It’s no secret how powerful the Internet is as a democratizing agent. The obvious comparison is to Gutenberg’s printing press, which finally placed the written word in the hands of the general population outside of monks and monarchies. However, unlike the early years of traditional print the Internet knows no bounds. Internet users in the West are privy to almost any source of information they want, and gratification is immediate (for now anyway).
China is a different story. Although China has undergone drastic changes over the last few decades, the government still upholds a number of strict laws over its citizens. For instance, freedom of speech and access to information is highly controlled. You may have read about Google’s dumbed down portal in China and the backlash it received for conforming to China’s principles. Then there’s the notorious situation involving Yahoo, which reported one of its users to government officials for blogging about items the government didn’t approve of.
The question is how long will the Chinese government be able to manage Internet usage? Like the rest of the world, the amount of Internet users in China has exploded. It will become increasingly difficult to fasten a watchful eye over what people see and do unless the watchdog infrastructure can keep up with the pace. Maybe it can.
More to the point; how can the government restrain every bit of information contained within blogs? I don’t think it’s possible. Blogs are geared for free thinking thought process; as bloggers jot down their ideas / feelings and publish them immediately over the wire, there’s little play for censorship.
Following the worldwide trend, blogging has become very popular in China. There will be an estimated 100 million bloggers in China by 2007; it seems unfeasible that the government can maintain the resources required to regulate this blogsphere explosion over time, unless the activity is banned completely. Blog channels are also becoming increasingly available. American owned search giants Google, Yahoo and Microsoft already offer blog services in China, and there are a number of smaller Chinese companies that do as well. And, China’s largest and most popular engine, Baidu, has now joined the mix. It will soon have a blog service available through Baidu Space.
It’ll be interesting to see how the Chinese government handles this over the next several years. Will it persevere to maintain control over its principles? Or will the power of the Internet be the technological determinant that finally opens the door to higher freedoms?
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