winning press freedom conference

China and the Internet: History, Economy and Human Rights
By Wolfgang Kleinwächter

China has the world’s most dynamic Internet market. In December 2007, there were 210 million Chinese people online. Right after the United States, with 215 million Internet users, China now has the second largest Internet community. And with a growth rate of 53% in 2007 and a penetration rate of only 21% (compared to more than 80% in the United States) there is still an enormous market potential. It can be expected that China will soon be the Internet No.1 nation.

Yet, China also has one of the most restrictive Internet domestic policies. When it comes to freedom of expression on the Internet, a mix of governmental regulation, policing activities and technical mechanisms keeps the flow of information content via the Internet under political control. Critical web sites are taken down, Internet Cafes are closed, cyber dissidents are arrested. The annual Internet Freedom Report, produced by Reporters Without Frontiers, ranks the People’s Republic of China a very low no. 164, out of around 170 countries.

1. History

The Internet is still a new media in China. The country was connected to the Internet in 1987. But until 2000, the Internet was practically non-existent in Chinese daily life.

When the first e-mail was sent from a server of the Institute for Computer Applications (ICA) of the Technical University in Beijing to a server of Karlsruhe University in Germany on Sept. 20, 1987, practically no one took note of that historic event. It took more than 15 years to reach the level of 1 million users in a country with a population of 1.3 billion.

1.1. The Chinese-German academic research project: Linking China to the Internet Root;

Establishment of a network connection between Beijing and Karlsruhe was the result of a joint Chinese-German academic research project that had started back in the mid-1980s. Prof. Werner Zorn of Karlsruhe University, one of the fathers of the German Internet, was deeply involved in connecting Germany to the Internet when he linked in 1984 a university server in Karlsruhe to a server of the US Computer Science Network (CSNET). Three years later, Zorn became also one of the “fathers of the Internet” for China.

When Prof. Zorn visited Beijing in 1987, he worked with Prof. Wan Yung Feng of the Chinese Commission on Science & Technology. Both managed to install a name server for China’s .cn domain and to connect it to the name server of Germany’s .de domain. The text of the first e-mail was rather simple: “Across the Great Wall we reach now all corners of the world.” That short sentence was the first step on the long Chinese march into cyberspace.

A simple technical solution was in fact a rather problematic and complicated political project. It came during the Cold War. On the one hand, COCOM regulations, established by NATO, did not allow transfer of highly sensitive communication technology and relevant software to communist countries like the People’s Republic of China. On the other hand, Chinese authorities were very suspicious of “Western spies” and “ideological diversion.”

Rather unwatched by governmental representatives, Zorn and his colleagues used their creativity and flexibility to make the project happen. A great help was also Zorn´s international reputation, his recognition within the Internet community and his good personal contacts with Internet pioneers in the United States who also became excited about the challenge of helping Chinese academics open the door to the West.

After a series of individual efforts on various levels, the name server of the Chinese Top Level Domain (ccTLD) .cn was finally successfully linked to the authoritative Internet Root Server System (RSS). Zorn helped -- in cooperation with Stephen S. Wolff of the US National Science Foundation (Wolff oversaw NSFnet) and Lawrence H. Landweber, co-founder of the CSNET (which connected many countries to the Internet in the 1980s) -- to introduce the .cn root zone file into the IANA data base and to get final approval by the US government to authorize publication of the .cn root zone file in the A-Root server in 1990.

The two letter code .cn, which became the ccTLD for China, was listed on the ISO 3166 list. From the early 1980s, the ISO list was used by Internet pioneer Jon Postel of the Information Science Institute (ISI) at the University of Southern California (USC) in Marina del Rey as a database for the delegation of the management of a ccTLD. Postel managed the IANA database and the global Domain Name System (DNS) from its creation in the early 1980s.

Then, delegation of a ccTLD was done mainly with a handshake and without great formalities, to a trusted manager with Jon Postel’s personal confidence. Governmental authorities were not involved. Nevertheless, authorization for publication of a TLD root zone file in the A-Root Server needed confirmation by the US National Science Foundation (NSF). NSF funded Internet development in the US from the mid-1980s. It needed also authorization by the US Department of Commerce (DoC). The first delegation for management of the .cn domain was handed out by Jon Postel to Werner Zorn.

When Zorn returned to Karlsruhe in 1988, he continued to manage to .cn domain. A copy of the relevant data base of the .cn name server remained in Beijing, but day to day management of the .cn domain was done by Zorn from his office in Karlsruhe. This was not a big deal because only a small number of domain names were registered under .cn.

1.2 CNNIC: From 10,000 to 10 million registered domain names

In 1994, management of the .cn domain was re-delegated to the Chinese Academic Network (CANET), a subsidiary of the Chinese Academy of Science. Three years later, in 1997, based on a government regulation, the “Chinese Internet Network Information Center” (CNNIC) was established and took over full responsibility for management of the .cn domain.

Fewer than 10,000 Internet domain names were then registered under .cn. This number grew at a marginal growth rate, to 50,000 by 2001 and to 430,000 in 2004. The explosion started in 2005, when the number of registered domain names crossed the 1 million mark. By the end of 2006 there were 1.8 million domain names registered, by mid-2007 6 million and by the end of 2007 9 million. With this number, the .cn registry had become the world’s second largest ccTLD, after DENIC. DENIC manages .de for , with 11.8 million registered domain names.

The China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) of the Academy of Sciences is the ccTLD registry for the .cn TLD and the main Internet body in China. It is a government agency but was founded as a non-profit organization under Chinese law on June 3, 1997. CNNIC takes its orders from the Ministry of Information Industry (MII) for its daily business, while it is administered by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). A CNNIC Steering Committee, a working group of well-known experts and commercial representatives from the domestic Internet community, supervises and evaluates the structure, operation and administration of CNNIC.

