Open Networks, Closed Regimes: The Impact of the Internet on Authoritarian Rule

Chapter 2

13 CHAPTER TWO Wired for Modernization in China Imagine if the Internet took hold in China. Imagine how freedom would spread. —George W. Bush, Phoenix, Arizona, December 7, 1999 Most followers of international affairs are now familiar with assertions of the Internet’s potential to change China drastically. Certainly, access has grown exponentially since the country’s first connection to the Internet in 1993. Domains and web sites have proliferated, while growing millions access the Internet from personal computers at home and the office. In major cities, cafeteria-sized Internet cafés host a generation accustomed more to cell phones and consumerism than to communist dogma. Chinese Internet companies seek and attain listings on U.S. stock markets, while foreign investors hail China’s entry to the World Trade Organization. Beijing’s municipal government boasts a web site where citizens can email their mayor with grievances. Jiang Zemin, the leader who presided over much of this transformation, has spoken glowingly of “a borderless information space around the world.”1 Yet tugging at the rhetoric is another reality. China’s own information space is restricted by regulations inherited from prereform years. Its expansion is driven by five-year plans. Even as the so-called wired elite mushrooms and gains influence, growing numbers are arrested for expressing antigovernment views online. Falun Gong followers who use the Internet to spread information are sent to reeducation camps. Meanwhile, millions outside China’s urban centers still lack telephones, much less Internet access. Clearly, the hype over China’s experience with the Internet belies a far more complicated scenario, one that does not lend itself easily to pat characterizations of political impact. Yet many have tried. A number of inter- 14 OPEN NETWORKS, CLOSED REGIMES national observers have suggested that the technology poses a potent threat to China’s political system, that a tide of forbidden images and ideas will simply sweep away half a century of outmoded thinking. Others believe that the Internet will become a tool of the Chinese regime, which will use increasingly powerful monitoring and surveillance technologies to stay one step ahead of the democracy-seeking masses. The truth is considerably more complex than either extreme and difficult to discern. In part this is because the government’s attitude has been contradictory , leading to uneven and sometimes unintended policy outcomes. The population of Chinese Internet users also defies easy labeling, especially as it expands in scope and scale. Perhaps what is most important is that China’s approach to the information revolution is forged by its historical approach to modernization, which itself has warranted volumes of exposition. Here, we paint a nuanced picture of China’s Internet evolution, tracing its beginnings in ministries and inefficient bureaucracies to its myriad current uses in China’s government, economy, and society. Even as competing sources of information broaden the public sphere of debate, the Chinese government has pursued a number of measures—from web site blocking to punitive deterrents—designed to shape the physical and symbolic environments in which Internet use takes place. The state is also vigorously encouraging Internet-driven development, harnessing the Internet for specific political and economic aims. Choosing a proactive approach, China has sought to use information technology, and in particular the Internet, to address such high-level issues as corruption, transparency, local government reform, and the development of poor areas. It has incorporated concepts of information-age warfare into its rethinking of military affairs. China has looked abroad for guidance on how to balance ICT promotion with authoritarian political control. Meanwhile, its state-led model of Internet development has served as a model for other authoritarian regimes , such as Cuba’s (see chapter 3). Hence, we argue that the state’s attempts to direct and define the political impact of Internet use are, for now, succeeding. By its very nature, however, China’s market-led approach is designed to increase popular access to the technology substantially, potentially increasing the government’s vulnerability to challenges from Internet use.2 From the Iron Rice Bowl to the World Trade Organization The People’s Republic of China is a one-party authoritarian state that has been ruled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since October 1, 1949. WIRED FOR MODERNIZATION IN CHINA 15 The CCP controls all top government and military positions, as well as the media and security apparatus. It is headed by Hu Jintao, the hand-selected successor to...