ChinaAndInternet

STRAYER UNIVERSITY
CHINA AND THE INTERNET:
WITH CHINA’S ECONOMY IN MOTION, AND A RIGID GOVERNMENT TO RULE,
THE INTERNET MAY THREATEN IT ALL.
A DIRECTED STUDY PROJECT SUBMITTED TO THE
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS
IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF SCIENCE
IN BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION
BY
ANDREW JANITSCHEK
STRAYER ONLINE
JUNE 11, 2006

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CERTIFICATION AND APPROVAL
This directed study project on China And The Internet: With China’s Economy In Motion,
And A Rigid Government To Rule, The Internet May Threaten It All is submitted as my
own research for approval by the Graduate School of Strayer University in candidacy for
the degree of Master Of Business Administration..
Submitted By ____________________________ June 11, 2006
Andrew Janitschek
Approvals ____________________________ ___________
Margaret A. New, Ed.D.
DSP Supervisor

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ABSTRACT
China And The Internet:
With China’s economy in motion, and a rigid government to rule,
the Internet may threaten it all.
This study draws upon some of the most current materials available, some retrieved
less than 48-hours before this paper was submitted. This study also involved data from an
original survey designed to measure the effects of the Internet upon China and measure the
success, or failure, of the Chinese government’s efforts to maintain rigid control on its
people and the economic environment in China. It suggests that the Internet is an economic
force, at least in part, which is partially responsible for China’s move from its rigid,
centrally planned economy towards more of a market economy; there have been stumbles
along with the successes with this transition in China. This study not only looks at the
history of China and the development of the Internet, but also examines Chinese plans for a
stronger economic future in order to support its citizens for years to come.
This study ultimately demonstrates the Internet has affected China in many ways and
will continue to do so as the country continues to change in ways that are predictable and in
other ways that were unforeseen. The affects of the Internet are considered less dramatic
than those derived from issues concerning weapons of mass destruction or the former Cold
War, but the Internet has helped take a toll upon the older, stodgy economic policies of the
past. The Internet is opening China up to a new world of information and education, and in
many ways, faster than the Chinese government desires.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
CERTIFICATION & APPROVAL………………………………….……..ii
ABSTRACT......................................………………………………….……..iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS................………………………………….……..iv
LIST OF FIGURES.........................………………………………….……..vi
CHAPTER I ......................................………………………………….……..1
INTRODUCTION............................................................................................1
Statement of Problem ....................................................................................3
Research Questions and Sub-questions ........................................................3
Significance of Study ....................................................................................5
Research Design and Methodology..............................................................5
Organization of the Study .............................................................................6
CHAPTER II......................................................................................................8
LITERATURE REVIEW.................................................................................8
History of China ..........................................................................................10
History of the Internet .................................................................................22
History of the Internet in China ..................................................................27
Contemporary Issues of the Internet...........................................................33
CHAPTER III..................................................................................................48
ANALYSIS OF THE FINDINGS.................................................................48
Analysis of Data ..........................................................................................51
CHAPTER IV ..................................................................................................74

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SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION ..............................................................74
Summary......................................................................................................74
Conclusion ...................................................................................................76
APPENDICES..................................................................................................78
Appendix A: Survey.......................................................................................78
DELINIATION OF TERMS..........................................................................79
REFERENCE...................................................................................................81

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LIST OF FIGURES
Number Page
1. Internet Usage Growth in China...........................................................29
2. China’s Population: Internet Users and Non-Internet Users................31
3. Professions of all Chinese Internet Users.............................................32
4. Bar Chart Results for Statement 1 ........................................................51
5. Pie Chart Results for Statement 1.........................................................52

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CHINA AND THE INTERNET:
WITH AN ECONOMY IN MOTION, THE INTERNET
MAY THREATEN IT ALL
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
Context of the Problem
The Internet is a global network of interconnected computers that allows a user to
post, view, and download data. This data can be in the form of music, video, software, or
even simple text. Since the late 1980s, the Internet has launched new industries, changed
how we go about the process of commerce, and has literally availed the knowledge of
humanity to anyone with a connection to it. For over two decades, the Internet has been a
catalyst for change.
In China, where change goes only as fast as China sees fit, the Internet is also
propelling change along in the fast-lane; this path is quickly changing the face of a
nation. The society, known for control, and a slow-but-sure process of change, has itself
been changing at speeds once unthinkable and in ways beyond control of the government.
In a country that is at least 95 percent saturated with television access and now the
world’s premiere producer of computer chips and components, China’s population is
gaining access to information that was untouchable up until a few years ago; information

