In rejecting U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s recent call for lifting restrictions on the Internet in their society, China’s Market-Leninist authorities denounced Clinton’s remarks in a state-run newspaper as “information imperialism.”
There may be an element of truth in that analysis – but China’s rigid censorship and lack of respect for any semblance of Internet freedom is nothing less than information Communism of the most reactionary sort, harkening back to the Maoist days of complete control over the Chinese populace and its inalienable human rights, such as freedom of expression and of the press.
“We urge the U.S. side to respect facts and stop using the so-called freedom of the Internet (italics mine) to make unjustified accusations against China,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said in a statement posted Friday on the ministry’s Web site. “The Chinese Internet is open and China is the country witnessing the most active development of the Internet,” Ma added, defending China’s Internet policies and noting with pride that China now has more than 380 million Web users and 180 million blogs – none of which, of course, are allowed to mention the banned “Three T’s” of Tiananmen, Tibet or Taiwan.
Here are some facts that should be respected: the Chinese authorities lack any authority or mandate within China except for that dictated by their political power, which as Chairman Mao aptly noted grows out of the barrels of the many guns they keep trained on their population – and which, as events from Tiananmen to Tibet have amply demonstrated, they are capable of employing with great effect to cow opposition and quell dissent.
Further facts include the following: China’s leaders heavily censor any and all Internet content they regard as anti-social or politically subversive; numerous news and social media sites enjoyed freely by Americans and other “information imperialists” — including Twitter, Facebook and YouTube — are blocked permanently; and the government summarily cuts off all public Web access during emergencies, such as last year’s rioting in the western region of Xinjiang, where they have yet to be fully restored.
Despite Chinese efforts to politicize the issue, Clinton did not single out China in her speech, but named it as one among other countries, including Tunisia, Uzbekistan, Iran, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, (the latter two US allies,) where there has been “a spike in threats to the free flow of information” over the past year.
The speech was spurred of course by the recent decision by 800 pound Internet gorilla Google to cease cooperating with Chinese government censorship -and came after Google said it had uncovered a computer attack that tried to access the e-mail accounts of human rights activists protesting Chinese policies.
State Department officials say they plan to make a formal complaint to Chinese officials soon, and Clinton urged them to investigate and openly publish their findings. But the Chinese responded with their usual disdain and attacks, charging that Clinton’s speech was part of an American “information imperialism” campaign aimed at imposing its values and denigrating other cultures.
The Global Times newspaper, published by the Communist Party, complained that “Unlike advanced Western countries, Chinese society is still vulnerable to the effect of multifarious information flowing in, especially when it is for creating disorder.”
The irony is that, in order to maintain their rigid control, Chinese officials – normally (and justifiably) proud of their country’s recent great strides in development — are forced to argue that their dynamic and rising nation is vulnerable and less advanced than the West.
And unfortunately when it comes to information access – they’re right!