The legal basis for CNNIC is laid down in the “China Internet Domain Name Regulations” of Sept. 28, 2004. According to the regulation, anybody -- both individuals and institutions -- has the right to register a domain name. CNNIC follows the “first come, first served principle” used worldwide as the standard procedure for domain name registration.

Yet, some names are blacklisted and excluded from registration. According to Article 27 of the Regulations “any of the following contents shall not be included in any domain name registered and used by any organization or individual:

1) Those that are against the basic principles prescribed in the Constitution;

2) Those that jeopardize national security, leak state secrets, intend to overturn the government, or disrupt of state integrity;

3) Those that harm national honor and national interests;

4) Those that instigate hostility or discrimination between different nationalities, or disrupt the national solidarity;

5) Those that violate the state religion policies or propagate cult and feudal superstition;

6) Those that spread rumors, disturb public order or disrupt social
stability;

7) Those that spread pornography, obscenity, gambling, violence, homicide, terror or instigate crimes;

8) Those that insult, libel others and infringe other people’s legal rights and interests; or

9) Other contents prohibited by laws, rules and administrative regulations.”

Various other regulations by the MII specify the mandate and the tasks of CNNIC in more detail, including the “CNNIC Implementing Rules of Domain Name Registration” from 2002 and the “Rules for CNNIC Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy” from 2007.

CNNIC has the full responsibility for the registration of Domain Names in the .cn Domain and the allocation of IP addresses. It is responsible for management of relevant data bases, for technical research and statistical surveys. CNNIC hosts the secretariat of the Internet Society of China (ISC). ISC is not an official chapter of the global Internet Society (ISOC), based in Geneva and California, but an independent, purely Chinese organization.

1.3 China and ICANN

CNNIC is also the authorized contact for international Internet organizations, including the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a private non-profit corporation that manages on behalf of the global Internet community critical Internet resources -- root servers, domain names, IP addresses-- on a worldwide basis. ICANN, which now also manages the IANA data base, was established in 1998 by the US government and is headquartered in Marina del Rey, California. ICANN is governed by an international Board of Directors (BOD) and operates under a Joint Project Agreement (JPA) with the US Department of Commerce. The JPA expires in October 2009.

The Chinese government is officially a member of ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) but does not participate in its regular meetings while Taiwan remains an equal GAC member. However, China hosted an official ICANN Board meeting in Shanghai in 2001. Just recently, ICANN`s new Board Chair, Peter Dengath Trush, got a warm welcome in Beijing and met CNNIC Director General Mao Wei on Feb. 19, 2008. Hualin Quian, deputy director of the CNNIC Steering Committee and Vice-Chair of ISOC China, was from 2003 to 2006 a voting member of the ICANN Board. Xue Hong, a Graduate of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and Assistant Professor at the Foreign Affairs College of the Hong Kong University, served in ICANN’s At Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) from 2005 to 2007. Since 2007, CNNIC has officially been a member of ICANN’s Country Code Name Supporting Organization (CNSO).

1.4 Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan

Next to the .cn Domain there are also ccTLDs for Hong Kong .hk (managed by the Hong Kong Internet Registration Corporation Ltd. /HKIRC with 152,000 registered domain names in 2007) and for Macao .mo (managed by the Macao Network Information Center at the University of Macao with only 2,075 registered domain names in 2007). Both ccTLD registries are managed independently, have their own rules and individual policies but operate under the same general regulations as CNNIC.

The ccTLD .tw of Taiwan is managed by the Taiwan Network Information Center (TWNIC) with about 50,000 registered domain names. TWNIC is also a member of ICANN’s CNSO and stresses its status as an independent ccTLD for Taiwan. As noted above, the government of Taiwan is also a full member of the GAC, which is not accepted by the government of the People’s Republic of China. Regardless of the political controversy over Taiwan, there is a businesslike relationship between CNNIC and TWNIC on the working level, particularly on technical issues.

1.5 gTLDs in China

Chinese individuals and institutions can also register Domain Names under a generic Top Level Domain (gTLD) like .com, .net, .org or .info. However, the popularity of such gTLD registration is shrinking.

On the one hand, domain name registration under .com still enjoys a high growth rate. But in comparison with registrations under .cn, the .com domain, managed by the US company VeriSign, is losing ground. In 2005, about 40% of all domain names in China were registered under .com. By the end of 2007 this had fallen to 20%. Nevertheless there are 2.4 million domain name registrations under .com in China. The domain .net is the third strongest Internet domain in China with a market share of 3.3% -- a total of 390,000 domain name registrations. Other gTLDs like .org or .info have no more than 1.1% market share or a bit more than 100,000 registrations.

In March 2006, CNNIC started to register domain names under .com and .net with Chinese characters but without the involvement of VeriSign. As outlined below, the iDN issue with regard to Chinese Domain Names (CDN) is still in a test phase and under discussion.

2. Economy

Until the late 1990s there was no such thing as a Domain Name Market or an Internet Economy in China. Only a limited number of academics from technical research institutions had access to the Internet. Today, China is a rapidly growing market for the local and global Internet economy. With more than 200 million Internet users within China’s mainland not only domain name registration but all kinds of online applications and services offer untold business opportunities.

2.1 Growth of the Domain Name Market

The primary domain name market had a growth rate of 190.4% in 2007. That growth is bound to continue after full introduction of domain names with Chinese characters, the so-called internationalized Domain Names (iDNs), also on the TLD level (iDN.iDN).

