RConversation

links for 2006-04-30

• All Headline News - Chinese Premier Defends Country's Internet Censorship - April 29, 2006
  Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao is defending his country’s censorship of the Internet, saying it was necessary to safeguard "national, social and collective interests."
  (tags: china chineseinternetresearch censorship freespeech)
• Comment is free: The true price of doing business in China
  Are Yahoo and Google betraying the promise of the internet as a tool for free speech?
  (tags: china chineseinternetresearch yahoo google censorship freespeech)
• AsiaMedia :: HONG KONG: Hong Kong experts fear censorship from media audit
  Local media question motives of government investigation into public broadcaster RTHK
  (tags: hongkong freespeech censorship china journalism)
• Human Rights in China
  Human Rights in China (HRIC) has learned that dissident Wang Xiaoning was sentenced to 10 years in prison on the basis of essays he distributed through the Internet. Wang was sentenced more than two years ago, but his case has only recently come to light.
  (tags: yahoo! china chineseinternetresearch humanrights freespeech)
• MediaShift . Digging Deeper::Singapore Tries to Squelch Political Blogs, Podcasts | PBS
  While many Americans have been focused lately on online censorship in China, few have noticed a similar practice in other countries such as Singapore.
  (tags: singapore censorship blogs podcasting citizenmedia freespeech)

links for 2006-04-29

• MediaShift . Free Hao Wu::Blogosphere Unites to Help Jailed Chinese Filmmaker | PBS
  "As I was researching and writing my blog post about the Singapore elections, I noticed all the Asian blogs that had “Free Hao Wu” badges on them."
  (tags: freehaowu china humanrights freespeech media blogs)
• China's Pledge of Allegiance
  "Internet companies in the country are making public proclamations to restrict content on the Web and support the Communist government's stance. How far will they go?"
  (tags: china chineseinternetresearch censorship freespeech humanrights)
• China and the internet | The party, the people and the power of cyber-talk | Economist.com
  "At present the party has the upper hand. It is starting to sweat, though"
  (tags: china chineseinternetresearch internet censorship freespeech)
• NewsBlaze: Censorship and Online Filtering on the Internet
  "Issue is complex cat-and-mouse game for some countries"
  (tags: china chineseinternetresearch internet censorship freespeech humanrights)
• China Web portals pledge stronger self-policing | CNET News.com
  "China's top Web portals, including Sina and Tom Online, have agreed to rid their sites of "unhealthy" content, amid a broader Beijing campaign to clean up the Internet."
  (tags: china chineseinternetresearch censorship internet freespeech)
• Reporters sans frontières - After two months without news, authorites accused of "kidnapping" blogger
  Reporters Without Borders today said it considered Chinese blogger Hao Wu to be the victim of state abduction as more than two months have gone by since his arrest without his family getting any news about him.
  (tags: china chineseinternetresearch freehaowu freespeech humanrights globalvoices)

links for 2006-04-28

• CBSNews.com: Barry Petersen On Being a Foreign Correspondent in China
  "The first thing you need to know about your rights as a foreign reporter in China is that, in the end, you have no rights. "
  (tags: china censorship journalism)

links for 2006-04-23

• EastSouthWestNorth: Roland gives us another reason not to use Yahoo!
  What can I say? I wanted to continue to hand US$29.95 to Yahoo! indefinitely, but they really showed that they didn't want my business. So I obliged them.
  (tags: yahoo! trust)

Hu's Heckler: Online fallout

Thanks to Jeremy Goldkorn for pointing out that somebody has uploaded the CNN video of Chinese President Hu Jintao being heckled by a FLG practitioner during his speech at the White House on Thursday. Chinese censors may have blacked out the live TV signal and all CNN replays, but it's all over the internet. And Chinese chatrooms are re-posting and analyzing the photos from the Great White House Lawn Debacle. This one (via Imagethief) has a shot of Mrs. Hu, scowling next to a smiling Laura Bush.

Meanwhile Roland Soong over at ESWN digs up a rather fascinating revelation: according to photos on this website belonging to photographer Darrin Zammit Lupi, Dr. Wang Wenyi - Thursday's heckler who was accredited into the official press coverage pool via the FLG-run publication Epoch Times - also managed to break through the security detail and confronted former President Jiang Zemin when he was on a trip to Malta in 2001. I have e-mailed the photographer asking him to confirm the authenticity of this photo and describe what happened in detail. When he gets back to me I'll update this post. [NOTE: Photo taken down for copyright reasons. Click here to see it.]

