The development of the Internet in China

2.5 The development of the Internet in China

The Chinese government plays an important and active role in shaping Internet development in China in terms of policy-making, financial support, surveillance and censorship, and the e-government programme. The Chinese government has recognised that the Internet is indispensable to economic growth (Taubman, 1998; Hachigian, 2001), and it cannot be ‘contained within national borders’ (Wu, 1996). It is stated in the report of the Internet in China in the white paper of the Central People’s Government of the People’s Republic of China that:

The Chinese government has fully recognised the irreplaceable role that the Internet plays in promoting national economic development, the advancement of science and technology, and informatisation of social service, and attaches great importance to and actively boost the development and application of the Internet (China, 2010).

In order to take full advantage of the economic, educational, and informational potential of the Internet, the Chinese government ‘has supported the development of the Internet as a tool for business, entertainment, education, and information exchange’ (MacKinnon, 2007, p.31). From 1997 to 2009, the Chinese government has invested 4.3 billion RMB into the construction of the Internet infrastructure (State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China, 2010). On the other hand, the Chinese government is well aware of the challenges that the free flow of information online and the social-networking capacity of the Internet may bring. Nevertheless, the Chinese government has maintained the balance between the development and the risk. No immediate threats to the rule of the government and the party have been generated so far while China is enjoying the benefits of the development of the Internet.

The Internet has experienced exponential growth in China, which now has the world’s largest number of Internet users, 250 million IPv4 addresses and 11.21 million domain names. By the end of 2008, the sale of Internet industry had reached 0.65 billion RMB; by the end of 2009, the market scale of Internet advertisements had reached 20,000 million RMB and the market scale of Internet games was 25,800 million RMB (State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China, 2010). At the same time, ‘China operates the most extensive, technologically sophisticated, and broad-reaching system of Internet filtering in the world’ (OpenNet Initiative, 2005). The Chinese government’s control and influence over the Internet is implemented in three major ways: subsidy, structure regulation and content control. Subsidy refers to the financial support that the government provides to support or promote certain programmes or content favouring the regime of the government. Structure regulations – like limits on cross-ownership of media – build restrictions into the structure and organisation of media ownership and management. Content control involves regulations, laws, and technologies employed to filter out unacceptable content and block unacceptable access to certain websites.

The tight control of the Chinese government raised concern from scholars worldwide. A number of studies have criticised the censorship in China (Taubman, 1998; Qiu, 1999/2000; Boas & Kalathil, 2001; Hachigian, 2001; Harwit & Clark, 2001; Tsui L., 2001; Walton, 2001; Edelman, 2003; Hughes & Wacker, 2003; Kalathil, 2003; BOAS, 2004; Gorman, 2005; Fry, 2006; Crandall, et al., 2007; Dann & Haddow, 2007; Elijah & Neil, 2007; MacKinnon, 2007; 2009; Weber & Jia, 2007; Palfrey, 2008; King, Pan & Roberts, 2013). Deans (2004, p.129) pointed out that the Internet service providers and users have been encouraged to conduct self-censorship and self-regulation in China since the mid-1990s. Crandall, et al. (2007) supported Deans’ viewpoint in their study of the Great ‘Firewall’ of China (GFC). The result of their study suggested that the GFC's keyword filtering worked as a ‘panopticon’ to promote self-censorship. Regarding the influence of censorship in China, MacKinnon (2007, p.33) argued that the world view of the average Chinese Internet user was skewed by ‘China’s system of Internet censorship, control, and propaganda’, ‘in the regime’s favour’. Fry (2006) has blamed the censorship of the Chinese government for dragging the major Internet search engine companies – Google, America Online, Microsoft and Yahoo – into a moral dilemma in which they have to choose between commercial profits and social responsibility. There are a limited number of scholars (Gorman, 2005) supporting censorship in China. Bell (2000) and Gorman (2005) argued that the Internet, as well as other media, is subject to censorship in some form or another in most societies and different societies have different standards of what is considered acceptable.