Growth of domain registration is mainly driven by market needs for eCommerce and other commercial applications and services. Yet, eCommerce is still in its infancy in China. According to a statistical report by CNNIC for 2007, only 22.1% of the Chinese Internet users do shopping online. For 2007, this represented no more than 46.4 milion Yuan (or 4.2 million €). Compared to the United States, where 71% of Internet users are online shoppers, and the volume of e-Commerce is more than 5 billion, the volume of Chinese e-Commerce is still very low.

2.2 Search Engines, ISPs and Online Games

Search Engines are one of the key Internet markets in China. For a number of years, the market leader has been the national Internet search engine www.baidu.cn with a market share of 62%. The second most popular search engine in China, www.google.cn, has just 24% market share. The remaining 14% is distributed among various local Chinese search engines and Chinese branches of international portals like www.yahoo.cn or www.msn.com.cn.

The ISP market is growing fast. There are about 100 ISPs. Nine ISPs have allocated more than a million IP addresses to customers in China. China Telecom with 47 million allocated IP addresses and a market share of about 30% is the leader, followed by China Netcom (25 million), CERNET (12 million) and China Tietong Corporation (7 million).

One of the most dynamic Internet markets in China is the online entertainment industry with Shanda Entertainment in the lead, followed by Softworld and ZT Network Science Technology. Kou Xiao Wei, a governmental representative from the Audiovisual and Internet Publication Department of the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) told the People’s Daily newspaper in February 2007: “The online Chinese gaming market has become the biggest, internationally recognized, potential market. In 2006, the scale of the online Chinese gaming market reached 6.54 billion Yuan (about 600 million €), an increase of 73.5% from 2005, much higher than the forecast 46.3%. Such strong growth can be attributed to the ‘free service’ model. It is undeniable that there are still gaps between China and other nations in terms of software development. However, the innovative business mode of Chinese game providers has won approval from many of their foreign counterparts.”

2.3 Beyond the Olympics: Leapfrogging into the Next Generation Networks?

The forthcoming Olympic Games in Beijing in August 2008 are seen as a driving force for dramatic improvement of the national Internet infrastructure and for introduction of new Internet-based applications and services with long-term economic and social consequences. China wants to become the leading world IT nation by the year 2015.

Ruoqi Guan, President of the China Network Communications Group (CNC) told the Pacific Telecommunication Conference (PTC) in Honolulu in January 2007 that there will be 300 million broadband connections for high speed Internet access in China after the Olympic Games. That number would make China the world’s No.1 in broadband connections. According to Guan, this will make it easy for Internet users in China to switch also to VOIP and IPTV. In 2000, there were fewer than a million broadband connections.

There are plans to turn Beijing with its 17.4 million inhabitants, and other Chinese urban centers into “Wireless Cities,” where everyone has fulltime free Internet access. According to Kai Li Kan from the School of Economics & Management at the University for Post & Telecommunication in Beijing, such a model would be “led by the government, built by the people”. In the A2K conference at Yale University in New Haven, Conn., in April 2007 , Kai Li Kan dreamed of an Internet “of the people, by the people, for the people,” recalling Abraham Lincoln`s characterization of the ideal government in his Gettysburg Address in 1863.

2.4 Internet Usage: More eEntertainment than eCommerce

The Internet in China is now mainly used for information and entertainment, less for eGovernment or eCommerce. According to a report by CNNIC the most popular Internet services in China are Online Music and Instant Messaging/Chat Rooms.

181 million users (or 85.6%) had been listening to online music in the second half of 2007. Heavy use of online music explains also the success of the search engine www.baidu.cn which offers special searches for MP3 files. More than 170 million Internet users (or 81.4%) in China had used instant messaging or had gone to a chat room in the second half of 2007. For about 40% of users, this is the most important and first reason for use of the Internet. It is specially popular among young people between 18-24 years, of whom 96% regularly use instant messaging. Interestingly, instant messaging is used more in underdeveloped regions in the west of China than in the booming regions on its east coast.

Other top applications are Online Video (161 million or 76.9%), Search Engines (152 millions or 72.4%) and Online News (154 million or 73.6%). Of special importance are Internet games (124 million or 59.3%). Online game-playing is particularly popular among young people. About three quarters of youngsters below 18 play online games regularly, spending around 10 hours per week for playing games. Interestingly, low income and low education people make the highest use of Internet games compared to other groups and applications. Internet game playing is even more popular than e-mailing. 118 million netizens (or 56.5%) use e-mail services.

Personal web sites and blogs have a high growth rate. The CNNIC report states that at the end of 2007 nearly 25% of Chinese Internet users had their own web sites, which means that there are nearly 50 million individual blogs. Less popular are Online Job Hunting (21 million or 10.4%), Online Payment (33 million or 15.8%), Online Education (38 million or 18.2%) and Online Banking (40 million or 19.2%). Official e-government services, according to the CNNIC report, are underused. Only a quarter of China’s netizens use state services offered by the national and local authorities.

While the Chinese government supports development of a national Internet economy by encouraging e-Commerce and other commercial activities on the Net, it tries to keep control of the national domain name space and in particular over content distributed via the Internet within China,

3. Human Rights

Article 35 of the Chinese Constitution of 1982 guarantees, that “Citizens of the People’s Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration” Furthermore, Article 40 guarantees the freedom and privacy of correspondence: “No organization or individual may, on any ground, infringe upon the freedom and privacy of citizens’ correspondence except in cases where, to meet the needs of state security or of investigation into criminal offences, public security or procuratorial organs are permitted to censor correspondence in accordance with procedures prescribed by law.” According to Article 41, citizens of the People’s Republic of China have the right to criticize and make suggestions to any state organ or official. “Citizens have the right to make to relevant state organs complaints and charges against, or exposures of, violation of the law or dereliction of duty by any state organ or functionary.” But the article adds that “fabrication or distortion of facts with the intention of libel or frame-up is prohibited.”