UPDATE (4/24): Mr. Lupi responded to my email with the following account of what happened:

from what I recall, she'd been shadowing jiang for a couple of days, turning up at a few of the events the media were covering.... I believe she had press credentials of some sort, though not issued by Maltese for purpose of covering the visit.... still, whatever she had was good enough for some cops providing security, I suppose.

On the day in question, Jiang was doing an unscheduled walkabout around Malta's ancient former capital city, Mdina.... no one gave Wang a second look.  As Jiang descended some stairs from a terrace overlooking the bastions, she somehow slipped through the ring of plain clothes police officers around him, and said something....there was some shouting, and she was immediately pulled away by the security guards.  Jiang immediately instructed that she be brought back to him, and that's when the moments I'd photographed took place.... she very calmly accused him of killing and persecuting Falun Gong practicioners, to which Jiang angrily and animatedly, with wide hand gestures, replied that the Falun Gong were killing themselves.

Then he brushed her off and the police took her away again... she was held for a while at a local police station, then released without charge. She became something of a celebrity in the following days. Prior to her protest, the police had been keeping Falun Gong and other protestors well away from Jiang, making sure he wouldn;t even see or hear them.

Chinese netizens were already speculating that the White House or somebody in the U.S. government had allowed her into the press stand on purpose, given how long it took before she was led away. (Roland quotes more such speculation here.) Then there's the added issuse that even many Chinese who dislike their regime equally dislike FLG. For a taste of those sentiments check out Bingfeng here and here. I have a lot of Chinese friends who share similar views - people who also have a habit of saying very unflattering things in private about various Chinese leaders and government departments.

But what has really upset a lot of Chinese people was Bush's rude and very public yank on Hu's sleeve. See Imagethief's post about the reaction of his Chinese co-workers. Lead sentence: "They think Bush is a protocol-impaired dweeb."

The saddest thing about Thursday's White House Lawn Diplo-Debacle is that many Chinese who generally dislike the Chinese Communist Party have now turned against the U.S. government. Roland cites a Hong Kong newspaper poll with the following results:

Issue: The White House master of ceremony announced the playing of the national anthem of the Republic of China.
    - 33% said that the American goverment deliberate set this up to insult China
    - 21% said that the American government was of poor quality
    - 23% said that it was an unintentional mistake
    
Issue: When the female FLG member disrupted Hu Jintao's speech, she was allowed to go on for almost three minutes before the secret service agents removed her.
    - 79% said that the American government should apologize
    -   9% said that the American government should not apologize

Issue: How should China protest against what occurred?
    - 43% said China should demand an apology from the American government
    - 22% said China should lodge a diplomatic protest
    -   6% said China should cancel the recently signed purchase contracts

Issue: Do you think that the United States is a trustworthy partner?
    - 17% said USA is a trustworthy partner
    - 62% said USA is not a trustworthy partner

Youch. And this is from people in relatively Westernized Hong Kong.

For more news and blogger coverage from Reuters and Global Voices Online, click here:

Skype and China censorship

I am a big fan of Skype in general, and I use it heavily. But the way Skype chooses to treat its Chinese users will ultimately impact the extent to which I as a user can trust Skype anywhere, in general.

I'm disturbed that Skype in China has adopted the internet censorship practices of its local Chinese partner, TOM, without examining whether there is a more ethical and honest way to handle Chinese government demands to censor chat clients than the one currently employed by local Chinese companies.

On his blog, Skype's Jaanus Kase tries to explain his company's decision a bit further:

Skype has a joint venture with TOM Online. As part of that venture, we provide a co-branded version of Skype called TOM-Skype, which is the version of Skype that is available in mainland China.

As part of the joint venture, TOM provides guidance to Skype about how to co-operate with local laws and regulations in China. In every country we operate in, we always work with local authorities to follow local laws and best practice.

TOM operates a text filter in TOM-Skype. The filter operates solely on text chats. The filter has a list of words which will not be displayed in Skype chats.

"Best practice?"  Come on. I posted a comment on his blog as follows:

Hello! I have some more questions:
- Do you notify the users of the fact that their chats will be filtered? Or that they have been filtered and why?
- Can you or will you publicize the list of filtered words?
- Can you please specify the exact laws and regulations which are being followed in regard to each word or phrase? In other words in each case what Chinese law or regulation is being broken by each word's use?
- Is there an appeals process for users to challenge the legal necessity of filtering certain words that they feel should not be filtered?