In addition to surveillance and control, the Chinese government takes an active part in generating and leading content in favour of its regime. One example is the Government Online Project that started on 22 January 1999. By the end of 2009, there were 45 thousand government websites established in China including those of 75 departments of the central government, 32 provincial governments, 333 city governments and above 80% of the county governments (State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China, 2010). Government websites provide services like Revenue Bureau Audit services and National Tourist Bureau Electronic reservation services, and information like Labour Ministry Employment information collection and publication and the Labour Bureau Enterprise database (Lu, et al., 2002). Despite its large scale, however, Zhang (2002) argued that the Government Online Project in general is still ‘in its infancy and has a long way to go before it can claim to be ‘serving the people’’ (Zhang, 2002).

Despite the efforts made by the government to manage the potential so-called ‘negative’ consequences of the Internet, there are factors working in the favour of long-term evolution rather than revolution. The need for information driven by the free market and integration with the world, the rise of a new middle class with knowledge, property, and ‘expectations that may not always conform to those of the ruling authorities’ (Hwang & Schneider, 2011, p. 30) as a result of the advancement of the private and knowledge economy, the expansion of higher education, the increased awareness of rights and sense of inequality promoted by the high penetration rate of media such as TV and the free flow of labour force, and the interplay of the central and local governments which underpins the gradual social and political changes that are happening in China.

The Internet works as a catalyst. It is enabling the development of ‘civil society’ and public discourse around policy that could result in a gradual evolution towards democracy; the ability of Internet users to collaborate freely with one another through various online social networking forms might be laying the long-term groundwork for successful political activities, even while sensitive topics are blocked and offline protest activities are prohibited or effectively managed. Chase and Mulvenon (2002) supported the argument. They suggested that the Internet would be ‘a key pillar of China’s slower, evolutionary path toward increased pluralisation and possibly even nascent democratisation’ (p.90) instead of bringing ‘revolutionary’ political change to China. Moreover, the number of Internet users is increasing rapidly to be more representative of the Chinese population and the virtual space for civil discourse is quietly deepening. If this civil discourse in Chinese cyberspace continues to mature, deepen and develop, that leads to a number of intriguing questions. Over the course of a generation, will a new group of Chinese emerge who have grown up debating public affairs, engaging in critical thinking and respecting the sanctity of the individual in ways that were not possible before? Will this new generation who have grown up using blogs and other forms of online participatory media be better equipped for reasoned self-governance than the current generation (MacKinnon, 2008)?

In addition, the Internet should not be seen as a mere technology or platform. It is a product of the Internet industry workers including the designers, the managers, and so on who are members of Chinese society. They are not passive followers of the government regulations or restrictions, but active agencies who ‘contribute to the production of alternative online spaces’ for the Chinese people within their ‘problematic working conditions’ in a hope to alter China (Xia & Kennedy, 2014, cited in Marolt & Herold, 2014, p.176).

However, there is never a want of scholars who argue against the Internet’s potential to promote those changes. Morozov (2011) and Schlaeger (2013) suggest that information and communication technologies reinforce the current power relation and legitimise the current regime instead of undermining it (see Chapter 2, 2.4). Instead of being employed for activism, the Internet is too often used for vigilantism (Leibold, 2011; Sullivan, 2013), nationalism (Hughes, 2002; Kalathil, 2003; Herold, 2009; Weiss, 2014), chauvinism (Hu, 2011), etc. The human-flesh search engines (renrou sousuo yingqing 人肉搜索引, online vigilantism) all too often ‘result in petty, ill informed and harassing witch-hunts based on innuendos, half-truths and bizarre conspiracy theories’ (Leibold, 2011, p.10). Sullivan (2013) also believes that ‘human flesh searches raise the spectre of Cultural Revolution-era vigilantism’ (p.10). The Internet is also a hotbed for nationalism due to both the tactics employed by the CPC (Hughes, 2002; Kalathil, 2003; Weiss, 2014) (see Chapter 4, 4.5.2) and ‘a latent nationalism and traditionalism in Chinese culture’ (Herold, 2009).

The Chinese government played a very important role in promoting the development of the Internet in China as a part of the strategy to boost economic growth. The Internet contributed much to the fiscal revenue of the government and the economic growth. At the same time, the Chinese government employed a sophisticated system of strategies and measures to control the negative impact of the Internet. However, maintaining the balance between Internet development and political control has proved a challenging task for the Chinese government, because ‘the features of the Internet that cause problems’ for the Chinese government are ‘the same features that make the technology’ ‘a key to development, prosperity, and influence’ (Taubman, 1998, pp. 255-6).

Download 3.43 Mb.

Share with your friends: