China Lawyer Detained For Teaching College Students About Online Censorship

Radio Free asia, 2009-11-30 -

HONG KONG—A civil rights lawyer says he was detained by police in southern China for teaching a class to college students about online censorship and the use of a popular microblogging service.

Tang Jingling, a lawyer based in Guangdong’s provincial capital Guangzhou, said he was invited by a teacher surnamed Xu to the Guangzhou College of Vocational Technology on Nov. 27 to lecture students there on the Internet and its applications.

Instead, he said, he was interrupted by a member of the campus security force who was auditing the class, and was told to show his identification before being led away by police.

“When a teacher delivers a lecture, he should have all the rights over the content. But when I was in the classroom, a staff member from the school’s security division was sitting there, intimidating teachers,” Tang said.

“He even called the police to threaten the teachers and students. This was a joke and the biggest derision to academic freedom,” he said.

At the police station, Tang was questioned and barred from making phone calls.

Police threatened to keep him in custody for 24 hours.

News of Tang’s detention spread quickly on Twitter, enabling some netizens to immediately rush to the scene and call for his release.

Police allowed Tang Jingling to leave early Saturday, after three to four hours of questioning.

Twitter targeted

Tang admonished the authorities for shutting down his lecture, which included a talk on the use of the Twitter microblogging service.

“Twitter is just a tool to acquire knowledge and information, which can increase the skills of the students and ready them for tomorrow’s society. The way I was treated is really ridiculous,” he added.

Twitter has been censored several times by Chinese authorities following deadly ethnic riots in the northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region last July.

But China’s netizens say it is impossible for authorities to completely control Twitter due to the service’s inherently open characteristics and joke that “the day Twitter is shut down, pigs will climb trees.”

In fact, signs seem to indicate that an increasing number of China’s netizens are joining Twitter and using the service to pass on news.

Feng Zhenghu, a cyber-dissident who has been stranded in Tokyo’s Narita airport seeking the right to return to China, said that since registering as a user on the site on Nov. 13, he has received nearly 500 messages.

“In my inbox there are several hundred tweets, mostly from Chinese people expressing their concern and support,” Feng said.

Guangzhou-based cyber-activist Bei Feng said that Twitter is considered “a tool of subversion” by some Chinese security personnel.

“As far as I know, leading Chinese Web sites and forums were all cautioned not to discuss Twitter, which may now be monitored by special task forces,” Bei said.

“The Chinese authorities are always on high alert against Twitter, wanting to cut it off entirely,” he said…….(more detals from Radio Free Asia)

China’s pre-emptive response to Obama’s free flow of information comments?

Reporters Without Borders, 16 November 2009 -

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 details from Reporters Without Borders)

Berlin Twitter Wall website blocked by China just days after its launch

Reporters Without Borders, 3 November 2009 -

Reporters Without Borders deplores the fact that the Chinese authorities blocked the Berlin Twitter Wall website (www.berlintwitterwall.com) just days after its launch on 20 October and urges the government to allow its citizens to access this special Twitter site, which is dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The site allows people to express their comments about the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989 and their related hopes and wishes. The initiative has had a great response, including in China, where nearly 2,000 Internet users had left a message on the virtual wall – most of them demanding an end to censorship in China – before access was blocked.

“Chinese Internet users must not be prevented from accessing the Berlin Twitter Wall,” said Reporters Without Borders, which supports this interactive campaign. “Initiatives like these are important platforms for the promotion of freedom of speech as well as for critical voices and protest.”

The press freedom organisation added: “Just a few weeks ago, at the Frankfurt Book Fair, Chinese representatives argued in favour of the promotion of cultural exchange. Yet many foreign news outlets and social-networking sites remain inaccessible to Chinese users.”

The Berlin Twitter Wall website was launched by Kulturprojekte Berlin as part of the celebrations marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall. By using the hashtag #fotw (fall of the wall), Twitter account holders can post comments wall that appear automatically on the berlintwitterwall.com site.

