WaPo Story about Chinese Journalist Defiance Also Reveals Censors’ Usually Strong Grip
The Washingon Post (registration probably required) has a very good front-page story today with an over-the-top headline (”The Click That Broke a Government’s Grip”; HT Instapundit). A courageous senior editor at a Chinese newspaper tactically used a 90-minute meeting as a delaying tactic after he “posted a blistering letter on the newspaper’s computer system attacking the Communist Party’s propaganda czars and a plan by the editor in chief to dock reporters’ pay if their stories upset party officials.”
The letter spread so fast that the Chinese government censors eventually gave up trying to stop it.
Fine. But the article also reveals the inner workings of the Chinese government’s press system of press censorship that shows that the government’s grip is anything but “broken”:
System of Censorship
Every Friday morning, executives from a dozen of China’s most popular Internet news sites are summoned downtown by the Beijing Municipal Information Office, an agency that reports to the party’s propaganda department.
The man who usually runs the meetings, Chen Hua, director of the Internet Propaganda Management Department, declined to be interviewed. But participants say he or one of his colleagues tells the executives what news they should keep off their sites and what items they should highlight in the week ahead.
These firms are private enterprises, and several, including Sina, Sohu and Yahoo! China, are listed on U.S. stock exchanges or have attracted U.S. investment. But because they need licenses to operate in China, they comply with the government’s requests.
The meetings are part of a censorship system that includes a blacklist of foreign sites blocked in China and filters that can stop e-mail and make Web pages inaccessible if they contain certain keywords. Several agencies, most notably the police and propaganda authorities, assign personnel to monitor the Web.
The system is far from airtight. Software can help evade filters and provide access to blacklisted sites, and Internet companies often test the censors’ limits in order to attract readers and boost profits. If an item isn’t stopped by the filters and hasn’t been covered in the Friday meetings, the government can be caught off guard.
That is what happened with Li Datong’s letter. Minutes after he posted it, people in the newsroom began copying it and sending it to friends via e-mail and the instant messaging programs used by more than 81 million Chinese.
“We had to move quickly, before they started blocking it,” recalled one senior editor, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The fact that the information control system doesn’t work perfectly now from a technological standpoint doesn’t mean it can’t achieve near-perfection with the help of the members of BizzyBlog’s Internet Wall of Shame. And the technology doesn’t have to be perfect to achieve its ultimate aim of information control. The closer it gets to perfection, the more difficult it will be to disseminate dissenting messages and content, and the more personally dangerous it will be for those wishing to do so. Once the controls are near-perfect, the government can simply round up those it considers the worst offenders and make examples of them. Most of those who remain will be successfully intimidated. At that point, some kind of edict barring publication without pre-approval, with stiff penalties for violators, would seal the deal. Does anyone think Yahoo! China (named above) would not cooperate?
The preceding paragraph is why I’m not comfortable with the blithe assumptions that there will always be technology workarounds, and that there will always be courageous journalists willing to put their safety on the line. It’s why current inititiatives in Congress will hopefully rein in our high-tech companies’ ability to passively or actively assist the Chinese government’s censorship apparatus.
Let’s also not forget the ultimate result of this one act of defiance on the publication involved, Freezing Point, and on the person who disseminated the unapproved news:
Freezing Point enjoyed a renaissance in the months that followed. Li Erliang appeared chastened, unwilling to risk another fight he might lose, reporters said.
But in January, propaganda officials finally shut down the section. Before doing so, they called executives from all the major Web sites to a special meeting and warned them not to allow any discussion of the action.
The news spread quickly anyway.
Maybe the government wanted it to spread, in order to discourage others.
