The Boston Globe: China's tangled Web

January 16, 2006

On New Year's Eve, Microsoft shut down the Web site of the Chinese dissident and journalist Zhao Jing. Writing under the nom-de-blog Michael An Ti, he had angered Chinese authorities by criticizing recent government-ordered firings of editors at a progressive Beijing newspaper. Microsoft said it agreed to pull the plug on Zhao out of respect for Chinese laws. But U.S. technology companies doing business overseas cannot operate ethically while helping their host countries squelch human rights.

The vast, unruly Internet may pose more of a threat to repressive governments - whether China, Myanmar or Singapore - than democracy protests or strikes. Already at least 100 million Chinese use the Internet, instantly spreading information that the government would rather suppress. In November, the Web was a convener - and magnifier - of public anger over Beijing's handling of a benzene chemical spill in the city of Harbin.

China's government has tried to fight fire with fire, using sophisticated filtering software to block Web sites that carry references to such "prohibited" words as Tibet, Tiananmen or Falun Gong. Cisco Systems has been sharply criticized for selling the filtering equipment to China, and Yahoo, Google, Sun Microsystems and other American companies are complicit in various ways in government censorship abroad.

The advocacy group Reporters without Borders is circulating a petition asking Congress and the State Department to convene an effort to establish voluntary guidelines. The tech companies can join in or risk more burdensome legislation. Congressional hearings are set; it's no longer good enough for the companies to claim that their mere presence opens up repressive societies.

Until now, the corporate image of high-tech has been rather benign:

relatively pollution-free; offering decent work conditions; socially responsible. That may be changing.

By week's end, An Ti was back on line, blogging through a U.S. host site, but still not available in China except through e-mails. "It is so hard to be a free Chinese person," he wrote to his supporters. [...]