December 31, 1997

China Cracks Down on Dissent in Cyberspace

By ERIK ECKHOLM

EIJING -- China adopted elaborate new rules Tuesday restricting use of the Internet, a medium that is fast fraying the government's monopoly on information.

Credit: Illustration: Christine M. Thompson / CyberTimes

The new rules spell out in more detail than before the government's definition of computer crimes, which include use of the Internet to defame government agencies, to promote separatist movements or to divulge state secrets, along with pornography and the prowling of hackers.

Officials cited a need to "to safeguard national security and social stability" as they annouced the rules, which are clearly aimed at squelching the rapidly growing use of electronic mail and Web sites by dissidents to spread their message.

Announcing the new regulation, Zhu Entao, an assistant minister of public security, said computer information networks are indispensable to the country's economic and scientific advance.

"But the connection has also brought about some security problems, including manufacturing and publicizing harmful information, as well as leaking state secrets through the Internet," Zhu said, according to the official New China News Agency. Zhu spoke on Monday at a news conference to which foreign journalists were not invited.

In 1996 the government declared that laws against pornography, social disturbances or breaches of state security would apply to the Internet, and the practical impact of the new regulation will depend on how it is enforced.

But the announcement is a warning to dissenters and their sympathizers here and abroad.

Earlier this month, for example, after he was released from prison and sent to the United States, democracy advocate Wei Jingsheng said he planned to use the Internet and other forms of telecommunications to press his cause from abroad.

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Use of the Internet to retrieve information and send e-mail has soared since China first allowed global connections in 1994, especially among scholars, business executives and officials. At the end of October, 620,000 Internet subscriptions had been established, reported the Internet Information Center of China, an arm of the state-run company that oversees Internet services here.

Many of those accounts are shared by 10 or 20 people, though a growing number of people have computers at home and may pay more than $200 to establish a personal account. If the connecting lines are often crowded and slow, by and large these users can still tap the bountiful resources of the global Internet, a boon to research and business.

The Cabinet approved the new rules, which took effect Tuesday, on Dec. 11. The government did not publish the text, but Reuters reported that among other things it prohibits using the Internet to "split the country" -- Chinese terminology applied to supporters of the Dalai Lama or of formal independence for Taiwan. Another article bans "defaming of government agencies," which could apply to statements by democracy advocates on Web pages or in e-mail.

The regulation calls for unspecified "criminal punishments" and fines of up to $1,800, Reuters reported, and applies to companies providing Internet access as well as individuals using it.

In 1996, inveighing against the "spiritual pollution" of China, the government used its control over the telecommunications system to block access to more than a hundred Web sites, including those of many foreign newspapers, human rights and dissident groups and Taiwanese agencies, as well as sites considered pornographic, like Playboy magazine's.

In early 1997, it reopened access to some sites but has kept permanent or intermittent controls on others.

Tuesday evening, access through Chinese Internet providers to some newspapers, including The New York Times, and to the Web pages of well-known dissident groups abroad was apparently blocked. A user trying to sign on received no response.

But the pages of many other foreign news sources, including The Washington Post, were accessible, as were many X-rated sites reached via a common Web browser.

Controlling Web sites is a Sisyphean task because so many new ones are constantly being created, and people with skill and determination can find ways to bypass the government barriers. Though a monitor may be identify messages by their labels -- for example, www.amnesty.com -- seditious information can be disguised under bland addresses.

Still, one blocked site, that of the group Human Rights in China, which is based in New York, still gets dozens of "hits" from inside China each week, said the group's executive director, Xiao Qiang. Another banned site from the United States, China News Digest, gets hundreds each week, he said.

E-mail is the government's real Achilles' heel. Security agents can tap phones and monitor the contents of some among the blizzard of letters flying every which way, but there is no way to censor them. More likely, a monitoring program could be used to gather evidence against addressees should the government wish to suppress their access to information.

The scattered, usually silent remnant of democracy advocates here has found ways, together with exiles, to exploit electronic mail.

It is not so useful, they say, for sending sensitive messages directly to one person in China, because the line might be tapped and because so many accounts have numerous readers.

"But it's great for the mass distribution of information," Xiao said by telephone from New York, noting that news or articles can be sent to dozens or hundreds of addresses to be widely read, with no one clearly responsible.

He pointed to an electronic magazine called "Tunnel," a weekly forum for free political discussion that is mainly written and edited inside China. The contents are sent by e-mail to a Silicon Valley address where it is electronically mailed back into China to thousands of addresses. Some 20 issues have appeared since it began in June.

China's struggle to tame the squirming Internet octopus reflects what many experts see as the government's central conundrum: how to foster economic growth and freedom while keeping tight screws on politics.

Zhu, the security official who announced the new rules, gave no nod to the possible trade-offs. "The safe and effective management of computer information networks," he said, "is a prerequisite for the smooth implementation of the country's modernization drive."

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