IRP editors talk internet censorship with Chinese gov’t officials
By Christy George | May 13, 2010 | China
Our delegation of editors sat down for green tea and talks with several central government leaders today: Dr. Zhu Chen, China's Health Minister; Zhenhua Xie, Vice-Chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission; and Chen Wang, the director of the State Council Information Office (SCIO), the International Reporting Project's official host in China.
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With Google's recent attempt to bypass Beijing's search censorship, and the news today that the U.S. State Department is funding a group associated with the Chinese religious minority, Falun Gong, to help the controversial group develop border-busting software to get around what people here call the "great firewall of China," you can bet the chat about government Internet control was the hottest.
Mr. Wang explained that China is no different than the U.S., which holds down the #2 spot on the list of countries which censor the Internet. The Patriot Act allows the U.S. government to read anything in your email mailbox, he said. China is mostly just filtering out pornography and racist hate speech.
There are more "netizens" in China than anywhere else, which is fairly easy to pull off when your national population is 1.3 billion, give or take a few hundred million. 30% of China's population is wired up, blogging, podcasting and commenting on news sites.
The meeting took place in a room plastered with blue signs with white letters that said "Ask yourself. Is this an effective meeting? Do you know how to make an effective decision?" and when I took a picture of the sign after the meeting ended, one of the officials saw me and said the signs are borrowed from Intel.
"Was it an effective meeting?," I asked Mr. Wang.
"Yes," he said. "It was."
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