Foreign media at Olympics urged to press home governments to demand China lift internet censorship
(CFAC, 8/1/08) A free speech organization leading a legal challenge to China’s internet-censorship has called on news media covering the Olympics to demand that China tear down “The Great Firewall”–the elaborate system of filters blocking access to online content deemed objectionable by government censors.
The California First Amendment Coalition, which has petitioned the US Trade Representative to contest China’s censorship as a restraint on international commerce that violates free trade rules, urged news organizations to demand that their own governments, as participants in the Olympics, pressure China to end internet censorship.
“US and other foreign media in China for the Olympics should not quietly go along with official policies that forbid free speech and the exchange of information,” said Peter Scheer, the Coalition’s executive director. Scheer said that, in addition to criticizing China, the media should demand that their own governments register strong protests with the Chinese government.
“China’s censorship policy not only harms the Chinese people, but also harms internet-based companies in the US and other countries that are effectively locked out of China’s huge internet market,” said Gilbert Kaplan, a trade law expert in Washington, DC, who represents the Coalition in its anti-censorship petition. “This gives governments participating in the Olympics a strong basis for objecting to China’s censorship and demanding that it stop,” Kaplan said.
“China’s censorship of the internet is not just an internal, domestic matter, as the Chinese government would contend,” said Kaplan. “It is an international matter implicating the legitimate interests of other governments.”
The Coalition’s legal petition, filed at the end of 2007, urges the US government to contest China’s system of internet censorship before the World Trade Organization. The Coalition argues that China’s practices, by crippling US-based websites’ access to the Chinese market, violate the free trade rules of WTO treaties. China became subject to those treaties when it joined the WTO in 2001.
The US Trade Representative has yet to decide whether to challenge China’s “Great Firewall” before the WTO. The European Parliament, in an action plainly aimed at China, adopted legislation earlier this year declaring internet censorship to be an unlawful trade barrier.
In recent days foreign media in China for the Olympics have discovered that their internet access is subject to censorship. The blocking of politically sensitive sites, although standard operating procedure for China’s 100-plus million internet users, is contrary to promises made by China and the International Olympic Committee only last week.
While China claims to block only websites that are pornographic or pose a security threat, the reality is very different, according to the Coalition. “The government blocks anything in the Chinese language that it can’t control,” from BBC’s Chinese language news service to the websites of Chinese language newspapers in the US, said the Coalition’s Scheer.
Also censored are websites featuring user-generated content, such as blogs and video-sharing sites. “China fears these because of their capacity to create voluntary associations of citizens that the government does not dominate,” said Scheer. “It’s all about preserving the government’s political power and protecting Chinese internet companies from outside competition,” said Scheer. “Ideology hardly matters.”
A partial list of censored websites based outside China can be found on this page of wikipedia–which, not suprisingly, is itself censored:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_the_People’s_Republic_of_China
A useful service for determining whether a particular website is being blocked is websitepulse.com:
http://www.websitepulse.com/help/testtools.china-test.html
The California First Amendment Coalition is a nonprofit advocacy organization, based in San Rafael, CA, that advocates for free speech rights and more open, accountable government.