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about major events, like the 1989 Tiananmen Square student protests, is now available
for all. The Chinese population,, now at 1.3 billion, has grown a voracious appetite for
that same information and news, of not only what is going on in the world around them,
but also for what is going on within their country and within their local communities.
Does the Internet in China threaten their way of life? Are there worries in the
Chinese government that they are losing control of their populace? This research
examines:
 Access
 Efforts to control access
 Benefits
 The down-side of access (contrary thoughts, religion, pornography, etc)
 Intellectual property rights (copyrights)
This investigation evaluates the pros and cons and will support the hypothesis that
the Internet is beyond China’s control inasmuch as they may try to harness its power.
This research paper addresses these, and other, issues. The primary research was through
the use of a survey; some of the respondents are specifically involved in the
dissemination of news to China, while others are experts, or are in some way personally
familiar with the news and events of China.
The Internet is influencing the minds of average Chinese citizens bringing
enlightenment of more than just their personal sphere of life; they are evaluating and
debating life’s issues that involve the metaphysical, the cultural, the societal, the natural
rights of humans, and more.

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Statement of the Problem
The Internet provides access to a great deal of information. In China’s effort to
control and manage change, the Internet is managed by the General Administration of
Press and Publication (GAPP) in order to prevent, and protect, the population from
accessing perverted, subversive, or other controversial materials that China deems as un-
Chinese. The challenge is keeping the minds of the population wanting to learn and
experience more but preventing them from visiting websites that do not fit into the
Chinese way of life, way of thinking, and way of being Chinese. Blocking Internet sites is
one method used to help manage this issue.
For those Chinese citizens blocked from finding information they need or desire,
many are simply finding ways to get around government attempts to block or control
access. Some of those that host, or otherwise provide, the information are also working
hard to get around these official Chinese efforts. Is China wasting its time? Will
someone get what information or data they want by simply working harder? With so
many nodes and connections to manage, can anyone in the Chinese Government fully
expect to ‘pull the reins’ tight on typical human curiosity, or is it doomed to fail? In the
end, it will fail so all are able to see, view and hear the world unrestrained and untamed.
Research Questions and Sub-questions
The Hypothesis: The Internet in China is monitored and controlled by the
government but it will not succeed in total control as the population finds ways to
circumvent preventative measures, whether the average person wants news,
entertainment, weather, political debate or religious information. The Internet’s strength

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draws from the unprecedented prosperity brought on by China’s booming economy.
This hypothesis is supported through research addressing the following questions:
Question: Does the Internet threaten China’s way of life? For every method of
blocking information, Internet users are developing ways to circumvent those
government measures.
Sub question 1: Are China’s efforts to manage the Internet doomed? If so, is
this to the benefit of China, its economy, and its society?
Sub question 2: What processes does China use to manage information access?
The amount of money spent on controlling information access can be tolled in the
millions of dollars which could be better spent on other domestic issues.
Sub question 3: Why is China afraid? Once we understand why the Chinese
government is leery of the Internet, we can understand how, and why, they have taken
specific actions, and whether there is agreement with those actions or not. In the long
run, these actions can play into the hands of China’s proponents and opponents.
Sub question 4: How do Chinese Internet users get past the government blocks
and censors to find the data they desire? When humans want something, they will poke,
prod, and experiment with different methods to ultimately achieve their goal; this can
also be said of information and data access on the Internet from within China. If not
directly off the Internet, data can be shared through the use of photocopies, print-outs,
letters, compact discs, digital video discs, word-of-mouth, and other means. Trying to
keep this under control is at least difficult, if not impossible.

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Significance of the Study
The significance of this research is to highlight humanity’s right to information
and its need to evolve. The controls put in place by the Chinese government may thwart
the efforts of many, but over time, the data and information will be acquired and will be
shared. This is not to say that China is a big bully and deviously keeping its population
in the dark, but this is also not an effort to say China is simply protecting the clean ‘hearts
and minds’ of its population from pornography and lies either. This is also a study of
what efforts the Chinese government has gone through, and continues to use in order to
block data, thereby attempting to influence the opinions, and thinking, of its majority.
Research Design and Methodology
Different methodologies were used to obtain and analyze the research, most of
which are commonly accepted practices in the fields of research and study. The
secondary research included a review of a great deal of historical data to understand the
history of China, and the growth of the Internet. In this research, it was found that the
Internet is not only changing the face of societies in places like China, but it has started a
global evolution in the technological genesis of knowledge, the likes of which have never
been known to our species. Leaps and bounds in our global knowledge-base have
pushed the edges of our brain capacity further. This immense increase in available
knowledge has propelled our own thoughts and technologies to their outer limits; limits
which we will certainly exceed as we continually learn, develop and grow.

