Chinese Netizens Plan Boycott
2009-06-23
China＇s latest bid to control online content sparks outrage, and a high-profile call for a Web boycott.
Chinese artist and collaborator on the design of the National Stadium, Ai Weiwei, poses in his home on the outskirts of Beijing, Jan. 29, 2008
HONG KONG—The man who designed Beijing＇s emblematic "Bird＇s Nest" stadium, which formed the centerpiece of the 2008 Olympics, has called on Chinese netizens to boycott the Internet on July 1 in protest at official censorship.
Blogger, designer, and social commentator Ai Weiwei called for a widespread boycott of the Internet on July 1, when the government has ordered that all new Chinese computers must include filtering software, allegedly to protect the country＇s youth against pornographic content.
Ai called on the 5,000 or more people who follow his blog to boycott the Internet from the early hours of July 1 to the early hours of July 2, in protest at Chinese government controls on the Internet, especially a compulsory filtering program known as Green Dam.
Some users reacted via social networking sites similar to Twitter.
I don＇t think this is a good idea. It isn＇t going to have any effect."
Beijing University professor Xia Yeliang
"If Green Dam is launched smoothly nationwide on July 1, that will be the day that the Internet in China was raped. Yes, yes, yes!" tweeted one commenter in reponse to Ai＇s idea.
Met with scorn
Chinese computer users and commentators have lashed out publicly at the Web filtering program that the government has ordered installed on all new personal computers in China on grounds that it aims to protect young people online.
The "Green Dam Youth Escort" is a Windows executable file, which claims to be able to prevent young people from gaining access to undesirable content such as pornography, as well as providing monitoring reports to supervisors about users＇ activities online.
Chinese Web users have greeted the move with scorn.
"It is to awaken people＇s ability to form their own opinions, their self-consciousness," another user wrote of the boycott.
"Strike on July 1: Prove your own existence!" said another.
"Boycott the Internet. Be your own master. Don＇t count personal gain or loss," said another.
Backlash feared
But some commenters feared an official backlash from universities, while others said the plan wouldn＇t work as a protest.
"I don＇t think this is a good idea," said Beijing University professor Xia Yeliang.
"It isn＇t going to have any effect. They will probably be even happier if we don＇t go online. It＇s not something that＇s going to step up pressure on them. It＇s like a self-imposed punishment by China＇s intellectuals."
Xia said China＇s anti-porn campaigns, and its attempts to attack Google on the basis of its pornographic results, were beside the point.
"They say that Google throws up a lot of illegal pornographic content, that Baidu is more refined, but Baidu has banned a lot of keywords and personal names. Who is obscene, who is vulgar? China＇s 1.3 billion people—you know who you are!"
Young people make up 50 percent of China＇s 300 million Internet users, making them the biggest single constituency, according to Green Dam＇s software developers Jinhui.
Jinhui has already signed user agreements with top computer makers Lenovo, Inspur, and Hedy, who have installed it on 52.7 million machines to date, amid widespread public anger at security loopholes and an erratic method of filtering "undesirable" content.
Computer experts inside China and overseas have spotted major security problems, programming glitches and intellectual property issues with Green Dam.
Jinhui was quick to issue some fixes, but major problems still remained, according to a group of computer scientists at the University of Michigan.
"We continue to recommend that users protect themselves by uninstalling Green Dam immediately," the group said in a statement.
More criticism
Meanwhile, the Open Net Initiative (ONI), which groups Internet specialists from universities in the United States, Canada, and United Kingdom, called Green Dam a "substandard software product that interferes with the performance of personal computers in an unpredictable way."
Once installed, the program killed browsers and applications without warning while opening up users to numerous serious security vulnerabilities, while failing to serve the needs of parents wishing to protect their children, the ONI said in a statement on its Web site.
"The mandate requiring the installation of a specific product serves no useful purpose apart from extending the reach of government authorities," it said.
In response to the outcry from Chinese Web users, Chinese officials have reportedly backed away from making Green Dam compulsory, saying in unattributed media interviews that the software must be shipped with new PCs, but not necessarily installed.
Beijing University＇s Xia said he doubted whether pornography was really the concern of the Chinese authorities in the first place.
"There is so much sex in the public domain in China these days. Can they really be that concerned about it?" Xia said.
"Really the authorities don＇t care how pornographic you are. They＇re more worried that you＇ll develop a diversity of political opinion."
＇Fake news＇
Netizens meanwhile exposed a flaw in a recent program by state-run broadcaster CCTV, which ran an item about pornographic content brought up by Google＇s suggested keywords when the user began to type a search query.
The June 18 edition of CCTV＇s "Focal Point" interviewed a young man, Gao Ye, who it said was a university student.
Gao told the camera that he "felt very uneasy" about the way pornographic content was easily available on Google China.
An informal investigation by Chinese netizens revealed that Gao was in fact a journalism intern working for the show, sparking widespread accusations that CCTV had produced "fake news."
Independent media commentator Ling Cangzhou said the meaning of the event wasn＇t immediately obvious.
"Of course Google China provides a lot more information to Chinese netizens than the domestic search engines do," Ling said, adding that this made it the target of official attack ahead of the launch of Green Dam.
"There is a growing trend this year for the tightening of controls on the Chinese Internet to come out of the shadows, behind the scenes, and be publicly exposed," Ling added.
Independent writer and Chinese PEN member Liu Yiming said CCTV had likely been ordered to criticize Google.
"Its aim in doing so is to pave the way for Green Dam, because they have found that attempts to force the widespread adoption of Green Dam resulted in opposition from netizens," Liu said.
"They are very unhappy about this, and so they are hoping just to promote it in the universities."
"Those words that leap up on Google have been created by the fact that so many people use them to search with in the first place. What has that got to do with Google?"
A copy of the government statement mandating the installation of Green Dam, posted online and dated May 19, said the aim of the order was to provide an "environmentally friendly, healthy, and harmonious Internet" for China＇s young people.
Original reporting in Mandarin by Xin Yu and Qiao Long, and in Cantonese by Ho Shan. Mandarin service director: Jennifer Chou. Cantonese service director: Shiny Li. Translated and written for the Web in English by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Sarah Jackson-Han.
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