GOVERNMENT CONTROL OF THE INTERNET IN CHINA
Internet Police
China, in the opinion of many, has the most extensive Internet censorship system in the world. The government has spent tens of millions--perhaps hundreds of millions--of dollars on filters and other blocking devices to prevent the spread of information over the Internet.
A special 30,000-member police unit checks chat lines, looks for spikes in Internet traffic, monitors and screens websites and blogs for sensitive material and blocks access to violators. Advanced technoloy is deployed to block access to overseas websites regarded as threatening. China has purchased much of its filtering and spying equipment from the American companies like Cisco Systems and Dynamic Internet technology.
More than 500 cities have established internet police bureaus. The Public Security Ministry has even introduced a male and female pair of characters in police uniforms that can pop up on person’s screen when a sensitive website is sought out to remind them their activities can be monitored.
As of early 2007, the government had shut down more than 700 online forums and websites and blocked more than 10,000 sites. including thousands of popular news, political and religious sites. Access to business, cultural, and educational sites is generally no a problem because Beijing views access to them as essential for being part of the globalized world.
Both domestic and foreign providers must comply with restrictions designed to suppress political dissent and track down offenders. Each week representatives of China’s most popular websites are summoned to the Internet Propaganda Management Department and are told which news they should keep off their services.
A specific “ideological education” campaign was launched against student websites used by million to discuss a wide range of topics, including pop culture and politics. The government has even conducted tests to explore how “harmful information” can be expunged quickly from the Internet in the event of an “emergency.”
Freedom of Speech and Press on the Internet in China
Even with all the controls, filters and restrictions the Chinese government places on it, the Internet is widely used to disseminate stories about scandals, injustices and corruption that are not allowed to be printed or broadcast on conventional media—and it is surprising the amount of stuff that gets through.
The Internet has arguably ended the government’s monopoly on the media and information. While television and the print. media remain under the grip of Beijing the Internet has blossomed as a source of uncensored news and a forum for people to openly express their views—albeit anonymously—and be exposed to the uncensored views of others. Voicing opinions on the Internet has been called the closest thing to voting in China.
When some news events happen, such as a large protest, coverage on television and in the press are controlled by the government while accounts and pictures quickly make their way to the Internet and are circulated on chat lines and forums. The government often tries hard to stop it but there are simply too many sites and ways to avoid censorship and there is no way the government can control all the Internet.
Websites and blogs were vital in disseminating information about SARS, the Harbin benzene spill and protests and riots. Once an issue finds an audience on Internet it can take on life of its own, generating huge interest, and sometimes forcing the government to act and change its policy. Coverage of the beating of college graduate in Guangzhou in 2003 and 2004, for example, led to reform of China’s detainment centers. An outcry over the leniency given a notorious gangsters resulted in the gangster being retried by the Supreme Court and executed. As of early 2006 there were an estimated 4 million to 16 million bloggers in China.
Government Control of Internet Users in China
Internet users are supposed to register with police and sign an agreement promising not to harm the country or do anything illegal. The Ministry of Posts and Telecommunication is the only authorized provider.
“Internet police” can jam e-mail viewed as threatening, tap the Internet the same way it does telephone lines, and monitor Internet users who type in word like "Taiwan" or "Falun Gong" in their e-mail accounts.
Filtering systems referred as the Great Firewall of China work by blocking access to sites with keyword like Tibet, democracy, Tiananmen Square, Taiwan independence, sex, Dalai Lama, human rights, Amnesty International, or Falun Gong. If you type the words “democracy” or “freedom,” for example, on the MSB Spaces Web log service—a blogging service—you get the message: “You must enter a title for your space. This title must contain prohibited language, such as profanity. Please type a different title.”
