Can China Control the Internet?
Can China control the internet with its latest internet news regulations?
Xiao Qiang wrote that China's internet censors are fight a losing battle in an Asian Wall Street Journal op-ed piece:
A bit more about the power of web from O'Reilly:
Liu Kang, director of the Chinese media program at Duke University said to AP
Xiao Qiang wrote that China's internet censors are fight a losing battle in an Asian Wall Street Journal op-ed piece:
"Online discussions of current events, especially through Internet bulletin board systems (BBS) and Weblogs, or "blogs," are having real agenda-setting power.
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The leaders are trying to halt a power shift in which Internet surfers get to choose which site to visit, what information to believe and distribute, and whose opinion to listen to. What's important online is credibility. The real opinion leaders and influential voices are coming from Chinese BBS and the blogosphere, not the official media."
A bit more about the power of web from O'Reilly:
"Hyperlinking is the foundation of the web. As users add new content, and new sites, it is bound in to the structure of the web by other users discovering the content and linking to it. Much as synapses form in the brain, with associations becoming stronger through repetition or intensity, the web of connections grows organically as an output of the collective activity of all web users."
Liu Kang, director of the Chinese media program at Duke University said to AP
"the new regulations appear at first glance to be more of the same: Banning conduct already prohibited under China's constitution, which he described as "a joke in China because by and large they just ignore it."
But drafting the regulations could serve to inform the public and local authorities that the central government considers Internet control a priority, Liu said.
Complete enforcement is virtually impossible in a country with 100 million Internet users — second only to the United States — but the rules will let the government "cherry pick" the most troubling cases, said Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
They also could foster self-censorship, he said.
Nonetheless, he said, resourceful Internet users have typically managed to bypass controls in the past, forcing authorities to regularly "restate the rules in a way to get more compliance from people and close potential loopholes."
