RConversation

Happy Internet Human Rights Day!

Today is the 98th anniversary of the 1911 Wuchang Uprising which led to the collapse of the Qing Dynasty and founding of the Republic of China in 1912. (I wonder how the 100th anniversary will be celebrated in the People's Republic two years from now?)  To mark the occasion, 15 Chinese intellectuals have issued a Declaration of Internet Human Rights, suggesting that netizens of China and the world celebrate October 10th to be Internet Human Rights Day.

C.A. Yeung at the blog Under the Jacaranda Tree has done a great public service and posted a translation. I've made a few small changes which I think clarify the meaning of the original Chinese version. Here it is:

Internet Human Rights Declaration
Issued by 15 Chinese Intellectuals

Those of us who are standing on the riverbank overlooking the torrent of history have witnessed the potential of this new technology: the Internet. We understand how this new technological revolution has brought about progress and social change. It has great potential to advance basic human rights and freedom for the Chinese people. Its contribution to civilisation will be on a par with the discovery of iron and fire, or the invention of plough and wheel in ancient times.

We acknowledge the arrival of netizen activism and regard it as an irreversible trend. Citizen reporting, which involves the use of mobile phones and digital cameras for live information dissemination, has already become a popular trend. The Internet has also provided netizens with unlimited space for creativity, and for voicing opinions through weblogs, podcasts, BBS and online comments.

We believe it is a citizen’s responsibility to be concerned about public affairs, and a netizen’s responsibility to care about freedom of speech on the Internet. Netizens are exercising their civil rights when they legally express their opinions or when they report the truth of what has actually happened. The best way to rejuvenate an ancient civilisation is to inject it with new core values based on the advancement of happiness and of basic human rights for individuals. It is also the best way to improve well-being for everyone in China. For these reasons, freedom of speech on the Internet should be encouraged, nurtured and tolerated.

We therefore pledge for the following principles to be endorsed:

1. Freedom of speech on the Internet is a part of citizens’ rights to freedom of speech. It is the most basic human rights and the most fundamental value that should be pursued, treasured and protected.

2. Netizens who express their opinions on the Internet using words, sounds, pictures or videos, should be protected and encouraged, as long as such conduct is in accord with the constitution and local statutes.

3. The right to publish opinion is the most basic rights for netizens. This includes the right to publish through weblogs and podcasts, as well as online discussion forums. Netizens’ rights to publish should not be subjected to unlawful investigation and interference. They should be allowed freedom to hold and to express their views without feeling intimidated.

4. Netizens’ editorial rights should be respected. When they are exercising those rights, they should not be subjected to harassment by authorities who act outside of law.

5. It is the right of Netizens to conduct interviews and to report their findings. This right is protected as a part of their constitutional rights to freedom of speech. Netizens who excercise this right should endeavour to report the truth, and to avoid distortions, fabrications and malicious slander.

6. It is the right of netizens to make comments and to exchange opinion. This includes the right to ask questions, to monitor, to criticise and to boycott.

7. Netizens’ freedom of speech encompasses a right to express themselves anonymously. Anonymity enables some authors to express their opinions in ways that best suit their needs. This legal right should be respected as long as an anonymous author is expressing his views in accordance with legal and constitutional requirements.

8. The right to search for information on the Internet is an integral part of netizens’ rights to expression, to be informed, and to act as watchdogs. It is our opinion that law-abiding websites should not be filtered, and that netizens’ rights to conduct searches on public information for personal use should be respected and protected.

9. Online privacy should be respected and protected. Netizens’ real identities and personal information should not be disclosed unless the information is required for a transparent legal proceeding, or else if the disclosure is necessary under the rule of law.

10. The free flow of information should be respected and protected as long as it is conducted in line with legal and constitutional requirements. Website monitoring, filtering and blockades that go against the principle of freedom of speech should be condemned by public opinion. Netizens are entitled to seek freedom of expression and justice through judicial proceedings.

We call for the establishing of an Internet Human Rights Day, to remind everyone of the need to safeguard freedom of speech on the Internet. This is the only effective way to make sure all people in China enjoy human rights and happiness.

10 October 1911 was the day when a group of patriots staged an uprising to end the rule of a cruel and racist dynasty. They also put an end to a long imperialist history. As a way of commemorating their bravery and their spirit of freedom, we suggest to make every October 10th China’s Internet Human Rights Day.

Powered by ScribeFire.

China's censorship arms race escalates

Last week the China Digital Times reported that the photo above (click here to view full size original) has been making the rounds in Chinese blogs and chatrooms. It is an image of a "computer science float" for Thursday's National Day parade, onto which somebody has photoshopped a screenshot of the Internet Explorer error message familiar to anybody who has ever tried to access a blocked website in China: "This page cannot be displayed."

As the 60th birthday of the People's Republic of China approaches, Internet users in China are complaining that the Internet has become even more difficult to use than ever before. Not only has the number of blocked websites increased, but the most popular censorship circumvention techniques and technologies have come under attack. A sampling:

VPN's (Virtual Private Networks): The most popular VPN's among people I know in China are Witopia and Hotspot Shield. Witopia users in Beijing report that even with the VPN on, they have to manually set the DNS (via these instructions, see Q6) in order to access certain super-blocked sites like Facebook and Twitter. Others, in Shanghai and elsewhere, report that Witopia isn't even working when they set the DNS, or it works only intermittently for all sites. People all over China are telling me that Hotspot Shield no longer works for them at all.

Tor (onion routing): Since September 25th, according to the Tor development team, 80% of Tor's public relays are "blocked by IP address and TCP port combination." However you can still access Tor via bridges, updated regularly in various places. See some Chinese instructions here.

Freegate: (Note their website is down as of 1am Monday EDT) This tool developed by FLG-followers has reportedly been under attack since around September 1st. They have issued an update but according to various people around China who I've queried, including those using the latest version, it's still intermittent and difficult to use.

SSH tunnel: Dave Lyons, who has set up a tunnel to his own server outside China, reports that he also has to use Foxyproxy. UPDATE: Jon Phillips aka "Rejon" has detailed instructions for SSH tunneling here. 

Proxy servers: Until this summer, probably the most common (if insecure and unreliable) way to access blocked websites was through proxies. It has been the case for years that users of public proxies had to switch frequently as they got blocked. However in the past few months Internet users in China have been reporting that the blocking of public proxies has become much more thorough.

Psiphon: I've sent out queries to see if anybody out there in my Twitter network is using Psiphon and whether it's working. However as of this writing I've gotten no responses. [UPDATE 30 minutes later: one person reports it's working]

If anybody reading this post has anything to add about any of the above, please share it in the comments section of this post.

Meanwhile, Global Voices Advocacy, Reporters Without Borders, The Register, and PCWorld all report that at least some ISP's in some parts of China have been ordered to install new censorship and surveillance software, "Lan Dun," which has variously been translated as "Bluedon," "Blue Shield" or "Blue Dam." According to PCWorld:

At least one Chinese city has adopted a further measure to monitor Internet traffic. The southern city of Guangzhou this month ordered Internet service providers to install "security monitoring" software on all servers and threatened punishment for failure to do so, according to government notices posted on the blog of one data center management company. Two such software programs, called Blue Shield and Huadun, were recommended in one of the government notices. Huadun's Web site says the program helps server owners remove illegal and pornographic content from their systems.

The software is meant to "create a favorable online environment" for China's National Day celebration next week, the government orders said. A representative of the data center company reached by phone said it put the orders on the blog for reference by clients and that the order applied only to Guangzhou.

Both Global Voices and Reporters Without Borders cite this Chinese-language Apple Daily (Taiwan) article which says that all ISP's were required to install the software by September 13th. According to the product description, it not only blocks websites but also logs individual users' web browsing histories and monitors instant messaging conversations.

In other developments, AFP quotes Chinese state media reports of new laws in Northwest China (namely Xinjiang) "making it a criminal offence for people to discuss separatism on the Internet." AFP continues:

The Bill passed by authorities in the Xinjiang region bans locals from using the internet in any way that undermines national unity.

It also bans them from inciting ethnic separatism or harming social stability, the China News Service reported.

The Bill requires internet service providers and network operators to set up monitoring systems – or strengthen existing ones – and report anyone who breaks the law, the report said.

The Bill did not specify what punishment offenders would face, but its apparent aim is to allow authorities to arrest individuals behind emails and web posts within the region that they deem to be a threat.

"The introduction of the 'Information Promotion Bill' is timely and necessary," the report quoted the Bill as saying.

"It ensures internet criminals can be quickly and effectively controlled in the future."

The Internet was shut off in Xinjiang in early July and has not been turned back on. Today blogger-journalist Michael Anti posted a report on Twitter that Internet connectivity will finally be restored in Xinjiang in mid-October.

Global Voices Advocacy also recently reported that Chinese Internet users are also becoming more acutely aware of the reality that domestic companies like Tencent log users' conversations and share them with the police as requested.

Powered by ScribeFire.

China's new real-name requirement: another global trend

The New York Times' Jonathan Ansfield reported on Sunday that Chinese news websites have quietly implemented "secret government orders" requiring new users to register their true identities before they can post comments. His interviewees explained the reason why the orders were a tightly guarded "secret," implemented without public announcement or discussion: if they announced it beforehand, public outcry and industry pushback might block implementation altogether.

That's exactly what happened with theGreen Dam mandate which was scrapped this summer, and with its failed proposals to implement real-name registration back in 2006. Given that China isn't a democracy, and neither policies nor laws require open debate in the legislature before they're passed, the government seems to have adopted a new tack with measures like the real-name system that are likely to be controversial: don't talk about it, just do it. Then aggressively work to shape public opinion after the fact so that you can claim the measure was in line with what mainstream and reasonable members of the public wanted anyway.

One point already being made is that South Korea's major websites already have a real-name registration system. (Apparently they use national e-commerce verification systems like this one (IE/Safari only) to run identity checks.)  And Korea is a democracy. So, the argument goes, China is only in line with the growing global backlash against all the bad things that can come from anonymous Internet speech. One need look no further than the furore over the anonymous blogger who called aging supermodel Liskula Cohen a "skank" for evidence that many in the U.S., U.K. and Canada wouldn't mind a real-name system either.  The EFF's Danny O'Brien rightly warned in an article last month that Korea is leading the global charge to stamp out anonymity.

A number of people here in China have been testing out the new registration system. The GFW blog has extensive annotated screenshots here. The NYT's Ansfield himself pointed out that he was able to register successfully using fake information. It appears that while many of the systems do check to make sure that the ID number you entered is a valid ID number, it doesn't verify whether the name you entered matched the number, let alone whether the human being entering the information matched any of it. Some people tell me they just search on the Internet for random ID numbers and use those. That said, as this blogger points out, all of these services log IP addresses. Even without real-name registration it's not so hard for the police to track somebody down if they really want to - as long as that person isn't using an anonymity tool like Tor and being extremely careful about their general online security. With growing numbers of Internet users being detained and prosecuted on charges of "spreading rumors" lately, even though the real-name registration system is far from thorough or perfect, it's likely to have a chilling effect.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Dark days for China's liberals

(Photo by Zola, taken at Gongmeng's offices. Left-to-right: Teng Biao, Lin Zheng, Li Fangping, Xu Zhiyong, Zhang Lijun.)

The people in this picture are not dissidents. They are civil rights lawyers who have been trying to work within the bounds of China's legal system and constitution to help ordinary Chinese people who are neither rich nor powerful nor politically connected. They have not been trying to organize an overthrow of the regime. Yes they're liberals in the Chinese political context - similar to how the ACLU and the EFF are liberal within the American context. Their rough equivalents in American political culture would be NPR-listening liberal democrats who work in public interest law with a lot of pro-bono cases and class-action lawsuits.

More than a week ago, Xu Zhiyong, the second man from the right in the picture above, was taken by police from his home. Police have not formally charged him with any crime, but his family learned from officials at the university where he teaches that he's being held for tax evasion. Xu is an elected member of the Beijing People's Congress and a civil rights lawyer who co-founded the Gongmeng legal aid organization. Xu has given defended and advised petitioners fighting official land-grabs in the provinces; he worked to expose the illegal "black jails" where some petitioners have been held. Gongmeng lawyers defended parents of children sickened by melamine-tainted milk powder last year, and worked on sensitive death penalty cases. Gongmeng was shut down by authorities in mid-July because they said the organization's Open Constitution Initiative had failed to pay taxes. Xu was detained along with another Gongmeng staffer, Zhuang Lu, the day before he was scheduled to attend a hearing on the matter. Nobody believes this matter is really about taxes: while it's possible that Gongmeng's books weren't in perfect order, pure tax infractions are generally not handled this way. It certainly wouldn't be the first time that tax technicalities were used as a cover to nab people for legal activities that powerful people find threatening.

When I saw Xu in Beijing earlier this year, he told me he said that Gongmeng was operating well within the bounds of Chinese law, dedicated to the improvement and hence longevity of the current regime. Nothing they were doing, he insisted, challenged Communist Party rule in any way. He claimed to be confident that Gongmeng would not have serious political trouble for this reason. Enough mainstream establishment people in Beijing seemed to agree with this view that he was even featured on the cover of the Chinese version of Esquire Magazine this month. (See picture on left.) Magazines like that - always concerned about potential trouble with the publishing authorities - generally won't touch people whose reputations their editors believe might endanger their publishing license. Sharon Hom of Human Rights in China warns: “By suppressing Xu Zhiyong, who is a moderate voice for social change and has dedicated his career to helping forge a society with genuine rule of law, the authorities are running the risk of radicalizing the forces for reform and change in China.”

But the crackdown is broad and deep, and shows no sign of ending. In May, 20 civil rights lawyers who had defended Tibetans, Falun Gong members, and other politically sensitive clients were effectively disbarred. In July the licenses of another 53 lawyers were revoked. On the same day as Xu's detention, security officials raided the office of Yi Ren Ping, a non-governmental organization dedicated to fighting discrimination, and confiscated all copies of its latest newsletter on grounds that they don't have a publishing license. A number of people involved with a citizens' effort to collect information about children who died in the Sichuan earthquake and raise questions about shoddy construction of schools have been arrested. Earthquate survivor He Hongchun was convicted for disturbing social order. Huang Qi, who reported online about the plight of children who died in the quate, went on trial this week for disclosing state secrets; the court's ruling has yet to be announced. According to Human Rights in China a key witness was kidnapped and prevented from appearing in court to testify for Huang's defence. Tan Zuoren, an activist who conducted an investigation into the reasons why so many school buildings collapsed in the quake, is scheduled to go on trial for state subversion next week.

While many news reports about all of these developments point to the upcoming 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic as a possible reason for the crackdown, experts in Chinese law are worried that this is not just a temporary phase - and that something much more serious and long-lasting could be happening. Jerome Cohen, one of the preeminent experts on the PRC's legal system, wrote yesterday in an e-mail (which I quote with his permission): "What we are witnessing now is a systematic campaign unparalleled since the beginning of the Open Policy in 1978. It has nothing to do with the 60th celebration. Are there still people who believe that such policies and practices can be explained because of the approach of one or another of China's many anniversaries?"

Rather, Cohen and some other legal experts are concerned that a much more deep-seated reversal is underway: it may be that the Chinese government intends to discourage the use of courts and China's legal system by the nation's many aggrieved citizens - steering them to other avenues for appeal and dispute-resolution. If this is the case, it represents a reversal of the government's repeatedly stated goal of "strengthening rule of law" that has been an emphasis over the past three decades, and on which China's civil rights lawyers and activists have staked their right to exist.

