China - The Great Firewall of China
Broadcast: 29/04/2008
Reporter: Stephen McDonell
LEAD STORY
SERIES 17
EPISODE 33
Synopsis
There are an estimated 60 million bloggers in China and 230 million Chinese internet users, making it the fastest growing market in the world.
Internationally people assume the internet is an open and uncontrollable phenomenon, but in China popular western web sites like Wikipedia, Flikr and YouTube are all restricted.
China has the most sophisticated censorship and internet surveillance of any country in the world. Human rights groups say that about 30 journalists and 50 internet users are known to be behind bars. The US based Committee to Protect Journalists has branded China “the world’s leading jailer of journalists.” But some Chinese bloggers have learnt to work within the system and push its boundaries. Shanghai based venture capitalist Isaac Mao was one of the first Chinese bloggers.
He tells Stephen McDonell, “I think it’s a game... like a cat and mouse - because people are always trying to be more free - freer to access more information.”
McDonell: “People are the mouse and the Government is the cat?“
Isaac Mao: “And the Government always wants to try to act as the cat to control and to limit people’s access to the whole world of information but I think the mouse is running faster.”
In north western Xianxi Province, Zhang Shihe, a self trained guerilla journalist travels to isolated areas, filming poor rural workers and posting their stories on his blog.
“When I write my blog, I rely on my instinct. Am I telling the truth or lies? Am I evilly attacking something. Or am I trying to help improve the situation? I know if I can control this, I’ll be fine. If I am thrown in jail or something, I don’t really care, because I am not wrong.”
Former CNN correspondent bureau chief and China expert, Rebecca MacKinnon explains, “there is surveillance, there certainly are internet police whose job it is, who work in public security apparatus to track speech on the internet.”
However, as Mackinnon explains, China wants to be a global economic power and a cultural powerhouse, so “the Chinese government’s goal is not to control 100 percent of what people are doing one hundred percent of the time.“
“In order to remain in power they want to prevent certain kinds of conversations and certain kinds of uses of the internet that might lead to people organising to overthrow the Communist Party.”
One crucial case is the Chinese journalist Shi Tao. He e-mailed a US based web site with the Chinese government’s hitherto secret instructions on how to report on the 15th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. For this he’s serving ten years in jail for “leaking state secrets”.
Last year Yahoo apologised to Shi Tao’s family for helping Chinese authorities to find and arrest him. The global internet giant paid his family compensation.
Freedom of Expression in China
The International PEN Poem Relay is focussed around the poem “June” by the imprisoned poet and journalist Shi Tao and seeks to raise awareness about freedom of expression in China in a uniquely PEN way – through poetry and translation. PEN Centres around the world have translated and recorded “June” in more than 60 languages and, using the internet as its main instrument, the poem will virtually “travel” around the world, from centre to centre, language to language, adding new translations as it goes and ending in Beijing for the 2008 Olympics.
Pen Poem Relay
English translation of "June" by Chip Rolley
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Further information:
Zhang Shihe's blog (Chinese)
Issac Mao's blog (Chinese)
Rebecca MacKinnon's blog (English)
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