The Internet in China: Its Impact and Limits (Notes from the Paris Conference)

When facing the overwhelming strength of a foe, unity and sense of purpose often become your only option to fight back.

That’s what Boxun News is all about, making a free information forum available to any willing user and empowering him or her to make a difference in this resistance.

But Boxum, as its Editor Watson Meng told the Paris conference, takes a huge gamble in its fight against the Chinese authorities and does have the scars to prove it.

Internet in China: Its Impact and Limits
By Watson Meng
Our website is supported by citizen journalists and volunteers. There’s no funding at all. With this model, we can operate it without many resources. It updates 24/7, is very active and features 2000 blogs.

The advantage of citizen journalism in China is that they are on the scene first during breaking news or developing stories.

Official media will not show up at many incidents such as a protest, examples of police violence and so on.

Sin the Chinese government controls the media, with Internet technology we have a chance to break that control.

The Internet has become a part of the people’s power. Thanks to it, NGOs are resources of information now, affecting policy-making in China and foreign countries. The information from the Internet affects policy.

There are limits to what can be done. There’s the firewall, there are web sites attacked by the Chinese government outside China, and they shut it down in China.

They use Internet viruses to target dissidents, including a fake virus about this conference initiated by the Chinese authorities.

They spy users’ computer, including at Internet cafés, PCs at home both in China and outside, and they also monitor email accounts. So safety is a problem, and people are punished if they don’t walk the line.

Huang Jinqiu was arrested after publishing over 500 articles in Boxun.

Another is Li Changqing was former deputy director of Fu Zhou Daily, was detained on December of 2004 and sentenced three years in prison. He was the winner of Golden Pen of Freedom in 2008. He’s been released and is doing fine now.

Another case is that of Sun Lin and his wife, He Fang, who were writers for Boxun. In late March of 2007, he was arrested by police, who told him not to work for Boxun. He’s very brave because he acted publicly for Boxun. His father is a high-ranking Red Army officer.

Hu Jia, another Boxun writer, was also jailed. We need a fund for his defense attorney and to support the families of all these journalists financially, until they are released.

We don’t have money to help them. We need international attention.

Watson Meng is the Founding Editor of Boxun News Web Site.