This Too Shall Pass
By Douglas C. McGill
Do Western investors in China Internet companies have anything to fear from Beijing's latest crackdown on the content of Web sites published in China?
Well, yes, but China's history over the past 20 years tells us there is no reason to overreact.
The PRC's State Secret Bureau yesterday published guidelines designed to control the content of Web sites published in China, to be sure no site is publishing state secrets. "State secrets" in China are not clearly defined but are generally understood to mean any kind of information -- political, military, commercial, whatever -- that Beijing does not want made public.
The Shanghai Daily newspaper also quoted an official from the State Press and Publication Administration saying "No Web sites will be allowed to hire cyber reporters to write stories." In addition, every Web site, company that runs a Web site, and individual that contributes or even chats on a Web site must submit to a security check and submit all written material for prior approval.
Sounds harsh, but take a look at the long view for a minute.
China's modern period of economic reform, started in 1979 by Deng Xiaoping, has been marked by an unmistakeable overall trend towards liberalization and greater freedom. Book, newspaper, and magazine publishing in the late 1970s in China was completely a state-run affair, with all three businesses publishing a gray bureaucratic mush.
Danger Zones
Today there are dozens of newspapers that publish articles about corruption in local governments and businesses, social trends, crime stories, lifestyle features, and celebrity gossip by the ton.
Only a handful of utterly taboo topics remain: blatant challenges to the Communist Party and its political line; anything pro-independence for Tibet, Taiwan, or other separatist movements and religious sects; and hardcore pornography. If publishers or broadcasters steer clear of these danger zones they will probably be safe.
That "probably" is the tricky part. Periodically there are crackdowns, when suddenly what was acceptable becomes unacceptable. TV stations are shut down, newspapers close, editors are fired, reporters go to jail.
China Pop, the 1995 book by Jianying Zha that brilliantly chronicles the emergence of a thriving Chinese popular culture in the 1980's and early 1990's, is the story of successive waves of liberalization and crackdowns.
But if the crackdowns are inevitable, so too is the overall trend towards more freedom.
From a business standpoint, it has never paid to overreact to the periods of chill. What's paid is to pull in one's horns for a while and wait. Because no matter how draconian the regulations announced during these periods, the advance of communications technology has always defeated any efforts to control it.
For example, the Chinese government became alarmed in 1995 at how articles about sensitive government financial policies, military operations, and occasional interviews with dissidents sometimes entered China via financial news services like Reuters and Bloomberg News. In response, Beijing announced that henceforth every story written by a foreign financial news reporter was to be reviewed by a censoring office to be set up in Beijing.
Internet Firewall
A team of government censors would arrive for work each day, sit down in front of a battery of computer terminals, and read and read. Offending stories would be deleted before they ever entered China.
Bloomberg, Reuters, and the other agencies waited it out. They took meetings with officials, sent over their CEOs for higher-level talks, and showed respect. Within weeks it was all forgotten.
The same thing happened a year later, when satellite TV became all the rage (STAR-TV was pumping in MTV, American soap operas, and European soccer). One day it was declared a crime to own a satellite dish that was not registered with the policy. This didn't stop the little dishes from sprouting like crazy on China's big city rooftops, like mushrooms after a good rain.
Talk of a creating an Internet "firewall" marked the first phase of the Net's emergence in China. Within months the technology had grown far beyond the capacity of the government to contain it in this way.
This latest set of regulations is arguably the most extensive set of controls the Chinese government has yet devised to control what Chinese people read on the Internet.
Yet if the range of announced controls are greater than ever before, so too is the breadth and depth of the Internet's reach into China.
A Smooth Handover
The last Chinese government Internet survey showed the number of China Internet users had more than tripled, to 8.9 million, in the past six months.
Make no mistake, this is a real crackdown, and some will pay the price.
Already Jiang Yiping, who edited the brash, bold, and risk-taking Nanfang Zhoumo newspaper in southern China has lost her job. She published one too many articles pushing the boundaries, including one recent article explaining how Internet users in China can access Web sites that are blocked by Beijing.
Even in Jiang's case, however, there's evidence things are changing for the better in China.
Jiang Yiping isn't in prison, isn't under arrest. She's reassigned to another department at the paper, and indeed will work with her replacement to ensure a smooth handover.
One can well imagine the strategy she's following at this juncture.
It's the same one time-tested by many China media survivors for the past twenty years: lay low for a while, watch and wait, until things warm up again. |
