[iwar] [fc:China.Quietly.Unblocks.U.S..Sites]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-09-21 18:45:26


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Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 18:45:26 -0700 (PDT)
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Subject: [iwar] [fc:China.Quietly.Unblocks.U.S..Sites]
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China Quietly Unblocks U.S. Sites
By Steve Friess 

2:00 a.m. Sep. 21, 2001 PDT

BEIJING -- Chinese Internet censors quietly unblocked several major U.S. 
media websites this week in a surprise move that one Chinese expert said
may have been prompted by a demand for news about the U.S.  terrorist
attacks. 

The change grants China's Web-using public access to the previously
unviewable sites of The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, San
Francisco Chronicle and Boston Globe, which were blocked as recently as
Sunday.  It was unclear exactly what day the unblocking occurred. 

Among those still blocked are the sites of CNN, Voice of America, Time
magazine and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, as well as a slew of
Western human rights groups including Amnesty International. 

China unblocked The New York Times site in August.  While the government
has not stated why, the Times itself reported in passing in a story on
proxy servers that the change happened as a result of the paper's top
editors and reporters raising the issue during a July interview with
Chinese President Jiang Zemin. 

An official at the Ministry of Public Security, which oversees Internet
control, refused to discuss why it blocks or unblocks any sites.  Yet
one key Chinese expert said the Sept.  11 terrorist attack on the United
States may have provided the impetus. 

"Opening such websites is a statement that the Chinese government wants
to allow people to get true access to the information about this," said
Zhu Feng, director of the international security program at Peking
University in Beijing.  "It is a constructive action my government took
at this critical time because they feel people have a right to know what
is going on around the terror attacks."

Western observers were skeptical, though, noting that most Chinese
people can't read English anyway. 

"I wonder how many people really look for news in English on the
Internet in China," said Sophia Woodman, research director for the New
York-based group Human Rights in China.  "The point of opening these
sites may not have anything to do with domestic expression so much as
getting China better press internationally."

Bureau chiefs for the affected sites were unaware of the change, because
most have been consumed in recent weeks by news of the Sept.  11 suicide
attacks. 

Despite the switch, it remains impossible on even the unblocked media
sites to search terms such as Falun Gong, the banned spiritual movement
targeted by the government here as a cult, or Taiwan, the breakaway
province China insists is still a part of its territory.  Additionally,
searching such terms on engines such as Yahoo and Google yield errors
either during the search or in attempts to access the sites that are
found. 

Yet critical articles about China are easy to locate on those websites
if they are top news of the day or if other search words are entered.  A
search for "Jiang Zemin" on the San Francisco Chronicle's site, for
example, found a biting satire by columnist Jon Carroll on Aug.  14
mocking the Chinese president's answers in the July Times interview. 

The United States has taken an increasing interest in helping the
Chinese people overcome the censors.  California's Safeweb, which
creates technology to circumvent such blocks, received $1 million from
the CIA via a venture capital firm it uses to fund startups working with
intelligence-related technology.  And Congress last year allocated
$800,000 for Voice of America's Internet news operations in an effort to
boost VOA's ability to reach the Chinese people. 

The Chinese censors are savvy, though, blocking proxy servers when
necessary and keeping on top of new ways to get to blocked sites. 
Earlier this year, for instance, users could read CNN.com by going to
Europe.CNN.com, but that was halted in February. 

The continued blocking of the Atlanta news service may reflect the
unevenness of the government's site-blocking efforts.  Even before the
Times was unblocked, for example, Internet users could read much of the
paper -- including stories on China -- through Yahoo's New York Times
section.  And the International Herald Tribune, an overseas
collaboration that chiefly reprints New York Times and Washington Post
stories, was accessible. 

Furthermore, a lot of syndicated content from the blocked sites,
including anti-China commentaries, could be found on a host of other
Western media sites that were never blocked.  Among those outlets were
the United States' two largest dailies, USA Today and The Wall Street
Journal, as well as the Chicago Tribune and ABCNews.com.  Reporters from
those publications often joke that their goal, in fact, is to get
blocked. 

"In The New York Times case, it takes the top leaders to unblock it,
which makes me wonder whether it's a totally thought-out censorship
system," said CNN's Beijing bureau chief Jaime FlorCruz.  "It has a very
erratic nature.  Sometimes I attribute that to an ad hoc approach to
censorship.  It's almost a bungling erratic approach.  There's no rhyme
or reason."

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