China Crackdown Continues: First Blogs, Now Internet News and Web Sites

China’s work on perfecting their police state, aided by American technology companies (noted at intro and in last half of post), at least one of which will even become an informant when pressed, continues (link is free for now):

China Sets New Media Restrictions, This Time for the Internet

BEIJING, Sept. 25 - China on Sunday imposed more restrictions on the news media, designed to limit the news and other information available to Internet users, and sharply restricted the scope of content permitted on Web sites.

The rules are part of a broader effort to roll back what the Communist Party views as a threatening trend toward liberalization in the news media. Taken together, the measures amount to a stepped-up effort to police the Internet, which has become a dominant source of news and information for millions of urban Chinese.

Major search engines and portals like Sina.com and Sohu.com, used by millions of Chinese each day, must stop posting their own commentary articles and instead make available only opinion pieces generated by government-controlled newspapers and news agencies, the regulations stipulate.

The rules also state that private individuals or groups must register as “news organizations” before they can operate e-mail distribution lists that spread news or views. Few individuals or private organizations are likely to be allowed to register as news organizations, meaning they can no longer legally distribute information by e-mail.

Existing online news sites, like those run by newspapers or magazines, must “give priority” to news and commentary pieces distributed by the leading national and provincial news organs. The restrictions would appear to make it harder for such sites to republish articles from popular news outlets that do not fall under the government’s direct control.

….. “The foremost responsibility of news sites on the Internet is to serve the people, serve socialism, guide public opinion in the right direction, and uphold the interests of the country and the public good,” the regulations state.

Although Chinese authorities already have effectively unlimited powers to control the gathering and publication of news, the Propaganda Department has sometimes struggled to censor information about sensitive developments before it circulates on the Internet.

About 100 million Chinese now have access to the Internet. Though the government closely monitors domestic content and blocks what officials consider to be subversive Web sites from overseas, savvy users can obtain domestic and overseas information that never appears in China’s traditional news media.

By the time officials have decided that a topic might prove harmful to the ruling party’s agenda, an item about it often has already been posted or discussed on hundreds of sites and viewed by many people, defeating some traditional censorship tools.

….. Experts who follow the Internet say one of the most significant changes is the ban on self-generated opinion articles and commentary pieces that accompany the standard state-issued news bulletins on major portal sites. The commentary pieces enliven the news pages of those sites. The sites can now only offer commentary and news from the same state-run sources.

The move to restrict the ability of Web sites to republish articles produced by the huge array of news organizations that do not fall under direct central government or provincial government control seems intended to ensure that the Propaganda Department has time to filter content generated by local publications before it can be widely disseminated on the Internet.

When will Microsoft, Sun, Google, Cisco, Yahoo, and others object to having their tools used for oppression? When will Congress and the Bush Administration step and stop the technology enablers of China’s oppression?

And while I’m at it, does anyone still think the thankfully-nixed acquisition of Unocal by Chinese government-owned CNOOC was a good idea?
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ADDENDUM 1: RConversation tells a happier story–how Time Warner’s AOL refused to participate in comprehensive Chinese censorship. It would be nice if other companies demonstrated similar interest in protecting and promoting freedom.

ADDENDUM 2: She also blogs on an op-ed piece in the International Herald Tribune (”The Great Firewall of China”), where author Tina Rosenberg notes:

…. America has a bipartisan human rights policy in China. It is called trade. The idea is that Western companies will bring Western values - especially when they develop the Internet, supposedly an unstoppable force for openness. But Shi’s fate is the latest piece of evidence that it’s not working out that way.

…. But let’s not pretend that foreign investment will make China a democracy. That argument was born out of self-interest. Because China is too lucrative a market to resist, Western businessmen have ended up endorsing the party line through their silence - or worse. They are not molding China; China is molding them.

ADDENDUM 3: An RConversation commenter goes further:

If we’re not careful, the Chinese will be exporting their political ideas to us, in the coming years. As China’s growth continues to run ahead of the U.S., I expect business leaders will begin to see the virtues of free-market authoritarianism. Especially when they return to the U.S. after being “molded” by the Chinese.

This is one reason I think it’s important to push for reforms in China, because if we aren’t moving in that direction, then flow of ideas will run the other way. When you don’t stand for the rights of all, you will eventually lose your own.

ADDENDUM 4: You don’t think there would be a receptive political reception for the idea of “controlling” the Internet? Don’t be so sure. Take a look at the woman who may be our next president said in February 1998 (HT Drudge):

WASHINGTON - Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a meeting with reporters Wednesday that “we are all going to have to rethink how we deal with” the Internet because of the handling of White House sex scandal stories on Web sites.

In an otherwise low-key question-and-answer session, Clinton was at her most intense when asked whether she favored curbs on the Internet, on which news services have serveral times made headlines themselves with their coverage of the president’s purported affair with a White House intern.

“We are all going to have to rethink how we deal with this, because there are all these competing values … Without any kind of editing function or gatekeeping function, what does it mean to have the right to defend your reputation?” she said.

“There used to be this old saying that the lie can be halfway around the world before the truth gets its boots on,” Mrs. Clinton added. “Well, today, the lie can be twice around the world before the truth gets out of bed to find its boots.”

Keep in mind that what Mrs. Clinton was calling “lies” in Febuary 1998 became better known as “the truth” in August of that same year.
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UPDATE, September 27: A Wall Street Journal editorial objects to China’s new restrictions, and demonstrates the paper’s usual naivete about users’ ability to work around restrictions:

China’s cyber police issued new rules Sunday limiting Internet postings to “healthy and civilized” news. In prose that the Chinese people could identify with George Orwell were his books not banned in China, the state news agency Xinhua said that only information “that is beneficial to the improvement of the quality of the nation, beneficial to its economic development and conducive to social progress will be allowed.” Companies that refuse to comply will be shut down.

It remains to be seen whether Big Brother in Beijing is a match for the power of the Internet. With 100 million cybernauts, China has the world’s second-largest Internet population, after the U.S. with 135 million. The ability of Chinese surfers to communicate with each other on a massive scale has already made a mockery of state censorship of information.