Don’t Count on the Internet, U.S. Information Technology to Set China Free

(Washington, D.C.): On the eve of Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s trip
to China this
week and amidst efforts to schedule precipitous Senate action on legislation granting the PRC
Permanent Normal Trade Relations, the Washington Post published an op.ed. article
that should
give pause to Cabinet officers and legislators alike. In particular, this essay, which appeared on
17 June under the headline “The Red Internet,” challenges blithe assertions by Clinton-Gore
Administration officials and American business leaders that the “Internet will, without much
else, bring about freedom and democracy [in China].”

The article was written by someone who knows whereof she speaks — Ellen Bork, a highly
regarded analyst of Sino-U.S. relations who served as a professional staff member on the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee and then as an aide to a leading democratic activist in Hong Kong,
Martin Lee. Ms. Bork notes that no less an authority than Vice President Gore has warned that
“you can leave a trail of virtual footprints [on the Internet]” and that “somebody with bad
intentions can follow those footprints and do you harm.” Her conclusion only serves to reinforce
assessments that there is nothing inevitable about expanding trade with the PRC leading to either
a more free China or enhanced U.S. security interests in Asia: “Chinese who test [the] theory
[that the Internet will someday bring freedom to China] today find themselves in grave trouble at
the hands of a regime that seeks to use the best technology America has to offer to maintain its
control.”

Washington Post, 17 June 2000

The Red Internet

By Ellen Bork

Last week, Vice President Gore warned of the dangers the Internet can pose to individual
liberties. “Today, with changing technology, you can leave a trail of virtual footprints that are far
too easy to follow, and somebody with bad intentions can follow those footprints and do you
harm.” What’s true in the United States is true in China as well. Last week, Chinese authorities
arrested Huang Qi, the operator of a Web site in Chengdu, Sichuan province. Huang faces a
subversion charge for publishing articles commemorating the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen Square
massacre.

While worrying about Internet privacy at home, the Clinton administration made optimistic
predictions about the Internet’s beneficial impact as it lobbied for legislation making permanent
China’s enjoyment of normal tariff treatment. “In the new century,” the president said, “liberty
will spread by cell phone and cable modem.” As for China’s efforts to control and crack down on
the use of the Internet, the president is dismissive, wishing Chinese leaders, “Good luck–that’s
like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall.”

The Chinese government has been a good deal more effective than that. Huang’s arrest is not
the
first. Lin Hai served 18 months for distributing e-mail addresses to an overseas dissident
publication. Others have been arrested for posting portions of an unpublished book on the
Internet, and for sending news about arrests of Falun Gong members abroad by e-mail.

According to the State Department, China has created “special police units to monitor and
increase control of Internet content and access.” Since last year, Human Rights Watch reports,
the Ministry of State Security “has been able to track individual e-mail accounts through
monitoring devices on Internet Service Providers. Internet bulletin boards were subject to
round-the-clock monitoring; several were closed for hosting political discussions or postings
critical of
government policies.” In January, new regulations banned dissemination of state secrets over the
Internet, and “the broad language of the state secrets law invites selective application against
anyone out of favor with the government.”

Furthermore, while many people believe the Internet and the telecommunications
infrastructure
that supports it will erode Communist Party control, the Communist Party has other plans. In
1994, China launched the “Golden Projects,” designed among other things to reform banking and
financial sectors, and state-owned enterprises, and improve tax and customs enforcement.
According to Peter Lovelock, an expert on China’s Internet, China’s leaders see improvements in
its information infrastructure as key to maintaining, not loosening, political control while
advancing economic objectives. “Senior leaders believed that information networks would allow
them to sit in Beijing yet be present in each and every administrative trouble spot throughout the
country.” At the same time, the top priority went to the creation of a “secret and restricted
information system interconnecting China’s senior government leaders and providing them with
immediate access to reference data from other institutions, organizations and offices under the
direct jurisdiction of the Communist Party Central Committee.”

None of this should come as a surprise. With or without the Internet, China’s leaders regard
freedoms of speech and association as impermissible challenges to its rule. A concerted
campaign is underway to eradicate the China Democracy Party and neutralize the Falun Gong
spiritual movement. Several Falun Gong members have died in jail. The Communist Party is
pursuing a political campaign against Western, liberal influences, firing and disciplining
intellectuals who have advocated free markets and political liberalization.

Claiming that the Internet will, without much else, bring about freedom and democracy fits
well
with the Clinton administration’s constructive engagement policy that consists of trade, talk and
concessions. The business community is also content to trade now and worry later about whether
the Internet will make a difference. Regardless of China’s repression, says Dave McCurdy, the
head of the Electronics Industries Alliance, which represents Lucent, Nortel and General Electric,
among others, “most of our companies would like to make sure it’s our base technology that’s in
on the beginning of this process. The question is: Do we want it to be a French product that’s
being blocked or an American product that’s being blocked?”

The president often exhorts fellow world leaders to be “on the right side of history.”
Democracy,
however, is no more inevitable than dictatorship. And history contains examples of democracies
strengthening dictatorships through trade, making the ultimate struggle for freedom much more
difficult. It’s not at all clear what will happen in China, or when. While the administration insists
that the Internet will some day help bring freedom to China, Chinese who test that theory today
find themselves in grave trouble at the hands of a regime that seeks to use the best technology
America has to offer to maintain its control.

Ellen Bork, a former staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, writes
about
Asia.