Posts Tagged ‘Human Rights in China’
China’s plan to use internet for propaganda
Flickr Creative Commons | Clemson
By John Garnaut | Sydney Morning Herald | July 14, 2010
BEIJING: The Chinese Communist Party has detailed its ambitious but secretive strategy for transforming the internet into a force for keeping it in power and projecting ‘’soft power” abroad.
An internal speech by China’s top internet official, apparently posted by accident on an official internet site before being promptly removed, outlines a vast array of institutions and methods to control opinion at home and also ”create an international public opinion environment that is objective, beneficial and friendly to us”.
”Those efforts provided powerful public opinion support for unifying thinking, consolidating strength, assisting in our diplomatic battles and safeguarding our national interests,” said Wang Chen, who is deputy director of the Propaganda Department, head of External (foreign) Propaganda and also director of the State Council’s Information Office.
Mr Wang’s speech was made to the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress on April 29 and posted on the Congress’s website on May 4, before being removed, sanitised and re-posted on a more mainstream government website the following day. It was picked up by Human Rights in China and included in its report released yesterday, China’s Internet: Staking Digital Ground.
”China has this goal of establishing a Chinese intranet, removing China from the global internet, and you can see that in this report,” said Anne-Marie Brady, an expert on China’s propaganda system at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. ”The average Chinese person knows basically how the propaganda system works but there’s no need to advertise so blatantly what the government is doing,” she said, explaining why large sections of the original speech were deleted.
Rather than shut off China to the outside world, the Communist Party has maintained its authoritarian rule in the information age by vastly expanding its propaganda apparatus and modernising its methods and messages. The country’s 400 million internet users are ”guided” towards government-friendly information and away from ”harmful” content but can nevertheless access and spread information far more easily than previous generations.
Mr Wang said the internet ”has increased the government’s capabilities in social management” but also brought new subversive threats. ”As long as our country’s internet is linked to the global internet, there will be channels and means for all sorts of harmful foreign information to appear on our domestic internet,” Mr Wang said. He outlined how the party has used internet platforms to ”markedly strengthen” its capability to promote messages overseas.
”These foreign language channels are becoming an important force in countering the hegemony of Western media and in bolstering our country’s soft power,” he said.
The Communist Party’s ”great firewall” blocks most overseas Chinese-language websites and many foreign-language overseas sites, and local internet companies must vigilantly screen and censor sensitive content.
Official censors, commercial internet operators and informal public opinion leaders – derisively labelled as China’s ”50 cent” army for the fees they receive per posting – are also deployed to push the government line on sensitive issues.
”Government agencies at all levels … have gradually built mechanisms to guide public opinion through integrating the functions of propaganda departments,” Mr Wang said.
China seeks to reduce Internet users’ anonymity
Flickr Creative Commons | Rob Pongsajapan
By Anita Chang | The Associated Press | July 13, 2010
BEIJING — A leading Chinese Internet regulator has vowed to reduce anonymity in China’s portion of cyberspace, calling for new rules to require people to use their real names when buying a mobile phone or going online, according to a human rights group.
In an address to the national legislature in April, Wang Chen, director of the State Council Information Office, called for perfecting the extensive system of censorship the government uses to manage the fast-evolving Internet, according to a text of the speech obtained by New York-based Human Rights in China.
China’s regime has a complicated relationship with the freewheeling Internet, reflected in its recent standoff with Google over censorship of search results. China this week confirmed it had renewed Google’s license to operate, after it agreed to stop automatically rerouting users to its Hong Kong site, which is not subject to China’s online censorship.
The Internet is China’s most open and lively forum for discussion, despite already pervasive censorship, but stricter controls could constrain users. The country’s online population has surged past 400 million, making it the world’s largest.
Chen’s comments were reported only briefly when they were made in April. Human Rights in China said the government quickly removed a full transcript posted on the legislature’s website. But the group said it found an unexpurgated text and the discrepancies show that Beijing is wary that its push for tighter information control might prove unpopular.
Wang said holes that needed to be plugged included ways people could post comments or access information anonymously, according to the transcript published this week in the group’s magazine China Rights Forum.
“We will make the Internet real name system a reality as soon as possible, implement a nationwide cell phone real name system, and gradually apply the real name registration system to online interactive processes,” the journal quoted Wang as saying.
As part of that Internet “real name system,” forum moderators would have to use their real names as would users of online bulletin boards, and anonymous comments on news stories would be removed, Wang is quoted as saying.
The State Council Information Office did not immediately respond to a faxed request asking whether certain sections of Wang’s address to the legislature were altered in the official transcript.
Wang’s comments are in line with recent government statements that indicate a growing uneasiness toward the multitude of opinions found online. A Beijing-backed think tank this month accused the U.S. and other Western governments of using social-networking sites such as Facebook to spur political unrest and called for stepped-up scrutiny.
China has blocked sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, although technologically savvy users can easily jump the so-called “Great Firewall” with proxy servers or other alternatives. Websites about human rights and dissidents are also routinely banned.
Open Net Initiative
- Filtering in Asia reseach with the OpenNet Initiative September 7, 2010[…]rtabasky
- Large-scale survey research September 7, 2010[…]rtabasky
- Free expression and Internet filterning research and blogging September 7, 2010[…]rtabasky
- Berkman Buzz: Week of August 2, 2010 September 7, 2010BERKMAN BUZZ: A look at the past week's online Berkman conversations If you would like to receive the Buzz weekly via email, please sign up here. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * What's being discussed...take your pick or browse below. * Stuart Shieber defends publication-fee OA journal […]syoung
- Berkman Buzz: Week of July 19, 2010 September 7, 2010BERKMAN BUZZ: A look at the past week's online Berkman conversations If you would like to receive the Buzz weekly via email, please sign up here. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * What's being discussed...take your pick or browse below. * Radio Berkman 159: "Spare a Cycle?" * D […]syoung
The Global Network Initiative 
Academic Fellowships 
Yahoo! BHRP 
Impact Assessments 
BHRP Summit 
Human Rights Fund 
