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Digital China is
booming
By Jayanthi Iyengar
Nothing epitomizes the challenges of providing
balanced information via the world wide web better than
the subject of the Internet in China. There are two
digital Chinas - the much publicized one of political
repression and blocking "forbidden" content - but that
one is dwarfed by the booming digital China of shopping,
trading, chatting and playing games. And that's where
the boom is.
Running a simple search for
"Internet access China" on Google throws up 3,420,000
links in 0.20 seconds. Of the first 100 results, over 40
percent relate to information on the repressive tactics
used by the Chinese government to control information,
particularly politically "undesirable" information.
Less than 20 percent highlight the Internet boom
that is sweeping China, but the details of the boom are
spelled out in four recent reports. They are from the
Chinese government's China Internet Network Information
Center (CNNIC), the Beijing-based Chinese Academy of
Social Sciences (CASS) in collaboration with the Markle
Foundation, the International Telecommunication Union
(ITU) and Neilson/Netratings.
CNNIC's numbers
are considered to be official data. CASS is of Chinese
origin but the US-based Markle Foundation is a
non-profit organization that studies the potential of
emerging information and communication technologies and
promotes their use in health care and national security.
The ITU is globally recognized. Its Digital Access Index
(DAI) covering 178 countries goes beyond measuring
Internet access using physical numbers. Instead, it
includes other parameters such as infrastructure,
education and affordability in order to determine the
digital competitiveness of a particular country as
compared with other ITU member states.
Neilson/Netratings is an equally well-known known global
consulting firm, which set standards in Internet
audience measurement and analysis.
Two sides:
Expansion of Internet, repression of
content
These four reports, read with the glut of
information proliferating the Internet, make one thing
clear. There are two sides to digital China. On one side
is a country that systematically represses content and
free expression, using law and technology to aid it in
this process. On the other side is a country that has
embarked on the China Wide Web project, which aims at
creating in a short time as much nation-based, Chinese
language content as possible.
While this
expansion project is underway, China also faces the
challenge of controlling unruly, unapproved media on a
daily basis. Many Internet experts, however, like
Professor Jonathan Zittrain, co-founder of the Berkman
Society for Internet & Society, Harvard Law School,
believe that ultimately efforts at control will be
unsuccessful.
Today, China's technologies not
only block forbidden information - primarily about
political dissent, religion, Taiwan, Tibet, and other
topics - but they also give the state the power to
investigate, prosecute, and sanction those who seek
and/or receive forbidden information.
"Internet
filtering tends to dampen and discourage Internet use.
Of course, things could be worse - countries like Cuba
and Uzbekistan restrict Internet access even more
tightly than China. Relative to the more restricted
world (Cuba, Uzbekistan, and to a lesser extent Saudi
Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Iran), China's
approach makes the Internet more accessible and more
useful than would otherwise be the case," says Benjamin
Edelman, a researcher at Harvard University.
Professor Zittrain and Edelman ran what is
believed to be the first Empirical Analysis of Internet
Filtering in China. The analysis was conducted between
May and November 2002, and it found ample empirical
evidence of filtering of unapproved content by the
Chinese authorities.
Edelman said his study
showed that China blocked a large amount of material
cutting across substantive categories, but with special
emphasis on regional political issues (Taiwan, Tibet,
etc), on religion, on tourism to other countries, on
health, and other topics. He also found evidence of
extensive mistaken blocking, seemingly accidental, of
innocuous content - reflecting a lack of precision in
certain Chinese blocking methods. "Subsequent to this
study, my sense is that China's filtering methods have
become more precise, better able to block what China
doesn't like, without blocking what the country
considers permissible," he states.
His views are
echoed by Professor Zittrain, who points out that if
anything, filtering has gotten increasingly subtle over
time. The Chinese experiment now revolves around
"blocking out individual pages rather than whole sites,
automatically blocking web searches containing certain
search terms, or simply encouraging the use of Internet
cafes rather than individualized connections, so usage
can be monitored by passersby", he says.
Booming digital China is not about
politics
While that is one China, there's another
booming virtual China, which can be ignored only at
one's peril. This is a China where repression has failed
to check Internet penetration. The official CNNIC pegs
the number of Internet users at 79.5 million at the end
of 2003, surpassing previous projections of around 78
million. These figures make China the second-largest
Internet users in the world, next only to the United
States with about 165.75 million, and well ahead of
Japan's 56 million, going by the Central Intelligence
Agency's (CIA) World Factbook for these countries.
The growth in numbers has caused jubilation
within China but has raised some eyebrows elsewhere.
This is because the Chinese government's figures
represent an unprecedented half-yearly jump in number,
up from 58 million in 2002 to 68 million (17 percent
growth) in mid-2003 and 79.5 million (17 percent growth)
at the end of the year. This data is also in sharp
contrast to earlier projections made by the Chinese
themselves. For instance, Hu Qiheng, chair of the
Internet Society of China pegged the number of Chinese
netizens at 78 million for 2003. She was speaking at the
Second Internet Conference of China in December, just a
fortnight prior to the release of the official figures.
By her estimates, there would be 500,000 websites and 30
million online computers in China by the end of the
year. Against this, the government's CNNIC has placed
increased access to Internet websites at 595,550 (60
percent growth) and computers linked to the Internet at
30.89 million, representing a 48 percent growth during
2003.
Such anomalies in numbers are not abnormal
when it comes to Chinese data. The Chinese government's
figures generally tend to be questioned, but CNNIC's
figures have been questioned in particular in 2001, when
Iamasia, an independent research firm, released figures
for Internet users. Steve Yap, communications director
for Iamasia, pegged the number of China's Internet users
at 15.2 million at a time when CNNIC was claiming 20
million. That was in the past, but even today there is a
question about what defines an Internet user - the
Chinese government defines a user as one who uses the
Internet for at least an hour per week.
Net penetration in China, of
course, is way behind the US and the global averages in
percentage terms, with only about 5.6 percent of the
Chinese population of 1.27 billion having Internet
access, as against 10.7 percent globally and about 63.2
percent in the US.
Average Internet user:
educated, young, male
However, what is also
undeniable is that the Chinese are investing heavily in
infrastructure.The average Internet user is an educated,
young, single male 15 years to 35 year of age. He is
more interested in chatting and playing games on the
Internet than trading, checking e-mail or surfing the
net for forbidden content. An average Chinese Internet
user spends 11.3 hours a week playing games, making
China a mega-market for electronic games. According to
China's General Administration of Press and Publication
(GAPPPRC), it approved 37 new games in 2003.
Also, though China's netizens are comparatively
uneducated, the number of highly educated
(post-graduate) Internet users is growing. Further,
Internet users seem to be concentrated in industries and
fields such as manufacturing, education and public
management, social organizations and the IT industry,
which is exciting business forecasters like
Neilson/Netratings and others.
Email - through
which forbidden information could be transmitted and
exchanged - is not an obsession for most Internet users
in China, though simple message service (SMS) and
web-based messaging is popular. "About 20 percent of
Internet users do not have e-mail accounts. For those
who are using e-mail, only 20 percent of them check
their accounts every day. Yet many Internet users prefer
[companies] ICQ or OICQ," says Professor Guo Liang, who
led the study by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
(CASS).
The CASS report has a specific segment
on public perception of the Internet as a tool for
political self-expression. Professor Guo says that in
his opinion, Internet penetration would touch 150
million by 2005 - though the Chinese government would
like this figure to be 15 percent of the population or
about 190 million users. However, even assuming all of
those who use the Internet use it to surf for unapproved
content, it would still be less than 15 percent of the
Chinese population. These figures, Guo says, contradict
the impression that most Chinese use the Internet for
political self-expression or that the Chinese government
represses its citizens extensively. However, he is among
the first to concede, "While the Internet is still
relatively new to China, it is already changing Chinese
cultural, social and political institutions."
The political dimensions of the report apart,
the CASS findings are highly regarded, as there are few
other reports of comparable depth and detail mapping
China's Internet potential and penetration. Guo's 2003
report is the second in the academy's series on Internet
use in China. The first was released in 2001 and studied
Internet use in five big cities. The second, currently
cited study, completed in 2003 after two years' work,
covered 12 cities and five small towns.
The
study, called "Surveying Internet Usage and Impact in
Twelve Chinese Cities", this study is based on
door-to-door interviews with 2,457 Internet users and
1,484 non-Internet users. It makes the point that rural
China offers as much potential for Internet growth, as
does urban China.
"The Internet has the
potential to contribute significantly to the future of
the people of China. Professor Guo's findings show that
in China, the Internet has the ability to expand the
flow of information and spur economic growth," said Zoe
Baird, president of the Markle Foundation. Guo said,
"With the arrival of the Internet, the Chinese people
have the opportunity to access information, communicate
and conduct economic transactions in a new way."
Lessons from SARS - shop at home
The
year 2003 was monumental for digital China in many other
ways. The severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)
epidemic opened China's eyes to the potential of the
Internet as a tool for furthering commerce. Western
observers say that SARS taught Beijing how difficult it
was to control the spread of information in the Internet
age and that it could be waging a losing battle if its
aim was merely to control information.