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The primary research was performed through the use of a survey. The total sum
of the surveys aided in establishing a basis of opinion about the use of the Internet in
China and on what the respondents felt was best for China. The point must be made here
that at least half of the survey respondents are directly involved in the flow, or broadcast,
of information to China; it must also be understood that these respondents are highly
motivated in their efforts to bypass China’s blocks on information dissemination; their
goal is to educate Chinese citizens about what is happening inside and beyond their
country’s borders. The reasons for this type of research, and for the secondary research is
clear; they were needed to paint a full picture of China and its use of the Internet today;
they were also necessary to establish what China is doing to control Internet access and
what others are doing to circumvent these efforts. Appendix A shows the full survey.
Out of 60 invitations to take the survey, 27 responses were received; this is a response
rate of 45 percent. At least two responses are from associates of one respondent who
works in the Information Technology Department at a United States Embassy in Asia; he
asked for approval to share the survey with a few select people and was given approval to
do so.
Organization of the Study
The current research was performed in order to determine the level of control
China exercises over its population’s access to the Internet and if they are doing it
effectively. Through the research, it has been determined that China uses a great number
of methods to impose limits on what information can be accessed via the Internet. Using
what has been called The Great Firewall, China blocks access to foreign websites it
deems as subversive or just un-Chinese. What has been further examined are the reasons

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for these controls and whether these are the actions of a despotic tyrant state or of a
caring and concerned government only interested in what is best for their fellow
countrymen.
The analysis performed is not atypical. The analysis serves to confirm what other
researchers have found before and what others will solidify through future research
efforts; control is not for the greater good of China’s population, but aids in maintaining
the status of the political elite, their power, and their ability to influence. This research
sets the ground work for others to follow; they should attempt to disqualify this work in
order to break any thoughts of bias and pre-established prejudices; let this be the basis for
the work of others research.

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CHAPTER II
LITERATURE REVIEW
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has long been home to one of the most
advanced civilizations in all of known history. All this leads one to ask the perennial
question of China, “With such a rich and advanced society in its time, how could they fall
so far behind the western world and fall prey to western influence?” During the Boxer
Rebellion, the Chinese succumbed to the British, and as English history recounts, the
Chinese were ruled as slaves and savages. Hong Kong was leased to the British as the
Westerns took a strong foothold in the Far East and proceeded to build the island into one
of the strongest economic powers in all of Asia. While the Portuguese had the same lease-
deal with Macau, they were unable to capitalize on this unique situation as their culture and
mentality carried them in different directions. With the passing of time, both Hong Kong
and Macau reverted to China’s control helping to strengthen the Chinese belief that in time
all lands will become part of China, and that they have the rest of time to help make these
changes happen.
Even before Hong Kong and Macau returned to China though, the seeds of change were
already planted and already making changes in ways no one could predict; once again,
changes generated by westerners and changes that were beyond control of the Chinese and
their government. In 1994, many were starting to hear of this new wonder called the

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internet. It was a place to go for information, shopping, and just plain fun; sure you could
access your personal email over the internet, but it was capable of so much more.
Did China fear this at first? Not that we can tell. Did they have any idea on how it
would affect them? No; no one knew what effect the Internet would have in the 1980s or
the 1990s. The Internet was originally meant for use by the department of Defense and for
educational institutions in order to quickly share information and resources. When this
limited network became public, it launched one of the most powerful technological tools
that was ever be invented by mankind. Some inventions have changed our lives in major
ways; the discovery of fire, the wheel, the light bulb, and the use petroleum products to
power machinery; all have contributed the advancement of human-kind in their own way.
The Internet is also one of those major breakthroughs propelling technology and
knowledge forward in ways that are faster than most can comprehend. How does one
control the wind? How does one control the mind? How does one control the Internet and
the inborn human thirst for knowledge? One can try; the Chinese are trying to do just that.
If you can control the information your nation sees, hears and gathers, you can generally
control what they think, feel and how they act. China is finding this task to be beyond their
capabilities. Where there is a need for information, the Chinese are finding a way to get it
and distribute it to their fellow countrymen. For example, in 1989, students and peasants
gathered in Beijing to mourn the loss of a popular leader; this gathering grew into a protest
of the slow and unmoving government that needed reform. The Tiananmen Square
Uprising, commonly referred to as a moment of ‘turmoil’ in China by its government, is
also called a massacre by others.