Regardless of the liberal language of the constitution, China is widely seen as one of the world’s most restrictive countries when it comes to freedom of expression on the Internet. There is a huge gap between theory and practice.

All the constitutional rights and freedoms are conditioned by general provisions to protect national security, public order and state secrets. In cases of conflict, the interests of the state or the government have a higher value than the rights of individuals. With references to the “higher values” of society, censorship is justified, and individual rights and freedoms are often reduced to a low level, particularly when sensitive political issues are at stake.

3.1 The “Harmonious Internet”

The concept of the “harmonious Internet”, which is propagated by the Chinese government, is designed to “clean the Internet” from criminal activities, piracy, pornography and “bad information.” Philosophically, it is inspired by a mix of Confucianism, a special interpretation of the Ying-Yang principle and power politics of the Communist Party. To simplify, the concept says that all good things on the Internet should be promoted, but bad things should be suppressed.

From a Western perspective, the problematic element to that approach is that there are very vague definitions of what constitutes “bad information.” There are no independent and neutral third parties with authority to evaluate concrete cases in conflicts between rights and freedoms of individual netizens and the political interests of the state or government.

The Chinese government uses various means to implement the concept of a
“harmonious Internet.” They include:

• governmental regulation (there are more than 30 individual content-related Internet regulations both on the national and local level),
• technical means (blocking and filtering of unwanted content),
• policing the net and
• punishing individuals identified as violators of government regulations.

The State Council Information Office has the mandate to regulate the Internet, but other security agencies in mainland China also have a say.

In September 2000, State Council Order No. 292, created the first content restrictions for ICPs . China-based web sites may not link to overseas news web sites or carry news from overseas media without specific approval. Only “licensed print publishers” have the authority to publish news on-line. Unlicensed web sites that wish to broadcast news may only publish information already publicly released by other news media. These sites must obtain approval from state information offices and from the State Council Information Agency . Article 14 of this Order, gives Chinese officials full access to any kind of sensitive information they wish: “ […] an IIS provider must keep a copy of its records for 60 days and furnish them to the relevant state authorities upon demand in accordance to the law.” Finally, Article 15, officially establishes an online dictatorship: “IIS providers shall not produce, reproduce, release, or disseminate information that: […] endangers national security, … is detrimental to the honor of the state, … undermines social stability, the state’s policy towards religion, … other information prohibited by the law or administrative regulations.” Article 12 says that “content providers are responsible for ensuring the legality of any information disseminated through their services.”

3.2 The Golden Shield Project

One key element is the so-called “Golden Shield Project” (GSP) which critical Western observers also call the “Great Chinese Firewall.” The GSP is overseen by the Ministry of Public Security (MPS). It is seen by the Chinese government as a main instrument to guarantee the stability and the security of the Internet in China, to combat “bad information” and to work for a “healthy Internet.”

According to Wikipedia the following methods are used to block “bad content”:

• IP blocking. Access to a certain IP address is denied. If the target web site is hosted in a shared hosting server, all web sites on the same server will be blocked. This affects all IP-based protocols such as HTTP, FTP and POP. A typical circumvention method is to find proxies that have access to the target web sites, but proxies may be jammed or blocked, and some web sites, such as Wikipedia (when editing), also block proxies. Some large web sites like Google have allocated additional IP addresses to circumvent the block, but later the block was extended to cover the new IPs.
• DNS filtering and redirection. Don’t resolve domain names, or return incorrect IP addresses. This affects all IP-based protocols such as HTTP, FTP and POP. A typical circumvention method is to find a domain name server that resolves domain names correctly, but domain name servers are subject to blockage as well, especially IP blocking. Another workaround is to bypass DNS if the IP address is obtainable from other sources and is not blocked. Examples are modifying the Hosts file or typing the IP address instead of the domain name in a Web browser.
• URL filtering. Scan the requested Uniform Resource Locator (URL) string for targeted key words, regardless of the domain name specified in the URL. This affects the HTTP protocol. Typical circumvention methods are to use escaped characters in the URL, or to use encrypted protocols such as VPN and TLS/SSL.
• Packet filtering. Terminate TCP packet transmissions when a certain number of controversial key words are detected. This affects all TCP-based protocols such as HTTP, FTP and POP, but Search engine results pages are more likely to be censored. Typical circumvention methods are to use encrypted connections - such as VPN and TLS/SSL - to escape the HTML content, or by reducing the TCP/IP stack’s MTU/MSS to reduce the amount of text contained in a given packet.
• Connection reset. If a previous TCP connection is blocked by the filter, future connection attempts from both sides will also be blocked for up to 30 minutes. Depending on the location of the block, other users or web sites may also be blocked if the communication is routed to the location of the block. A circumvention method is to ignore the reset packet sent by the firewall.
• Web feed blocking. Increasingly, incoming URLs starting with the words “rss,” “feed,” or “blog” are blocked.
• Reverse surveillance. Computers accessing certain web sites including Google are automatically exposed to reverse scanning from the ISP in an apparent attempt to extract further information from the “offending” system.

Control is excercised mainly via the ISPs, which must follow government instructions (on blocking suspected IP numbers and domain names) and to transfer individual contact data to Chinese law enforcement in special cases where the government sees a breach of Chinese law, mainly with regard to criminal activities, pornography or to efforts to undermine national security, public order or to give away so-called “state secrets” by publishing “bad news.”

