China Stuck in the Net

There is nothing "virtual" about the problems China's communist rulers confront with the internet. Although critical to China's goals of modernization and globalization, the internet threatens the political status quo. So no surprise at the government's often schizophrenic response to it: while broadly encouraging the internet's development, some party factions seek to suppress it by arresting IT entrepreneurs and web dissidents. Nonetheless, China's more than 35 million internet users - a number that doubles every nine months - have access to a wide variety of previously censored information, including sites that are officially banned.

Staggering changes have already occurred. When, a little over a year ago, 42 elementary school children and teachers in impoverished Jiangxi (south central China) were killed in an explosion, China's domestic newspapers and internet sites reported the explosion as the result of an appalling child-labor scheme: nine-year-old children had been forced to install detonators in firecrackers so that teachers could sell fireworks to supplement their salaries.

Two days later, Premier Zhu Rongji denied the reports. He claimed that the explosion was the result of a "deranged man." Typical of China, state-owned media that carried the original story instantly retracted their reports to parrot the party line. Atypical of China, however, the true story refused to die.

In internet forums and chat rooms, Chinese citizens continued to express their outrage about what they saw as a government cover up. Evidence that party leaders were lying, including interviews with witnesses, was posted on the net. Some websites deleted the information, others refused. Links to obscure websites with uncensored news about the catastrophe could even be found on the government newspaper's official website, People's Daily.

A few days later, the breaking news from China was astonishing. "Responding to reports on the internet and elsewhere, Premier Zhu Rongji apologized for an explosion that gutted an elementary school in rural China," read a report. Zhu said that the government bore "unshirkable responsibility" for the imbroglio and ordered an investigation. The turnaround was unprecedented. Premier Zhu apologized primarily in response to the public outcry on the internet.

Though still in its infancy, the internet has shown that it has the power to shake China loose from its stagnant, isolated and repressive past. Historically, information in China was controlled by the Communist Party, making popular opinion irrelevant. Now the internet provides ordinary Chinese what they never had before: uncensored information. A voice.

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So the Communist Party is trapped in the internet, because the government cannot pull the plug on it without hamstringing the economy. Furthermore, China will probably need to ease up on the restrictions it has already imposed if it wants to gain all of the internet's benefits; that is, unless the conservative factions who feel most threatened by the internet consolidate their power in the upcoming leadership succession.

When I first visited China a few years ago, US President Clinton had just departed Beijing, where he charmed the Chinese people in an historic televised discussion with President Jiang Zemin. Since the April 2001 US-China spy-plane crisis, when China demanded an apology and US President Bush refused to give one, the Bush administration has been alienating the Chinese.

The implications go beyond public relations. The Communist Party is preparing to change its old-guard leadership over the next two years. Hardliners who feel most threatened by the internet's free flow of information were the people emboldened by the nationalistic waves of anti-American sentiment that swept China.

In the aftermath of the terrorist attack on America on September 11, angry and vengeful messages appeared in some Chinese chat rooms. "I'm glad that the USA was attacked," read one. "Airplanes? Why not atomic bombs," read another.

Were these the xenophobic rants of extremist rightists or did they reflect a majority sentiment of the Chinese? In China, like the US, reactionary groups often congregate on line, but with one important difference. In China, only the educated and relatively privileged can take part in online discussion. Thus, they can't all be written off as a purely lunatic fringe.

For the first time, as the explosion at Jaingxu school and the response to the attacks of September 11 th proved, China's public can use the internet to both gain information and express views that may influence the government. Now that popular opinion is emerging as a force in China, the Chinese people as well as its government will need to be wooed by those wishing to influence China. The internet has provided ordinary Chinese with access to the real story as well as to a public voice, which means that they can be a powerful ally in efforts to effect change in the most populace nation on earth.

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