Related Stories: ?China Sidebar Related Stories: ?Net Censors: The New Control Freaks ?Cuba's Newest Information War ?Censorship in Central Europe Government censorship of the Internet in China exists, but it's practically out of sight, out of mind.

According to several Internet professionals in China, many Western Web sites that were once banned, now can be easily accessed.

At OJR's request, Dr. Yun Tao, the vice president of Cenpok Intercom Technology Company, checked the Los Angeles Times' Web site from his office in Beijing. He reported back via e-mail: 'No problem. The headline news right now is Clinton opening national dialogue on social security.' And that indeed was the headline of April 8.

'I feel the current regulation actually doesn't affect users at all,' said Yun Tao, who received a doctorate in the U.S. 'Actually nobody really cares or can control what you're doing at home as long as you don't take things [into the] public.'

Kenneth Farrall, the president of Matrix East Incorporated, an Internet consulting firm, also found China's Internet censorship to be very minor, with almost no effect on a user's ability to access information.

He visited three sites for us in China: http://www.voa.org (the Voice of America), http://www.whitehouse.gov (Clinton's official site) and http://www.sinanet.com (a major Taiwan-based online news site.) Farrall said that he could access all of those sites freely without resorting to a proxy.

According to Zhang Rong, a government official who works as the deputy director of the Science & Technology Institute in Beijing, 'Everybody can get online in China.'

However, obtaining online access is still a real problem for most people.

China's Internet (International Networking) and Intranet (China Wide Web) are completely state-controlled. Anyone who sets up or uses a network needs prior approval from the government. The government dictates what people should and should not access on the Web.

To qualify for an Internet account, one needs to go to the local phone office, sign agreement to an Internet regulation and register with the police for the intent to surf.

Even with steadily declining access fees, Internet service in China is generally much more expensive than that in the U.S. An account holder must pay $75 a month, in addition to a $120 deposit, for unlimited access to ChinaNet, the primary commercial network run by the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications. With the exception of a burgeoning class of entrepreneurs, most people in China still earn $100 a month or less, and can not afford a personal Internet account.

The New Internet Regulation, passed by the State Council in December, 1997, and promulgated by the Ministry of Public Security, lists the types of information Chinese people are not supposed to tinker with online. The forbidden material generally falls into two categories: 1. 'sexually suggestive material, gambling, violence, murder', and 2. politically sensitive topics that include sites 'inciting to overthrow the government or the social system, inciting division of the country, harming national unification and injuring the reputation of the state organs.'

Those Internet users in China caught violating the regulation are to be fined for $625 to $1875 for a minor violation. For more serious offenses, computer and network access can be denied for six months. Public Security can suspend a business operating license or cancel its network registration.

Since the passage of the first Internet regulation in February 1996, Chinese government has been actively blocking 'undesired' Web sites. Domain names of those sites are blocked at the router level.

Chris Kern, the director of computing services for the Voice of America, said he suspects the station's Web site has been blocked in China at times. The evidence: listeners' complaints through e-mail, which is less likely to be blocked or censored.

As recent as the end of April, Kern said, he has received e-mails from users in China, complaining that the VOA public Internet server is being blocked.

The site was blocked, he said, between September, 1996, and January, 1997, following a pronouncement by Chinese government officials that they were prepared to take action to block access to certain information on the public Internet. Other news organizations were banned as well during that time, including the New York Times, the Washington Post and CNN, according to Kern.

'Activity from China on our public Internet server picked up after January, 1997,' said Kern. 'A number of foreign news correspondents in China, including the staff of the VOA Beijing news bureau, reported that China appeared to be relaxing its policy of interfering with Internet access.'

Then, connections to VOA's public Internet server from China dropped almost to zero in August, 1997. Activity from China has been almost nil since then, and the site continues to be blocked, according to Kern.

But clearly discrepancies exist in terms of connectivity, as Farrall said he was able to obtain access for our report.

The Jan. 12 issue of Time Magazine reported several black-listed sites of prominent Western media outlets, including Time's own Pathfinder site and cnn.com. However, there is no set pattern on what gets blocked and why. And it is almost impossible to confirm if a site is really blocked by the Chinese government.

According to a report by the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, also issued in January, Embassy officers have discovered that CNN's Web site is now accessible in China through some Internet servers. Time also observed that 'the New York Times Web site is generally blocked, while the Washington Post Web site is not.'

Meanwhile, Zhang Rong told OJR that the New York Times and CNN sites are not blocked at all.

For Farrall, so much confusion and inconsistency in the blocking business proves that China's Internet censorship is mild. 'Certain Western news institutions pass in and out of favor several times a year, and are added or removed to the list as often,' he said. 'Still, the logic is puzzling. I believe it is just additional evidence that [the government] is not making a serious effort.

'Most professionals in the industry believe the list of blocked sites is intended only to convince the Internet-illiterate old-guard, with the exception of net savvy Jiang Zemin, that the Internet can be controlled, and is not to be feared,' he said.

Even if the government intends to bar all unwanted sites, Farrall believes it doesn't have the ability to do so. 'The type of blocking they're doing, at the router level, means that there are relatively simple ways for those who know how to circumvent the blocks.

'Active censorship of the Internet is becoming increasingly expensive and impractical as more users go online,' said Farrall. 'Existing blocks are easily overcome by using proxy servers. New Web sites come on line every day, old web sites change their addresses. Content from one is mirrored on another.'

Fully-monitored Internet usage is further complicated by a lot of account sharing in China. Legal pressure is directed more to to ISPs, which are responsible to report to the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications, according to Yun Tao.

And so enthusiastic surfers in China tend to overlook the Internet regulation.

'Individuals don't even feel the existence of regulation,' Yun Tao described. 'Nobody from the government really comes to check regularly.'