Another form of control is strong regulation of Internet Cafes, where many Chinese, particularly in rural areas, access the web. Internet Café providers must follow strict regulations, otherwise they are closed. There is no anonymity for individual Internet Café users. Users must register and give their personal contact data before they may use a computer in an Internet Cafe.

The “Regulations on the Administration of Internet Access Service Business Establishments (Internet Cafes) of Sept. 29, 2002, state in Article 23: “Units operating Internet Access Service Business Establishments shall examine, register, and keep a record of the identification card or other effective document of those customers who go online. The contents of the registration and records shall be maintained for at least 60 days, and shall be provided to the cultural and public security agencies for examination in accordance with the law. Registration contents and records shall not be altered or destroyed during this period.”

3.3 Can it be Circumvented?

There are numerous studies by Western universities, including from the Berkman Center of Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, on Internet Censorship in China which survey various policies and praticies to censor the Internet in China.

There is, however, no obviously clear and consistent policy. Researchers at the University of California, Davis and the University of New Mexico have found that the GSP is not a true firewall since banned material can sometimes pass through several routers or through the entire system without being blocked. It differs also from region to region. Web sites that are not accessible in the western part of
China can be easily accessed in Shanghai. Servers in Hong Kong obviously have more individual freedom than servers in Beijing. There are also variations at different times. There are reports that during summit meetings or other official events with high-level Western presence, forbidden web sites are accessible but are blocked again after the events. The New York Times has observed that “the government’s filtering, while comprehensive, is not total. One day a banned site might temporarily be visible, if the routers are overloaded -- or if the government suddenly decides to tolerate it. The next day the site might disappear again.”

Other reports document that the firewall is rather easily circumvented by determined parties using proxy servers outside the firewall. VPN and SSH connections to outside mainland China are not blocked, so circumventing all of the censorship and monitoring features of the Great Firewall of China is easy for those who have available such secure connection methods to computers outside mainland China. Anonymizer Inc. provides a free service to allow uncensored and anonymous browsing in China. The software is available through a number of sources, including a China-accessible web site.

Psiphon, a software project designed by University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, is another circumvention technology that works through social networks of trust and is designed to help Internet users bypass content-filtering systems. Furthermore, Tor (The Onion Router), a free software, enables users to communicate anonymously on the Internet. Neither the Tor website nor the Tor network are blocked, making Tor an easily acquired and effective tool for circumvention of the censorship controls. Tor allows, inter alia, uncensored downloads and uploads, although no guarantee can be made on freedom from repercussions.

In addition to Tor, there are various HTTP/HTTPS Tunnel Services, which work like Tor. At least one of them, Your Freedom, is confirmed to be working from China and also offers encryption features for the transmitted traffic.

Some legal scholars have pointed out that the frequency with which the PRC government issues new regulations about the Internet is symptomic of their ineffectiveness since new regulations never refer to the previous set of regulations, which appear to be forgotten.

3.5 Punishment of Cyberdissidents and Self-Censorship

Expectations, that in the leadup to the Olympic Games, scheduled for August 2008 in Beijing, the restrictive system would be substantially liberalized, were disappointed during recent events around the unrest in Tibet in March 2008. Numerous web sites were blocked, blogs were taken down and individuals who uploaded pictures or videos of violence in Lhasa were arrested.

The number of cases where Chinese netizens who distributed “bad content” via the Internet were punished and sent to jail for expressing themselves online is growing. The recent annual report of Reporters Without Borders lists nearly 50 cases in 2007in which individuals or journalists were jailed and given Draconian sentences of several years in prison just for making critical statements that, in the eyes of the Chinese government, undermined national security, public order or were seen as revealing “state secrets.”

These cases have produced growing self-censorship. Not only individual bloggers, but also professional journalists are increasingly careful about expressing their views, particularly on critical political affairs. One journalist was quoted in the Reporter Without Borders report, saying that in his newspaper, staffers now wait for the official news from the Chinese state news agency Xinhua before writing their own comments, to be sure to get it right and to avoid trouble with local or national authorities.

3.6 The Role of US Internet Companies

A special case is the Yahoo affair of 2005. The Chinese branch of Yahoo Inc. disclosed the individual contact details of two Chinese cyberdissidents to Chinese authorities after an official government query. Wang Xiao Ning and Shi Tao were both sentenced to several years in prison. This case produced a storm of protest in the West. Human rights groups accused US companies of helping the Chinese government’s censorship and of ignoring human rights obligations. Microsoft, Google and Cisco -- all very active in the Chinese Internet market - also became targets of that kind of Western criticism.

The US Senate had a special hearing on the issue in February 2006. Representatives of the so-called “Gang of the Four” acknowledged the human rights problem in China but partly rejected the criticisms of US government representatives and human rights groups. Google, Yahoo, Cisco and Microsoft argued that they must respect local legislation when doing business in China, just as Chinese companies must respect US laws when doing business in the United States. They said it was beyond the powers of a US corporation to change Chinese laws and that it is rather the concern of the US government to use its diplomatic influence to change China’s laws.
Google explained in detail that they are, on the one hand, well aware about the human rights deficiencies in China and the risks of doing business there. On the other hand, like in any other country where Google is active, they must follow national legislation when they operate in the local market. Consequently, they filter out references to content that is illegal under Chinese law but give as much information as possible to their Chinese users about blocked and censored web sites. Furthermore, they avoid hosting data containing criticisms of China and information of individual Chinese Internet users, using Google’s g-mail or chat room services on servers located in China.