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History of China
Chinese civilization dates back at least to 2200-1700 BC. This is the era of the Xia
dynasty and presumed to be China’s first dynasty. Certainly there are no written records
from that time. Originally thought to be more of a dynasty of myth than one of fact, the
existence of the Xia has been proved recently through some hard work by archeologists.
The Xia are not only the first dynasty, but they are a culture now renowned for its pottery
covered with black lacquer. Much is unknown about ancient China but there is also a great
deal one can discover by studying Chinese antiquities and the ancient Chinese writings that
exist from more contemporary dynasties than the Xia. The past 2,500 years of China’s
history is well known and is regularly studied and dissected in order to provide greater
insight in to China and its people. While there is still not proof of any written
communications from the Xia, scientists are confident the Xia had a system of writing
which set the stage for the next set of rulers, the Shang dynasty.
The Shang dynasty existed from around 1750-1040 BC and is the first dynasty
known to have left behind a complete record of Chinese writings from their time. They
wrote their scripts on shoulder blades from pigs. They not only provide a historic reference
for study but the shoulder blades are also thought to have served some sort of religious
purposes in their time. The Shang were one of the most advanced bronze civilizations of
their time and also one that killed a great number of their fellow citizens. For example,
when a king would die, a hundred or more slaves would be put into the grave with the
corpse; many slaves were put in the grave site while still alive, or were simply beheaded
first. It is assumed the slaves were put into the graves to serve the king in their next life.
The Shang are also known to have used human sacrifice in part of their traditional

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ceremonies and even for something as simple as a way to bless a building. After the
Shang, came the Western Zhou dynasty.
The Western Zhou ruled China from 1100-771 BC. Like the Shang before them,
who seized control of China from the Xia, the Western Zhou took control from the Shang.
The Western Zhou were the first rulers to use the paternal system of succession where
control was passed from father to son. In contrast thought, the Western Zhou did not have
the same level of skills as the Shang when it came to working with metal. Another contrast
with the Shang is that the Western Zhou did not place as much reverence on human
sacrifice. During this period, China was itself a product of many principalities, of which,
the area ruled by the Western Zhou was the strongest and most stable. Due to their ever
expanding influence, the area ruled by the Western Zhou became known as the Middle
Kingdom, which is a term still in use to refer to China today (Boulard, 2005). It was not
until 771 BC that the Middle Kingdom was overrun by barbarians and the Western Zhou
dynasty came to an abrupt and violent end.
Over the next 500 hundred years, 771-221 BC, there came the overlapping periods
of the Eastern Zhou 771-256 BC), the Spring And Autumn Period (772-481 BC), and the
Warring States Period (403-221 BC). This time is marked by the eastern movement of the
Zhou from the west to escape the barbarians. This period also provides a distinct time
frame with which to separate the Western Zhou period from the Eastern Zhou period.
The Spring And Autumn Period gave rise to a greater introspect at that time; new
ideas and philosophies came to light including Daoism, Confucianism and Legalism.
Daoism, also known as Taoism, teaches followers to pursue harmony with all that
surrounds humanity through meditation. Its effect upon China’s culture is second only to

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Confucianism. Confucianism promotes respect for the elderly, for traditions, rituals, close
family ties, education, and promoting government reforms so it works for the benefits of
the people. Those that are followers of Legalism believe people’s conduct must be
regulated through strict control because humans are basically evil. An additional premise
of Legalism is that officials must be assigned specific responsibilities; they are punished if
they do not fulfill their duties but are rewarded if they are successful. Legalism also
promotes the use of secret police, informants and creating a general culture of fear. Hitler,
Stalin and Mao are known to have used the teachings of the Legalism. Legalism is still in
use as a tenet of the ruling Chinese government.
Both the Spring And Autumn Period and the Warring States Period were each
marked by battles. The battles were small and only lasted very short in time during the
Spring And Autumn Period; sometimes no longer than a day. During the Warring States
Period though, as many as a million soldiers would meet on the battlefield and participate
in long, drawn-out sieges.
In the subsequent Qin dynasty, 221-206 BC, Qin Shihuangdi became the first
Emperor of China; all the previous rulers had been called kings. The lack of cohesion
amongst the states allowed the stronger army of the state of Qin to eventually dominate
them all. During this period, the Qin had a great deal of iron at their disposal which they
strategically used to their advantage. With enormous amounts of this metal at their
disposal, they went to work and fashioned the iron into weapons; there was so much iron
available that the Qin were able to stockpile more weapons than their enemies. Herein was
the result of this advantage; an overabundance of a natural resource eventually became an
abundance of weapons. The Emperor was a Legalist and ruled with an iron fist. If one of

