one of the watchwords of the 60th anniversary, and new regulations have just been issued for combating online separatism in the far-western province of Xinjiang.
A Reporters Without Borders study of Uyghur-language and Xinjiang-based websites has established that the clampdown imposed during last July’s rioting in the province has not been loosened. Most of the sites that existed before the unrest are either still inaccessible or their content has not been updated. Of the 65 sites included in the study, 54 are still blocked for Internet users in China or abroad.
Even Tianshannet.com, a Xinjiang-based website that was held up by the authorities as an example of a site that respected the regulations, is no longer accessible. Xinjiang residents have been cut off from the Internet for almost three months and Uyghurs are being deprived of all news and information that is independent of the official media.
Three China-based Mongol websites – Mongol Ger Association (http://www.mongolger.net/), Mongol People Chat Room (MGLhun), which is hosted on the Sina.com site (http://www.sina.com.cn/), and Mongolian People (http://www.mongolhun.com/) – have been rendered inaccessible in the past few weeks. Read the rest of this entry »
by Mona Zhang, NYU News, Published September 22, 2009-
The Chinese government has been trying to play Big Brother to its 1.3 billion citizens ever since the creation of the internet. In 2006, the Golden Shield Project (aka The Great Firewall of China) was completed and came under scrutiny as the world turned its eyes to China for the 2008 Olympics. This year called for the implementation of the Green Dam, a project that was put on hold after worldwide criticism. The project originally decreed that all PCs and new software must include an internet filtering system, aimed at protecting the nation’s youth from pornographic sites.
In actuality, the Chinese government might is using the system as an Orwellian tool to monitor individual activity, and block access to information on politically sensitive issues, such as Falun Gong or the 1989 Tiananmen uprising. Researchers at the University of Michigan found that not only does the program block information the government deems “sensitive,” it has major security problems that put the user in the way of hackers and malicious software.
With the Green Dam project under fire and the Muslim Uighur uprisings also drawing international attention, the Chinese government — trying not to “lose face” over this issue — has decided to release the system as a voluntary addition.
But when will they realize that these measures don’t work? In our flourishing virtual world, China’s feeble attempts at information control only result in unwanted attention and so-called “netizen” uprisings. At the moment, China’s internet censorship system is sort of like that elusive cockroach you’ve seen lurking around the hallways of your dorm. It’s an annoyance that doesn’t inhibit you from going about your daily activities, but your dislike for it grows as you cautiously tip-toe to the basement to do your laundry……. (more from NYU News)
Reporters Without Borders, 18 September 2009 -
Reporters Without Borders is very worried about reports that Internet Service Providers in the southern province of Guangdong have installed a new filtering software called Landun (Blue Shield or Blue Dam in English) that is more powerful that its problematic predecessor Green Dam.
The press freedom organisation calls on the provincial and national authorities to explain their intentions with Blue Shield (http://download.bluedon.com/), which ISPs were reportedly told install by 13 September and which is said to be more dangerous for Internet users and companies.
At the same time, Chinese Internet users have told Reporters Without Borders that in the run-up to the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, on 1 October, it has become harder to visit certain foreign-based websites and more proxies have become inaccessible.
“It was encouraging that the government backed down on Green Dam in the face of a public outcry in China and abroad and protests from Internet players, but the reports of Blue Shield’s installation by some ISPs sound frightening for the protection of personal data and online free expression in China,” Reporters Without Borders said.
“It seems that the government has again acted on the sly, perhaps to avoid a storm of protest similar to the one about Green Dam,” the press freedom organisation added. “We urge Chinese and foreign Internet companies to resist requests from the authorities to install filters and monitoring tools without telling their clients.”
Blue Shield is said to be more powerful than Green Dam and its installation is obligatory, not optional, as the authorities had reportedly promised. It is intended to provide stronger protection against porn sites and to increase the monitoring and filtering capabilities of Internet connections.
As a result of its installation, Internet users will find it harder to circumvent existing censorship based on website blocking and keyword filtering. The use of proxies (browsing software that sidesteps firewalls) could become more difficult for China’s 300 million Internet users.
Even if it is hard to gauge the impact of this software for Chinese Internet users, access to independent news websites is liable to become more difficult and more risky.