Thus, www.google.cn is rather different from www.google.com. Users of www.google.cn will get no links to web sites that are considered under Chinese law to be “illegal.” But Google informs its Chinese users that such content is available and can be reached via www.google.com. Google applies the same approach also in other countries like Germany or France where web sites with Nazi content are illegal under national laws and so are not shown in Google searches on www.google.de (Germany) or www.google.fr (France). Google also does not respond to phone calls from Chinese authorities with requests to hand over the stored data of individual users. If Google gets such phone calls, they ask for a written request referring to existing legislation. Practice has shown that many such phone requests are not followed up with written requests.

3.7 Diplomatic Negotiations: How to balance individual rights with
State interests?

Internet freedom in China has also become controversial internationally. At the UN World Summits on the Information Society (WSIS) in 2002 and 2005, at the UN’s Internet Governance Forum (IGF) and at the newly established UN Human Rights Council, the issue has been debated by government representatives and other stakeholders from the private sector, civil society and the technical and academic community.

Diplomatic efforts to improve the situation have led so far to only limited results and have not gone beyond reconfirmation of existing international human rights instruments, notably Article 19 and Article 29 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. Article 19 guarantees to everyone the right to freedom of expression and opinion which includes “freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers,” while Article 29 stipulates that “everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible” and that “in the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.”

In democratic societies, conflicts between the individual’s exercise of freedom of expression and the governmental right to protect public order are settled by an independent judiciary or neutral third parties on a case by case basis, generally giving individual rights and freedoms highest priority. In China, priority is given to the State’s collective rights of “public order” and “national security.”

The issue of how to balance such conflicting values in concrete cases concerning publications on the Internet in China has also become a frequently discussed subject at international academic conferences. During a July 2007 meeting in Paris of the International Association of Media and Communication Research, a Chinese scholar recognized, on one hand, that there has been substantial progress on individual rights of freedoms of expression, including the Internet, during the last 20 years. What would have been impossible in 1987 is now common practice, he said. On the other hand, there are still taboos which, when they are ignored by individuals, are not tolerated by the government and lead to heavy punishment. The “Chinese taboos” he mentioned in particular were the three T`s (Tianamen, Tibet and Taiwan) as well as references to Falun Gong.

Another scholar, Andrew Lih, a Chinese-American professor at the University of Hong Kong, said that many in China take a long-term perspective. “Chinese people have a 5,000-year view of history,” he said. “You ban a web site, and they’re like: ‘Oh, give it time. It’ll come back.’ “

3.8 Violation of Human Rights as a Trade Barrier?

There are two schools of thought in Western academe and amongst non-governmental organizations in this field: One group argues that with more economic progress, a higher living standard and a new self-confident, well-educated generation, the spaces for individual freedom will gradually grow. The other group does not believe in such an evolutionary concept.

Under discussion is, inter alia, a proposal to classify the violation of human rights, particularly censorship measures against freedom of information, as constituting trade barriers. Under World Trade Organization arrangements, violations of international treaties to protect intellectual property rights are already defined as trade barriers. As recent experiences have demonstrated, the Chinese government, after pressure from WTO member states, has undertaken concrete actions against online piracy, to guarantee the protection of intellectual property rights under its international obligations, thus avoiding negative consequences for its economic interests. In contrast, violation of international obligations under global legal human rights agreements has until now been nearly without economic consequences for countries like China.

Cold War experiences in Europe in the 1970s and 1980s (notably the effects of the Helsinki agreements) might provide interesting leads for action, but it remains to be seen whether such mechanisms would also work in the rather different political, economic and cultural environment of China.

3.9 Internet Governance at the UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)

During the first UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Geneva, the Chinese Delegation played an active role, particularly in the discussions of human rights and of Internet governance.

The Chinese government challenged in particular the evolution of governance mechanisms for the management of critical Internet resources like domain names, root server and IP addresses, which are led by the private sector and executed by Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. ICANN operates under a contract with the US government, which expires in October 2009.

During WSIS Phase 1, China argued that the principle of private sector leadership was good for the early days of the Internet with about a million Internet users. With about a billion Internet users worldwide, critical Internet resources should now be governed by governments, China contends. A proposal to shift responsibility for root servers, domain names and IP addresses from ICANN to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) or to create a new intergovernmental Internet body in the UN system was rejected by the US government, the EU, private sector and civil society but was supported by a number of developing countries like Brazil, India, Pakistan, South Africa and some Arab states. In the absence of an accepted definition of Internet governance, another conflict was a rather controversial approach to what “Internet Governance” stands for. Some governments adopted a “narrow definition,” and others a “broad” one.

The controversy -- private sector leadership vs. governmental leadership -- was not settled during WSIS I. The compromise was to ask UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to establish a Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) with a mandate to arrive at a definition of Internet governance, to identify the public policy aspects of Internet governance and to specify the role of the various stakeholders. WGIG was not established as an intergovernmental working group but as a multi-stakeholder body with the full and equal involvement of governments, private sector and civil society representatives from developed and developing countries. The Chinese representative in WGIG was Madame Qiheng Hu, Advisor to the Science & Technology Commission of the Ministry of Information Industry and former Vice President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The WGIG report, presented in July 2005, paved the way for a “grand compromise” during WSIS II. Based on a “broad definition” of Internet governance, it concluded that the Internet should not be governed by one single unit but by a global mechanism, that includes various stakeholders -- governmental as well as non-governmental -- in their respective roles. WGIG proposed neither governmental nor private sector leadership for the broad range of Internet issues but recommended a “multi-stakeholder approach.” It encouraged the various players in such a “multilayer mechanism” (M_) to enhance their communication, coordination and cooperation (C_).

