Clash of cultures in cyberspace

Authoritarian governments in Asia are scrambling to erect barriers against the infobahn, but the task is proving tricky. Kunda Dixit of Inter Press Service reports.

SINGAPORE (IPS): The paradox of the information Age is that authoritarian governments as well as some of the pioneers of the Internet both find themselves advocating restrictions on the use of the information superhighway. The reason: too much freedom.

In the United States, an avalanche of electronic junk-mail is flooding cyberspace, diluting relevant information and complicating users' access to it.

The early internauts who started hooking up their computers to phone lines when today's young hackers were crawling around in their nappies now complain there is too much riff-raff cruising cyberspace. The noise is driving off serious academics, scientists and other experts.

But even as Internet's World Wide Web seems to suffer from too much democracy, the inherent anarchy of the medium has struck the traditionally restrictive and information-poor authoritarian societies of East Asia with a bang.

Many of these countries -- China, Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia -- have varying degrees of press restriction on place.

But as they become more affluent and their need for information grows, individual citizens have acquired the equipment to by-pass traditional sources of information to dial- in directly into the Internet.

Suddenly, they have unrestricted access to 30 million other Internet users worldwide. And the telephone line has also become a philosophical link to a subversive sub-culture of total freedom and an umbilical cord to the outside world.

Perhaps nowhere is this East-West clash of cultures more apparent today than in the information superhighway, and nervous governments are half-heartedly trying to put up road blocks.

Singapore's minister for information and the arts, George Yeo, warned in May that anyone using the Internet to pass around pornographic literature or libelous material would be hauled to court.

Experts say it is not really pornography Yeo is worried about: it is the "anti-social" Western cultural influences that could mean any form of criticism of authority. This is the same reason Singapore has banned satellite dishes.

Officials are said to be worried about the newsgroup on Internet called 'soc.culture.singapore', a bulletin board on which interested people from all over the world have posted more than 10,000 messages in the past year on everything from caning to the chewing gum ban.

But while it tries to keep Internet users on a tight leash, Singapore is fast becoming Asia's turnpike on the information superhighway. The tiny city-nation is being hooked by the fiber- optic digital grid that can bring interactive video to every home by the year 2000.

China is trying to price the Internet out of reach of even those who can afford to buy a computer. But while it does so, it is also offering better access to the Internet and even advertising it in the official media.

Only an estimated 500 subscribers are logging on to the Internet in China at the moment, but the number is expected to grow exponentially as multinational telecommunications companies enter the China market to tap the huge demand.

China's CERNET, which links universities all over the country, is expanding its user base ten-fold by the year 2000.

On the sixth anniversary of the suppression of democracy activists in Beijing on June 4, Chinese dissident groups in exile in the United States posted messages on Internet with a computer graphics image of the Goddess of Democracy to users back home.

China's Minister of Post and Telecommunications, Wu Jichuan, admitted in late June that information exchanges were vital for China's development. But, mindful of the potential for dissident groups to use the network, he cautioned against unrestricted access to information.

"China, as a sovereign state, will also increase control over information," he said.

Information experts doubt if that is possible. "Controlling information on the Internet is a contradiction in terms," says Roberto Verzola, of the Manila-based E-Mail Center Inc, who is involved in setting up Asia-wide exchanges via Internet.

"Internet is not designed for filters," he adds. "It is designed for a completely free flow of ideas without any restrictions."

In a move that sent a fresh wave of pre-1997 jitters, Hong Kong police in May swooped down on eight on-line computer companies providing Internet links to 75 percent of the colony's subscribers. The government said it was cracking down on non- licensee computer nodes.

Chinese dissident groups based in the mainland are said to use Hong Kong online addresses for links to the outside world.

Another country caught in a bind is Vietnam, where universities have set up their network with some 150 subscribers. As in China and Singapore, even as one Vietnamese official says how important free information is, another takes measures to restrict total access.

Says Verzola: "They may say they are against pornography, but these governments are not really worried about their citizens downloading Playboy and Penthouse. They are more worried about the free flow of information."

So far, the Internet has appealed mainly to students and academics. But as the network becomes commercialized, many information industry analysts see the general public logging on to download their favorite movies, programs or magazines in multi-media.

Too much freedom may one day put off genuine Internet users in East Asia as it has started to do in the United States.

Until that happens, most East Asian governments will continue to be schizophrenic in their dealings with the Internet. But in the end they have no choice: cyberspace is either fully free or fully restricted.