Searching for Cracks in the Great Firewall of China
Just a few years ago, conventional wisdom held that Google would be the vanguard of Internet freedom in China, transforming the way information flows throughout the historically closed society. But while the rapid expansion of the Internet in China has indeed served as a vital medium for political activism, Beijing has essentially kept pace with its extensive surveillance network to silence “cyber dissidents” and with its use of the Web as a pro-government propaganda machine to steer public opinion. At first glance, it appears that China’s censorship practices warrant a strong U.S. policy and a thorough condemnation from the Obama administration. But as Emily Parker, the Arthur Ross Fellow at the Asia Society, explains, U.S. technological innovation – not U.S. policy – is likely the most capable, effective, and politically sensible tool for chipping away at China’s Great Firewall.
Since Google’s departure, the Chinese government has taken action to tighten its grip on the Internet. Earlier this month, China quietly acknowledged the creation of a new “Internet news coordination bureau,” officially responsible for “guidance, coordination and other work related to the construction and management of Web culture.” And just this week, China’s legislature proposed an amendment to the Law on Guarding State Secrets that would require telecommunications companies to “detect, report and delete” leaks of “state secrets,” broadly defined by the government as “information concerning national security and interests that, if released, would harm the country’s security and interests.” These measures are just the latest pieces fastened to a massive regulatory system, much to the chagrin of the international human rights community and many of China’s 400 million Internet users.
But the Great Firewall is far from impenetrable. In fact, web-savvy citizens can circumvent it fairly easily through channels that exist beyond the government’s control like proxy servers or, more efficiently, virtual private networks (VPNs) – indispensible because they make foreign e-commerce possible. However, widespread unfettered access to “sensitive” information, like Google was expected to bring, remains elusive. But where Google Diplomacy failed, Parker believes that Twitter Diplomacy could succeed. While access to social networking sites remains blocked, an element of Twitter’s design called an open Application Programming Interface (API) allows coders to set up feeds that can be accessed at different URLs, which the government must stamp out one by one. This feature is especially significant since, according to Parker, the main objective of China’s censorship efforts is not to limit freedom of expression, but rather freedom of assembly through the use of the Internet as an “organizational tool”. And if the Twitter-driven escalation of the opposition protests in Iran last summer is any indication of the power of social networking sites to spur political action, Beijing’s recent censorship expansion should come as no surprise.
Increased access to VPNs and advancements in social networking allow Chinese citizens, themselves, to dissolve the Great Firewall from within. As Parker says, “what’s important is that these are fundamentally technological approaches, not overtly political ones.” It is important to remember that the U.S. and China have a complex, delicate, and deeply interdependent relationship, so if Internet freedom is to become a central political issue in China it must not be a result of direct U.S. political involvement. Such an approach would almost certainly provoke a nationalist backlash while lending credibility to Chinese government claims of American “imposition of value systems”.
Like many social and economic trends in China today, the natural appetite for freedom of information is converging with the incompatible constraints of a repressive government. Eventually, this convergence may reach a tipping point, and if it does, a stronger society will probably emerge. But if the United States hopes to play a role in nudging China toward that tipping point, it will most likely do so from Silicon Valley, not from Washington.
Related posts: