RConversation

China isn't happy with the IGF

On the final day of a four-day meeting, most government representatives expressed support for renewing the Internet Governance Forum's five-year mandate which ends next year. China did not.  Chen Yin, the head of the Chinese delegation to the Internet Governance Forum, said yesterday that the IGF's mandate should not be continued without reforms. Below is the full text of his statement, taken from the official transcript here (PDF). Video (with bad-quality audio in Chinese) can be found on YouTube here. I've added a few links so that the acronyms will make more sense to people who aren't professional Internet governance wonks:

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The Chinese delegation has noted that as mandated by WSIS, IGF has conducted productive and effective activities in promoting dialogue and exchange among the multi-stakeholders, and will conclude its mandate within its five-year life span. We would like to congratulate and appreciate the excellent work done by IGF Secretariat, MAG, and all the hosting countries including Greece, Brazil, India and Egypt. Meanwhile, we would like to point out some of the IGF shortcomings, as described following. 

First of all, the current IGF cannot solve in substance the issue of unilateral control of the critical internet resources.

Secondly, the developing countries are lack of resources for participating in IGF meetings, and the priority of development agenda has been downplayed, which made IGF lacking of broad representation. 

Thirdly, the issues discussed in IGF have duplicated a lot with the work being explored and covered by other UN agencies and international organizations.

Therefore, Chinese delegation think, without reform to the IGF as it is, it is not necessary to give the IGF a five-year extension. In the meantime, we noted that relevant parties, developing countries in particular, hope that internet governance issues could be discussed at the U.N. level. We support the views of Saudi Arabia and other developing countries in their proposal to set up the Enhanced Cooperation mechanism within the U.N. framework.

In our view, if the mechanism of Enhanced Cooperation needs the extension of IGF for the purpose of exchanging views among multi-stakeholders, IGF should carry out reforms in the following ways. 

First, the future IGF should, in accordance with the provision of Tunis Agenda, focus on how to solve the issue of unilateral control of the critical Internet resources. 

Secondly, the representation and voices of the developing countries should be increased in the IGF, and the development issue should be placed as the first priority. 

Thirdly, we should seriously consider the possibility of incorporating IGF financing into the regular U.N. budget, and provide assistance to developing countries for their participation in the IGF meetings. 

Fourthly, we should follow rigidly the Tunis Agenda so that the reformed IGF should not duplicate the work and mandate of the other organizations.

Fifthly, a Bureau should be set up with a balanced membership of various parties and geographical regions, and its term of reference and rules of procedures should be formulated by the United Nation. 

Sixthly, on tenure of the future IGF, we deem it necessary to review the extension of the IGF every two or three years.

In the view of the Chinese delegation, the setting up of a mechanism for Enhanced Cooperation with a reformed IGF will effectively promote the global Internet governance process and facilitate the achievement of Millennium Development Goals.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

China @ ICANN: thoughts from former CEO Paul Twomey

Nobody else appears to have reported this - at least not anywhere I can find - but last week marked a major turning point for China's engagement with ICANN. It was probably also a major turning point in China's strategy on Internet governance.

The Chinese government sent Cui Shutian, Deputy Director, Division of Telecommunications Services and Resources, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) to represent its interests in ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) at last month's ICANN meeting in Sydney. Outgoing ICANN CEO Paul Twomey confirmed to me that it was the first time the Chinese government has engaged directly with ICANN since 2001.

(It's likely that some of my more China-focused and less-techie readers have never heard of ICANN - the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. This California-based non-profit corporation is responsible for making sure that the Internet functions as one globally inter-operable system. Its primary job is to coordinate the global assignment of domain names and IP addresses - which turns out to be a very complicated and increasingly political job. Click here, here, here, and here for useful background.)

One reason the Chinese government disengaged from ICANN and is now re-engaging will be familiar to China wonks: Taiwan. The issue of what it should be called. Beijing was not interested in lending any legitimacy to Taiwan's government under the pro-independence president Chen Shui-bian, and the Chen government wasn't big on compromising with Beijing either. Now it's agreed that Taiwan will officially be referred to as "Chinese Taipei" at ICANN (though the .tw designation won't change), and the two governments in the Ma Ying-jeou era are more willing to be pragmatic with one another, in cyberspace as well as in "meatspace."

The second reason for China's re-engagement with ICANN is that the Chinese government and ICANN have both realized they need each other, at least for the short and medium term.

Some background (skip this paragraph if you are an Internet governance wonk): The Chinese government has long suported Internet governance reform. The fact that ICANN (founded in 1998) ultimately answers to the U.S. Department of Commerce has for most of this decade been a matter of concern to a number of governments, from China to Brazil, Iran, and the European Union. Reform proposals have ranged from ICANN "internationalization" - with supervision by multiple governments - to scrapping ICANN completely and transferring its functions to a U.N. body like the ITU (International Telecommunication Union). Arguments over ICANN's future reached a climax in 2005 during the run-up to the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis, at which governments agreed there wasn't enough consensus to change the ICANN-based status quo. Instead, the Internet Governance Forum was created with a 5-year mandate to continue inter-governmental and multi-stakeholder dialogue on how the global Internet should be governed, managed, developed, and regulated in the future. That mandate will end next year. In May of this year China publicly opposed the renewal of the IGF's mandate, declaring it a costly, messy, time-wasting shop and reiterating its longstanding position that Internet governance should be in the hands of sovereign governments, not other groups. Meanwhile the Joint Project Agreement between ICANN and the U.S. Department of Commerce expires this September. The U.S. Congress, concerned with U.S. interests, wants to keep things as they are. The European Union issued an official statement last month calling for "a more open, independent, and accountable governance of the Internet." African nations, interestingly, have shifted from supporting reform to supporting the status quo. Chinese officials have continued to express concern about a "monopoly" controlling the Internet, and have made it clear that they want to continue discussing the JPA, but I've not seen anything to indicate an official Chinese comment on the EU position or any other government's position.

According to Paul Twomey who stepped down as CEO of ICANN last week, China has not recently made public statements on ICANN and the JPA. Meanwhile he, the ICANN board, and the other members of the Governmental Advisory Committee have been working hard to make China feel comfortable engaging with ICANN. Here's what he said to me in response to my question about China's position:

In terms of the relationship with the United States government and the Joint Project Agreement, I haven't actually heard what the position of the Chinese government is but they have publicly said things in the past. But I dont think we're in anything like the bipolar situation that we had three four five six years ago, where we're sort of "ICANN love it or hate it." I don't think it's in that space anymore. I think it is, much more pragmatically, that this is an institution where there's a space for the Chinese government to participate in, that it's looking after the interests of the Chinese internet community, that they're dealing with real issues that really affect their concerns, and they're welcome. And i think that's important.

China can't afford not to engage with ICANN at this point in time. The Internet is about to undergo a huge real estate expansion and the Chinese government - along with China's domain name registrars - wants to make sure that Chinese government interests are well served as the rules and technical arrangements get laid out between now and early next year.

In 2010 ICANN will implement two big changes, and China has a big interest in how these changes are implemented. First, ICANN will soon allow anybody (who can pay the six-figure registration fee) to apply to run a "generic top-level domain" (gTLD) (Explanation for non-wonks: .com, .net, .cn, .asia, .mobi, .org, .gov, et cetera are all "top-level domains;" the word before the dot, for example "cnn" in cnn.com is called a second-level domain and that's what individuals, organizations, and companies buy when we purchase a domain name for our website. So for instance, if I was extremely rich and had the technical resources I could apply to create and operate .rebecca). So a religious organization, a political party, a company, or anybody with the resources who wants to administer a distinctive Internet address can apply to establish a new gTLD.

But that's not all. In 2010 ICANN will not only allow more gTLD's to be created, but it will also enable the creation of "internationalized" top-level domains, in non-English/non-Roman letter scripts. In other words it will for the first time be possible to have internationally accessible top-level Internet addresses in Chinese, Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, Thai, Japanese, and whatever other language can be input onto a computer. This is huge because it will make the Internet much more accessible to non-English speakers who have difficulty dealing with the current English-based global domain system. If we really want a truly global and multilingual Internet, having "international domain names," or IDN's as ICANN calls them, is essential. These new international top-level domains (IDN TLDs) will be divided into two categories: "country code TLDs" (ccTLDs) and "general TLDs" (gTLDs). For existing English-character ccTLD's (like .cn) each relevant country gets jurisdiction over how it is administered and the same will be the case for international ccTLD's. So .中国 will be controlled and administered the same way as .cn, and websites under that top-level domain will be subject to Chinese law. (Chinese bloggers have informed me that they stay away from .cn domain names because they lose their web address if their website is too politically controversial.) gTLD's, however, are different. ICANN's intention is that anybody anywhere in the world (with adequate resources) can apply to run a Chinese language gTLD. I asked Twomey what happens if people in, say, Canada or Australia apply to run .falungong and the Chinese-language equivalent. Here's what he said in response:

First of all our process, and the process of moving our policy forward, are neutral processes. And we have a series of objections mechanisms through which people can bring objections, one which we're still working through, which is morality or public order, which is a term that exists in international treaties. There's still a great deal of discussion including in the Government Advisory Committee about how that can possibly work, and should it even be there.... But ICANN is not in the business of the application level. We're not in the business of content. So the strings that people might put forward, were not in the buisiness of deciding whether its a good string or not. There are opportunities, but we're not in the business of saying that's a good string or a bad string. We dont like that one we like this one. And its global. The generic top level domains are global top level domains.

So, in other words, I followed up, anybody can apply to run a generic TLD in any language from anywhere? He replied:

That's right. Its a global technology. The technology doesn't recognize geographic boundaries so we support that. Now whatever governments might decide to do in terms of access or filtering is their business not ours... and we leave that.. because we are if you like the guardians of the single inter-operable internet, our community and the ISPs [internet service providers] are the people who provide the single inter-operable internet. We think it's very important that the issues of the addressing and routing system are separate from the issues of content carried on them. And so we don't comment, we dont condone, but we don't make comment upon those sort of content issues. But what we do say is: you know, if a government has a content issue, don't break the domain name system to try to fix it. Because that's like killing the goose that laid the golden egg.

Finally, here's what Twomey said about jurisdiction of gTLDs:

Let's make it clear that generic top level domains, when they're created, will have contracts with ICANN. And those contracts will clearly state that the applicable law is the law of California. And they will be contracts. Right? You know, any national laws that apply to end registrations we can't comment on, but the law under which the TLD will actually operate will be the law of California.

Many of the details, however, in terms of how a government or anybody else can object to the creation of a new TLD on the grounds of "morality and public order," and under what criteria the ICANN board then comes to a final decision, have yet to be worked out. Also, in the case of multiple applicants for the same TLD, there will be some kind of process for the ICANN "community" to decide who deserves to get that particular domain. So being there at ICANN meetings is very important if you want to influence how the rules get shaped and who has rightful claim over various names. Having the ear of board members by developing a personal relationship with them is also very important, I'm told by people who currently run generic TLDs.

Then there are trademark and other issues related to who has the "right" to a particular TLD name. There is already a big fight over the extent to which brand names can be protected or reserved by companies that are worried about their trademarks being (in their view) appropriated by others. The Chinese government and Chinese companies have an interest in trademark protection not overly favoring Western business and industry on the one hand, while still protecting Chinese companies on the other, while also making sure that arbitration mechanisms are properly internationalized and not overly Western-centric. There are also concerns about who has a right to register and administer, say, .beijing or .guilin - to name a couple examples. The Chinese are also concerned that fights over trademark protection and proposed attempts by ICANN to create a new trademark arbitration body will delay the roll-out of gTLDs in general, and internationalized gTLD's in particular.

Then there are a bunch of technical issues related to this multi-lingual rollout, including an appeal by the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans among others that ICANN must change it's current rule that non-country TLD's must be 3 characters or more - given that most Chinese words are two characters in length, the three-character minimum requirement is obviously unreasonable. While the Chinese have actually already implemented Chinese-language TLD's within mainland China, they don't work outside of China. Asian ICANN participants last week repeatedly expressed frustration that it's taking too long for ICANN to move forward on this.

So there are lots of reasons why the Chinese need to engage with ICANN now, and not wait till it's restructured or its functions re-appropriated to its greater liking. Here's how Twomey put it:

First of all there's a much better understanding of what ICANN does, what it is and what it's not. I think secondly ICANN is working on issues that really are important to the internet communities of China, for instance. So particularly on the internationalized domain names and the internationalized domain names for the country codes, these are core areas of interest to the Chinese, especially to the Ministry of Information Industry and Technology. But also for the broader Chinese internet community. I'm very pleased that not only has China come back to the GAC but that there's a broad commitment in China now to have Chinese institutions and organizations participating in the ICANN context. ...ICANN is looking at the role of the GAC and what it does and how it participates. And how it interacts with the board. we've continued to have that discussion. I think it's useful that China's at the table to have that discussion.

I was a first-timer at ICANN last week, but sitting through a week of meetings, I got the distinct impression that few people expect ICANN to be radically restructured this year. Most people seemed to expect that the JPA will be renewed in some fashion for now, due to lack of consensus over an alternative. Meanwhile the Government Advisory Committee seems to be getting an expanded role, with more opportunity to lobby the interests of governments as ICANN moves forward in radically expanding the Internet's real estate. How things evolve in the longer run is harder to say, but the people running ICANN are clearly trying to make governments feel welcome to engage and work for change from within - pointing out that this is more likely to be conducive to a stable global Internet - rather than try to dismantle or radically and suddenly restructure it from the outside.