A study of Green Dam by the OpenNet Initiative demonstrated that its keyword filtering was not very effective for the porn sites that are officially targeted, but it was good at blocking political, cultural and news sites. It also filtered out images that have a high percentage of “skin-coloured” pixels but not porn sites with other skin colours. At the same time, the pixel-filtering blocked sites with lots of demonstrators or animals with the censored skin colour.
Testing also showed that Green Dam registers all attempts to visit blocked websites and that computers slow down and become very vulnerable to virus attacks. More dangerously, personal data can be extracted remotely from computers.
Several models of computers with Green Dam installed – made by the Taiwanese manufacturer Acer, the Chinese manufacturer Haier and (as an option) the Japanese manufacturer Sony –reportedly went on sale in China before the official U-turn. Internet cafés have already installed it. We urge these companies to withdraw these computers from sale to avoid being accomplices to the government’s censorship.
HONG KONG— China has successfully undermined key software used by its netizens to climb over the “Great Firewall,” a sophisticated system of government-backed blocks and filters designed to limit what people can view online.
“Right now, basically, the network is not stable because of the blocking. It started probably Sept. 1,” said Bill Xia, CEO of Dynamic Internet Technology, which created Freegate to circumvent government blocking.
“Since last Monday, we saw that it got worse and people started to find it more difficult to use the Freegate software—it may have difficulty connecting to our network or after it gets connected then very soon they get disconnected,” he said in an interview.
“It is getting close to National Day, so probably the government is spending more effort in trying to clampdown control of the Internet, at least around this time,” he said. “They’re trying more and more to block our software.”
‘Great Firewall’
Chinese Internet users have been complaining since last week that it is getting harder to circumvent the Great Firewall, known online simply as “GFW.”
“I have been using Freegate for many years, but have never experienced anything like this, not even during last year’s Olympics,” said Sichuan-based online writer Ran Yunfei.
“[Freegate] used to be very fast, but in the last two days, it has become unstable,” he said.
The Chinese Human Rights Defenders Web site reported last week that most Freegate users in Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Hebei, Sichuan, Shandong, and Helongjiang were unable to log in.
But Xia said his company is working on a newer version of Freegate, to be released next week.
“We have been working on a new release for awhile because of the situation, so we are accelerating the process. We are targeting releasing a new version in one or two weeks,” Xia said……. (more detailsfrom Radio free Asia)
According to China’s official media, Xinhuanet.com, on the afternoon of September 9, Internet Bar Associations of over 30 cities and provinces in China published a joint statement in Xi’an City, pledging that they will assist the Chinese regime in purifying the Internet environment.
Representatives of the 30 localities including metropolitan cities and provinces directly under the central regime such as Beijing, Shanghai and Shanxi Province, and large cities such as Dalian, Xiamen, Guangzhou, and provincial capitals, stated that they will follow the rules and regulations set by the authorities, assist the government to crack down underground Internet bars, proactively purify the Internet bar market, guide youths away from Internet bars, improve the Internet bar environment, avoid any potential risk to Internet security, and protect consumer rights.
Radio Free Asia interviewed Chen Jianying, head of customer service for ‘China Internet Bars Online.’ Chen thinks that this act will benefit the exchange of information between managers of Internet bars in different areas.
“The joint statement from the associations is very effective. The main issues are pirate music and DVD products in some isolated areas and [other] issues relating to young people. Our next step will be designing specific measures on how to serve our customers better through this joint statement of the organizations.”
An excuse for media control and censorship?
Former editor of the Shenzhen Lawyer magazine, sociologist He Quinglian, who now lives in the U.S., thinks that since China’s professional organizations are required to be linked to government agencies, this statement is a reflection of media control by the Beijing regime before its anniversary on October 1.
Says He, “China’s professional associations are managed by the government and are established under government agencies. They have two sides – they represent the government in front of business and represent business in front of government. Therefore this statement of self-discipline was actually arranged by the government. Its aim is to control the media, especially before the 60th Anniversary of the Chinese communist regime. The government wants to eliminate any different opinions to build a so-called harmonious environment.”…… (more detailsfrom The Epochtimes)
(Chinese Human Rights Defenders, September 1, 2009) – On August 31, detained Beijing writer and intellectual Liu Xiaobo (刘晓波) met with his lawyers Ding Xihui (丁锡奎) and Shang Baojun (尚宝军) for the third time since his detention began last December. The lawyers revealed to CHRD that the police have extended the period of investigation of Liu’s case for an additional month, through September 23. Liu appears to be in good spirits.
