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China Says Web Controls Follow the West's Lead

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BEIJING, Feb. 14 — Chinese authorities are determined to stop "harmful information" from spreading through the Web, but the controls it places on Web sites and Internet service providers do not differ much from those employed by... See more » BEIJING, Feb. 14 — Chinese authorities are determined to stop "harmful information" from spreading through the Web, but the controls it places on Web sites and Internet service providers do not differ much from those employed by the United States and European countries, a senior official responsible for managing China's Internet said Tuesday. The official, Liu Zhengrong, who supervises Internet affairs for the information office of China's State Council, or cabinet, did not directly dispute the contention of many critics that China operates a vast and technologically sophisticated firewall to protect the ruling Communist Party against what it views as Web-based threats to its authority. But he sought to put the country's Web-policing operation in the best possible light, emphasizing that China's Internet minders abided strictly by laws and regulations that in some cases have been modeled on American and European statutes. "If you study the main international practices in this regard you will find that China is basically in compliance with the international norm," he said. "The main purposes and methods of implementing our laws are basically the same." The briefing about Internet controls was one of the few times any senior Chinese official has spoken in detail about the matter. Officials assigned to enforce the Communist Party's controls on the news media operate behind closed doors and rarely make public statements about their work. Beijing's Internet policies have come under close scrutiny abroad since Google and Microsoft acknowledged helping China censor information available through Web searches and blogs, and Yahoo was accused of providing data that helped convict dissidents who had used its e-mail accounts. Mr. Liu said China's effort to regulate content on the Web was aimed primarily at preventing the spread of pornography or other content harmful to teenagers and children. He said its concerns in this area differed minimally from those in developed countries. Human rights and media watchdog groups maintain that China's Web censorship puts greater emphasis on helping the Communist Party maintain political control over the increasingly restive society. Such groups have shown that many hundreds of Web sites cannot be easily accessed in China mainly because they are run by governments, religious groups or political organizations critical of Beijing's policies or its political leaders. Mr. Liu said Chinese Internet users were free to discuss many politically sensitive topics and denied that the Chinese police have arrested or prosecuted people for using the Web to circulate views. Rights groups maintain — and court documents show, however — that legal authorities have cited e-mail messages and postings on domestic and foreign Web sites as evidence against Chinese dissidents accused of "incitement to overthrow the state" and "leaking state secrets." The official objected to what he suggested were biased criticisms of China's Internet controls that ignored similar restrictions by foreign governments and private companies on their Web sites. He cited, for example, statements on Web sites run by The New York Times and The Washington Post that reserve the right to delete or block content in reader discussion groups that editors determine to be illegal, harmful or in bad taste. Chinese news media Web sites are also monitored in that way, he said. "Major U.S. companies do this and it is regarded as normal," Mr. Liu said. "So why should China not be entitled to do so?" Editors, journalists and Web site operators in China say domestic news and discussion sites must ban a long list of topics deemed off limits by party officials or face penalties. Such controls appear to have only superficial similarities to attempts by private companies in the United States and Europe to monitor content on the Web sites they operate. Mr. Liu also said powers the Bush administration gained under the Patriot Act to monitor Web sites and e-mail communications, and the deployment of technology called Carnivore by the F.B.I. to let the agency scrutinize huge volumes of e-mail traffic, were examples of how the United States has taken legal steps to guard against the spread of "harmful information" online. "It is clear that any country's legal authorities closely monitor the spread of illegal information," he said. "We have noted that the U.S. is doing a good job on this front." The Bush administration says its efforts to police online communications pertain mainly to preventing terrorist attacks. Mr. Liu said there were now 111 million Web users in China and in the last five years China had expanded the bandwidth available to connect with overseas Web sites nearly 50-fold to 136,000 megabits per second, underscoring its commitment to let citizens gather information and interact with people around the world. The number of Web sites Chinese users cannot access amounts to a "tiny percentage" of those available abroad, he said. See less »

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From the list : China Censorship by gabbahead

China defends its censorship policy, lies about it and compares it to the Patriot act.

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China Says Web Controls Follow the West's Lead

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