Bringing in China was likely a critical step by ICANN to ensure its own survival, at least in the short to medium term. For now, ICANN and China need each other.

Green Dam is breached...Now what?

As a number of China hands predicted, the Chinese government has postponed its mandate requiring that all computers sold in China must include the Green Dam -Youth Escort censorware by today.

Yesterday after the news broke I told the Financial Times: "There's been this impression in the internet industry that when the Chinese government makes a demand, they have to roll over and play dead. The lesson here is that's not necessarily the case." I'll put it more strongly here: The Green Dam episode proves yet again that when companies respond to critics by saying things like: "it's beyond our control if we want to do business in China" or "there's nothing we can do or we will get kicked out," that is a huge pile of, well, equine excrement.

What should be abundantly clear from events of the past several weeks is that industry and even ordinary citizens can have a real impact on policy outcomes in China - especially information and technology policy that has a direct impact on large numbers of people nationwide. It's not clear whether a new deadline will be set, the mandate radically revised, or the whole thing quietly scrapped. Which of those three options becomes reality depends very much on the actions over the next few months by industry, Chinese netizens, and various other actors.

Andrew Lih writes:

This should be seen as a case study on how the complexities of China’s decision system is much more nuanced than what a “Communist” regime would suggest, and the role of citizen deliberation in a new, upwardly mobile, aspirational, IT-savvy China.

While the outside world sees the PRC government in absolute control, in reality the heavy handed, top down authoritarian system rides on a delicate balance of, bottom up public consent that supports the state’s legitimacy.

Sky Canaves at WSJ.com's China Journal has a great post titled Green Dam and the Politics of Consent, in which she points out:

While it’s impossible to know what impact Chinese critics of the plan had relative to the vocal protestations of foreign governments, trade organizations and PC makers, the ministry’s latest move on Green Dam highlights the consensual nature of government and politics in China, which emphasizes stability and agreement among all parties involved.

Dan Harris sees this as an example of how China really is moving in the right direction:

China is billing it as a delay, but I can virtually guarantee this software will never be heard from again. I say this for two reasons. One, the people did not like it and Beijing does NOT want to go against the people on something like this. Since there is absolutely no reason to believe the people will ever start liking something like this, there is absolutely no reason to believe the software will return. Two, I know movement has been slow, and I know it has been in fits and starts, but if we were to draw a straight line through the rises and falls, freedom is on a fairly inexorable march in China.

William Moss, a.k.a. "Imagethief," however, isn't ready to pop the champagne just yet:

Green Dam Youth Escort may have submarined as predicted, but make no mistake, this isn't over. The objective that drove it the Green Dam plan, the desire to "purify the Internet", still stands. All attempts are being made to wrap the demise of Green Dam in face-saving balm, but there is no disguising the thoroughly humiliating nature of the episode. Nothing stokes the fires of zealotry like a bout of punishing humiliation, and I'd expect to see that zealotry redirected in coming months in an attempt to justify the Green Dam initiative. The recent assault on Google may be a sign of things to come. PC makers may be able to breathe a sigh of relief now, but portals, video sharing sites, social networks, Internet cafes and others may be in for an interesting few months. Watch this space.

A piece in today's Financial Times (subscription required) points out that scrapped mandates sometimes get resurrected later on in somewhat different forms. One example was Beijing's failed attempt to require that all mobile phones sold in China adhere to a new WAPI standard (alternative to Wifi). Strong industry pushback caused that mandate to be scrapped but it's now been revived, the FT writes:

In 2004, the Chinese government surprised the communication industry with an edict that the homegrown wireless encryption standard – in competition to WiFi – would be compulsory for all mobile data products sold in the country. Only just before the May deadline, Wu Yi, then vice-premier, backed down during a visit to the US. After China failed to win recognition for WAPI as an international standard two years later, the industry assumed the episode was over.

But now, WAPI is back, with a demand by the Chinese government that WiFi handsets for sale in the country will only receive approval if they are also equipped with WAPI.

I agree with "Imagethief" that while the Green Dam mandate may never be revived in its present form, we can absolutely expect that Chinese government efforts to clean up Internet smut, promote a "green Internet," and control Internet content in the name of protecting China's children are by no means over.