For every detention, arrest, and suspension, dozens of other people are being subject to questioning, their computer hard drives copied for detailed examination, and their personal notebooks and documents scanned for police records. I've heard informally from a few people who were either "invited for tea" by the police or who know people who were. From time to time somebody describes their "tea drinking" experience on their blog or on Twitter. Internet censorship has been getting increasingly worse all year: not just blocking of websites and social networking services hosted overseas, but the shutting down of people's blogs on domestic blogging platforms and the wholesale outages of some Chinese SNS's like Fanfou. Green Dam may have been defeated for now, but universities and other institutions are under growing pressure to install systems with the same kind of censorship and surveillance functionality. A clear message is also being sent that people will face serious consequences for posting sensitive information: the Fujian-based blogger and twitter user Guo Baofeng (aka @amoiist on Twitter) was detained along with several other bloggers for posting information of an alleged gang-rape and murder committed by an allegedly politically well-connected man.

Bloggers from all over China - and the Chinese speaking world - rallied to free Guo with a postcard-writing campaign, and fundraising drive to cover his family's legal expenses. He was recently released. Now the same kind of nation-wide effort is underway to support Xu Zhiyong. Liberal Chinese intellectuals around the country are also rallying to their defense with eloquent essays. But writing in places that the domestic audience has easy access to isn't easy. Gongmeng's blog on QQ was shut down. Guangzhou-based columnist Xiao Shu has seen his posts related to Xu Zhiyong and Gongmeng removed by administrators of his Netease blog. Here is one such post that I saved in my aggregator and posted into Google docs for safekeeping. Meanwhile, though, people keep trying. A petition campaign is underway. With Gongmeng's blog and website shut down, staff continue to post updates about their situation on their Twitter account. They are conducing a fund-raising drive to help with legal fees. They continue to fight for their rights as guaranteed - in theory - by the Chinese constitution and body of laws.

But if rule-of-law for civil rights really is being reversed as Cohen and others fear, that doesn't bode well for liberals with lingering hopes that their fortunes will improve after the October 1st anniversary has passed. We can expect that China's liberal intellectuals and liberal bloggers will keep pushing for their rights to the maximum extent possible. One of many problems however is that the pool of lawyers they can turn to when they get in trouble is getting smaller and smaller. In which case - will that force China's liberals to get increasingly fed up, and become more radical, as Sharon Hom of HRIC suggests? Or will they get worn down, censored and marginalized, successfully discredited by the propaganda machine, their efforts unknown or misunderstood by the vast majority of the Chinese public?

Xinjiang Info-War

The screenshot above comes from the Anti-cnn.com website as it appeared on Saturday. The item is titled "Rebiya Fakes It! Using a fake photo to twist the truth in the Urumqi incident"

Click on the image to view an image of the full web page. I happen to have saved the page (a research habit I've developed) before Anti-CNN.com went completely offline, sometime on Sunday. For the time being at least there is a Google's cache of the front page from July 9.

Exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer mistakenly made prominent use in interviews of a photo that turned out to be from riots in Shishou, Hubei province, in late June. Al Jazeera has an account here.

Roland Soong at ESWN has a full account of how the photo came to be misconstrued and misused (scroll down to find the relavant material in his long compilation of news about the Xinjiang riots).

Apparently, the source of the error was Reuters, who had sourced the photo from Twitter and put it out on the wire before recalling it. Roland somehow got ahold of Reuters' recall notice (click to enlarge):

The Chinese media and netizens naturally went to town on the whole thing.

The unfortunate - but it appears genuinely honest - mistake by Rebiya Kadeer sparked a fury of comments on anti-cnn, many of which denounced the Western media for emphasizing Uighur casualties while making light of Han Chinese casualties. Some comments on that page and on other threads on the anti-cnn (which unfortunately I did not save) described the July 5th race riot as an act of terrorism, accused the Uighurs of being terrorists, and accused Western governments and the Western media of supporting anti-Chinese terrorism.

Such views were egged on by commentaries in the Chinese state-controlled media, some of which even appeared in English. One, which by Sunday had been removed (but which can still be found in the Google cache) began this way:

By whatever calculations, the blood-thirsty maiming and slaughtering of civilians, as young as six years old, in Urumqi, northwestern China's Xinjiang on July 5, is heinous homicide, barbarity against humanity, and terrorist act on China.

A look into the aftermath of the bloodbath found it bore the hallmark of secret and well choreography aiming at innocent human lives, identical to Al Qaeda's killing of thousands of office workers at the World Trade Center twin towers on September 11, 2001. The terrorists this time did not use flying petrol bombs to detonate tall buildings, they brandished steel rods and wielded knives to end lives.

It continues:

The barbarity has astonished China and the world. Thanks to the authorities' revised policy of free on-spot reportage, in sharp contrast to previous media controls, more people on the globe have got to know the senseless killing. Some said that even during New Stone ages, our ancestors, though barely dressed, did not do this to each other while chasing nuts and edibles in the woods.

..and so on.

This kind of language has raged all over the Chinese Internet between July 5 and Saturday or so.

