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INTERNET CENSORSHIP AND
ANTI-CENSORSHIP IN CHINA
By Shiyu Zhou, Ph.D.
Deputy Director, Global Internet Freedom Consortium
Symposium on People's Republic of China: Foreign Policy Risks and Opportunities
Room 200, West Block, Parliament Buildings, Ottawa
June 10, 2008

The lack of information freedom in closed societies is usually coupled with severe violations of human rights and it also puts the democratic nations at risk. In closed societies, information control is often used for manipulation and indoctrination, and sometimes also used to whip up anti-democracy sentiment, as illustrated by the xenophobia fostered online in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) following the Tibet crackdown and the Olympics Torch Relay. Violence begins with hate, and hate begins with distorted information.

Information control can also cost lives. When the PRC leadership chose to suppress news of the SARS outbreak in 2003, the virus spread far beyond China’s borders to places like San Francisco and Toronto, causing the death of at least several hundred victims and almost a global pandemic.

The Internet is a vast, fast, and inexpensive way to access information and to communicate. It has become the greatest hope for global information freedom and democratization. The number of Internet users worldwide has soared. In China, the number of Internet users has increased by eight times since 2000 and reached 230 million as of March 2008. While authorities in closed societies can easily shut down newspapers, block TV channels, jam short-wave radios, and ban books, the Internet is far more elusive. With the proper anti-censorship technologies, users in closed societies can access uncensored information online freely and without fear of reprisal. Here, anti-censorship, also called anti-blocking or anti-jamming, refers to technical means that protect users in closed societies from being monitored, blocked, or tracked.

The Censorship

Over the past eight years or so, we have witnessed in China a fierce battle between censorship and anti-censorship over the Internet.

The Chinese authorities started the Internet censorship as soon as the Internet became popularized in the Chinese society in the mid 90’s. The battle became intensified after the suppression of Falun Gong started in 1999 because, on one hand, the Internet started fast-booming in China at that time and, on the other hand, Falun Gong practitioners have launched the world’s largest anti-censorship effort since then.

With the help of Western high-tech companies such as Cisco and Nortel, the Chinese authorities constructed the billion-dollar Golden Shield Project, which is an integration of a gigantic online database and a vast surveillance network. It is the host project of the so-called Great Firewall that is being used to monitor and control Internet usage in China. As revealed in a Cisco document, one of the three major objectives of the Golden Shield Project is to “combat Falun Gong.”

Besides the technological aspect, there is a whole other dimension to censorship on the Net. We call it the “human flesh Great Firewall.” At the top is an army of tens of thousands of net police patrolling the web space in China. Down below are countless website administrators who are forced to sift through the blogs, forums, and bulletin boards they are managing to delete any posts deemed “sensitive” according to certain arbitrary rules. In addition, Internet service providers (ISPs) are told to keep an eye on the sites they are hosting and be ready to shut down the sites that cross another arbitrary line drawn by the state. Internet content providers such as search engines and portal sites also devote significant time and effort in preemptive self-censorship.

According to media reports and documents of human rights organizations, dozens of Internet journalists and users have been arrested and sentenced to long jail terms by the Chinese authorities over the past few years. Two well known examples are Shi Tao, a journalist who was arrested and sentenced to 10 years in prison for using his Yahoo! email to send a brief of a government document to an overseas website, and Yao Yue, a graduate student of Microelectronics in Tsinghua University who was sentenced to 12 years for posting "materials" about Falun Gong on the Internet.

Internet Freedom Project

The Global Internet Freedom Consortium has run the world’s largest anti-censorship operation since 2000. It is a small team of dedicated volunteers, connected through their common practice of Falun Gong, who have come together to work for the cause of Internet freedom. We constantly battle tens of thousands of Internet monitors and censors in China around the world so that millions of citizens inside repressive societies may safely communicate online and access websites related to human rights, freedom, and democracy. These men and women maintain operations out of their own pockets, but provide their products and support services to the citizens of closed societies entirely free of charge.

Our five existing tools – UltraSurf, DynaWeb FreeGate, Garden, GPass, and FirePhoenix — currently accommodate an estimated 95% of the total anti-censorship traffic in closed societies around the world, and are used daily by millions of users. As of January 2008, the Top Five censoring countries with the most average daily hits to our anti-censorship systems are (hits per day):

(a) China: 194.4 million

(b) Iran: 74.8 million

(c) Saudi Arabia: 8.4 million

(d) UAE: 8 million

(e) Syria: 2.8 million

Of the 43 countries identified as “Not Free” in Freedom House’s Freedom of the Press 2008 Survey, our anti-censorship systems have served users in the following 33 countries as of January 2008: Algeria, Angola, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Brunei, Burma, Cambodia, Cameroon, China, Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Laos, Libya, Maldives, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Russia, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe.

