China's Internet virtual revolution

Xiao Qiang, Director, Human Rights Watch China, Project Syndicate

After eight years of explosive growth, there are now almost as many internet users in China as there are members of the 70- million-strong Communist Party. China's "information elite," the largely urban, educated, professionals who are China's internet surfers, are becoming a force of equal size to the ruling political power base. What will this new center of power mean for the transformation of Chinese society?

Since the mid-1990s, China's government has promoted the rapid growth of the internet for its economic benefits. But it has also been developing a sophisticated political and technological system to control online information. The government employs a host of new legal regulations, a shadowy internet police force, and a powerful hardware-based national information filtering system.

Control also relies on the demography of internet users, most of whom belong to China's economic elite and are more likely to adopt the internet as part of a newfound consumer lifestyle than as a tool for political or social revolution.

What is surprising is that the government's control mechanisms have been largely effective. But it is also prompting profound social changes that are rooted in a rising rights consciousness within society, something strengthened -- and amplified -- not only by the growth of the economy, but by the rapid spread of the internet.

After two and a half decades of market-oriented economic reform, Chinese citizens are increasingly aware of how to protect their economic and social interests by using the language of rights. When confronting abuses of power, people are increasingly using a new term, weiquan (defending rights), to challenge the system. Another new term, zhi qing quan (right to know), has also entered public discourse.

The new terminology inspired by the information technology revolution was especially prevalent after the SARS outbreak last spring, when the government covered up the epidemic until after it had spread throughout China and beyond. The momentum of this rising demand in China for "rights" can also be seen in the coverage of other major events in the traditional media.

For example, when covering a natural disaster, a major industrial accident, or an urgent public health issue, journalists in the traditional media are not allowed to investigate and report without official sanction. But the internet is helping to change these rules. Journalists now learn how to evade government guidelines by distributing and collecting information online, making it more difficult for propaganda bosses to silence the spread of information considered "sensitive."

Ordinary internet users can also write about events they witness and broadcast their reports online, making the suppression of important breaking news almost impossible. Moreover, the authorities have a difficult time tracking down and punishing people who spread this kind of "subversive" information -- a term frequently used by the government to suppress political dissent -- online.

Because Chinese internet users are now more likely to find out about a breaking story in real time and question why the official press hasn't covered it, China's conventional media now feel pressure from the public to cover events that they might otherwise dodge.

Online discussion of current events, especially through internet bulletin boards, is another new phenomenon. One recent survey shows that the number of users registered with China's ten most popular bulletin boards, which focus on news and political affairs, range from 100,000 to 500,000. Mainly through bulletin boards, email mailing list services and an emerging "Web log" community, the internet has begun to provide an alternative public sphere that did not exist in China a few years ago.

Under the state censorship system, most discussions are limited to politically acceptable topics, such as legal reform and anti-corruption efforts. However, within these boundaries, internet-enabled activism, such as online petitions, have not only expanded the boundaries of traditional media reporting, but presaged some interesting new political consequences as well.

When college student Sun Zhigang was beaten to death by the police in the southern city of Guangzhou this spring, for example, it inspired a storm of online calls for "weiquan," and provoked debates over the "custody and repatriation system." That form of "administrative detention," used primarily against migrant workers, was the basis for Sun's detention. The online protest that ensued undoubtedly played a role in the government's decision to abolish the system and arrest the officials involved in the case.

Despite government efforts to control the internet, a space to support the rising rights consciousness within Chinese society has been carved out. As the pervasiveness and flexibility of the new medium weakens traditional media censorship, internet-enabled social activism plays an increasingly influential role in China's legal reform and the development of its nascent civil society.

China's 70 million "netizens" may now be in a prime position to guide the transformation of society and determine the country's future. But the outcome of this grand experiment, which pits an authoritarian government dedicated to controlling politics against an information technology inherently resistant to such controls, is far from certain. Ultimately, what happens may tell us as much about the inherent nature of the internet in our evolving world as about a changing China.