After the presentation of the WGIG Report, China no longer insisted on the transfer of responsibilities from the private sector (ICANN) to the governmental sector (ITU) but agreed finally on the establishment of a multi-stakeholder Internet Governance Forum (IGF) instead of a new intergovernmental body. China also supported the launching of a process of “enhanced cooperation” amongst involved international institutions and organizations, including ICANN and ITU in the “Tunis Agenda for the Information Society.”

The first priority for China in WSIS II was recognition of the principle of sovereignty over its national domain name space. In Paragraph 63 of the Tunis Agenda, governments agreed that “countries should not be involved in decisions regarding another country’s country-code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD)” and that “their legitimate interests, as expressed and defined by each country, in diverse ways, regarding decisions affecting their ccTLDs, need to be respected, upheld and addressed via a flexible and improved framework and mechanisms.” This assurance, that China has legitimate sovereignty rights under international law made it easier for the Chinese government to join the general compromise on the IGF and the process of enhanced cooperation. In practice, this is a de facto recognition of ICANN and the principle of private sector leadership for management of Critical Internet Ressources (CIR).

3.10 The Internet Governance Forum (IGF)

In the public consultations on the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), which advises the UN Secretary General in convening the annual IGFs, the Chinese representative proposed to include also the issues of Critical Internet Resources as a subject of discussion, a proposal which was broadly accepted. The IGF is, however, not a negotiating body and has no decision-making function. The concept of the IGF is to promote multi-stakeholder debate, to exchange ideas, information and arguments and to send “inspirational messages” to specialized bodies that are mandated to make decisions. The Chinese member of the IGF Multistakeholder Advisory Group (MAG) is Tang Zicai, Deputy Director, Department of Foreign Affairs in the Ministry of Information Industry (MII).

Within the IGF, which started in Athens in October 2006, China gave the issue of “Cybersecurity” highest priority. During the IGF II in Rio de Janeiro, November 2007, the Internet Society of China (ISC) and the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST) organised a workshop on the “New Culture of Cybersecurity.” During that workshop, Prof. Sihan Qing, Director General of the Engineering Research Center for Information Security Technology (ERCIST) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences proposed a document called a “Framework on World Norm of Internet (Version 2.0).”

That document is drafted like an international treaty, with rights and duties for various stakeholders. The author says he does not intend to present it as a draft convention. It is “neither a legislative regulation, nor a technical standard, it is rather a self-disciplinary agreement,” says Sihan Qing.

Among the proposed principles are, under Chapter B, the following paragraphs: “1 It is requested that all information created for, and contributed to, the Internet be trustworthy and valuable for the evolution of human being and prosperity of the world. 2. The contents created for, and contributed to, the Internet should be trustworthy and valuable for maintaining human ethics and morality, for the protection of privacy and human rights, for the protection of all people, particularly women and children, disabled people and weak group of people. 3. The contents created for, and contributed to, the Internet should be trustworthy and valuable to all nations and people, regardless of race or creed. 4. It is requested that the operators of the networks take on the responsibility for making efforts to keep the high reliability and high quality of services (QoS). 5. It is requested that the users of Internet be strictly observe the related regulations when accessing and utilizing the Internet. 6. All nations and individuals should go along shoulder to shoulder to take all measures to defeat various attacks and cyber crimes, such as Trojans, viruses, worms, spyware, spam and phishing.” And paragraph 2 of Chapter E calls for a new international Internet authority: “It is needed to have an organizational authority to monitor the quality of services maintaining, diagnose the faults of operations and arbitrate disputes.”

The proposed “Framework on World Norm Internet 2.0” (a first version was presented at the first IGF in Athens in October 2006) has not so far gotten formal backing of the Chinese government. As noted above, the IGF is not a decision-making body and formal proposals like the “Framework” are not subjects of negotiation (but the drafters have said they hope it will eventually be adopted -- where and by whom being left open). It remains to be seen whether such ideas will stimulate further debate and lead to political actions in relevant institutions and organizations, including inter-governmental organizations.

4. Looking into the future: Towards a fragmented Internet?

How will the Internet look in ten years and what role China will play in the Internet of the future? The list of challenges is long: Access, cybersecurity, diversity, openness, next generation networks, network neutrality, non-fixed location Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), mobile Internet etc. When it comes to future management of critical Internet resources, there are two key issues where China will have to play a crucial role: Internationalized Domain Names (iDNs) and IPv6 Addresses.

4.1 Internationalized Domain Names (iDNs)

One of the key Internet problems for China is the introduction of internationalized domain names (iDNs). When the DNS was invented by Jon Postel and Paul Mockapetris 25 years ago, it was based on the ASCII code, a shortened version of the Latin alphabet. This has put individuals and institutions using non-Latin characters in their national languages at a disadvantage. Use of local languages in the addressing system is also a crucial element to bring nations with languages not based on the ASCII code into the Internet more efficiently.

Technical experiments with iDNs started in the 1990s, mainly within the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), a non-governmental Internet standardization body of technicians and engineers. After 2000, ICANN started a special program to implement iDNs, both at the secondary and the primary (top) levels (iDN.iDN). But while iDNs on the secondary domain level were introduced in 2004, introduction of iDNs on the Top Level created unexpected technical and political problems.

Some experts, like Jon Klensin from the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), the umbrella organization of the IETF, pointed to the enormous challenge for the capacity of routers if they must deal with different language tables with hundreds of non-ASCII characters. He warned of “cosmic confusion” and a collapse of the DNS. Otherwise, ICANN`s so-called JCK (Japanese, Chinese, Korean) working group concluded that the technical problems related to language tables in scripts with symbols instead of Latin letters can be managed. Next to the technical problems, the issue of “ownership of a language” became a political issue. Established gTLD registries like VeriSign, the registry for .com or .net, argued that their gTLD may be considered a trademark that should have protection in all language variations, including Chinese. Alternatively, China’s representatives argued that the Chinese language is owned by the Chinese people.