With Xinjiang we've seen substantial evolution of the Chinese government's media strategy in times of unrest, aimed to make the best of a bad situation. The government has come to recognize that media blackouts don't work in the Internet age. Assuming your goal is to maintain the central government's power and the Communist Party's overall legitimacy (rather than total social control which they gave up on a long time ago) when localized unrest flares up it is more effective a multi-pronged strategy, as follows:

1. Cut off the Internet and mobile messaging in the immediate area where the violence took place.
2. Censor blogs, chatrooms, search engines and social networking sites heavily to prevent people from spreading unofficial information or using social networks to organize. Increase blocks on overseas sites. Shut some domestic ones down if needed.
3. Get Xinhua, the People's Daily, CCTV and other officially sanctioned news outlets on the scene as soon as possible. Fill the airwaves, news pages, and domestic websites with the government-approved version of what happened. (This new approach first emerged as a riot-information-management strategy with last year's Weng'an riots.)
4. Grant access to foreign media - the lesson of last year's Tibet unrest is that if you keep them out they're not going to believe a thing you say. This time, foreign reporters have directly reported about Han victims of Uighur violence as well as Uighur victims of Han violence. Which is probably one reason why the foreign media has not directly challenged the government's official death toll reflecting many more Han dead than Uighur dead, though they've quoted the Uighur exile groups who say the Uighur toll is actually much higher. Coverage instead emphasizes how hard it is to figure out what's going on, which is a much better storyline for the Chinese government than "they won't let us in, what are they hiding?"
5. Be helpful: facilitate the foreign media coverage with press conferences, a dedicated news center, and a discounted hotel in the area you want them to stay in. Allow the police to kick them out of places you'd rather they didn't go to, act coy when reporters complain.
6. Wait for the inevitable mistakes to be made in the Western media - mis-captioned photo here, mistakenly used video there, a grossly oversimplified turn of phrase comparing a race riot to the 1989 democracy movement, plus some downright factual errors here and there. Let the nationalistic blogosphere and Chinese media outlets like Global Times rip into these things as proof of the West's anti-China bias and deliberate obfuscation of the truth.
7. Take advantage of the failure by Western commentators, exiled activists, and human rights groups to consider how their statements and actions may sound and look to ordinary Chinese people, even those who are open to critiques of their government. Last year we saw a pro-Tibet protestor accosting a wheelchair-bound Chinese athlete. In the Xinjiang case, many Western commentators and human rights groups have condemned methods used in the crackdown, expressed legitimate concerns about an impending witchunt against Uighurs, and rightly critiqued the Chinese government's bad policies that led to the ethnic tensions, but then in many cases failed to deplore the killing of innocent Han. This has given many Chinese the impression that the West condones Uighur violence as excusable because they're an oppressed minority. For example, this statement by Human Rights Watch is unlikely to play well with Chinese audiences because it expresses no concern for the loss of innocent Han lives and stops short of condemning all killers regardless of ethnic background. The Chinese government can afford to dismiss it without domestic political cost.

The result is that while they've got much unpleasantness to deal with, their legitimacy in the minds of the majority of Chinese is sufficiently maintained. While many people may have a lot of serious issues with their government, enough people end up concluding that the foreigners and the exiles may not have the Chinese peoples' interests at heart either - so might as well stick with the current crop of bums and work things out with them gradually.

This weekend, however, the censors seem to have decided that the patriotism may have gone too far. Hence the deletion of certain articles, the shutting down of Xinjiang-related discussions in nationalist-leaning fora like the Global Times, and the outage of anti-cnn.com.

One reason for dialing things back may be the reactions coming from the Islamic world. Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan has condemned China's crackdown in Xinjiang as genocide. Global Voices' Iran editor dug up this Persian-language blog comparing the Chinese in Xinjiang to the Israelis in Palestine. I get the impression that there is a lot more of that kind of sentiment out there. China has spent the last few decades cultivating strong relationships with the Islamic world, including Iran. China badly needs their oil, among other things. Chinese companies, engineering crews, and construction workers are all over the Middle East and Africa. Suppress the Tibetans however you like and your external economic relationships won't suffer that much. Treat China's restive Muslim minority in an insensitive, ham-fisted manner, and there could be all kinds of hell to pay. Time to start figuring out how to govern a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural country in a sustainable, enlightened way.

What's also interesting, I find, is that this year in the wake of the Xinjiang riots I've been seeing a lot of discussion and critique on Chinese-language websites about the Chinese government's ethnic policies. Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong but there seems to be a more detailed and nuanced policy discussion going on this year than in the wake of last year's Tibet unrest. A number of postings by Han Chinese people who've lived in Xinjiang, and who think that the government's minority policies have been a failure, have been translated by China Digital Times, Global Voices, Fools Mountain, and ESWN among others. I've come across several Chinese blog posts and articles analyzing the policies on ethnicity and race practiced in Europe and North America. There seems to be a pretty strong consensus among nationalists as well as liberals that - whatever the solution may be - the status quo policies are not working. Combine this with pressure from the Islamic world to do a better job, will things change?

The problem, however, is this: does the Chinese government have the ability to conduct credible policy reform? If good policy happened to be formulated, does the center have enough control over the localities to actually implement it effectively?

If the answer to those two questions continues to be "no," the Chinese government's new and improved information management strategies may help them keep the country together in the short and maybe even medium term, but in the long run even the cleverest and most thorough strategy of censorship and information management will be hard pressed to prop up failed policy and bad governance.

[UPDATED] Green Dam reincarnated in QQ? - initial comments received cast doubt..

UPDATE (Monday 10am London time): Comments received to this post so far indicate that the Boxun.com upon which this post is based may have significantly exaggerated the situation. I am be investigating further and will report back. Clearly I posted prematurely and for that I apologize.

----

Pseudonymous blogger dafengqixi, writing on a Hong Kong-based blogging platform, has linked to this very interesting post published Saturday on the overseas Chinese news platform, Boxun.com (blocked in mainland China).

It reports that QQ, China's largest instant-messaging and micro-blogging service (with over 570 million registered users of its IM service, see Wikipedia entry about it here), is now requiring users of the QQ IM client to install a censorware upgrade - possibly also containing spyware - before they can continue using the client.

