China Pushes Net Access, Restricts Content

Welcome Guest. | Log In| Register | Membership Benefits

June 26, 1998 (1:54 PM EDT)

By John Borland,

As President Bill Clinton addresses students at China's Beijing University this Sunday, patrons in a Beijing cybercafe will chat live about Clinton's visit with overseas Net users on ABC's website.

The event marks both the flaws and strengths of China's attempts to encourage Internet use while restricting the flow of overseas information. The site's live feed will let the Chinese users say and read what they want. But they will be accountable for what they say, with a record of everything they type at the government's fingertips.

China observers say the country's official Internet regulations often function in much the same way. The state owns the four major internal networks with international gateways, and requires these and the smaller ISPs to block a list of restricted URLs and search for other sites with pornographic or anti-government material.

"In theory, they check websites randomly, looking for pornographic or information critical of the government," said Xing Fan, a research fellow with the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. "But it turns out it's very difficult for them to check out or block all of these websites."

Individual businesses and citizens are required to register with authorities and sign a contract agreeing not to access or post pornography, material critical of the government, or other illegal information. ISPs can lose their license for allowing illegal material through their servers.

But according to the U.S. embassy in Beijing, the government recognizes it can't stop all controversial information at its borders. Senior Chinese telecommunications official Yu Renlin recently told U.S. officials that "if an individual is intent enough on obtaining pornography, that person will find a way to get it." But Yu also said a person's online activity could be monitored relatively easily, and surfers visiting "restricted" sites could be arrested later.

The ISPs' blocking of sites is spotty, the embassy reported early this year. The CNN website was available only through some Internet servers, the report said. The New York Times site was generally blocked, but The Washington Post is usually accessible.

Despite its fears about outside information, the Chinese government is trying hard to encourage local use of the Internet, Fan said. "Officially the government is trying hard to recruit as many users as possible. It makes good economic sense. It's directly beneficial to the telecommunications regime, and to the big ISPs, which are all state owned."

That effort has translated into a stream of partnerships with overseas technology companies to help build the nation's networking infrastructure. Companies like Cisco, Lucent, IBM, and Motorola have signed contracts with the government to help upgrade network bandwidth and develop a domestic technology industry. Prodigy and CompuServe both have signed deals to set up internal ISP services, and agreed to abide by government restrictions.

Net use has risen quickly, but is still limited to about 870,000 people in the country. Observers say a per-minute pricing structure has kept Net access out of reach for many. Access fees for communally or privately owned ISPs to tap into the state-owned backbone network are also high, and many are losing money, Fan said.

But momentum is growing as local prices fall and technology improves. AT&T recently contracted to upgrade the links between the country's internal networks and the Internet, as officials plan to reach 3 million Net users by the end of the decade.

At Beijing's cybercafe on Sunday, users at 25 Net terminals will be in the vanguard of this policy. But like the rest of China's Net users, they will guard their speech or risk losing their connection to the outside word.