SCMP: The Net will follow, not lead, China's reforms

Beijing prevented access to the Internet's Google search engine in the autumn, and now access to some online journals is being blocked. Such interruptions are part of the complex way the authorities are using policy and technology to attempt to guide the development of the Internet, our commentators write.

Most followers of international affairs are now familiar with assertions about the potential of the Internet to change China drastically. Access has grown exponentially since the country's first connection to the Internet in 1993. Domains and Web sites have proliferated, while growing millions access the Internet from personal computers at home and the office. In major cities, Internet cafes host a generation accustomed more to mobile phones and consumerism than to communist dogma.

Chinese Internet companies seek and attain listings on US stock markets, and foreign investors hail China's entry to the World Trade Organisation. Beijing's municipal government boasts a Web site where citizens can e-mail their mayor with grievances.

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Yet, tugging at the rhetoric is another reality. China's own information space is restricted by regulations inherited from pre-reform years. Its expansion is driven by five-year plans. Even as the so-called wired elite mushrooms and gains influence, growing numbers are arrested for expressing anti-government views online.

Falun Gong followers who use the Internet to spread information are sent to re-education camps. Meanwhile, millions outside China's urban centres still lack telephones, much less Internet access.

Clearly, the hype over China's experience with the Internet belies a far more complicated scenario, one that does not lend itself easily to pat characterisations of political impact. A number of international observers have suggested that the technology poses a potent threat to China's political system, that a tide of forbidden images and ideas will simply sweep away half a century of outmoded thinking. Others believe that the Internet will become a tool of the Chinese regime, which will use increasingly powerful monitoring and surveillance technologies to stay one step ahead of the democracy-seeking masses.

The truth is considerably more complex than either extreme. Even as competing sources of information broaden the public sphere of debate, the Chinese government has pursued a number of measures - from blocking Web sites to more punitive deterrents - designed to shape the physical and symbolic environments in which Internet use takes place. The state is also vigorously encouraging Internet-driven development, harnessing the Internet for specific political and economic aims.

China has sought to use information technology, in particular the Internet, to address such high-level issues as corruption, transparency, local government reform and the development of poor areas. It has incorporated concepts of information-age warfare into its rethinking of military affairs. China has also looked abroad for guidance on how to balance the promotion of information technology with authoritarian political control.

Through measures ranging from blunt punitive actions to the subtle manipulation of the private sector, the Chinese state has been largely successful to date in guiding the broad political impact of Internet use. This should not be confused with overt central control over every facet of the Internet.

Many analysts accurately note that the Chinese state is increasingly fragmented and unable to monitor the Internet in its entirety; that bureaucratic battles plague the medium's development; and that access to forbidden information has become much easier as the technology has spread.

While valid, these points do not necessarily challenge the assertion that the state is effectively controlling the over-arching political impact of the Internet.

In the realm of civil society, the central government has largely been able to shape the environment in which Internet use takes place. It does this mainly by encouraging a level of self-censorship that still allows access to a plethora of information on the Internet. By offering some pre-emptive liberalisation, the government may also head off more serious challenges in the future.

In the economic arena, the government has shown that its ability to impose dictates on domestic and foreign companies extends well into the Internet sector, despite a proliferation of private companies that provide access and content to the public. At the same time, the government is harnessing the Internet to strengthen the state through anti-corruption and e-government measures. It is also using the Internet to influence global perceptions of China and its policies.

This is not to say that the government's ability to manipulate the political implications of Internet use is perfectly sustainable over the long term. The realm of public use features a growing potential for political impact.

One Internet entrepreneur has predicted that in five years China will have 300 million Internet devices, including cell phones and computers. Although such estimates may be high, it is true that Internet access will continue to expand considerably, with the state's blessing, in the coming years. By wholeheartedly endorsing a market-led model of Internet development and by encouraging mass access, the state faces the increased probability of political challenges stemming from Internet use.

In fact, much of the Internet use most challenging to the state has taken place during times of crisis, such as the incident in April 2001 when a US navy spy plane collided with a PLA jet fighter. Heated anti-American sentiment, which reached a crescendo after the terrorist attack on America, still simmers in many Web forums.

As analyst Nina Hachigian argues, during a crisis, the Internet may refocus national discontent in unprecedented ways. An unforeseen international incident, for instance, might precipitate a groundswell of public discontent that could mesh online with overseas Chinese nationalist sentiment, creating a potent challenge to the regime.

In such an instance, the Chinese authorities appear to have two choices: responding harshly, setting off a chain of repercussions, or shifting to a more hardline foreign policy in order to accommodate an increasingly agitated populace.

The increasing openness and competition promoted by China's entry to the World Trade Organisation may also shape the Internet's political impact. As China's transition to a market economy encourages bureaucracies to fight for lucrative pieces of turf, the Internet has proved to be an irresistible lure. But such battles do not facilitate effective centralised co-ordination and supervision. This presents one of the biggest challenges to the Chinese government: ensuring that Internet development takes place according to centrally crafted timetables and blueprints.

In essence, the Internet's development in China is taking place against a highly fluid backdrop. Various forms of Internet use may erode authoritarian control in a number of ways.

The public use of the medium, especially as it evolves, may prove to be, if not a catalyst, then a point of inflection along the road to concrete political change. Yet this change may not necessarily be of a democratic nature.

Should popular nationalistic sentiment coalesce on the Internet into significant opposition movement, the consequences may not bode well for stability or liberalisation. The idea of a wired populace spontaneously pressing for democracy tends to appeal to Western policymakers. Yet Internet use that strengthens state capacity may contribute more to long-term liberalisation than Internet use that weakens the state in certain areas. Current e-government measures designed to increase transparency and promote efficiency may in fact gird the capacity of state institutions to weather a future political transition.

On its own, Internet use is unlikely to bring in a new political age in China. Concrete political change is likely to depend on several slow, incremental steps, many of which may have no connection to the Internet. At the same time, it is possible that Internet use may set the stage for gradual liberalisation, facilitating a future transition from authoritarian rule. All told, the Internet is likely to contribute to change within China without precipitating the state's collapse.

Excerpted from the book, Open Networks, Closed Regimes: The Impact of the Internet on Authoritarian Rule by Shanthi Kalathil and Taylor C. Boas, published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, www.ceip.org. Reprinted by permission of the publisher

SCMP (South China Morning Post) is a prominent Hong Kong-based English-language newspaper