It features this screenshot:

Upon opening his (or her - the author is not named) QQ client, the reporter was greeted with the above pop-up window. It says:

QQ Online Upgrade

Your QQ must install the upgrade below before you can continue to use it:

Upgrade content:

Security, Important Patch Upgrade

Detailed information:

Improves the user's login performance

The Boxun article reports that due to recent unrest in Xinjiang and related concerns about security and social stability, the government has required QQ to implement a mandatory software upgrade which would block and track the use of sensitive keywords, enabling authorities to follow conversation trends of users, track and monitor them, etc. The model, according to the reporter, is Green Dam.

The QQ client only works on Microsoft Windows computers. As a Mac user I am unable to download and duplicate the reporter's experience. I would like to hear from others confirming whether they get the same popup requiring the mandatory download. I also hope people will test the upgraded client with some of the Xinjiang-related keywords found in a recent government order to filter search engine results, and some of the political keywords recently unearthed from the Green Dam software.

For readers unfamiliar with QQ, here is how Scott Harley at the Internet and Democracy Blog recently described QQ's importance Chinese Internet users:

Another emerging form of domestic communication is Tencent’s Instant Messaging (IM) on QQ.com. No site in China enables greater horizontal web communication than QQ.com, now the 9th largest web property in the world. Founded by Pony Ma in 1998, Tencent –a Chinese-listed company earning $1.2 billion annually in revenue, 88 percent via the sale of “virtual goods” rather than online advertising– has over 570 million registered users of its IM service. In January Tencent launched an English version of the IM platform at IMQQ.com, and a 3G version that offers QQ chat, real-time news, and search engine accessible over mobile phone.

Many users in Western China, and across rural China, do not have email accounts. And many rural Chinese view and understand the Internet as Tencent, the platform on which they’ve grown up. In fact, as of March 2009 China had as many active Tencent QQ users as it officially had people online. Despite focus on access to Google and Twitter –observations of Tweet trends, and Google search engine query data patterns– undoubtedly most relevant in China is continued access to those domestic services of communication most widely used by Chinese citizens.

Some more Green Dam documents...

This photo, posted last week on Twitpic by a pseudonymous blogger claiming to be based in Hangzhou, shows a document included in the box of a new Sony Vaio computer. (Click to enlarge.)

It is titled: "Sony Disclaimer Notice Concerning the Green Dam - Youth Escort" Software." The document makes the following points (my summary, not verbatim translation):

• Green Dam doesn't support a 64-bit operating system, so PC's with the 64-bit OS don't include this software.
• The software is provided to users in accordance with government requirements.
• Sony cannot guarrantee the authenticity, legality, or compatibility of the software's content, function, service or any other feature.
• Sony assumes no responsibility whatsoever for any kinds of loss or harm incurred by the user as a result of use of Green Dam. Sole responsibility lies with the software's maker.
• The locations on the PC's hard drive of the program and user manual are then listed.

So it appears that Sony has gone ahead with distribution of Green Dam on at least some of its computers sold in China, providing the program on the hard disk for the user to install if they want, with major disclaimers.

Meanwhile the Wall Street Journal reports that a broad coalition of international business associations, including most of the world's major technology companies have issued an appeal directly to Premier Wen Jiabao:

The letter, which was viewed by The Wall Street Journal, says the plan "raises serious concerns for us and seems to run counter to China's important goal of becoming a vibrant and dynamic information-based society."

It urges the government to "reconsider implementing the Green Dam requirements," and proposes an open dialogue on parental controls over content for children. "The Green Dam mandate raises significant questions of security, privacy, system reliability, the free flow of information and user choice," it says.

An executive from the Taiwanese computer company Acer is quoted saying they're going ahead with compliance, having "no choice."

I have also received two documents from an anonymous source. Both were issued by the Ministry of Information Industry in 2006. They're in Chinese, and quite long. I have not had a chance to go over them in detail. I am sharing them both in full. Hopefully somebody with more time and stronger technical translation skills than I have will help the community by doing a partial or full translation.
In sending me these documents my source points out: "Note the Jinhui and others were drafters of this standard. The 国家计算机网络应急技术处理中心 is a national cyber security related organization... Note that it also refers to possible mobile phone standards of similar nature. Also language in there about having a remote access capability."

The first is titled "Technical Requirements of Internet Parental Control Software Based on PC"
Green Dam Technical Requirements - Official Doc (Chinese)

The second document is titled "Test Methods of Internet Parental Control Software Based on PC"Green Dam Test Methods Official Document

China's censorship blowback

I'm not sure what the Chinese government is thinking, or whether certain parts of certain ministries and party apparatus have gotten completely out of control.  

Until recently, it had seemed to me that the Chinese government was managing its censorship system with surprising success: censoring enough (combined with strategic arrests) to keep people from using the Internet to organize a successful nation-wide political opposition movement; but at the same time allowing enough space for online discourse and citizen-muckraking that people have felt freer and more empowered than ever before, which actually seemed to work in favor of the central government's legitimacy - despite being very bad news for corrupt local officials. But this month, something shifted. It's unclear whether the shift is long-lasting or just temporary madness until the PRC's 60th anniversary on October 1st.

