John Palfrey

Today, the OpenNet Initiative is releasing its report, “Internet Filtering in China in 2004-2005,” at the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission’s public hearing on China’s State Control Mechanisms and Methods.  The following is my testimony before the commission earlier today.

April 14, 2005

Written Statement of: John G. Palfrey, Jr.
Executive Director, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard Law School

Before the U.S. – China Economic and Security Review Commission Hearing on China’s State Control Mechanisms and Methods

Mister Chairman, Madame Co-Chair, Distinguished Members of the Commission:
 
My name is John Palfrey, and I am the executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, where I also teach on Internet-related subjects as a Lecturer on Law.  I am a member of a team of researchers, called the OpenNet Initiative, based at the University of Toronto, the University of Cambridge, and Harvard Law School, that has been conducting rigorous empirical testing of China’s Internet filtering regime for the past several years.  The report we present to you today builds on a similar report we released in 2002.  My colleagues Ronald Deibert of the University of Toronto, Rafal Rohozinski of the University of Cambridge, and Jonathan Zittrain of Harvard Law School are also principal authors of this report.  We have also studied in depth the filtering regimes of states in the Middle East, the former Soviet republics, and parts of East Asia.  I am joined today by my colleagues Nart Villeneuve, the Director of Technical Research at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, and Derek Bambauer, a research fellow at the Berkman Center at Harvard Law School. 

Today the Commission considers China’s mechanisms and methods of state control.  While China seeks to grow its economy through use of new technologies, the state’s actions suggest a deep-seated fear of the effect of free and open communications made possible by the Internet.  This fear has led the Chinese government to create the world’s most sophisticated Internet filtering regime.

The People’s Republic of China has the most extensive and effective legal and technological systems for Internet censorship and surveillance in the world today.  China’s system prevents users from accessing most politically sensitive content on the Internet, including information about opposition political groups, independence movements, the Falun Gong spiritual movement, the Dalai Lama, and the Tiananmen Square incident.  China’s system blocks virtually all BBC content and much CNN content online.  The Chinese government has imposed significant legal and technical restrictions that prevent the publication of and access to content sensitive to the government.

China’s filtering has advanced far beyond the comparatively limited filtering regimes in place in other states and, since we last tested China’s filtering systems in 2002, its approach has become markedly more sophisticated and successful. The success of China’s filtering efforts lies in its reliance on multiple, overlapping filtering methods and systems. China’s filtering takes place at multiple levels, including at access points such as cybercafés, at intermediaries such as Internet Service Providers (ISPs), and at the national Internet backbone network. 

China employs a mixture of soft and hard controls to limit the Internet material its citizens can access.  Hard controls include technical measures such as keyword and source blocking.  Soft controls include both extra-legal measures, such as informal pressure on users and content providers, and formal legal measures, such as broad and often arbitrary-seeming legal restrictions combined with zealous enforcement.  China’s legal enforcement measures concentrate primarily on the creation and dissemination of content rather than its retrieval.  Thus, these soft controls create a “chilling effect” that deters users, and intermediaries such as ISPs, from posting content on sensitive or prohibited topics.

Since we last tested, China has broadened its controls over the Internet through expansion of both laws and technology.  Legally, new requirements and restrictions raise barriers to creating and hosting sensitive content, placing authors and intermediaries on notice that their actions are monitored.  Technologically, China’s filters have become more sophisticated, with improved targeting of prohibited content and less “overblocking” of similar but less sensitive materials.  As new Internet communications methods have become popular in China – for instance, on-line discussion forums, search engines, and Web logs – the Chinese state has extended its filtering apparatus to control expression in these media. Filtering systems have also become integrated into the architecture of new technologies.  Chinese blog providers, for example, include code to prohibit publication of sensitive terms and content.

The Chinese state’s filtering systems lack transparency in nearly every sense.  In addition to limiting what Chinese citizens can come to know about the censorship process, this lack of transparency complicates the task of monitoring its filtering regime.  Most important, this lack of transparency contributes mightily to the climate of self-censorship.  Chinese officials very rarely admit that the state censors Internet content.  Officials do not disclose at any level of granularity what material it targets through the filtering regime.  Unlike Saudi Arabia, for instance, China does not permit users to participate in blocking decisions or to appeal erroneous filtering of sites that do not include content intended to be blocked. 

China’s Internet filtering and censorship efforts have global ramifications, and should be of concern to Internet users worldwide.  Most of all, the ramifications of this censorship regime should be of concern to anyone who believes in participatory democracy – online and offline.  China’s growing Internet population represents nearly half of all Internet users worldwide, and will soon overtake the United States as the single largest national group of Internet users.  How the Chinese government restricts its citizens’ online interactions is significantly altering the global Internet landscape.  China’s advanced filtering regime presents a model for other countries with similar interests in censorship to follow.  China acts as a regional Internet access provider for states such as Vietnam, North Korea, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan.  Through this important role as a gatekeeper between citizens in other states and the Internet, China may be able to share or export its content controls to neighboring states and their local Internet service providers.  There is no reason to believe that the Chinese government will refrain from exporting its filtering technology to other states, if the opportunity arises. 

While it may be an open question as to whether democratization and liberalization are taking place in China’s economy and government, there is no doubt that neither is taking place in China’s Internet environment today. 

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