Fearing the Internet

By Joseph Gauger
Collegian Editor
February 6, 2008

Like any authoritarian government, the People’s Republic of China understands that transparency is one of its greatest enemies. As that regime has fostered rapid economic growth in recent years, the Internet has inevitably proliferated in China. PRC has imposed strict and arbitrary controls over the flow of content in and out of the country in what is known colloquially as the “Great Firewall.” It tightly monitors even mundane Internet activity in order to maintain a chilling effect on the efforts of dissidents.

An incipient resistance movement has cropped up in response to this censorship. Bloggers have formed grassroots networks to tell their readers about the firewall and some have written software to subvert the government’s Internet rules. These courageous resisters are fighting for the freedom of expression we Americans are lucky enough to take for granted. They know that by bringing attention to the Great Firewall, they are weakening the PRC government’s ability to commit other human rights violations.

Internet giant Google has rightly come under criticism for facilitating the PRC’s censorship efforts. Google China cooperates fully with the government’s restrictions, enforcing its blacklist of restricted content.

This is just the opposite of the approach Western companies should take in dealing with China. A small number of Chinese citizens are risking brutal retribution to express themselves and spread the word about the government’s abuses. American capitalists should not be undermining their endeavor. Further consolidation of media ownership frustrates vital work like that of the Chinese dissidents.

gaugerj1@lasalle.edu