Regardless of numerous workshops, studies and working groups, the implementation process within ICANN did not move forward at high speed. China was dissatisfied with the slow progress in ICANN and developed its own system. CNNIC started in March 2006 a test with iDNs on the TLD level, so called “Chinese Domain Names” (CDN). The first test was limited to .cn, .net and .com with Chinese characters. CNNIC established its own root server system to manage communication amongst the new TLDs. Linkage to the global legacy root server system was guaranteed by a special procedure that added automatically in each query, the ASCII-based .cn TLD to an iDN.iDN address. This was not visible for the user in the Chinese mainland, and it only created problems for Chinese users outside of China if they forgot to add the .cn in ASCII to the e-mail or web-address with Chinese characters. Reports on the results of this test were not available at this writing.

Separate language-based Internet root server systems have the potential to split the Internet. It can lead to fragmentation of the global unified Internet. Such a split -- some people call it the “Balkanization of the Internet” -- would not mean the “end of the Internet” as we know it but would lead to new complications and challenges for coordination. To maintain the standard of universal communication, there would be a need to build bridges between different language-based networks and to introduce very complex cooperation mechanisms.

From an economic and technical viewpoint, such a fragmentation would be very counterproductive. There would be disintegration of the unique value of the internet, with its current 1.3 billion users who can all communicate with each other anywhere, anytime. Changing root server systems when moving from one language to another would create additional technical problems and lead to inefficient time-consuming and costly bureaucratic procedures. Separate roots could lead also to more control opportunities over the communication flow within a specific language root, particularly if all root servers of such a network are within the territory of a single country. Bridges between language-based networks could be designed as gateways that can be passed only with special governmental permission. That could backfire against the social and economic needs of a society and lead to isolation and backwardness.

To avoid such a trend toward fragmentation of the Internet, ICANN has speeded up its procedures and started in 2007 a so-called “fast track” for introduction of iDN.iDN on a ccTLD level for 11 non-ASCII language scripts, including complex and simplified Chinese. Part of this project is to offer China the possibility of a .cn TLD with Chinese characters in the IANA data base and in the legacy root server system. China has welcomed ICANN’s fast track iDN ccTLD efforts. ICANN Chair Peter Dengath Trush visited Beijing in February 2008, and assured CNNIC that “the fast track process of IDN ccTLD [really] will be fast.” There is a strong economic incentive for China to remain with CDNs on the top level in the global legacy root, but it remains to be seen how potential contradictions between China’s national economic and political interests are worked out internally and how the use of Chinese characters in TLD zone files will finally make its way into the legacy root server system coordinated by ICANN.

During the ICANN meeting in Los Angeles in October 2007, another problem appeared when CNNIC representatives challenged use of both traditional and modernized Chinese on an equal basis in ICANN`s test phase. In mainland China, modernized Chinese dominates, while in Taiwan traditional Chinese script is more popular. CNNIC proposed that there be just one Chinese script in the test phase and then to provide for local variations under one main language table. The conflict was diluted both by CNNIC and TWNIC, who called it just a technical, not a political, issue.

4.2 IPv6 Addresses

The issue of the new addressing system - IPv6 - is of similar complexity. It is expected that the old version of the IP protocol - IPv4 - will reach its limits and be saturated in 2012. ICANN has dealt with the IP address issue for several years through its Address Supporting Organization (ASO), in close cooperation with the Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) and the Number Resource Organization (NRO).

China has its own National Internet Registry (NIR). Chinese ISPs can get IP addresses both from the NIR and the Asian-Pacific RIR (APNIC). Chinese officials have been arguing that they do not have enough IPv4 address blocks. But a transition to IPv6, which offers a rather unlimited number of addresses, also creates a number of technical and political problems that are still being discussed.

One technical problem is the interoperability between the two protocols. For a longer transition period, full interoperability between IPv4 and IPv6 addresses is needed. But existing protocols allow only interoperability from IPv4 to IPv6 and not from IPv6 to IPv4. So, there is another risk that the Internet could be split into two networks, one based on IPv4 addresses and another on IPv6 addresses.

Furthermore, with the introduction of IPv6, the established procedure of a flexible allocation of IP addresses following specific needs of day to day communication could terminate and be substituted for by a procedure that would give every individual or institutional Internet user a fixed IP address for life. Like a passport number, such fixed IP addresses could become a key element in authentication processes on the Internet. That would raise many data protection, privacy and human rights questions. It would also allow a much higher level of control of individual Internet communication.

4.3. Conclusions

China will soon be the Internet’s nation No. 1, supplanting the United States as the country with the largest number of users. China will have the largest national Internet community. It will have the largest number of domain name registration under a ccTLD, and it will have the largest number of broadband access points. It will have also the largest number of individual web sites and blogs.

However, Internet development in China is characterized by a huge contradiction between economic interests and human rights practices. While there is an open policy toward promotion of the private sector in the Internet economy, including access for everybody to the ‘net, there is also a restrictive government policy when it comes to access to and distribution of information content by and free communication amongst individual Internet users.

It remains to be seen what the mid- and long-.term consequences of that contradiction between economic development and human rights will be in China´s internal evolution and its integration into the global community.

Wolfgang Kleinwächter is a professor of Internet Policy and Regulation in the Department for Media & Information Studies at the University of Aarhus in Denmark. He is Co-Chair of the Law Section of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR), co-founder of the Global Internet Governance Academic Network (GIGANET) and was a member of the UN Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG)