Title: Roundtable - China And The Internet | China In The Red | FRONTLINE | PBS
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Content: Just as Deng understood that he could better consolidate power through economic progress than through ideological purity, so the Communist Party leadership today has realized that it needs to embrace the economic potential of the Internet. And yet, while Beijing has taken steps to encourage the growth of its Internet sector -- giving tax breaks to high-tech firms, for instance, and building low-cost office space for Internet start-ups -- China's leaders also view the Internet as a threat to their authority. Even as China's entrepreneurs leap onto the Internet, the government is developing some of the world's most sophisticated filtering technologies to control speech and access, and is cracking down on various forms of online "subversion," imprisoning pro-democracy advocates who have used the Internet for political purposes. Much as Deng set the country on a course toward what he called " socialism with Chinese characteristics ," today's leadership has put its stamp on the Internet by fiercely regulating it. The government handed down rules in September 2000 prohibiting Internet content providers (ICPs) from posting "information that is detrimental to the honor and interests of the state" or that "undermines national unification," among other offenses, and an Internet "police" force -- estimated to be 30,000 to 40,000 strong -- constantly monitors Web content and usage. Indeed, China has the most extensive Internet censorship in the world, more effective even than Saudi Arabia's according to a December 2002 study by Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. The authors found that of 200,000 websites they tried to access, fully 50,000 were inaccessible from China on at least one occasion. While the authors note that the filtering was inconsistent -- for example, a site might be blocked to users in one geographic area but not in another -- they say it could be due to a delay in updating the "block lists" in certain regions. They also noted that there was a "documentable leap" in the sophistication of China's Internet filters beginning in September 2002. ( Recent articles and an Amnesty International report have pointed out that North American companies -- including Cisco Systems, Microsoft, Nortel Networks, Sun Microsystems, and Websense -- have provided important technologies that help the Chinese government censor the Web.)