- Reporters Without Borders

Citizen Lab uses forensics to fight online censors in China and other 70 countries

By Robert Mahoney/Deputy Director, Committee to Protect Journalists, Nov. 2, 2009 -

A basement in the gray, Gothic heart of the University of Toronto is home to the CSI of cyberspace. “We are doing free expression forensics,” says Ronald Deibert, director of the Citizen Lab, based at the Munk Centre for International Studies. Deibert and his team of academics and students investigate in real time governments and companies that restrict what we see and hear on the Internet. They are also trying to help online journalists and bloggers slip the shackles of censorship and surveillance. Deibert is a co-founder of the OpenNet Initiative (ONI), a project of the Citizen Lab in collaboration with the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. ONI tracks the blocking and filtering of the Internet around the globe.

“We are testing in 71 countries,” says Deibert, who shares his data with Berkman. “We are testing all the time. We are the technical hub of ONI.”

“We started out in 2002 with China,” said Jillian York, project coordinator for Berkman. “The work evolved, and then with Cuba we cracked it.” By 2006, ONI had expanded its dragnet for blocked or filtered content to more than 40 countries. However, as Citizen Lab and Berkman gained expertise and resources so did the censors they battled.

“We are now onto third-generation controls,” York said of Internet censorship. “The first generation was simple filtering, IP blocking in China, for example.” The second generation was surveillance, which ranged from placing spies or closed-circuit cameras in Internet cafés to installing tracking software on computers themselves. “The third generation controls combine all the above. We see it in China, Syria, and Burma. It’s a very broad approach,” York laments……. (more from CPJ)

China Officials Try New Press Restrictions, Then Back Off

By Weiguo Gong & Matthew Robertson, Epoch Times Staff,  Oct 28, 2009 -

Propaganda officials in southern China were forced to limit the scope of an order requiring journalists to apply for a “special journalist license” before interviews after receiving a flood of complaints online.

The order, titled “Dongguan City Promotes Care and Support for Media; Builds Idea for Positive Environment for Public Opinion,” a summary of which was published in the Guangzhou Daily on Oct. 22, argued that officials from the city’s Propaganda Department were attempting to help journalists by giving them an official certificate so they could do their job unimpeded.

The directive was questioned by bloggers, who wondered why Dongguan City should need the measure, since journalist licenses are already regulated by the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP), which works closely with the Central Propaganda Department in Beijing.

Some pointed out that in recent years, local regime officials have purposefully set up obstacles for media reporting for fear of having corruption, administrative failures, or popular discontent exposed.

Under the new order, bloggers argued, local officials could stall requests or arbitrarily reject applications. Organizations like the Foreign Correspondents Club of China have documented harassment of journalists in China, where provincial officials send plainclothes thugs to beat journalists or use police to pursue reporters, confiscating and destroying their photographs and video recordings.

The order contains several clauses near the end which outline the conditions of the license. It says that journalists who don’t “follow interview procedures” or who breach security cordons “will be pursued especially seriously according to the law.” It also said that those who don’t “report truthfully” may have their certification rescinded.

In response to the criticism, the Dongguan Propaganda Department on Oct. 25 published an update that the “special journalist license” will be used only for large-scale official conferences.

Before that date, on Oct. 23, officials set up a Web site with simple cartoons and slogans attempting to explain the issue.

The Chinese Communist Party’s control of media in China has been widely documented by scholars,  journalists, and NGOs; propaganda and control of public opinion in China’s current era is thought to be integral to maintaining one-party rule in the country.

- The Epochtimes

Eutelsat Hearing Postponed Due to Last Minute Submissions

Press Release, NTDTV, Oct. 14, 2009-

On 13 October 2009, the Commerce Court in Paris was to hear the merits of a petition brought forth by New Tang Dynasty Television (NTDTV) to determine whether to appoint an expert to investigate Eutelsat SA’s termination of NTDTV’s broadcast over China. However, Eutelsat legal counsel Jean-Michel Lepretre presented a new stack of documents to the court very late in the evening before the day of the hearing. In order to study and digest the newly produced documents, NTDTV legal counsel William Bourdon asked for and received a postponement to the hearing. The Commerce Court has rescheduled the hearing to 5 November 2009 instead.

Although the hearing date was set more than two months in advance, such an act is often employed as a stalling tactic, according to Joseph Breham, an associate of Mr. Bourdon. He expressed confidence in the strength of NTDTV’s case, and indicated that the additional documents should not pose any problems for him and he intended to use the allotted time to examine the newly produced documents and prepare a response.