China,
however, drew a different and innovative lesson from the
same experience. The conclusions should be compulsory
reading about why digital China cannot be dismissed as
being repressive and controlled. With so many people
afraid to venture out because of SARS, they shopped at
home, sent messages from home and played Internet games
at home.
Online shopping, short message services
and online games were three rapid growing application of
the Internet in 2003, says CNNIC. It points out that
because of SARS, online shopping and message service
found a second development opportunity in 2003. Among
those surveyed, only 8 percent never visited a shopping
website, while 40 percent of those who visited shopping
websites made online purchases. They bought books,
audiovisual material and products; communication
equipment was the principle product of on-line shopping.
During the year, website message service users
sent out 10.9 messages a week, which the Chinese
consider to be a large market of which everyone wants a
share. Almost all the major websites and many
specialized-service websites opened messaging services,
which has become one of the important and steady income
sources in the country. And the stock prices of
[messaging companies] Sina, Sohu and Netease soared on
NASDAQ. "Short message service played a vital role in
the process," said the People's Daily.
Professor
Guo provides a more balanced and telling interpretation
of the situation, which cannot be ignored by serious
China watchers. "I believe last year was a milestone [in
the sense] that several cases happened, including Sun
Zhigang, SARS, Liu Yong and BMW," he said. " It is
obvious that more and more people are trying to use the
Internet to express their opinion and the online
discussion did change the government thinking and
policy," he said.
The details of Sun Zhigang's
death in police custody in Guangzhou was picked up by
the conventional media from the web. The arrest,
prosecution and death sentence of crime lord Liu Yong
symbolized the Chinese government's determination to
crack down on corruption. The provincial courts had
given him a two-year reprieve from a death sentence, but
it was rejected by the Chinese Supreme Court in December
2003 and Liu was executed soon afterward, sending home
the message that the government means business. The word
was spread on the web.
Concerning BMW, the
Chinese government was forced to listen to angry
Internet users who accused the courts of letting off
lightly the female driver of a BMW car who ran into a
peasant in a tractor in the city of Harbin. The woman
was heard threatening the peasant after she had a minor
accident in which her silver BMW was scratched. Word
spread on the web - and so did the outrage.
English no longer crucial in
technology
The International Telecommunications
Union study makes an equally important point in China's
favor. It suggests that English is no longer a decisive
factor in quick technology adoption, especially as more
content is made available in other languages. "Until
now, limited infrastructure has often been regarded as
the main barrier to bridging the Digital Divide," says
Michael Minges of the Market, Economics and Finance Unit
at ITU. "Our research, however, suggests that
affordability and education are equally important
factors." Half of the Internet users in China, for
instance, are university educated. Surprising though it
may seem, ITU ranks China (0.79) below Sweden (0.83),
but above Canada (0.78), the US (0.78), and Britain
(0.77) in its latest Digital Access Index.
These
are all findings that make it clear that no one keeps
down the growth of the Internet in China, including the
Chinese government. However, what it can do is guide the
direction of Internet's growth by using the Internet as
a vehicle for growth. An indication of such thinking
comes from the statements made by high-ranking Chinese
officials.
Xi Guohua, vice-minister of
information industry, announced at theSecond Internet
Conference of China in December that his ministry would
strengthen its macro planning, guide the Internet
industry and push forward the upgrading of the Internet
with a focus on the market.
Xu Guanhua, minister
of science and technology, echoed Guohua, when he
pointed out that, research and development apart, "China
will vigorously push forward on the popularization and
application of Internet, development of electronic
commerce transaction, electronic government
administration and other information services, so as to
promote industrialization with informationalization."
The most important issue today is that the
Chinese government no longer fears the world wide web,
the civil societies or the propaganda tactics of the
free world, particularly the US, which makes every
effort to beam-in content aimed at converting and
democratizing the Chinese citizenry. The Chinese have
refined Internet filtering systems to such an extent
that such content is well-camouflaged from its average
netizen. The Beijing government now checks content at
the gateway level by controlling its Internet service
providers (ISPs) - just three in number (ChinaLink
Networks, Netaway, and VPM Internet Services). It lays
down guidelines for any of the telecom service providers
who wish to do business in China. Amnesty International
and other human rights bodies notwithstanding, none of
these corporations dare to contest the Chinese
government's policies for fear of losing a foothold into
a consumer market which is waiting to explode.
Jayanthi Iyengar is a senior business
journalist from India who writes on a range of subjects
for several publications in Asia, Britain and the United
States. She may be contacted at
jayanthiiyengar1@hotmail.com.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online
Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact
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