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his generals was late, the general was executed. Another Legalist ruling by the Emperor
was the order to burn all books that could be found. After Qin Shihuangdi died in 210 BC,
the country fell into chaos once again. It is important to note that the Great Wall of China
started during this dynasty as a series of walls to protect the Chinese from attacking Turks
and Mongols; it is also important to note that it took china another 1900 years to complete
the structure.
By 206 BC, the Han took control of China and started the Early Han dynasty. This
dynasty lasted over 200 years until the Wang Mang Period, which lasted only 17 years.
During the Early Han dynasty, China’s history was meticulously documented and is still
used today to retell China’s past. It was also during this time that China’s largest ethnic
group was named, the Han. Today, the Han comprise almost 92 percent of China’s total
population (CIA World Factbook, 2006). The greatest contribution to China from the Early
Han dynasty was the idea of a bureaucracy. During this time, China was the largest
country in the world with 60 million inhabitants. A structured form of government was
needed to help manage the military, collect taxes, and to effectively deal with a never
ending mixture of social issues. Their version of government set the foundations of how all
China’s governments would be structured from then on.
When Wang Mang ruled China from AD 8-25, he became Emperor simply due to
disagreements within the Han. As a commoner, Wang Mang had motivation and good
ideas, but in the end proved unable to handle the responsibilities of the position. When he
died, the Han were there to seize control of the country again and establish the second rule
of the Han, or the Later Han dynasty. Like their predecessors, the Early Han, the Later Han
dynasty ruled China for 200 years. Toward the end of Later Han dynasty, there were

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continual raids into China by Mongols, and other barbarians, from the north which
prompted a major shift of the Chinese population from the north to the south of China. By
220 AD, the Later Han lost so much control over the country that their power evaporated
and China entered a chaotic period of 350 years where there was no longer a single China.
220-265 AD saw the period of the Three Kingdoms followed by the Dynasties of
the North and South from 317-589 AD. Politics and war marked these years but in the end,
this helped solidify the idea that there can only be one Emperor in China. When
researching the changes in Chinese society during this time, it is noticeably marked by the
continual southern movement of non-Chinese barbarians from the northern borders and
their eventual assimilation into Chinese society; this time is also marked by the continual
movement of the Han further south to distance themselves from those of the north. A final
stepping stone in the evolution of China is that during this era Buddhism arrived from India
and was quickly accepted throughout the country. Buddhism is considered by many to be a
way of life and not just simply a religious sect. The three main goals of Buddhists are to
lead a moral live, be mindful and aware of thoughts and actions, and to develop wisdom
and understanding (White, 1993). Buddhism was so popular that it replaced Confucianism
as the major philosophy of the Chinese citizenry. From China, monks would take
Buddhism beyond its borders into other Asian countries propelling its spread further and
further.
In 589 AD, it was the Sui dynasty that reunited the country. Although the Sui did
not hold power for long, this dynasty is marked by the fact the Sui were based in the
northern part of China and therefore the Sui were not totally ethnic Chinese; they were also
mixtures of the Turks and the Mongols. It was just 300 hundred years prior to the Sui

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dynasty that the northern, non-Chinese tribes had been entering the country and becoming
part of China; now they were partly responsible for ruling China. Non-Chinese not only
influenced the Sui dynasty, which ended in 618 AD, but also in the subsequent Tang
dynasty which ruled from 618-907 AD.
By Chinese standards, the Tang are ranked as one of the best to have ever ruled the
country. They are renowned for expanding China’s borders as far north as Siberia and as
far south as what is Vietnam today. To the east they controlled as far as Korea and to the
west their influence and control extended into Afghanistan. It was during the Tang dynasty
that the only woman to ever rule China lived, the Empress Wu. The end of the Tang
dynasty began with the An Lushan Rebellion. An Lushan was a general that had won favor
with a concubine of another Tang ruler, the Emperor Xuanzong. The general’s power and
influence grew so much that he believed he should be the Emperor of China. Eventually
this general started a civil war that lasted from 755-763; this war was based on nothing else
than the general’s desire to become Emperor. While this started the downfall of the Tang
dynasty, it took another 150 years before the house of Tang fell into total disarray. As the
days of the Tang ended, the Song dynasty came to power and in 960 AD took control of
China. The next 200 years, is known as the period of the Northern Song followed by
another 150 years of rule, 1127-1279 AD, by the Southern Song.
In spite of all the problems facing China in the dwindling years of the Tang
dynasty, there were several developments in agriculture and economics. The greatest
development of this era was the Vietnamese development of a strain of rice that grew
quicker than the standard grain of its time. The faster growing rice could supply enough
food for all of China for generations to come. What is important about this single

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development is that this helped the Chinese develop such an efficient food supply system
that it remained virtually unchanged until the 1900s. Also notable of this era is that while
the Industrial Revolution and its ensuing shortage of workers encouraged technological
development in Europe, in China there were so many in the labor force that there was no
incentive to develop technology further; this, by itself, proved to be a failing of both Song
dynasties.
The Northern Song gave way to the Southern Song as barbaric tribes once again
invaded the northern areas of China forcing the Song to abandon their capital early in the
1100s and moved their seat of power to southern China setting the stage for the Southern
Song dynasty. The Southern Song rule collapsed after their 150 years as the Mongols, and
other barbaric tribes, invaded China; this came on the heals of Mongol successes in
conquering everything else between Austria and Manchuria. From 1279-1368, the Mongols
ruled China in the period known as the Yuan dynasty.
The Yuan dynasty gave rise to names of legendary proportions for it was during
this time that Marco Polo and Kublai Khan arrived in China; Marco Polo even worked for a
while as an official for the ruling Mongol government. As most educated Chinese were
excluded from working in the government, it gave those with an education a chance to
further develop cultural institutions, like the opera, that still set the highest standards of
culture in China today.
The Ming ruled China from 1368-1644. They were noticeably larger and heavier
than the average Chinese citizen, and were also noted for being tougher on their opponents
than most dynasties. For example, the first Emperor of the Ming discovered that his Prime
Minister was plotting against him. In the end, approximately 40,000 lost their lives in the

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Emperor’s effort to punish those who would oppose him. Also notable from the Ming
dynasty was their movement of the capital to Beijing, fortification of the Great Wall, and
giving control of Macau to the Portuguese.
In 1644, the Manchu’s seized control of China and started almost 300 years of rule
under what is known as the Qing dynasty. They are recognized for many contributions to
China. For example, the Qing encouraged further development of Chinese culture and arts,
but most notable is that when the dynasty ended in 1911, they would also be China’s last
dynasty. One of the major contributors to their downfall was that the Emperor of China
was revered and treated as the Son of Heaven and therefore was above all others. There
was also the belief that China was the center of the world, and then there were all the other
countries. When France, England, Germany, Russia and the United States started pursuing
trade earnestly with China, this ‘greater than thou’ philosophy made it difficult for
emissaries to negotiate with the Chinese. A diplomatic move that helped bring on the end
of the dynasty was that the Western governments did their best to undermine the Qing
government. For example, England contributed to the downfall of the Qing by the
smuggling of opium into southern China and then selling it to the Chinese. On the other
hand, as the United States Marines and other foreign troops did in 1900 by quelling the
Boxer Rebellion, the Western countries also did what they could to keep the Qing dynasty
going in order to maintain a unified China; all the while, the Western powers plotted and
planned to share the profits of China amongst themselves. By 1911 though, the Ming
government fell into disarray and they were no longer able to rule causing greater chaos in
China. Leading to a further void in proper Chinese leadership was Europe’s entry in to
World War I; with that, Western attention turned away from China.

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In the early 1920s, the Chinese Nationalists, or Kuomintang (KMT), under the
leadership of their president, Sun Yat-sen, accepted assistance from the Soviet Union in an
effort to seize power away from various warlords and reunify China. The KMT also
sought additional cooperation from the newly formed Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
With the help of the Soviets and the CCP, Sun Yat-sen and the rest of the KMT began the
long task of defeating warlords and bringing the country under one leader. By 1925 though,
Sun Yat-sen died making room for Chiang Kai-shek to take over the KMT. As he never
trusted the Communists, he began an effort to systematically hunt down and eradicate
China of all CCP members.
By 1934, just when the KMT, had the last vestiges of the CCP cornered, the CCP
escaped and began the Long March, where little known members of the CCP, like Mao
Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, began a trek that is now legendary amongst the Chinese.
What began with 100,000 CCP followers evading and moving away from the KMT, one
year later saw only 4,000-8,000 arrive at their final destination, some 6,000 miles later. It
was at this final destination, Yan’an, where Mao came to power within the party; a process
that began during the Long March. At the same time, the Japanese had already occupied
Manchuria and were now moving towards China. The soldiers of the KMT that were sent
after the CCP then changed their focus and concentrated on protecting their country from
the advancing Japanese. This was the break the Communists needed.
By 1937, Japan was attacking China; it was war. With the start of World War II in
1939, Japan remained focused on China as they were uninvolved in the global battle until
1941 with their attack upon Pearl Harbor. It was then that Japan diverted its war efforts
from China to the West, towards the United States to the East. The ruling Nationalist

19
government was in disarray and rife with corruption; power struggles and corruption once
again created a power void that Mao and his fellow CCP members moved in to fill at the
end of the war. By 1949, the Nationalists vacated the capital city of Nanking and were on
the run from the CCP, seeking the safety of Taiwan. China’s new Chairman, Mao Zedong,
and his followers, announced to the world the creation of the Communist ruled People’s
Republic of China (PRC). The ideology of Mao and his followers at this time was that it
was better to have a Communist in any position of great authority instead of having a
qualified, non-communist. What ensued in China were projects and policies that were less
than optimal for China and its people; ideology ruled while common sense and education
lost out.
With the backing of the Soviet Union, the PRC’s first major leap into international
conflict was in 1950 when the PRC threw its support behind the North Koreans in their
fight against the South in the Korean War. On July 27, 1953 a ceasefire was signed
between the two Koreas to end all hostilities even though both are technically still at war
with each other today. In 1958, the Chinese government began the Great Leap Forward
with the full support of Chairman Mao. In their effort to consolidate food production
within China, collective farming was used; any worker not involved in agriculture was to
be sent to the steel mills. What ensued over the next few years was the worse man-made
famine in the history of mankind. Just 15 years prior, 20-million Chinese had died at the
hands of the Japanese, and now China’s own inept policies were the reason for twice that
many simply due to starvation; something akin to what happened in North Korea in the late
1990s when 2.5 million died from starvation (Beck, 2006).

20
During the 1960s, the world watched as China broke away from the Soviet Union
and established itself as the ‘other’ great Communist power in the world (Frankenstein,
2002). In spite of the failings of the Great Leap Forward, the next major change in the
PRC was in 1966 with the Cultural Revolution. It is assumed that Chairman Mao called
for this to silence his opponents within the Communist Party. Mao called for the students of
China to rebel against authority; chaos begot more chaos as offices and schools closed and
the country’s transportation system came to a halt. As it had so many times before over the
past 4,000 years of their history, China was again thrown into chaos. Only with the full
support of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), Mao Zedong, and his government
survived. Three years after it began, the Cultural Revolution ended. To date, there has still
not been a full accounting of the damage, lost lives, and the economic costs of the Cultural
Revolution.
In February, 1972 US President Richard Nixon visited China after a flurry of visits
by his Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. Always the strong anti-communist, the world
was taken by surprise when Nixon’s official visit to China was announced. The meetings
between US and Chinese officials, especially between President Nixon and Chairman Mao
were extremely successful politically. This ‘ping pong diplomacy,’ called that because the
warming of relations all started with ping pong matches arranged between the two
countries, signified friendlier relations between the two superpowers and it weakened the
position of the Soviet Union. Just a few years later Mao Zedong passed away and by 1978,
Deng Xiaoping became the new Chairman of the Communist Party and ruler of China.
In contrast to Maoist ideologies, it was under Deng Xiaoping that the government
began changing weaker policies about who should be in positions of power, towards

21
putting the best people, or experts, in critical positions to manage the greater problems of
China. Experts were now in places to begin the difficult task of economic reforms. As the
ensuing years of reforms progressed under Deng Xiaoping, the Soviet Union and Eastern
Europe were falling apart.
In April of 1989, protests in favor of further political and economic reforms were
taking shape in Beijing. The first gatherings, though small, had originally started as a way
to mourn the passing of a popular politician, former Secretary General Hu Youbang. As the
news spread that the mourners were clashing with the local police, others joined. Soon the
small gatherings became throngs of people not just mourning, but also asking for speedier
economic reforms, political reform, and open dialog with government authorities; there
were even some demands for the government to resign. By May 20, martial law had been
declared but up until this point, the protests had gone unabated and unchallenged by the
military, although the military had tried to enter the city that same day but were ordered to
return to their barracks after blockades slowed, and in some cases stopped, the advance of
the PLA. On the evening of June 3, the PLA moved in to Beijing and through the night
cleared Tiananmen Square of protestors. In the end, hundreds were dead and thousands
injured; the government had restored control and the world’s view of China was forever
changed.
After Tiananmen, economic reforms in China cooled off until 1993 when Deng
Xiaoping, in one of his last public appearances, visited the Special Economic Zone in
Shenzhen and surprisingly announced his full support for more zones like this. That visit,
along with the Deng’s open support, was enough to kick start China’s economy again along
with reforms he had supported since the beginning of his leadership of China (Deng

