CAPP Events: 2003

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CAPP Co-Sponsors Conference on China and the Internet

The RAND Center for Asia Pacific Policy recently co-sponsored a two-day conference, 'China and the Internet: Technology, Society and Economy in Transition' at the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Southern California on May 30-31, 2003. It was the largest event of its kind ever held in the United States.

The Dean of the Annenberg School, Geoffrey Cowan, kicked off the conference and noted that the event, which is likely to be held on an annual basis, was originally conceived as a conference to serve as a launching pad for a journal and might possibly result in a forthcoming book.

Wenxiang Gong, Dean of the School of Journalism & Communication at Peking University, presented the opening remarks on “SARS, the Internet, and SMS.” He traced the events that led to China’s use of mobile short messaging system (SMS) for disseminating up-to-date information about the SARS epidemic. The government’s authorization of SARS updates via this medium has lent SMS validity as it takes its place among more traditional forms of communication, he argued.

At the panel discussions on "Regulation: Methods, Critiques, and Cultural Responses", James Mulvenon, Deputy Director of CAPP, discussed Beijing's technical solutions to monitor and counter online dissent, which range from e-mail monitoring to blocking servers. Panelists noted that while China’s enforcement of content regulations has been stringent, enforcement of intellectual property law has been lax, especially in the music, movie and software industries.

Peng Hwa Ang from the Nanyang Technological Institute highlighted the many ways and reasons why China regulates the Internet. The Chinese government primarily controls the Internet via rules and laws, she said, and concurrently attempts to enforce these laws though control of the Internet’s architecture, such as proxy servers and firewalls. In addition, China uses psychological techniques to deter illegal behavior, such as rumors of punitive measures and reinforcement of social norms that encourage the traditional Chinese suspicion of western technology.

Taylor Boas, author of the book, Open Networks, Closed Regimes: The Impact of the Internet on Authoritarian Regimes, pointed out that technology has evolved to accommodate control of the Internet by totalitarian governments. Kathleen Hartford, a professor with the University of Massachusetts, Boston, elaborated on a three-tiered approach to regulation -- governmental, intermediate and self-censorship –- that she said the Chinese government practices. Panelist Lokman Tsui stressed the importance of the way the Chinese interpret the meaning of the word “privacy” -- e-mail privacy is likened to privacy in any public space, which is limited. Tsui pointed out that awareness and expectations of privacy online match those in the offline world in China.

Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker, dean of McGeorge School of Law, University of the Pacific, presented a keynote address that focused on cultural differences in perceptions of privacy, regulating a "free" space, and the "International" Internet. Parker surmised that China’s alternative view of the Internet raises the question as to whether western notions of privacy are an acceptable norm for the rest of the world.

Orville Schell, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Journalism, articulated two key issues in his keynote address: the duality of the Internet experience in China, and the view of the Internet in China as an experiment, or perhaps even a role model, for the rest of the world. He described the Chinese Internet as an experiment in using a combination of law and self-regulation to control what was once considered a largely uncontrollable, democratic medium. Schell questioned whether China’s experiment will be successful in the long run, but he thought that China’s regulations could prove to be a model for governments attempting to curb terrorist activities or for corporations trying to stem online piracy.

Other panels focused on perspectives on e-governance in China, the boost SARS has given China’s telecommunications industry, e-commerce as the next big Chinese market, and rethinking conventional theories of the Internet as community-creator and a catalyst for democracy in light of new research on ethnic groups on China’s web, and China’s seemingly contradictory success at both promoting and controlling Internet usage.