I believe that multinational internet communications businesses are not being transparent or honest enough with Chinese users. This is not just about freedom of speech and human rights, it's about the way you treat your user and whether you are squandering your user trust in China. User trust is ultimately your greatest competitive advantage in China; any technical competitive edge will not be maintainable over the long run against your Chinese competitors. Filtering in a non-transparent, unaccountable manner squanders your user trust. I believe it is possible to engage and do business in the Chinese market without lying to your users or treating them like children. It will take some effort and spine to do the right thing but your users will appreciate it and reward you with trust and loyalty. It is not just morally the right thing to do, it's the right thing to do for your business.

Jaanus has not yet responded.  If you have questions to add that you'd like him to answer, please head on over and ask them.

links for 2006-04-21

• TCS Daily - Digital Walls, Digital Holes
  "the struggle over control of the Internet in China is not a one-sided battle, in which the Chinese government has all the resources on its side. The situation more closely resembles an arms race between the Chinese government and activists and freedom-lo
  (tags: china chineseinternetresearch internet censorship freespeech hacktivism)
• Google in China: The Big Disconnect - New York Times
  "In the eyes of critics, Google is lying to itself about the desires of Chinese Internet users and collaborating with the Communist Party merely to secure a profitable market."
  (tags: google search internet china chineseinternetresearch censorship freespeech)

China's State Kidnappers

I've got an editorial running in today's Washington Post, titled Shattering the China Dream. I talk about the way in which Chinese state agents are in the habit of what amounts to kidnapping: abducting people for long periods of time without any kind of charges, formal arrest, or any kind of legal process whatsoever. Blogger and filmmaker Hao Wu has now been held for 58 days in this way. As far as many Americans are concerned, such unlawful detentions cast a very long shadow over Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit to the U.S. this week.  My piece concludes:

With Chinese President Hu Jintao in the United States this week, Americans have an opportunity to assess his regime. What is this country to think? On the one hand his government has raised the living standards of millions of its citizens with economic reform and international trade. On the other hand his underlings trample shamelessly on his people's basic human rights.

The careers of some politicians in both countries -- not to mention military budgets -- would no doubt benefit if our two nations became enemies. As an American who lived and worked in China for more than a decade, however, I continue to believe that peaceful engagement between the United States and China is in the best interest of both nations' people.

But we have a serious problem that won't go away: How can Americans respect or trust a regime that kidnaps our friends?

Hao's birthday was on Tuesday. His sister Nina says you can give him a birthday present by doing something to lobby for his realease. Click here to participate in our letter writing campaign and click here to sign an online petition demanding Hao's release.

links for 2006-04-20

• White House Puts Face on North Korean Human Rights
  "Now the case of Kim Chun Hee has made its way to the desk of President Bush, threatening to complicate the first White House visit of China's leader tomorrow and further irritate an irritable relationship."
  (tags: NKorea China china-u.s. diplomacy humanrights)
• Bloomberg.com: China Steps Up Lobbying Efforts to Win Support in U.S. Congress
  China, which up to now has relied on U.S. presidents to keep Congress from derailing bilateral relations, is turning to lobbyists to burnish its image with increasingly assertive lawmakers.
  (tags: china china-u.s. congress)

The third Yahoo! China case

Reporters Without Borders and the DuiHua Foundation have now released details of the case of Jiang Lijun, sentenced to four years in prison for “subversion” on 18 November 2003, thanks in part to evidence supplied by Yahoo! Jiang's case is the third known instance in which Yahoo! handed over user information that was then used to try and convict a Chinese dissident. Both the original and the translation of the verdict, citing the Yahoo! information, can be uploaded as pdf here. The verdict's list of evidence includes:

(2) User information provided by Yahoo! Holdings (Hong Kong) Ltd. for the email account ZYMZd2002 used jointly by Li Yibing and Jiang Lijun, confirming the registration data for that mailbox. In that user’s drafts folder was saved a draft email entitled “Declaration,” saved on September 25, the contents of which were the same as the “Freedom and Democracy Party Program” and “Declaration of Establishment” recovered and printed from Liu Di’s computer and Li Yibing’s floppy disk.

...and the final guilty verdict:

This court finds that defendant Jiang Lijun actively participated in a plot to subvert the
people’s democratic dictatorship under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and to overthrow the socialist order; his actions constitute the crime of subversion and should be punished in accordance with law.

Way to go, Yahoo!  When will Yahoo! senior executives, and their Chinese partner Alibaba, announce concrete measures to prevent such cases from happening in the future? 

Their congressional testimony claimed they are reviewing practices, yet in public statements their top executives sound pretty unapologetic and unrepentant.