SCMP: China tightly controls information, internet

Wednesday, December 10, 2003

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE in Beijing

With more than 2,000 TV stations and countless newspapers, China is flooded with information, but virtually everything is tightly controlled by the state and the internet is also subject to regular crackdowns.

Television is in the homes of 94.5 per cent of the 1.3 billion people in China, who are glued to the box on average for three hours a day, which, without question, is the principal source of information, and propaganda, in China.

The Communist Party uses TV to get its message across with news broadcasts centered around the activities of party leaders and the state.

On the major national channel, CCTV 1, the actions of President Hu Jintao, no matter how irrelevant, come before news of the head of the parliament, and so on.

While a state tool, the small screen is permitted to some extent to investigate social problems, corruption, pollution or public health, which are popular subject matters.

The print industry in China was also huge, with newspapers read by approximately one in three people, said Yu Guoming, a journalism professor at the People's University in Beijing.

It is a diverse industry, covering more than 2,000 newspapers and some 9,000 magazines, much of it government-run. Reflecting the development of the consumer society, newspapers in large cities are increasingly including supplements on things like cars and real estate.

The growth of traditional media has been accompanied by a boom in internet usage, with an estimated 70 million regularly logging on.

This is a problem area for the government, which wants to move with the times but also wants to repress what the population is reading and writing.

Currently it censors hundreds of websites of Western media outlets, political dissidents and others that are viewed as critical of the Communist Party, using Western technology to do so.

One dissident in exile said in the United States recently that China's communist authorities were training "internet police" to trace political dissidents using the World Wide Web to evade state censorship.

According to state media China plans to set up a national surveillance system for internet cafes and let a small number of companies run most of them, in a move also blasted as yet another attempt at online control.

Experts said the internet was a powerful new tool for Chinese, although the consequences could be dire, with authorities regularly arresting and jailing anyone who used the Net to disseminate or read political views.

"The internet offers new possibilities to Chinese intellectuals, particularly in the political field," said Yu Jie, a well-known writer and activist.

"However, the control exercised by the Communist Party on the media in general has not slackened one bit.

"The Internet in China opens a space to debate ideas. While the nationalist and patriotic indoctrination still conditions students, many are starting to reflect in a more autonomous way after having read articles or debates on democracy and freedom on the internet."

Professor Yu agreed that the introduction of the internet had broadened the minds of many Chinese people.

"Whereas censorship assures the traditional media reflect the Communist ideology, the internet is more diversified and allows deviating opinions to be expressed," he said.

"The censorship is less strict. The internet is a source of important information in the large and medium-sized cities."

http://china.scmp.com/chitech/ZZZV1SDWXND.html