Beijing Olympics 2008: Winning Press Freedom - World Press ...

Beijing Olympics 2008: Winning Press Freedom
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China and the Internet:
history, economy and human rights
Wolfgang Kleinwächter
Professor of Internet Policy and Regulation, University of Aarhus, Denmark
China has the world's most dynamic Internet market. In December 2007, there were 210 million
Chinese people on line. Right after the United States, with 215 million Internet users, China had
the second largest Internet community. With a growth rate of 53 per cent in 2007 and a
penetration rate of only 21 per cent compared to more than 80 per cent in the United States there
is still an enormous market potential. It can be expected that China will soon be the leading nation
for Internet connection.
Yet China also has one of the most restrictive Internet domestic policies. When it comes to
freedom of expression on the Internet, a mix of governmental regulation, policing activities and
technical mechanisms keeps the flow of information content via the Internet under political
control. Critical web sites are taken down, Internet cafés are closed, cyber-dissidents are arrested.
The annual Internet Freedom Report produced by Reporters Without Borders ranks China 164 out
of 170 countries.
History
The Internet is still a new medium in China. The country was connected to the Internet in 1987.
But until 2000, the Internet was practically non-existent in Chinese daily life. When the first e-mail
was sent from a server of the Institute for Computer Applications of the Technical University in
Bejing to a server of Karlsruhe University in Germany on Sept. 20, 1987, practically no one took
note of that historic event. It took more than 15 years to reach the level of 1 million users in a
country with a population of 1.3 billion.
Establishment of a network connection between Bejing and Karlsruhe was the result of a joint
Chinese-German academic research project that had started in the mid-1980s. Werner Zorn of
Karlsruhe University, one of the fathers of the German Internet, was deeply involved in connecting
Germany to the Internet when he linked in 1984 a university server in Karlsruhe to a server of the
US Computer Science Network. Three years later, Zorn became also one of the fathers of the
Internet for China.
When Zorn visited Beijing in 1987, he worked with Wan Yung Feng of the Chinese Commission on
Science & Technology. Both managed to instal a name server for China's .cn domain and to
connect it to the name server of Germany's .de domain. The first e-mail text was rather simple:
“Across the Great Wall we reach now all corners of the world.” That short sentence was the first
step on the long Chinese march into cyber-space. 5
A simple technical solution was in fact a rather problematic and complicated political project. It
came during the Cold War. On the one hand, NATO regulations did not allow transfer of highly
sensitive communications technology and relevant software to Communist countries. On the other
hand, Chinese authorities were very suspicious of “Western spies” and “ideological diversion.”
But unwatched by government representatives, Zorn and his colleagues used their creativity and
flexibility to make the project happen. A great help was also Zorn’s international reputation, his