Rebecca MacKinnon has just published an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal about the true meaning and scope of the so-called Great Firewall of China, the digital fortress that keeps one sixth of the world's population in the dark of the information age.
She contends that the regime's censorship prowess reaches well beyond this ideological bunker, whose armor only shields users from websites from outside China.
The "Great Firewall," the common moniker for China's filtering system that blocks various Internet addresses and keywords, really only pertains to Internet sites and services hosted on computer servers outside China. Inside China, companies that host Web sites, blogs and chat rooms are held responsible for objectionable content posted on their services. All of China's blog-hosting services, YouTube-style video sharing sites and the like hire entire departments of people to flag and delete things that may get them in trouble with the government authorities who could revoke their business license.
But the censors are giving formal journalists in China more leverage to cover news in a more Western-like fashion. The trick is those journalists, unlike bloggers and other independent sources, can be controlled much more easily.
The strategy seems clear: Give China's professional journalists a longer leash to cover breaking news even if it's not positive -- since the news will come out anyway and unlike bloggers, the journalists are still on a leash. At the same time, clamp down on blogs, chat rooms and video-sharing sites that might allow too much unfettered discussion of the news. A similar thing happened in July after large riots took place in Weng'an, a town in Guizhou province, after a young girl died under suspicious circumstances. Many large Chinese Web portals deleted or prevented publication of any blog and chat room posts mentioning Weng'an. Instead the Web portals ran extensive coverage of events in Weng'an reported by China's professional media.
But MacKinnon is optimistic, and regardless of this bunker's powerful reach, she believes it will crack.
China's censorship is far from perfect. Often what's censored on one Web platform somehow slips through on another. Users can and do devise alternate wordings or euphemisms to avoid the notice of keyword trackers, or simply email the news around. In the long run censorship is bound to fail. But in the short run this variety works just well enough to help the Chinese Communist Party stay in power.
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