- Jul 16, 2001
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With a rapidly expanding online population, it is tempting to see China as hurtling full speed towards digital nirvana, but all is not quite what it seems.
Somewhere along the way the idea that the Chinese people should be allowed to inform and be informed appears to have been lost.
China is proof that the net can be developed and strangled all at once.
Being online here is a distinctly hit and miss experience - fine if you want to access mundane content, but try to get into anything considered even remotely sensitive by the government and it soon starts grinding to a halt.
I tried accessing the BBC News website but to no avail. A government official told me there must be what he called "a technical problem".
In truth, those "technical problems" are afflicting more and more information sites in China, for example the open source encyclopaedia Wikipedia, perhaps because it has fallen foul of the government's recent declaration that news and information in today's China should only be what it calls "healthy" and "in the public interest".
One official from the internet publishing department, Kuo Xiao Wei, admitted the authorities consider the net a mixed blessing.
He said it abounds with pornography and gambling sites, and while it can be a source of good information, it also carries with it the possibility of spreading rumour and misinformation.
"With 56 ethnic minorities, we can't risk one slandering another", he added.
With a rapidly expanding online population, it is tempting to see China as hurtling full speed towards digital nirvana, but all is not quite what it seems.
Somewhere along the way the idea that the Chinese people should be allowed to inform and be informed appears to have been lost.
China is proof that the net can be developed and strangled all at once.
Being online here is a distinctly hit and miss experience - fine if you want to access mundane content, but try to get into anything considered even remotely sensitive by the government and it soon starts grinding to a halt.
I tried accessing the BBC News website but to no avail. A government official told me there must be what he called "a technical problem".
In truth, those "technical problems" are afflicting more and more information sites in China, for example the open source encyclopaedia Wikipedia, perhaps because it has fallen foul of the government's recent declaration that news and information in today's China should only be what it calls "healthy" and "in the public interest".
One official from the internet publishing department, Kuo Xiao Wei, admitted the authorities consider the net a mixed blessing.
He said it abounds with pornography and gambling sites, and while it can be a source of good information, it also carries with it the possibility of spreading rumour and misinformation.
"With 56 ethnic minorities, we can't risk one slandering another", he added.
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