On August 31, Liu and his lawyers met for thirty minutes at Beijing No.1 Detention Center. The police were present throughout the meeting despite requests from the lawyers to meet with Liu without monitoring. Liu told his lawyers that he is being interrogated once a week. He is allowed to leave his cell for thirty minutes every day, but must remain in the corridors of the detention center and is not allowed out into the open air; he is permitted to watch TV and read a restricted selection of books.
On August 24, Liu’s lawyers were told by the Beijing police that they had extended the investigation period of Liu’s case for another month. According to the Criminal Procedural Law (CPL), after a suspect is formally arrested, the police have a maximum of two months to investigate the case. After that, the period can be extended three times. Altogether, the investigation period can last for a maximum of seven months (CPL Articles 124, 126 and 127). The police must then either release the suspect or transfer her or his case to the Procuratorate for public prosecution……. (more detalsfrom Chinese Human Rights Defenders)
Zan Aizong is a well-known Chinese blogger who’s sometimes critical of the Communist Party. In 2006, he was arrested and fired from his job as the Zhejiang bureau chief of the Chinese Ocean News for writing an article that exposed the forced demolition of a Christian church building.
Well now the regime has labeled him a dissident— adding him to a secret media blacklist and shutting down his blog.
The blacklist was created by Chinas Propaganda Ministry. It contains the names of 247 so-called dissidents that Chinese media are now forbidden to interview or write about.
Chinese news service Boxun.net reports that the media have been ordered to copy the blacklist by hand—making sure there’s no electronic record.
Zan Aizong says these kinds of orders are common around politically sensitive dates. On October 1, the Communist regime will celebrate the 60th anniversary of its takeover of China.
In an interview with Sound of Hope Radio, Zan says the blacklist may actually draw more attention to the very people the regime is trying to suppress.
[Zan Aizong, Writer and Dissident]:
“Before, people didn’t care about what [dissidents] wrote, because there are hundreds of thousands of people in the media business. The more the media is asked to ignore them, the more the media will pay attention. The media may find alternative ways [to get input from the dissidents].”
Zan hasn’t personally seen a copy of the blacklist, but he says it’s a violation of the Chinese constitution.
[Zan Aizong, Writer and Dissident]:
“Handing out this document is equivalent to violating citizens rights to their names and reputations. If you dont allow them to be published, its like saying theres something wrong with the person or he’s made mistakes or broken the law. Their reputation would be tarnished. The [Propaganda Ministry] can be sued through civil laws.”
Other dissidents on the blacklist include democracy activist Liu Xiaobo, his wife Liu Xia, and an outspoken former associate professor at Peking University, Jiao Guobiao.
Reporters Without Borders is presenting a series of four articles by Chinese journalist Jiang Weiping recounting his career as an investigative reporter from the time he started out as a journalist in the 1980s to his arrest in 2000 and his departure for exile in Canada this year.
“Jiang is a courageous and exemplary journalist who did not think twice about the dangers he was running when he denounced corruption at the highest levels in the Communist Party of China,” Reporters Without Borders said. “It is thanks to committed journalism like his that the Chinese public can learn about the all-powerful party’s abuses and press freedom will be able to evolve in China.”
Jiang achieved recognition in the course of his long career, which he began by working for the state news agency Xinhua. In the early 1990s, he became northeast China bureau chief for the Hong Kong-based newspaper Wen Wei Po (香港文匯報). He wrote a series of articles on corruption in the party for the Hong Kong-based magazine Frontline (前哨). Around this time he also started working for Hong Kong magazine.
He was arrested in the northeastern province of Dalian in December 2000 and was sentenced in May 2001 to eight years in prison on charges of endangering state security and divulging state secrets. He was finally released in 2006 after serving six years of his sentence.
In February 2009, he obtained political asylum in Canada, where he now lives with his wife in Toronto and continues working as a freelance journalist and calligraphist.
