China: Eine Reise in das Herz der Internetzensur

Reporter ohne Grenzen hat zusammen mit den Chinese Human Rights Defenders einen Report über die Schlüsselmechanismen der chinesischen Online-Zensur erstellt: A “Journey to the Heart of Internet censorship” on eve of party congress. Hier ist der Report zu finden.

“This system of censorship is unparalleled anywhere in the world and is an insult to the spirit of online freedom,” the two organisations said. “With less than a year to go before the Beijing Olympics, there is an urgent need for the government to stop blocking thousands of websites, censoring online news and imprisoning Internet activists.” This report shows how the CCP and the government have deployed colossal human and financial resources to obstruct online free expression. Chinese news websites and blogs have been brought under the editorial control of the propaganda apparatus at both the national and local levels.

The use of the Internet keeps growing in China. The country now has more than 160 million Internet users and at least 1.3 million websites. But the Internet’s promise of free expression and information has been nipped in the bud by the Chinese government’s online censorship and surveillance system. “Journey to the Heart of Internet Censorship” explains how this control system functions and identifies its leading actors such the Internet Propaganda Administrative Bureau (an offshoot of the Information Office of the State Council, the executive office of the government), the Bureau of Information and Public Opinion (an offshoot of the party’s Publicity Department, the former Propaganda Department) and the Internet Bureau (another Publicity Department offshoot).

The report also documents how the Beijing Internet Information Administrative Bureau has in practice asserted its daily editorial control over the leading news websites based in the nation’s Capital. It gives many examples of the actual instructions issued by officials in charge of this bureau. The last part of the report gives the results of a series of tests conducted with the mechanism of control through filtering keywords. These tests clearly show that, though there are still many disparities in the levels of censorship, the authorities have successfully coerced the online media into submission to censor themselves heavily on sensitive subjects.

Der Report empfiehlt die Nutzung von Proxy-Servern und die Nutzung von „neueren Internettechnologien“ wie Blogs, Diskussionsforen und VOIP.