Most users could care less. They aren’t that interested in politics and when they do view an illegal site is most likely to be a pornographic one. As long as they have access to the chat lines and games they like they are happy. The government makes no secret about its intention to block sites. Most Internet-related businesses are willing to comply and the government even hands out wards to those that do the job eagerly and efficiently. The owner of one large Internet company told the New York Times, “We don’t want to annoy the government.”
Some users however upset. Reuters described one Internet user who was unable to access his friend’s holiday photographs on Flickr.com, because Flickr.com had been blocked for showing images of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Wikpedia and a number of seemingly harmless blogs have also been blocked Almost as quickly as they are blocked though, links to browser plug ins and other methods to subvert the filters are posted on blogs and in chart rooms.
The Chinese government has been accused of forcing foreign hotels to install Internet filters on computers in the hotels that allow the government to spy and eavesdrop on Internet uses at the hotel.
Blocking Sites in China
The primary Firewall barriers are: 1) the Domain Name System (DNS) block, which prevents users from locating entire websites and addresses based on the domain name; 2) disrupting the “connect phase,” which prevents users form connecting with certain blacklisted sites by impeeding their ability to connect with them; and 3) the URL keyword block, which prevents users from connecting with certain sites or articles that have blacklisted keywords.
Much of the blocking of the Internet by the Chinese government is done by disrupting the “connect phase,” and with the URL keyword block in this way: 1) a user enters a URL (address) to a browser; 2) the monitoring system checks whether the URL is on a blacklist (if it is the user is sent an error message); 3) filtering systems check whether the text on the URL requested contains flagged terms (again if it does the user is sent an error message). There are also filers that screen e-mail and search engine request.
The URL keyword block can block an entire site with the blacklisted keyword or only a part of the site or an article with the blacklisted keyword. With this system users are punished with broken connections and display of the message “the connection has been reset.” The broken connections can last more than a hour if a user repeatedly tries to access a certain blacklisted keyword. If the offense continues further the Internet police can be alerted and they may try to locate the user The surveillance system is constantly being updated with new keywords added all the time.
Routers
The blocking and surveillance systems that the Chinese use rely on routers—switches located where fiber optic cables cross international borders.
All Internet connections between China and the rest of the world are routed through a relatively small number of optic cables at one of three points: 1) the Beijing-Tianjin Qingdao connection in north, where cables come in from Japan; 2) the Shanghai connection on the central coat, where cables also come in from Japan; and 3) the Guangzhou connection in the south, where the cables come in from Hong Kong. There are some lines that run through Central Asia and Russia but they carry little traffic. An illustration of how fragile this system is came in 2006 when an earthquake around Taiwan that cut some major sea cables into China, disrupted international transmissions to and from China for weeks.[Source: James Fallows, The Atlantic, March 2008]
The Chinese are able to monitor Internet traffic by installing monitoring devises at the “international gateways” into China. Using a technique called “mirroring” that does incorporate extremely small mirrors, information that travels through the gateways is copied and sent with mirroring routers to “Golden Shield” computers which sort through the data and determine if anything should be blocked.
The mirror routers—many designed by Cisco—can be used to eavesdrop on transmissions. If the transmissions pick up something deemed offensive—a key word for example—the transmission can be blocked, Some of the systems are quite sophisticated and block only certain parts of transmissions and let others through. With a site like CNN or BBC, sports may be allowed to pass through while the news is blocked. When a site is blocked an error message appears.
The government has tried to require users to register using their real names and prevent them from using anonymous names which they have traditionally relied on to mask their identity so they can speak freely without persecution. Police reportedly have access to software developed by Cisco that allows them to track people’s work histories and political tendencies. Much of the surveillance software is thought to have been developed by the Chinese themselves, much of it by engineers in the Chinese military.
Government Control of Internet Cafes in China
Internet cafes are required by the government to have a license and register their customers identity. Users at cafes are required to register before using the Internet. The material users access can be easily monitored by the government. Much of the Special Internet software installed in computers in Internet cafes—that monitors pornography and sites critical of the government—has been sold to China by the American companies Hewlitt-Packard, Sun Microsystems, Microsoft and Cisco Systems.