There is the short run and the long run. In the short run, everybody's unavoidably in for a rough patch which is likely to continue in one way or another through the end of the year with the 60th anniversary of the PRC's founding on October 1st.

In the long run the Chinese public will value companies that treat adults like adults and give them choice and control over their lives. In the long run such products will win consumer loyalty. Ethical business practices that demonstrate respect for users' and customers' interests and rights - despite a very difficult regulatory environment - will serve companies better in the long run. A roll-over-and-play-dead policy is no way to build a brand's reputation in China or anywhere else.

Industry should take the Chinese government at its word that its goal is to protect children, and try to work out sustainable, ethical solutions on that basis. The drive to censor porn does actually have roots in genuine public frustration about children's easy access to smut and violence on the Chinese Internet. There is a real problem and lots of people expect their government to do something about it. Chinese parents' frustration is shared by parents around the world. Whether the problem can actually be solved by technical means without over-censoring and violating civil liberties, however, or whether the problem's real solutions are social and cultural (requiring parents and teachers to do the hard work as parents and teachers instead of foisting most of the responsibility on companies and governments), is subject of debate in China as well as in pretty much every country with substantial Internet penetration.

Because the Chinese government is un-transparent and unaccountable it will keep using porn as an excuse not only to exercise political control but also to go after foreign companies like Google when the mood suits them (with Chinese competitors egging them on) - and maybe even to help give a leg up to home-grown businesses. But it's also important to recognize that the Chinese government views itself as being part of a global pro-censorship, anti-porn freak-out "we have to do something" bandwagon.

Even democratically elected governments are increasingly turning to national-level Internet censorship as a solution to child porn and hate speech, and in some cases also intellectual property theft, and other real or perceived social ills - depending on whose opinion you go by. The German parliament passed a bill two weeks ago to implement a national Internet filtering system. As I wrote in my op-ed for WSJ Asia last month (links added):

In a petition against the bill, German civil liberties groups call it "untransparent and uncontrollable, since the 'block lists' cannot be inspected, nor are the criteria for putting a Web site on the list properly defined." These concerns aren't unfounded: Some German politicians have already suggested extending the block list to Islamist Web sites, video games and gambling Web sites, while book publishers have suggested it would also be nice to block file-sharing sites too.

Since 2007 Australia's Labor government has advocated a policy of mandatory national filtering. In the face of fierce public criticism the censorship plan may be downgraded to a voluntary industry initiative. But critics remain concerned the block list will not be selected and maintained in a transparent or accountable way -- and that the process for appeal is very unclear, making it likely that some Web sites will be blocked in error or that "mission creep" could take place without adequate public supervision.

In Britain, a "block list" of harmful Web sites, used by all the major Internet Service Providers, is maintained by a private foundation with little transparency and no judicial or government oversight of the list. At least one British family protection group, Mediamarch, has already spoken out in support of the Green Dam concept of moving censorship from the network down to the device level.

PC makers, mobile phone companies, search engines like Google and Internet content providers will remain under strong government pressure in China to "do something" about things the government doesn't like - just as today they are under pressure in many other countries from Thailand to Turkey.

Industry should give the Chinese government as little excuse as possible to use child protection as an excuse to accomplish other goals that have much less public support and which are contrary to globally recognized human rights norms. Industry should perhaps encourage and maybe even fund in China a set of public forums and independent research efforts and so forth to examine how can industry work together with China's parents, teachers, and government to protect China's children. Initiate efforts to work with Chinese experts to develop strong culturally appropriate Chinese-language parental control software that puts control in the hands of end users. China is a potential R&D test-bed to innovate on genuine best practices in child-protection technologies... to the extent that we can realistically expect technology to be able protect children from humans...

Ultimately the problem extends well beyond China and the solutions must also be approached in a global way. It's too easy once technical censorship systems are put in place for them to be abused, or for there to be "mission creep" even in democratic societies. There is little consensus in democratic countries on questions like: What are the best ways to protect children in the Internet age? Is too much emphasis being placed on technical solutions? Do politicians and civil society need to recognize that ultimately the solutions are social and cultural? How best to develop child protection policy and business practices that really accomplishes the goal of protecting children without encroaching on civil liberties and giving governments the excuse to censor content that goes beyond porn without appropriate accountability mechanisms? We need a more intelligent global policy and industry discourse on these questions, because as it stands global political trends are not on the side of free speech protections... whatever the trend-line might look like in China on any given day.

(Note: Some content at the end of this post appeared on this blog briefly last week when an unfinished draft post was mistakenly published.)

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