Translation From Chinese: You’re As Free As We Say You Are…Bruce Kesler
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BRUCE KESLER
Translation From Chinese: You’re As Free As We Say You Are
Below is the translation of the from the Chinese government’s first-ever White Paper on the Internet in China. Part Three of the six-part document is titled “Guaranteeing Citizens’ Freedom of Speech on the Internet.”
China Internet watcher Rebecca MacKinnon reports:
I’ve heard from several journalists and policy analysts (not people based in China, for whom such cognitive dissonance is normal) who at first glance thought they were reading The Onion or some kind of parody site. How, people asked me, can a government that so blatantly censors the Internet claim with a straight face to be protecting and upholding freedom of speech on the Internet? The answer of course is that China’s netizens are free to do everything… except for the things they’re not free to do. The list of the latter, outlined in the next section titled Protecting Internet Security is long, vague, and subject to considerable interpretation:
…The Chinese government attaches great importance to protecting the safe flow of Internet information, actively guides people to manage websites in accordance with the law and use the Internet in a wholesome and correct way. The Decision of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee on Guarding Internet Security, Regulations on Telecommunications of the People’s Republic of China and Measures on the Administration of Internet Information Services stipulate that no organization or individual may produce, duplicate, announce or disseminate information having the following contents: being against the cardinal principles set forth in the Constitution; endangering state security, divulging state secrets, subverting state power and jeopardizing national unification; damaging state honor and interests; instigating ethnic hatred or discrimination and jeopardizing ethnic unity; jeopardizing state religious policy, propagating heretical or superstitious ideas; spreading rumors, disrupting social order and stability; disseminating obscenity, pornography, gambling, violence, brutality and terror or abetting crime; humiliating or slandering others, trespassing on the lawful rights and interests of others; and other contents forbidden by laws and administrative regulations.
Other than that, people are totally free. What’s more, the use of the Internet by the people to “supervise” public officials is praised. As long as – in the process of said supervision – state power is not subverted, “state honor” is not jeopardized, nobody is humiliated or slandered, and no “rumors” are spread. The rise of Twitter-like microblogging services is even praised. (Twitter itself is blocked by the “great firewall,” though tens of thousands of Chinese Internet users are believed to access it anyway through third-party clients and circumvention tools).
Rebecca MacKinnon is a must read for those who try to keep up on China’s increasing censorship of the Internet. Her qualifications: She served as CNN’s bureau chief in Beijing, then co-founded Global Voices Online, has taught at the university of Hong Kong, and in 2009 was an Open Society Fellow.
There is little question that MacKinnon believes what she believes, and that she favors Internet freedom. However, there is some question as to what she believes if one considers her key place in co-flounding Global Voices Online and, especially, her favor with the Open Society Institute.
I’ve blog-debated her on several occasions about whether US firms should be allowed to transfer and sell technology to China and other despotic nations that they use to censor the Internet and persecute and imprison, sometimes torture and kill, those who challenge the ruling cliques. MacKinnon advocates that such trade should continue. She is obstinate in the delusion that continuing to provide oppressors with oppressive technology will somehow cause a more, dare I say, “open society,†even though her own words belie this:
The American investment community has so far been willing to fund Chinese innovation in censorship technologies and systems without complaint or objection. Under such circumstances, Chinese industry leaders have little incentive and less encouragement to resist government demands that often contradict even China’s own laws and constitution.
Or
[I]n the networked authoritarian state there is no guarantee of individual rights and freedoms. People go to jail when the powers-that-be decide they are too much of a threat – and there’s nothing anybody can do about it. Truly competitive, free and fair elections do not happen. The courts and the legal system are tools of the ruling party.
Still, she says:
I believe the Chinese people would be worse off if all American companies and investors were to abandon the Chinese Internet. Investors who remain silent, however, should be clear about what kind of innovation they are financing.
One may get a glimmer of the associates MacKinnon keeps close to wonder to what extent her advocacy is serving those less supportive of democracy and freedom and antagonistic to the United States.
Of MacKinnon’s main fellow Global Voices Board members two are affiliated with the open Society Institute and a third with Creative Commons:
– Ethan Zuckerman, is on the board of Open Society Institute’s US Program.
– Akwe Amosu who works as a Senior Policy Analyst for Africa at the Open Society Institute in Washington.
– Joichi Ito who on the board of Creative Commons, a non-profit organization which proposes a middle way to copyrights management, rather than the extremes of the pure public domain or the reservation of all rights. (MacKinnon is, also, the Public Lead for Creative Commons in Hong Kong.)
The Open Society Institute is one of George Soros’ network of organizations that fund the most liberal and leftist organizations in the United States and around the world. Creative Commons works closely with Soros’ Open Society Institute, and likely receives funding from it.
This is important while restrictions on the Internet are debated in the US, some favored by the Obama Administration.
Soros’ tentacles are almost everywhere a liberal or leftist advocate is promoted to prominence and influence.
Posted by Bruce Kesler at 00:23
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