Curfews have been imposed in Internet cafes to prevent children under 18 from entering. Violators face penalties of being shut down for 15 days or losing their licence. In April 2004, authorities in Shanghai began installing cameras at some cafes to keep an eye people while they were using computers and to prevent underage children from entering the cafes. .
In Shaoyang, a city in central Hunan Province, students under 18 are required to wear uniforms so they can be spotted more easily and kept from entering an Internet café. In Shanghai the city’s Communist Youth League set up 268 community centers where people were given free access to “healthy websites. “ In the town of Gedong in Fangshan County in Shanxi Province all the Internet cafes were shot down. None of the campaigns worked very well. In Gedong, kids simply went to illegal cafes that bribed policemen to stay open.
Crackdowns at Internet Cafes in China
The government has closed down thousands of Internet cafes. The fire at the Internet Café that killed 24 people in 2002 gave the government an excuse to launch a big crackdown. Immediately after the fire all 2,400 Internet cafes in Beijing were closed for fire inspections. Those with safety violations were closed either permanently or until the problems were rectified. Those that met the requirements were required to apply for new licenses.
Raids and inspections of Internet café are often aimed at deterring children from using the cafes and preventing people from using them to communicate anonymously. Internet cafes that get caught allowing minors onto their premises twice can be closed for 15 days or fined.
Between October and December 2005, Chinese authorities closed down 12,575 Internet cafes for operating illegally, most of them near schools. When the Internet cafes are shut down, users usually make their way to illegal cafes. In June 2007, the Chinese government banned the opening of any new Internet Cafes for the rest of the year while it conducted a industry-wide survey.
Internet cafes that don't use the software the government requires do so at their own peril. In one crackdown, 40,000 police officers were enlisted to inspect 56,800 Internet cafes. During the raid, 6071 Internet cafes were temporarily closed and 1,843 were closed down completely. Some of the raids were shown on television.
Government Control of Web Sites and Search Engines in China
All major web sites that are authorized in China have to submit to security checks and are required to sign a code of conduct in which they promise to keep unauthorized content off their sites. Sites that "leak state secrets," contain pornography, or promote social disturbances can be shut down. Individuals that break laws risks being sent to prison for long sentences.
Web sites run by BBC, the New York Times, Time Warner's Pathfinder, human right groups, Falun Gong, Tibetan exiles, pro-democracy groups, and Taiwan independence groups have been blacked out. A surprising number of sexually explicit sites are accessible, which is ironic because the government originally claimed that the primary point of censorship was to block them out.
In 2002, the government blocked access to Google. Google was popular among Chinese users because if its wide-ranging search capacity and the fact its links were unblocked and uncensored. In April 2004, the government began a crackdown on Internet discussion groups with new rules that banned independent reporting not be approved by the government, and prohibited discussions of sensitive issues such as economic failures and criticism of the Chinese Party.
In December 2004, the government Internet watchdog agency the Center of Illegal and Harmful Information shut down 1,287 We sites because they spread “harmful information” on religious cults, superstition and pornography. Some of the sites were shut down after the government was alerted by informants paid between $60 and $240.
In September 2005, the Chinese government stepped up its crackdown on “unhealthy” sites and news sites were required websites to register with the State Council or with provincial-level government information offices. Bloggers were forbidden from post information that “creates social uncertainty.”
In January 2007, Chinese President Hu Jintao ordered Internet regulators to promote “healthy online culture” and “purify the Internet environment.” In July 2007, the city of Xiamen banned anonymous web posting. According to the law all Internet users would have to use their real names, The move came after construction of a massive $1.4 billion chemical factory was halted by the use of a successful Internet campaign that incorporated the sending of a 1 million e-mail and text messages.
