IPI Congress: Online free speech seeps through cracks in great wall of Chinese censorship

Internet offers space for debate on banned subjects

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“The great firewall of China’s internet is not watertight”, says human rights activist and China Digital Times editor Xiao Qiang.
      Xiao was speaking at the World Congress of the International Press Institute (IPI), which concluded in Helsinki on Tuesday.
      In spite of being affected by the world’s heaviest censorship apparatus in the world, the Internet is offering the Chinese new possibilities of expressing themselves, to disclose corruption among local officials, and to demand justice. Xiao says that it also brings hope to China’s human rights situation.
     
Debate on banned subjects spreads online. A Google search of the content of blogs kept by Chinese reveals that the expressions “democratic reform” and “freedom of speech” appear with increasing frequency within the texts.
      Xiao says that the topic, which is brewing beneath the surface in many of the blogs, and in chat rooms, sometimes also comes up in the official media as well.
      The Internet has raised public consciousness. At the same time, liberal nuances in the official media have grown stronger, Xiao says.
      Xiao, who originally studied theoretical physics, became a full-time human rights activist after the events in Tiananmen Square in 1989. The former chairman of the Chinese section of Human Rights Watch is now a professor of journalism at the University of California at Berkeley.
      But is the Internet a real force for change? The most pessimistic experts have seen it as simply a pressure valve, which permits controversy within certain limits. Xiao believes that in the long term, the steam of the pressure cooker will have an effect.
      However, it is difficult to organise the online debate into action outside the Internet.
     
In the midst of economic difficulties, popular anger at official corruption becomes stronger. Nevertheless, Xiao has not seen any signs that it would be a real threat to those in power.
      China has more than 70 million bloggers and Internet users. The number is reported to have exceeded the 300 million mark. Xiao describes the limits of Internet activism: “It is not permissible to write about the Dalai Lama, but it is possible to write about local scandals.”
      Recently artist and blog writer Ai Weiwei sparked international attention by criticising the poor construction of schools, and by publishing the names of children who had died in the Sichuan earthquake. He has received extensive online support from people who are demanding limits to official corruption.
     
The distinction between professional journalists and blog writers and participants in online debates is different in China than it is in Western countries. The role of the Internet and unofficial channels increases in a situation in which the official media cannot operate freely, Xiao points out.
      “The Internet has spread at the same time that the Chinese media has become more commercial and turned to entertainment. If one does not touch politics, newspapers are allowed to operate quite freely. These papers will not hire journalists from official educational channels, because they only teach party propaganda. They look for good writers on the Internet. Many of these journalists live a double life and write online about subjects that they cannot write about in their papers.”
     
IPI Director David Dadge called on developing economic powers such as China to respect human rights and freedom of expression.
      At the conclusion of its congress in Helsinki, the International Press Institute issued a declaration calling for the immediate release of two American journalists who had been sentenced in North Korea to hard labour.
      The statement says that their sentence was based on a false trial orchestrated by the government, with the aim of punishing two innocent journalists for the criticism that North Korea has received from the international community, Dadge said.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Economic crisis also difficult for business media (9.6.2009)

Links:
  International Press Institute

Helsingin Sanomat