China has always been a hidden entity in the international community. Not hidden, since it’s so much in the limelight-but more of a secretive entity. What happens in China, stays in China. Advocates of nationalism may debate over the fact that it is this stringent big-picture, big-brother attitude that has helped it become one of the world’s fastest growing economies.
The internet recently, even right now has been in a furore over China blocking Google. Censorship is not new to China. However, so far, the internet had not been a very integral target of China’s government. China’s stringent take on banning any content that goes against the views and opinions of the communist Government in reign is very well known. However, there were many people who were hoping that the internet would change things. Press censorship was easy, most hoped the Internet would prove to be a tougher nut to crack. Not so, though. China already has the highest number of internet users in the world. And the last few months have seen tough stances taken by the government to increase their control over the world wide web.
A recent crackdown on Internet porn in China led to this announcement by the state on how popular search engines like Google, Baidu and MSN were aiding and providing obscene content and not assisting the government in their attempt to block out obscene material. What seems extremely amusing is the allegation that these search engines “provide” obscene material. However, it seems unlikely to point out to the Government that Safe-search is an option on Google and the fact that though these sites inadvertently become middle-men for access to pornographic or explicity material, they are almost never the providers.
It started with China requesting Google, to censor their searches or else face serious consequences. Earlier certain Google features like Google Suggest which guesses what you want to search for (by pertinence, past history and popularity). Certain appropriate searches for “son” led to results like “son and mother having sex“. Google had complied and agreed to take strict measures. However, one would hardly imagined Google, which has over 30% of China’s search market (Their popular search engine is Baidu) would be restricted for users. Internet users in China were extremely surprised to find out that Gmail, Google’s main site and China offshoot were all blocked for a while. A video by Reuters on the same. It was a possible “final warning” for Google to prove that China was not joking.
The attempt was quite reminiscent of China’s Great Firewall coming up during the 20th anniversary of the Tianmen Square protests. China’s Great Firewall came up earlier on June 2nd preceding anticipatory buzzing on the internet community about China and the suppression of democracy etc. Immediately after that, China issued a ruling where all PCs shipped or sold to China would have to have regulatory software. Though a lot of Chinese, and surprisingly other global voices are in support of internet regulation of pornography, the move raised serious questions from Chinese internet users and the press.
Certain people are of the opinion that the actions taken on Google are related to the USA raising concerns over China’s regulatory internet policy as it is in direct conflict with China’s compliance with WTO Trade policies. The USA government would obviously have to tread a fine line between pleasing its trade partner – one of the world’s largest growing economies and the movers of its own economy – the PC manufacturers back home. However, it’s not just on the internet censorship that the USA has a problem with. In recent news, they had raised questions over China’s trade policies. Whether these are related will remain a question. China’s hardhitting stances have often raised eyebrows over sensitive issues like Tibet during the Olympics and recently over Tianmen.
Whatever be the cause, it has probably had the expected repurcussions with PC makers racing to comply with China’s Green Dam software. What one wonders is how much more control can China hope to achieve over their internet. Internet control is not unheard of in most countries. Most of course, are just initiating some amount of control with recent news spanning EU demanding more privacy for social networks and rumours of USA preparing for cyber-warfare. We, at WATBlog had recently commented about India violating privacy through its IT Act Amendment of 2008. Hopefully, countries will realise the necessity of balancing “blocking harmful content” and blatant censorship which is tantamount to a violation of the right to expression if not used properly. The line is what prevents governments who worry about “public-good” from turning into totalitarian regimes.