Self Censorship in China
Self censorship is the rule on the Internet in China. Most blogs are hosted by large Internet companies. They know that if the government finds something wrong the government will hold them responsible and thus the Internet firms censor the blogs.
Many websites censor themselves to avoid trouble. Those that originate in China must comply with local laws, get the necessary licences and put with threats to stay on line. Those that originate outside of China have to deal with filtering systems.
A typical warning from the Beijing Internet Information Administrative Bureau read: “Dear colleagues, the Internet of late has been full or articles and messages about the death of Shenzhen engineer, Hu Xinyu, as a result of overwork. All sites must stop posting articles on this subject, those have been posted about it already must be removed from the site, and, finally, forums and blogs must withdraw all articles and ,messages about this case.” [Source: James Fallows, The Atlantic, March 2008]
Strategies to Outwit Censors in China
In the old days there were few computers and few telephones lines and the government was able to control most of the international access points and block websites perceived as anti-Chinese. But now with increased in the number of computers and the vast amount of material available on the Internet, the government has a more difficult time controlling cyberspace.
People have figured out ways to get on-line despite government efforts. Blogs are an effective way to outwit censors. If they are blocked they can simply change servers. Some that are shut down by the government one day reappear a day later. One pro-democracy site was shut 38 times over a three year period but managed to figure out a way to reopen each time.
Some sites post stories at 5:00pm when most of the censorship bureaucrats leave work for home, milking the story for all they can before censor show up for work the next day. Sometimes officials who close down the site are identified and besieged and harassed with e-mails, text messages and phone calls from those angry that the site was shut down.
To outwit filters that block sites with words like “democratic” or “corruption” users and readers in chat lines and forums use code words. There is also software that helps users evade filters and gain access to blacklisted sites. When authorities take action to block sites, messages and e-mails are sent to alert users of the moves and tell them how to get around them.
Once a piece of news is revealed it can quickly be spread by e-mails, text-messages, chat lines and blogs in way that expands very quickly and exponentially. The government may respond by ordering web sites that post the offending news to be shut and scan e-mails but by that time the information is in so many places there is no way censor it completely.
On Internet activism, Wu Xu, an expert of Chinese “cyber-nationalism at Arizona State University, told Reuters, “It’s so scattered, so decentralized, with so many fronts, so many ‘enemies’ and thus so unpredictable. The government has tried to catch up and the control and tame the emotions. But it didn’t create them itself.”
Proxy Servers and VPN in China
Anyone who wants to get around the firewall can do so using one of two tried and true methods: 1) the proxy server, a way of connecting a computer inside China with a computer elsewhere, allowing signals with the data concealed inside it to enter China; and 2) the VPN, or virtual private network, which creates a private encrypted channel that relays information in a way the firewall can’t pick up. VPNs such as Freegate or Ultrasurf funnel web traffic through third-party computers, allowing users in China to gain access to sites that otherwise would be blocked..
The proxy server system can be very slow. The VPN system is faster and costs about $40 a year and is so widely used the government doesn’t dare crackdown on it because banks, trading firms, foreign companies and even the military rely on it.
In practice the firewall is easy to skirt. If someone really wants to get some information on the Internet mostly likely he can. The aim of firewall system it seems is to make accessing information just enough of a hassle so that it discourages large numbers of people from doing it regularly, preveting serious threats against the government from gaining momentum and becoming organized.
Internet-Related Arrests in China
As of early 2007, 52 people were in prison for online activities, more than any other country, according to Paris-based Reporters Without Borders. In comparison 54 people were in prison in February 2004 and 33 people were in prison in November 2002. Amnesty International insists these numbers are only “a fraction” of those actually in jail for Internet-related crimes. Some are activists who have been arrested on charges of trying to overthrow the government for posting an open letter calling for political reform. Many are relatively ordinary people accused of posting material on the Internet that government deemed inappropriate.
