After years of sporadic control of the Internet, the Chinese government laid down some concrete rules in October and November 2000 governing ownership, content, and other aspects of Internet use.

The first set of rules, issued on Oct. 1, limits direct foreign investment in Chinese Internet companies, requiring companies to register with the Ministry of Information Industry and apply for permission before issuing stock or signing any agreement with a foreign investor. Another provision bans the dissemination of any information that might harm unification of the country, endanger national security, or subvert the government. Promoting "evil cults" (an unsubtle reference to Beijing's campaign against the Falun Gong spiritual movement) is similarly banned, along with material that "disturbs social order or undermines social stability." Other articles prohibit the distribution of pornography or "salacious material," along with anything that harms "the honor and interests of the state."

The regulations also cover chat rooms, a popular feature of many Chinese sites. In recent years, even government sites have attracted lively conversations in their chat rooms, where the anonymity of cyberspace fosters discussion of taboo topics such as democracy and the shortcomings of the ruling elite. Under the new rules, however, all Internet service providers (ISPs) must monitor content in the rooms and restrict controversial topics. Yet another regulation requires Internet cafe patrons to register with "software managers" and produce a valid ID card to log on.

These rules, however, are routinely ignored. In a grimy residential neighborhood a few miles from the stately Stalinist squares of official Beijing, Lei, a 22‑year‑old engineering student, showed a visitor how to surf the Web for contraband. While a bored clerk minded the small Internet cafe, Lei searched for Web sites about the Tiananmen Square massacre. Every site was blocked. "Never mind," Lei said, surfing instead for Falun Gong sites. But sites devoted to the banned movement also were blocked.

Lei (not his real name) then opened an e‑mail from Falun Gong supporters in the United States. The message contained a long list of proxy servers that allowed him to bypass China's firewall, the regime's first line of defense against unwanted Internet content. (In this context, a proxy server is an anonymous relay computer outside the Chinese firewall. Chinese users log on to the proxy server, which in turn logs on to the blocked site, thus fooling the government's site‑blocking software.) Soon, Lei was browsing through documents about Tiananmen on blocked Chinese dissident sites and catching up on Falun Gong news at the supposedly blocked New York Times site. The entire process took about 30 minutes. "We have to be careful about Falun Gong," cautioned Peng (not his real name), another student. "But the information is there, [so] why can't we see it? We treat this like a game."

Lei and his friends are probably a minority among Chinese Internet users. "Few people seem to be interested in politics, what is the point?" said an online editor at a government Web site. "They can't do anything to change things."

The new regulations turn Internet service and content providers into de facto government spies. Article 14 requires all ISPs to record "the time of ... subscribers' access to the Internet, the subscribers' account numbers, the addresses or domain names of the Web sites, and the main telephone numbers they use." Internet content providers, meanwhile, are required to maintain logs of all information posted on their sites. Both ISPs and content providers must keep their records for 60 days and turn them over to "the relevant state authorities" on demand. Violators face punishments ranging from fines of up to US$120,000 to closure.

When the Internet was first allowed into China in 1995, a powerful Ministry of Information Industry was immediately created to regulate Chinese access to the Internet, while the Ministry of State Security was assigned to monitor local use of the Internet. All service was to be funneled through government servers whose administrators block access to Western news sites, Chinese dissident sites, Taiwan newspapers, and other material deemed objectionable.

Despite all this bureaucracy, or perhaps because of it, government regulation of the Internet was sporadic and disorganized. For instance, during my visit to China, The New York Times site was blocked, but Times articles on China appeared on the unblocked International Herald Tribune site. Many dissident sites were blocked, but not all. Time magazine's site (www.time.com) was blocked, along with CNN.com. But the Far Eastern Economic Review site

(www.feer.com) was not blocked, even though it often features blistering critiques of the Chinese government.

While the Communist Party is still firmly in control of China's political superstructure, China with the Internet is certainly a freer place than China without the Internet. For the first time, "unofficial" news is circulating all over the country. As a result, millions of people have gained access to information and ideas that would have been unimaginable a generation ago. And while the government's new Internet policy still seems draconian from the perspective of an open society, it is important to remember that Chinese regulators once considered building a China‑only intranet, separated from the Internet by a Great Firewall, as it were, through which only a limited amount of carefully vetted content would pass.

Despite the official policy of openness suggested by China's pending entry into the World Trade Organization, some officials still cling to the dream of a China‑only information network sealed off from the dangerous temptations of the wider Web.

"You must remember our history," said Ke Guo, a professor of journalism at Shanghai International Studies University. "China is going to develop the Internet, but we do not know whether it will be with the kind of unfettered press freedom that Western experts want. Maybe we do not want that kind of freedom."1

A. Lin Neumann, Jan. 18, 2001. Neumann is currently a consultant to the Committee to Protect Journalists based in Thailand. This article is excerpted from a report in Attacks on the Press 2000, which can be found at www.cpj.org.