Background

In June 2008 Eutelsat terminated NTDTV’s broadcast to China on its W5 satellite, ostensibly due to technical failures onboard the craft. Days later, Reporters Without Borders obtained evidence that Eutelsat intentionally shut down NTDTV’s broadcast to appease the Chinese communist regime, and that contrary to Eutelsat’s claims, W5 had sufficient capacity to resume NTDTV’s broadcast.

Known for beaming uncensored news into mainland Chinese homes, NTDTV has long been a thorn in the side of the Chinese regime. The interruption to NTDTV’s broadcast represented a further setback for information freedom in China.

Recognizing NTDTV’s importance to the Chinese people, the European Parliament passed a resolution in January 2009 calling on the European Commission and EU Member States to take the necessary action to help restore NTDTV’s broadcasts to China and to support access to uncensored information for millions of Chinese citizens.

According to the convention that established Eutelsat in 1982, Eutelsat is obligated to “insure the freedom of expression and of information” in providing cross border television service. Citing “opacity of [Eutelsat's] behavior”, the lawsuit seeks to shed light on the facts surrounding W5’s malfunction, so a determination can be made on damages and interest in compensation of any prejudice suffered by NTDTV.

For the latest update on the progress of this legal action and its background, please contact Carrie Hung at 917-319-0219 or carrie.hung@ntdtv.com.

About New Tang Dynasty Television

Established in February 2002, New Tang Dynasty Television (NTDTV) is a non-profit television broadcaster and the only independent Chinese-language television to broadcast into China. NTDTV is dedicated to providing objective, uncensored news to Chinese residents. As a vital news source, NTDTV reported on the SARS outbreak in China three weeks before Beijing admitted to its existence. NTDTV also reports on environmental and human rights issues in China, generating awareness among Chinese residents important issues their government withholds from them.

China’s Export of Censorship (2)

by Christopher Walker and Sarah Cook, Far Eastern Economic Review, October 12, 2009-

<< Previous

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.

<< Previous

- Original report

China’s Export of Censorship (1)

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 >>)

Soft power with books does not come easy for China

DPA, via Earthtimes.org, Oct. 9, 2009-

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 from earthtimes.org)

Sixty years of news media and censorship– China

Reporters Without Borders, 1 October 2009 -

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)

China’s Online Censors Work Overtime

By Bruce Einhorn, BusinessWeek, Sep. 30, 2009-

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.

China’s losing fight with freedom

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)

Is China imposing more powerful version of Green Dam, called Blue Shield?

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.”

According to an article in the Hong-Kong based Apple Daily (http://tw.nextmedia.com/applenews/article/art_id/31938140/IssueID/20090913), Chinese network providers were given until 13 September to install Blue Shield to avoid being sanctioned.

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.

- Reporters Without Borders

China Boosts ‘Great Firewall’

Radio Free Asia, 2009-09-16 -

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 details from Radio free Asia)

China’s Internet Bar Association’s Self-Discipline Pledge

Radio Free Asia, Sep 11, 2009-

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 details from The Epochtimes)

China refuses visas and harasses two US journalists sympathetic to Quake victims

Reporters Without Borders, 4 September 2009 -

Reporters Without Borders deplores the Chinese government’s refusal to issue visas to two US filmmakers, Jon Alpert and Matthew O’Neill, thereby preventing them from attending yesterday’s screening of their documentary about the May 2008 Sichuan earthquake, “China’s Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province” at the Beijing Independent Film Festival.

The film examines the collapse of many schools in the earthquake and the difficulties encountered by the families of the victims in addressing their complaints to the government.

“Their kids had been buried when the school collapsed,” Alpert said in a recent interview, explaining a scene in the documentary (). “In their town, almost all the other buildings remained standing (…) And the parents began asking why the school collapsed. Was it a shoddy construction, was it corruption? And nobody gave them any answer. They started to get angry and started marching.”

Reporters Without Borders said: “While screening the documentary at a Beijing festival is laudable, denying visas to its two American makers is absurd. It is linked to the growing difficulties for foreign journalists and Chinese human rights activists to work in the areas affected by the earthquake. The openness displayed at the time of the quake is now unfortunately over.”