Most of China's educated, largely apolitical, internet-connected urbanites have until now been generally willing to accept the political status quo - and with it a certain amount of censorship, thuggishness and injustice, political paranoia and occasional bizarreness - in exchange for overall social stability (compared to any other time in living Chinese memory), economic growth, plus an impressive increase in China's global power and status. But whoever is driving the latest Internet crackdown and the accompanying moralistic propaganda drive may have done substantial damage to the government's credibility.

June began with the expected tightening of Internet censorship around the 20th anniversary of the June 4th crackdown, including the temporary blocking of Twitter and various other websites. That in itself was not a huge surprise. It followed the usual logic of Chinese Internet censorship: tighten up the bottleneck between the Chinese Internet and the outside Internet during politically sensitive periods. Chinese Internet users who tend to be concerned with politics know to expect this kind of thing. However a simultaneous suspension in service for "technical maintenance" on many domestic websites impacted a much larger number of Chinese Internet users who don't visit overseas-hosted news or social networking sites very much. It would likely not have occurred to many million Internet users that June 4th was a politically sensitive date if China's "net nanny" hadn't made it so blatantly obvious, prompting many teenagers who weren't even born in 1989 to ask each other and their parents what happened on June 4th. But that was June 4th. People expect a certain amount of government paranoia around that time.

Little did we know, that was just the beginning of The Month The Censors Stopped Taking Their Medication.

The next week the government's Green Dam censorware mandate became publicly known. Authorities insist on implementing the mandate despite the fact that it doesn't work as intended or advertised, is a security risk and has been subject to widespread domestic criticism (by bloggers as well as state-controlled media and respected public figures like Caijing editor Hu Shuli). Now the U.S. government warns it could be a violation of the WTO. It seems the government is having trouble finding a face-saving way to climb down. Rather than admit they made a mistake and work out a sensible solution with domestic and foreign industry, they have chosen instead to escalate in an increasingly irrational manner that serves only to increase Chinese Internet users' scorn and irritation.

Last week the propaganda department turned it sights on Google China, and continues to blame Google for smut on the Internet. Horror of horrors, when you type smutty words and phrases into the Google search box, you get smutty content coming back in your search results! Many people including this blogger (via Roland Soong) and this blogger have pointed out that plenty of smut remains available via Google's Chinese competitor Baidu. How commercially convenient for Baidu... though some bloggers point out that the whole fracas - aided by outrage and ridicule over a staged anti-Google interview on CCTV - is actually making Google more popular among netizens, who were already annoyed with the government for dispensing commercial favoritism on the makers of Green Dam.

So far this week we've seen the temporary blocking of Google.com and related services hosted outside of China including GMail. As if that wasn't bad enough for one week, we're now told that sexual health websites are a no-go for ordinary Internet users.

Meanwhile, the increased discussion of censorship all over the Chinese Internet is prompting China's netizens to educate themselves about the various technical methods to "jump over" the "great firewall." There are no hard and fast statistics on how many people in China are now using proxy servers, Tor, Psiphon, Freegate/Dynaweb, or OpenDNS as compared to a month ago. But based on the frequent mentions of these tools I've been seeing every day on blogs, in Twitter, and on other social networking sites, it seems that the latest Net Nanny follies have helped raise awareness of circumvention tools to a whole new level. If you plug the term 翻墙 (which means "scale the wall" - the most common Chinese euphemism for censorship circumvention) into Google's search insights and restrict it to searches coming from China, you see a big spike in early June and a bigger spkie in the past few days (click to enlarge):

Searches for Tor (a nonprofit tool for anonymizing and circumvention) are also substantially up this month, and Chinese-language searches originating in China for Freegate (a tool developed and operated by a FLG-affiliated organization) spiked dramatically over the weekend.

Aggravation is certainly mounting. After finding Google.com and GMail blocked on Wednesday night Beijing time, Jeremy Goldkorn, who runs Danwei.org wrote a letter to China's "net nanny," in which he pointed out: "You are making Chinese people look like children on the world stage. You are bringing shame to the People's Republic of China, and the Chinese Communist Party."

To protest the mounting ridiculousness, Ai Weiwei is calling for an Internet boycott on July 1st. Others like lawyer-blogger Liu Xiaoyuan believe a boycott is not the best way to protest Internet restrictions. He writes (translated by Roland): "We have nothing against the Internet. We should not boycott the Internet. We should be using the Internet to promote democracy, rule of law, people's livelihood and progressiveness." Roland suggests some other kind of protest that is more measurable, as the success or failure of an Internet boycott is very hard to measure. Meanwhile a group of anonymous Chinese Netizens have issued an open letter, vowing to take collective action on July 1st. It's not clear exactly what they will do, other than to say: "we are going to acquaint your censorship machine with systematic sabotage and show you just how weak the claws of your censorship really are. We are going to mark you as the First Enemy of the Internet."

The following paragraph is particularly interesting. They claim they're not interested in overthrowing the government; but the government is bringing on its own punishment for behaving in such a stupid manner:

NOBODY wants to topple your regime. We take no interest whatsoever in your archaic view of state power and your stale ideological teachings. You do not understand how your grand narrative dissipated in the face of Internetization. You do not understand why appealing to statism and nationalism no longer works. You cannot break free from your own ignorance of the Internet. Your regime is not our enemy. We are not affiliated in any way with any country or organization, and we are not waging this war on any country or organization, not even on you. YOU are waging this war on yourself. YOU are digging your own grave through corruption and antagonization. We are not interested in you, destined for the sewage of history. You cannot stop the Internetization of the human race. In fact, we won't bat an eyelid even if you decide to sever the transpacific information cables in order to obtain the total control you wanted. The harder you try to roll back history, the more you strain the already taut strings, and the more destructive their final release. You are accelerating your own fall. The sun of tomorrow does not shine on those who are fearing tomorrow itself.

