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112 Jack Linchuan Qiuthe Internet may find their browser application or even the entire terminaldisturbed (Zittrain and Edelman, 2002).From an economic perspective, the censorship regime entails higher coststhan justifiable for national development. Slower network speed and efficiencyand the image of a fettered Internet structure may discourage foreigninvestment. Insiders would see the picture differently. The control effortscreate jobs, generate profits, and bring opportunities for international collaborationfor China’s network censors. Surveillance and repressive control are afast-growing global industry, particularly after 9/11. In China, domestic andforeign IT firms seek state contracts to provide security technologies such as“personal identification systems” for e-government projects. 27 Internet contentproviders (ICPs) with government background welcome more stringentcensorship measures that apply to private start-ups with little official guanxi.Since 2000, private ICPs have become increasingly conservative due to newcontent regulations, frequently providing nothing more than clips from officiallysanctioned sources. Meanwhile, ironically, netizen-based politicaldebates (of corruption, WTO, international affairs and so on) migrate to onlineforums such as Qiangguo Luntan (www.qglt.com) hosted by the website ofPeople’s Daily.Another aspect of censorship has to do with China’s Internet cafés, a mainpoint of access for children, migrant workers, and low-income Internetusers. 28 Unlike large ISPs and ICPs, most cybercafés are small, private businesses,many run by laid-off or under-employed workers of state-owned enterprises.29 In April 2001, the Measures for the Administration of Business Sitesof Internet Access Services was promulgated by the MPS, the MII, theMinistry of Culture, the State Administration of Industry and Commerce, andthe State Birth Planning Commission in response to Internet trespassing fromthe cafés and increasing parental complaints about the negative impact ofcybercafés on schoolchildren. The measure formally prohibited Internet cafésfrom allowing patrons to access harmful information, required the speciallicensing of net-cafés, and prevented unaccompanied minors under the age offourteen from entering. However, the regulation was poorly enforced until thefatal Beijing café fire of June 2002 (Murray, 2003). Even after the fire, therehas been great geographical and temporal variation in the implementation ofthe Internet café regulations. Although officers in some municipalities confiscatedequipment or collected heavy fines from the cafés during a crackdowncampaign, others in neighboring towns were less predatory or turned a blindeye because the market demand for cybercafés was so huge.As difficult as it is to control cybercafés, it is even more difficult to monitorindividual users. It is most difficult to enforce the articles pertaining to userregistration. There is no systematic way to ensure that each of China’s 59 millionInternet users is registered or that the registration information is verified.