Officials at the Chinese consulate in New York offered Alpert and O’Neill no explanation for the refusal to give them visas late last week but it was almost certainly linked to their film about the aftermath of the earthquake that devastated the southwestern province of Sichuan on 12 May 2008 and their work with its victims……. (more details from Reporters Without Borders)

China backs down on Green Dam but concerns remain

Reporters Without Borders, 14 August 2009 -

Reporters Without Borders is relieved by yesterday’s government announcement that installation of its “Green Dam-Youth Escort” Internet-filtering software will not be obligatory on individually-owned computers but is nonetheless concerned that installation is to go ahead on computers in schools and Internet cafés.

“We hail this decision, which is the result of a major international outcry involving both government officials and the Chinese-language blogosphere,” Reporters Without Borders said. “But the ministry of industry and information technology’s insistence on installing the software on computers in schools, Internet cafés and other public places continues to worry us. As Internet cafés are very popular in China, this could do online freedom of information a great deal of harm.”

At a news conference yesterday, industry and information technology minister Li Yizhong said Green Dam’s installation would be optional. It had been poorly presented and explained and had been misunderstood, he said, claiming that that there had never been any intention of making its installation on individually-owned computers obligatory.

The decision to let people choose whether or not to install Green Dam was hailed yesterday by the US government, which had played a key role in lobbying the Chinese authorities against its obligatory installation on computers.

At yesterday’s conference, organised by the State Council’s Information Bureau, Li nonetheless said installation would go head on computers in schools, Internet cafés and other public places in order to protect young people from pornography and other harmful content.

However, the authorities have not provided any details about of the kind of content that will be considered inappropriate. The limits of this content filtering need to be clearly defined in order to avoid excesses. While it is legitimate to want to regulate the Internet, it would be unacceptable if this software were to restrict online freedom.

China has more Internet users than any other country in the world – more than 300 million – but its censorship of the Internet is also one of the world’s strictest. It was ranked 167th out of 173 countries in the 2008 Reporters Without Borders press freedom index.

- Reporters Without Borders

China Censors News of Party Head’s Son

Radio Free Asia, 2009-07-24 -

HONG KONG— Chinese authorities shut down sections of two major Web portals in the wake of news reports that President Hu Jintao’s son is linked to a Namibian graft probe, industry sources said.

The popular Web sites 163.com and Sina had their technology sections closed simultaneously Tuesday, with messages announcing that they did not exist.

State-run media ignored the reports.

“It was probably around 11:00 a.m. [on Tuesday] that we were unable to visit the technology sections of 163.com and Sina,” a former employee at one of the portals said.

“This really is not normal. A quick keyword search confirmed that the report [about a graft probe involving President Hu's son, Hu Haifeng] had been posted on both of those technology sections, and that other Web sites were linking to it,” he said.

The industry source said: “Both sections were back online at around 5:00 p.m. My sources had told me they expected the two sites to be closed for at least a day.”

The report related to Hu Haifeng had been deleted from both Web sites when their technology sections came back online.

Allegations of graft

Namibia’s Anti Corruption Commission (ACC) has called on Hu Haifeng, who headed state-controlled Chinese security equipment provider Nuctech until last year, to assist in the investigation into the disappearance of millions of U.S. dollars linked to a government supply contract in Namibia.

Two Namibians and a Chinese national were arrested last week in Namibia as part of a probe into bribery allegations involving Nuctech, a company headed until last year by Hu’s 38-year-old son, Hu Haifeng, who is now Communist Party secretary of Nuctech’s parent company.

Their arrest was followed swiftly by the suspension of the country’s defense force chief amid allegations that he too was linked to the Nuctech case.

Namibian President Hifikepunye Pohamba said in a statement: “The decision to suspend Lieutenant General Martin Shalli stems from serious allegations of irregularities, which must be thoroughly investigated.”

Namibian media reported on Thursday that Shalli was accused of allegedly having millions of Namibian dollars transferred to him, through a third party, by the Chinese company.

Nuctech representative Yang Fan and two Namibians, Teckla Lameck and Jerobeam Mokaxwa, were arrested after Namibia’s ACC said they had taken money from a U.S. $12.8 million down payment on security scanning equipment, which Nuctech was supplying to the Namibian government, financed by a Chinese government loan.

The supply contract and loan were inked on Hu Jintao’s 2007 trip to Namibia……. (more details from Radio Free Asia)