China Seeking Filtered Content

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May 28, 1998 (5:04 PM EDT)

By Mo Krochmal,

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- China says the Internet is a crucial force in opening its doors to the world, but Net users in China will see content that has been selected, filtered, and published from government servers in 10 Chinese cities.

"We are trying to strike a balance between the free flow of information and protecting our culture and social values," said Peter Yip, vice chairman of the China Internet Corporation, a company set up by the Chinese government to manage the Internet. "We are not interested in protecting gambling, pornography, and politically sensitive issues." Yip was part of a panel on filtering Net content at the Second International Harvard Conference on Internet and Society here Thursday.

Yip said even with a filtered content flow, the Internet will be "the single most important force in opening China to the world and transforming the economy."

The China Internet Corporation is working with America Online to build a co-branded Web-based service, guided by terms of service similar to AOL's, while conforming to Chinese laws. The site, China.com, is scheduled to launch in June.

It is also collaborating with AOL and Netscape on a Chinese browser that incorporates ratings, similar to the Platform for Internet Content Selection system, to filter content.

The Internet is hardly pervasive in China, with only 4 million users today and an installed base of 20 million computers expected by 2001. Even so, China is building its network and aggressively seeking content, signing deals with Bloomberg, Bertelsman, Netscape, Yahoo, and America Online among others in the past 18 months. China.com selects the content it wants, translates it, and posts it.

This selection, or filtering is crucial because, Yip said, much of the content that pervades the Internet, mostly in English and Western in cultural context, is "not relevant to most Chinese."