Law 897: The Law in Cyberspace Seminar
Yu-Shao Liu's Assignment for October 16
The Internet in China
China Internet Network Information Center ("CNNIC") has published the semi-yearly "Statistical Report on the Internet Development in China" since 1997, providing the up-to-date information as to China's Internet development. Read the summary of its latest report, and then skim whatever parts of the report you think may help you get a basic grasp of who are using the Chinese Internet, what for, and the official position of its Internet policies.
In the same regard, read also the short introduction on Economist's website, and then the human rights organization's view, the summary of "Internet Filtering in China in 2004-2005: A Country Study" by "OpenNet Initiative."
A commentator claimed on the New York Times earlier this year that the tentative sedition in his Chinese blog had not, and probably would never ever, been censored, because his blog was too trivial to be noticed among the thirty million blogs in China. Two things are worth mentioning here. First, if an Internet article has no audience, does the Chinese government care for censoring it? Second, the commentator's blogs did get taken down a few days after his bold assumption was published.
To learn how the China's Great Firewall works, read the “Journey to the Heart of Internet Censorship” by a Chinese Internet expert working in IT industry.
Nevertheless, many believe the Great Firewall is not that effective. For instance, Read “The Great Firewall: China's Misguided and Futile Attempt to Control What Happens Online.”
Now the question may boil down to "do you need a perfect Internet control to have a perfect social control?" Read “The Connection Has Been Reset,” skim the first half, and focus on the second half regarding the above question. Do you agree with the author's observation?
Capital or principle? It is a question to those Internet giants, who have vied for cashing in on the China's market. Read the IV chapter of the “Race to the Bottom” Corporate Complicity in Chinese Internet Censorship to have a general idea about the stories of Yahoo, MSN, Google, and Skype in China.
Optional: If Skype is your favorite, you might want to read the latest sequel of the Skype story.
And then read "Asia’s Fight for Web Rights" for some responses and initiatives against “evil corporations.” Do you think any of them would work?
Optional: "Google's China Problem (and China's Google Problem)" on New York Times. (An interesting story covering in depth the realities of compliance with Internet censorship in China, under which all local ISPs and Internet users seem to have found their way. Yet, foreign ISPs have been struggling with confusion on the one hand, and with higher moral demand on the other.)
It has long been a central topic of Chinese studies that how the emergence of Internet in China would change its political and social landscape, especially the development of democracy and rule of law, which are mainly based on a mature civil society. But will the Internet behind the Great Firewall facilitate the civil society in China?
Both of the following articles are based on empirical data. See how the authors predict on this issue:
"Mingling Politics with Play: The Virtual Chinese Public Sphere" by Quobin Yang (A Chinese teaching in the US)
"Flatter World and Thicker Walls? Blogs, Censorship and Civic Discourse in China" (draft) by Rebecca MacKinnon (An American teaching in Hong Kong)
Optional: The research of the Internet and civil society in China heavily depends on field investigation materials. In terms of the growing speed of China's Internet, the newer the materials, the more importance they bear. In December 2007, The Brookings Institution held a panel discussion on the subject "the development of the Internet in China and its impact on politics and society,” in which panelists talked about their survey results at hand and shared the latest observation on the Internet in China. Here you may find the transcript of the discussion.
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