English 1A
John Johnston
October 8, 2005
Word Count: 1,032
Since the Internet became available, China has tried to restrict its people from viewing sexually explicit and sensitive political issues on the Internet. In recent months, however, it has gone a step further. On Sunday, September 25, China imposed even more restrictions in order to limit the news as well as other information for Internet users in China. These restrictions are based on what the Communist Party believes has become a trend toward liberalization in the news. Under these new restrictions, major Chinese search engines such as Sohu.com and Sina.com cannot post their own commentary articles, and must instead post only opinion pieces written by government-controlled newspapers. Although the government of China states that they are trying to move forward as a country, their new restrictions on the Internet have ignored basic human rights by restricting the people’s viewing of sensitive political topics, as well as other information, on the Internet.
According to a study by Harvard University, China has been restricting information accessed via the Internet for over three years. In the year 2002, according to this study, 19,032 web sites were inaccessible from China, but accessible from the U.S. These web sites included sensitive political subjects and sexually explicit content that the Chinese government thought undermined their nation. The thought behind the new regulations is that news sites that promote good moral values on the people of China will move the country forward. China’s official Xinhua News Agency said that only “healthy and civilized news and information that is beneficial to the improvement of the quality of the nation, beneficial to its economic development and conducive to social progress” will be allowed.
The new restrictions state that individuals or groups must register as news organizations before they can run e-mail lists that spread news or commentary. Most of these individuals or private groups, however, will not be allowed to register as news organizations. Also under the restrictions, existing online news sites must give priority to news and commentary pieces by national and provincial news organizations. The regulations state that “the foremost responsibility of news sites on the Internet is to serve the people, serve socialism, guide public opinion in the right direction, and uphold the interests of the country and the public good,” but the “right direction” of public opinion, according to the Chinese government, is not what most citizens of China would consider “right” at all. The “interests of the country and the public good,” as the government so eloquently puts it, are not the interests of the country as a whole, but the interests of a select few officials that have been placed in high authority. The government of China is not trying to promote the common good, but is putting out a great deal of effort to control its own people. China has gone a step further than the Patriot Act of the United States of America; they have gone so far as to monitor what the citizens of China see and hear, as well as what they say. China’s army of “cyber police” monitor, patrol, track, and block web sites and e-mails it believes is a threat to communist rule. Web sites that criticize the government or address sensitive topics such as the self-ruled country of Taiwan are quickly removed under the supervision of the government.
The Chinese government states that with these new restrictions they hope to move the country forward, but how can a country advance if its people are uninformed and uneducated about current events? The Chinese Xinhua News Agency has said to an MSNBC News reporter that Internet news sites must “be directed toward serving the people and socialism and insist on correct guidance of public opinion for maintaining national and public interests.” But the government is not really trying to benefit their people, they are only aspiring to benefit themselves. Among the thousands of blocked web sites in China, some include Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, BBC News, CNN, Time Magazine, and web sites for higher education such as Caltech, Columbia, MIT, and the Music Academy of Zheng, as well as countless other news, health, and entertainment web sites. These sites do not promote an unhealthy way of living. On the contrary, they benefit the people immensely by giving them information about higher education, healthcare for AIDS, and the news from around the world. This leads me to believe that the government is not trying to benefit its people; it is trying to suppress them by only making available information that is pre-government approved and pro-China. I would not be at all surprised if soon no news sources available to the Chinese people will oppose the viewpoints of the Communist Party in China.
Realizing that their government has taken huge advantage of their power, some Chinese citizens are finding ways to get around the new Internet laws. Although the government monitors domestic content and blocks what the government believes is a threat to society, some Internet users have been able to obtain domestic and international information that doesn’t appear in China’s mainstream news media. By the time officials decide that a certain topic might be harmful to the people of China, hundreds of web sites have already posted it and many people have viewed it.
The government of China has ignored the basic human rights that every person deserves with their new restrictions of Internet viewing. The Communist Party says that they are promoting the “common good” by enforcing these laws, but they are far from promoting the advancement of the people of China. China’s government states that they are trying to advance as a country and promote the common good, but they are doing just the opposite. The people of China have been denied some basic rights that every human being should be entitled to: the rights of free press and free speech. Forcing the people of China to view only news and other information that is the complimentary to the government does not strengthen China, but weakens it. The people of China have a right to know about AIDS healthcare, about higher education institutions, and about the news that is contrary to the Communist party’s opinions and beliefs.