One Chinese man was sentenced to prison for “inciting the overthrow of state power" after he e-mailed 30,000 Chinese computer users about a U.S.-based pro-democracy Internet magazine. A high school teacher was arrested on similar charges for posting articles critical of the government on his website.
In November 2002, Liu Di, a 20-year-old, bespectacled female student who called herself Stainless Steel Supermouse on the Internet, was imprisoned for a year after she posted some Internet articles that 1) defended dissidents who were imprisoned for airing their views; 2) called for more freedoms; and 3) and jokingly demanded the creation of new political party in which everyone could be chairmen. She was never formally accused of a crime. She was released after her case drew international attention.
A high school teacher was sentenced to two years in jail for making the comment "Down with the Communist Party!" on an Internet chat line. A female university student was detained for a year for suggesting in an Internet essay that people should sell Marxist literature on the streets like real Communists and insisting that China’s repressive national security laws made China less secure. People have also been arrested for releasing explicit pictures and obscene stories on the Internet.
In May 2003, four young adults who met at university campuses occasionally to discuss political reform and posted essays from time to time on the Internet were sentenced to long prison terms on charges of “subverting state power.” Their meetings were never attended by more than a dozen people. The members said their meeting were about political theory. They never had any intention of fomenting change.
More Internet-Related Arrests in China
The United States-based activist Wang Bingzhang was sentenced in absentee to life in prison for espionage and leading a “terrorist group.” He as accused of passing secrets to Taiwan and posting essays on the Internet that threatened national security.
In May 2003, a computer engineer who posted politically sensitive articles on his website was sentenced to five years in prison on subversion charges. He has already spent nearly three years in prison since his arrest in 2000.
See Yahoo
In December 2003, a factory worker was arrested for posting political messages on an international website. Among other things he called for a reversal of the ruling that called the Tiananmen Square protest a counter-revolutionary riot.
In April 2004, a woman was sentenced to 18 months in a labor camp for posting an article on the Internet that criticized the central government for the way it handled public complaints. The women had her home in Shanghai destroyed to make way for development and had tried to petition the government to have something done about it.
In March 2006, a 27-year-old teacher named Ren Ziyuan was sentenced to 10 years in prison for publishing an anti-government essay on the Internet called The Road to Democracy. In May 2006, Yang Tianshui, a veteran dissident writer, was sentenced to 12 years in prison for subversion for posting essays on a blog that supported a movement by exiles to hold free elections. Many have condemned these punishments as being extraordinarily harsh.
In 2007, Zhang Jianhing, the former editor in chief of the Chinese website Aiqinhai, was sentenced to six years in prison for writing articles published on websites that defamed the government and aimed at toppling the government. In the articles Zhang had called for reforms of the current system and accused the government of illegally obtaining organs from living prisoners for transplants. In August 2007, Internet-dissident Chen Shuqing was sentenced to four years in prison for “inciting the government’s overthrow” Shuqing is an outspoken critic of the government and advocate of democracy.
One very vocal critic of the government that has managed to avoid arrest told the New York Times that the secret to staying out of jail is knowing where to draw the line. “If you talk every day online and criticize the government they don’t care because it is just talk. But if you try to organize—even if its just three or four people— that’s what the crackdown on. It’s not speech; its organizing.”
Hacker Attacks from China
Because computerization has occurred more quickly than computer savviness, China is particularly vulnerable to computer cyberattacks. In 2003, according to a survey by the Evans Data Corp., a staggering 84 percent of firms in China reported at least one cyber attack, up from 59 percent in 2002. Internet attacks thrive because Internet security is lax or nonexistent, intellectual property theft and corporate spying are widespread, and enforcement and punishment of Internet crimes is light.
Hackers attacked the Chinese search engine Baidu by installing rogue programs on computers used by its trading partners. That programs launched a wave of calls to the Baidu websites at a rate of more than 1000 a second, effectively blocking everyone else from using it for site fo 60 hours.
Hackers from China have attacked dozens of websites in Japan, Taiwan and the United States, often seeking out military, government or conservative political sites. A series of attack on Japan—said to have been prompted by Japanese nationalism and Japan’s position on some disputed islands— temporally shut down the sites of the Japanese Foreign Ministry Defense Agency and National Police Agency.
In the United States, hackers from China have successfully beached hundreds of unclassified networks in the U.S. Defense Department and other U.S. agencies. It is not clear whether the breaches were the work of a concerted attack supported by the government or the work of individual hackers acting on their own.
Hackers from China and Taiwan often invade and alter websites in each other’s countries. The Taiwanese national anthem, complete with music, for example, was placed on a web page for the Chinese Ministry of Railways. Chinese hackers responded by placing a mainland flag in the site for the Taiwan National Assembly.
Secret copying of data from an unattended laptop computer belonging to U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez occurred during his visit to Beijing in December 2007 and the data was use to hack into Commerce Department computers.
Military Hackers in China
Chinese military planners have determined the greatest weakness the United States military has is its reliance on computer and satellite systems. It has developed strategies to take advantage of these systems. Hackers in the PLA have worked out plan aimed disabling an aircraft carrier battle group. A “virtual guidebook fr electronic warfare and jamming: was developed by the PLA after carefully studying American and NATO military manuals.
The aim of military hackers is to attain “electronic dominance over each if its global rivals by 2050.” There are plans to cripple satellite communications system and bring financial markets to their knees. A massive cyberattack could leave the United States without electrical power for six months and cause a shut down of many of it military operations systems.
Chinese hackers began launching cyber attacks on U.S. government and military targets in 2003, including a coordinates series of attacks code-named Titan rain. . In 2007 the Chinese military successfully hacked into the Pentagon’s computer network, raising alarms that China could disrupt American military operations. The attack took place in June 2007 after several months of planning and shut down the computer system serving 1,500 Pentagon computers including the one used by of the Secretary of Defense.
After the Pentagon attack hundreds of computers had to be taken offline for months. Hackers also disrupted the U.S. Naval War College network. Chinese military hackers have also penetrated computers in the British military, the German government, including the offices of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and top U.S. military contractors.
Most of the attacks appear to have been aimed at collected information and probing defenses, possibly to prepare for a real cyber-war in the future.
Chinese Hacker Attackers
Time magazine’s Simon Elegant interviewed a group of hackers in Chengdu, Sichuan believed to be behind some of attacks. The group, known as NCPH (Network Crack Program Hacker), is made up of members who don’t reveal their real names and instead go by online names like Firestarter, Floorsweeper and Plumber. Elegant met them in a Chengdu hotpot restaurant, where they downed large amounts of beer, and described them as “in their early 20s, rail thin with the prison pallor acquired from long nights spent hunched over monitors.”
NCPH was discovered at a military-sponsored hacking competition, with one member earning over $4,000 in prizes, and has a made a name for itself producing hacking programs that can be downloaded free on the Internet. These programs, often referred to a Trojans, allow users to take over other computers and download information on them.
The PLA periodically holds hacking competitions with large cash prizes to discover new talent. Advertisements for the contests are run in local newspapers. Winners are given a month of intense training at provincial command posts, including simulated attacks, advise on designing hacking programs and network-infiltration strategies Pentagon military analyst told the Time of London, “These guys are very good.”
According to two reports by iDefense, a California-bases Internet security firm, the Chengdu group “launched a barrage of attacks against multiple U.S. government agencies...The result of all this activity is that the NCPH group siphoned thousands—if not millions—of unclassified U.S. documents back to China.” The iDefense report concluded that :NCPH was almost certainly was receiving some support from the Chinese armed forces and “more likely hundreds of these groups exist in China.”
Image Sources: Human Rights Watch
Text Sources: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Times of London, National Geographic, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, AP, Lonely Planet Guides, Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.
© 2008 Jeffrey Hays