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List:       cypherpunks
Subject:    Uncut: Cheney on China's Web
From:       "R. A. Hettinga" <rah () shipwright ! com>
Date:       2004-04-29 15:23:05
Message-ID: p061005ccbcb6cc5f83a3 () [66 ! 149 ! 49 ! 5]
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<http://online.wsj.com/article_print/0,,SB108319148009396535,00.html>

The Wall Street Journal

      April 29, 2004

 COMMENTARY



Uncut: Cheney on China's Web

By EMILY PARKER
April 29, 2004


When U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney's speech in Shanghai earlier this
month was drastically censored by Chinese state media, despite Beijing's
promise that it would do no such thing, it proved that China's long-awaited
political reforms have a long way to go. But the coarse attempt to conceal
the truth revealed at the same time how much things have changed over the
past decade.

For while China's government can still control the press, its grip over the
spread of information is slipping. China's dedicated cybernauts stepped
into the breach and posted on the Internet unexpunged versions of the
veep's speech. Chinese Web sites can indeed expose the cracks in the
party's control over the media.

For this reason, right after it emerged that Chinese censors had blotted
out the parts they didn't like in Mr. Cheney's comments, I went exploring
mainland-accessible Web sites to see if there were any discussions or
essays on the topic. Of course, China's Web sites are carefully monitored;
by both electronic and human censors. And the Chinese authorities went to
great lengths to ensure that some leading Web sites contained the version
of the Cheney speech that was censored. In state-media versions, the vice
president's references to individual liberties and political freedoms were
omitted, for example. When Mr. Cheney referred to "rising prosperity and
expanding political freedom" across Asia, the Chinese version only
mentioned "prosperity." Expressions like "the desire for freedom is
universal" were also cut, as were references to the North Korean nuclear
crisis and the Taiwan Relations Act. The cleansing was so thorough that
when I first started sifting through Chinese-language Web sites, I didn't
think I'd find anything that deviated too far from the party line.

It turns out that you just need to know where to look. There are
Chinese-language chatrooms that are accessible on the mainland -- and
largely frequented by young, educated Chinese -- that constantly challenge
the government by printing the truth. These Web sites stay afloat by
skillfully dancing around the censors.

After spending some time scouring these chatrooms for comments on the
censorship incident, I finally struck gold in a popular chatroom that I had
heard was known for pushing the envelope. The fact that Mr. Cheney's
Shanghai speech had been censored was mentioned in the title, and the
contents proceeded to give concrete examples of how the official version of
the speech deviated from Mr. Cheney's original words. The report mentioned
the fact that references to political freedom had been censored.

While this essay was exactly what I was looking for, it still took me
longer than usual to find it. I had been scanning chatroom discussions for
the two characters in Mr. Cheney's Chinese name, "qie ni," but was coming
up with nothing. I later found out why. In the essay mentioned above, the
writer replaced the character "qie" with a completely different one that
has a similar pronunciation. With a little time and effort, it was easy
enough to connect the dots. But a computer or net-watcher who was told to
look out for Mr. Cheney's name would just as easily overlook the
controversial report.

My pride in my code-breaking ability was counterbalanced by concerns that
others might not be able to find what the authorities wanted concealed.
Then I realized that finding information about Mr. Cheney's speech wasn't
nearly as difficult as I had thought. I discovered an even longer and more
detailed account of the censorship on another Chinese Web site, and this
version printed the correct spelling of Mr. Cheney's name. The report took
care to note exactly how Mr. Cheney's phrases had been altered or deleted
in the official state-media version.

At the conclusion of the essay there was a forum for discussion. While the
comments were often carefully and vaguely phrased, some respondents made no
efforts to conceal their displeasure at the censorship:

"I just have just two words, shameless and deceitful," said one. Another
said: "China's news media is just a propaganda tool of the Communist
Party!" In this phrase, the characters for "Communist Party" were mixed in
with letters of the roman alphabet; again, possibly to throw the censors
off the scent.

As I continued reading the comments, I was also glad to see that some
online politicos hadn't lost their sense of humor: "I don't think the
censors were thorough enough. The best thing would have been to also delete
the two characters for 'Cheney' and replace them with an East Asian name."
Another said, "We all should have known that words like 'political freedom'
couldn't possibly exist in the Communist Party dictionary!"

Yet another referred gamely to a famous point of discord between the U.S.
and China: "This is an infringement of Cheney's intellectual property
rights."

The final comment in the discussion expressed gratitude for receiving
access to uncensored information. "I deeply thank [the person who posted
this piece] for providing us with these valuable extracts." According to
the site, the passage had been visited over 1,500 times. Tiny, to be sure,
but this was just one site.

This presents a paradox. The Chinese government risked the wrath and
derision of critics, both international and domestic -- and earned a rebuke
from the U.S. Embassy -- in its efforts to conceal information from the
population. At the same time, Web sites that exposed this were accessible
in Mainland China. In fact, Beijingers could simply visit the American
Embassy Web site to see Mr. Cheney's uncensored words translated into
Chinese. Maybe this contradiction is simply due to the fact that China's
censors have neither the time, energy nor inclination to sift through the
overwhelming contents of cyberspace.

The censorship of Mr. Cheney's speech undoubtedly dismayed China watchers
who had been arguing that China's rapid economic development would
inevitably compel the leaders to loosen their grip on the media. But while
China's days of censorship may be far from over, some savvy Internet
writers prove that it's getting harder all the time.

Ms. Parker is an editorial page writer at The Asian Wall Street Journal.


-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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