June has been pretty wild. I wonder what July has in store...

Green Dam's makers fail to fix problems

Last week, computer scientists at the University of Michigan, The Open Net Initiative, and an independent group of Chinese programmers all found serious security flaws in the government-mandated Green Dam-Youth Escort software.

Earlier this week a Chinese official told the China Daily "that all security problems reported by the professors from University of Michigan had been fixed."

Well, not really. The Michigan team has found that while some problems are fixed, more serious security problems remain. Here is the summary of their latest update:

Following our initial analysis, the makers of Green Dam have released at least one security update and two filter updates. These updates address the original web filtering security vulnerability we described above, disable certain blacklists that were copied from the CyberSitter program, and bring the software into compliance with the OpenCV license.

Unfortunately, we have discovered an additional remotely-exploitable security vulnerability in the patched version. Even with the updated version installed, any web site a user visits can exploit this problem to take control of the computer. We continue to recommend that users protect themselves by uninstalling Green Dam immediately.

While Green Dam's developers have patched the software quickly, the program's continuing vulnerability suggests that its security problems run deep. We fear that the deeper problems cannot be resolved in time for the July 1 deadline for PC makers to distribute Green Dam on all new PCs sold in China.

Read the details here.

Also of possible interest is my Op-Ed in yesterday's Asian Wall Street Journal, The Green Dam Phenomenon: Governments everywhere are treading on Web freedoms.

Whether or not Green Dam ends up being mandated, this is not the end - not for China nor for the rest of the world. It's just the beginning. Get ready. I conclude:

It is very encouraging that a coalition of industry groups has pushed back publicly against the Green Dam mandate, calling on the Chinese government to reconsider. But the Green Dam incident is yet another example of why it behooves companies to think ahead about how they are going to uphold their larger responsibility to society. Industry has a choice: be reactive -- and be forced into growing complicity with government censorship and surveillance around the globe. Or be pro-active, develop robust human-rights policies, and consider how to responsibly handle the inevitable pressures by all kinds of governments to serve as national auto-parent, if not auto-cop.

Green Damned

Chinese netizens are certainly having fun mocking the government's mandate for PC manufacurers to install the Green Dam-Youth Escort software. Danwei posted some great pictures of cartoon "green dam girls," greated in the style of Japanese porno manga. This one on the left (click to enlarge) is removing the underwear of "Windows XP Girl". Hecaitou has a lot more.

The Guardian, Associated Press, and even the China Daily are now quoting an unnamed Chinese official at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology who says that the installation of Green Dam-Youth Escort is "not compulsory." The China Daily reports:

"The PC makers only need to save the setup files of the program on the hard drives of the computers, or provide CD-ROMs containing the program with their PC packages," said an official of the department of software service under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, who did not want to be named.

PC users have the "final say" over installing the filter and recent reports of the government compelling them to use the software was "a misunderstanding", the official said.

"The government only provides the Green Dam-Youth Escort software for free."

It seems like there must have been some kind of policy tug-of-war going on these past few days. Late last week the Communist Party's Propaganda Department sent round an edict to the media instructing them to say nice things about Green Dam and stop being so critical. But Caijing and other media continued running critical articles, and then the People's daily website, Renminwang, launched a whole feature section on Saturday with full coverage of the Green Dam story - pro and con. Plus a reader opinion poll. Here's the screenshot I took Monday morning of the results, soon before the whole thing got taken down (click to enlarge):

At the time the screenshot was taken, more than 5 million readers had voted. 16 percent (nearly 880 thousand) supported Green Dam, while 74 percent (more than 4 million) voted against it.

On the left is a screenshot of the front page of the feature section, provocatively titled: "Have you been 'Green Dam-Youth Escort-ed' today?" (Click to enlarge.) Interestingly, the accompanying discussion forum has not been deleted - and it's full of comments criticizing or mocking Green Dam. Even though the main section has been taken offline, Chinese media insiders say the fact that the critical analysis and online poll managed to appear at all on the People’s Daily website is proof of strong internal government disagreement over how to respond to this public relations fiasco.

Despite today's reports about an apparent climbdown, however, I got an email from one person in the industry who said his company has yet to hear anything different from the original directive in his company's discussions with the government. So the game may not be completely over, and some in the industry are concerned about the implications of even providing an accompanying disc, knowing the security and IP issues in addition to the free speech implications.

Meanwhile the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has ordered Green Dam's maker, Jinhui Computer System Engineering Co. to urgently patch their now well-documented security flaws. That could take a while if it’s to be done right: the University of Michigan computer scientists who analyzed Green Dam last week warned that the problems are so serious that they can only be resolved with “extensive changes to the software and careful retesting.” Whether the government requires installation or just an accompanying disc, it’s unclear whether it will still hold PC makers and importers to the original July 1^st implementation deadline. It also remains unclear whether the mandate will ultimately end up being enforced. If Jinhui fails to patch Green Dam’s leaks to government satisfaction in a timely manner, that could give the authorities solid reason to scrap the plan. Meanwhile, never a dull moment on the Chinese Internet. I look forward to the continued Chinese online humor... including this doozy that some reader managed to post for a short period of time also on the People's Daily site: