China shuts down 16,000 websites in latest crackdown

Since December, China has banned roughly 16,000 websites based on the claim that they were of pornographic nature, according to the Shanghai Daily and official reports, as part of an effort to impose more stringent restrictions on online content.

Rebecca MacKinnon, who headed CNN’s Beijing bureau before coming to CTIP, argued that China has established a pattern of Internet crime crackdowns that also target political content, especially within the last year. Without further research, however, it is impossible to tell how many of the recently banned sites were of a political nature, MacKinnon said.

“Every time they’ve done this, a number of websites known to be places [where] politically edgy people hang out have been shut down,” MacKinnon said.

Computer science professor and CITP director Edward Felten explained that the Chinese government uses three main strategies to control Internet content. First, he said, Internet companies located in China are required to self-censor the content of their sites. For sites outside China, network filters regulate the traffic coming in and out of the country. Finally, the government attempts to influence the content of conversations by promoting its policies in online forums.

“They’re not airtight, but they do have an impact on what people see and what they think of as normal,” Felten said, referring to these strategies.

For one Chinese undergraduate, the restriction of online content is not a major problem. Daniel Wu ’13 said that bans on Facebook, BlogSpot and YouTube were the most noticeable day-to-day restrictions, but that Chinese alternatives to many banned sites exist.

“Google search is also kind of flaky sometimes,” Wu added. “I’ll search a few things which aren’t controversial, and it’ll go dead for about a minute. It’s a little irritating, but I can just use a different search engine.”

Wu added that he never experienced problems accessing information for research or school projects, since news websites and databases were always accessible. He further noted that some methods of evading these restrictions, such as using proxy servers, are common practice.

MacKinnon said that the emphasis on national sovereignty has made it difficult to enforce the right to freedom of expression, which is guaranteed by Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights — a document signed by all U.N. member nations, including China.

“There is the argument that countries have the right to determine what forms of media and media regulation are appropriate in their countries,” she said. “But this often becomes an excuse for strict political controls.”

While students like Wu may not have noticed problems with their daily Internet use, MacKinnon and Felten said that government restriction of online information and free speech remains a concern in the U.S. government’s diplomatic relations with China.

“Like any problem of human rights, there are limited tools available to other countries to influence what’s happening,” Felten said.

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Felten added that the goal of diplomatic efforts is to persuade countries that it is in their interest to allow the free flow of information — a task that both he and MacKinnon claim is extremely challenging.

“While people were assuming that over time the Internet would bring freedom everywhere, we’re finding that that isn’t the case,” MacKinnon said.

The Chinese government does not “control everybody all the time, but they do make it effectively impossible for any kind of opposition party to form,” she added.