Our services have been transforming the closed societies in a peaceful but powerful way that must not be underestimated. It is a triumph for democratic principles and human rights.

Our tools have also been of benefit to the Western organizations such as Human Rights in China, Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, BBC – and even companies like Google and Yahoo who self-censor, since we bring the uncensored version of their services into closed societies.

We have witnessed first-hand the effectiveness of anti-censorship technologies in improving information freedom for people in closed societies. During the democratic movement in Burma in late August 2007, our anti-censorship portals experienced a three-fold increase in average daily hits from IP addresses originating inside Burma. After the protests broke out in Tibet on March 10 of this year, there was a four-fold increase in the number of daily hits to our portals from Tibet with Tibetans desperately trying to send out information about the crackdown by Chinese authorities. Our anti-censorship tools are now one of the Tibetans’ few remaining links to the outside world. In addition, of the current 38 million announcements quitting the Chinese Communist Party and its affiliated organizations by the Chinese people worldwide, a large majority of them were passed to the posting website by the mainland Chinese users of our anti-censorship services.

The Challenges

At the same time that we are battling the censors for the freedom of the people in closed societies, we are, unfortunately, finding strong indication that companies such as Cisco located in free societies may be involved in helping the Chinese security agencies monitor and censor the Internet, and persecute and prosecute Chinese citizens. In a 2002 Cisco (China) PowerPoint presentation entitled “An Overview of [China's] Public Security Industry,” now in our possession, a Cisco (China) official in the Government Business Department listed the “Golden Shield Project” – the host project of China’s Great Firewall – as one of Cisco's major target customers. In this document, which apparently lays out the marketing strategy for Cisco (China) to sell products to the Chinese security police, one of the main objectives of the Golden Shield was to “combat the ‘Falun Gong’ evil cult” – parroting the rhetoric of the Chinese authorities used to persecute Falun Gong.

In the presentation page headed "Cisco Opportunities [in the Golden Shield Project]," Cisco offers much more than just routers; it offers planning, construction, technical training, and operations maintenance for the Golden Shield. Our research shows that the infrastructure of China’s Great Firewall coincides with the layouts in Cisco (China)’s PowerPoint document.

We must appeal to these Western corporations to reconsider what they are doing. Every time our anti-censorship tools are attacked using their technology, they are taking the side of the totalitarian authorities against Chinese people seeking some of the most basic of human rights. They are jeopardizing the national security interests of the democratic nations by directly compromising the safety of millions of Internet users in closed societies around the world. This is no longer just a virtual game, and it is certainly no longer just about dollars and cents. Real lives are at stake. Just ask Yahoo! how Mr. Shi Tao is faring as a prisoner of conscience facing several more years in his prison sentence for sending an email.

Our Consortium has been able to stay ahead of the censorship game by developing new software and new technology, but each battle has been grueling and certainly taps into our already scarce resources. Sometimes we feel like a little David fighting a constant battle with a monolithic Goliath out in cyberspace. It has been a lonely battle thus far and we are tired of having to fight our fellow Western companies.

A particularly insidious aspect of information control is that it allows a repressive government to spoon feed the populace with whatever false information it chooses. On the flip side, anti-censorship technology can allow the people in closed societies to be better informed and to be less subject to manipulation by an unscrupulous leadership. Winning people over to a more open and free system via the Internet could very well be a way to avoid future conflicts that cost lives.

Another reason we should care about Internet freedom is because the governments of closed societies use their closed Internet systems to block out outside information and deliver propaganda that breeds hostility toward the democratic nations. We have already seen how dangerous that can be.

When Chinese "patriotic hackers" break into computer systems at the Western government agencies or maliciously compromise Western corporate data, it's usually the result of Chinese government media demonizing the democratic nations and whipping up nationalistic fervor.  A battle being fought in cyberspace can all too quickly spill over into daily reality. The threat to the free world and global security is very, very real.

Dictatorships like the PRC and Iran are spending billions on their Firewalls and cyber-attacks upon the West.  How much is the West spending combating this cyber threat?  Not hardly enough. 

The services the Consortium provides are invaluable and the impact goes far beyond the Internet. When the people in closed societies have gained a taste of freedom and are given a way to share information, they will no longer tolerate tyranny.

Once a critical mass, 10 percent we believe, of the 230 million Internet users in China get to know the existence of our anti-censorship tools and, especially, gain a positive experience of using them, the avalanche effect of such a development will in our view lead to the fall of the Beijing censorship Wall and, consequently, to the fall of other Walls in the world’s other closed societies. And we at the Consortium have the experience, commitment and capabilities to reach this critical mass given modest funding.

Only when the free world shows more determination to keep the Internet open than the closed societies’ will to seal it off, can there be the hope of information freedom and democracy for the citizens in all closed societies, and a more peaceful tomorrow for all of mankind.

 

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