22
Xiaoping, 2006). By early 1997, Deng Xiaoping was dead and Jiang Zemin was officially
announced as the new President of China although Deng had passed on the duties of
leadership to Jiang a few years before his passing. By 2005 Jiang Zemin had retired and
turned over control of China to its current leader Hu Jintao (Jiang Zemin, 2006).
ND Batra, a contributing writer to AsiaMedia.Com, summed up China’s recent
history this way (April 25, 2006):
The Deng Xiaoping market economy revolution unleashed China's
entrepreneurial and organizational energies, but not without help from the
outside world, especially the United States' open markets. Today China is a
healthier, better-fed and better-educated nation than most other developing
countries but it remains a closed society. China can compete with the best,
but can it tolerate the noise and chaos from an open society such as the
United States, where the people demand accountability from their political
leaders? Beijing with the help of Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft and Cisco, has
been trying to expand its control into the digital domain, but can it ever have
the same control over cyberspace as it has over Tiananmen Square?
History of the Internet
From the Internet’s humble beginnings as simply a way to share information
between scientists and other researchers, it has grown to such proportions that it has
touched the lives of every citizen of the ‘connected’ global community and its reach is
increasing daily. Most of America came to know the Internet in the 1990s; today, one
cannot help but be exposed to it in this modern society. While China is the most populace

23
country on the planet, they have always lagged behind the United States in the amount of
total users of the Internet; some day soon they will surpass the United States.
Before delving in to the developments of the Internet in China, it is important to
understand how it all started, it’s genesis, per se. With that foundation of information, it
will be possible to examine a similar set of data that relates to China, and then see how it
applies to the use of the Internet in China yesterday and today. This background will form
the basis from which the hypothesis derives.
The Internet is a global series of interconnected computer networks that are able to
share data using a common Internet Protocol (IP). The Net, as it is also called, is
interconnected by fiber optic cable, telephone lines, satellite channels, microwave links,
radio waves, or any other form of transmission that allows computers to exchange data with
each other. At times, the Internet is referred to as the World Wide Web, but there is a
difference.
The World Wide Web, or the Web, is a service that uses the Internet. Another
service that uses the Internet is email. The Web is a collection of documents that are only
available via the Internet through the use of Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) and
hyperlinks. Computer files that are present on all Web servers use the Hypertext Transfer
Protocol (HTTP) and make those files available to all Web users through a simple point-
and-click system (Buckley & Clark, 2006). When using the Web, someone only needs to
type the address, or URL, of a website into an Internet browser, like Mozilla or Internet
Explorer; the telltale ‘www’ in the address, like ‘ww.Google.com,’ is a sign that the person
is searching the Web and retrieving data from that portion of the Internet.

24
The creation of the Internet really goes back to the Cold War and to 1957 when the
Soviet Union launched Sputnik. As a reaction to the Soviet advances in space, the United
States created the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) so the Soviet lead would
be short-lived; eventually the United States would assume that lead. As part of a military
plan to ensure nuclear weapons could be used in any counterattack without reliance on
existing communications, a packet-based network of computers was suggested in 1962 that
would guarantee the full transmission of data, especially any data needed to launch a
missile as part of any possible counterattack; even if part of the data transmission was lost,
there would be a continuous resending of the data until the entire communication was
received. By 1968, a packet-based network called ARPANET was completed and
interconnected the University of California in Santa Barbara, the University of California in
Los Angeles, the University of Utah, and the Stanford Research Institute in Connecticut;
these four locations, with their communications links, signified the birth of the Internet.
In 1972 the first email program was created and during that same year ARPA was
renamed the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency (DARPA). One year later,
development of a suite of combined protocols began; it was named the Transmission
Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) and is still in use today. TCP/IP allows
varying computer networks the ability to communicate and interconnect with other
networks. 1974 saw the word ‘Internet’ used for the first time; while the science
community was excited by the advances, most of the general public would wait another 10-
15 years before they too suddenly became excited by this new technology. 1976 saw the
Department of Defense require the APRANET to use the TCP/IP protocol. During this
same year, Europe and the United States became interconnected using satellite

25
communications. Between ARPANET and the radio and satellite connections, the Net
jumped from 23 networks to over 111 interconnected networks on APRANET.
In 1981, National Science Foundation created the Computer Science Network
(CSNET) for institutions without access to ARPANET; that same year, plans were
developed to connect CSNET and ARPANET. By this time, 562 networks were connected
and working with each other. That number would double in 1984 as ARPANET was split
into two networks; MILNET for use specifically by the military, and ARPANET which
would continually support scientific research. At this time, CSNET would also have its
name changed to the National Science Foundations Network, or NSFNET, and by 1985,
high-stream data lines were replacing standard data-rate lines; these same standard lines
that were being replaced would eventually become the standard data rates for everyday
consumers within a decade. With the new communication lines in place, data was
exchanged twenty-five times faster than previously possible. By 1988, when the entire
network had been upgraded to the high-speed data lines, another upgrade was needed as
access and usage was increasing at an enormous rate. In 1991, Advanced Network
Services (ANS) came up with the concept of high speed networking using a T3 line
capable of sending 45 million bits of data per second. By the end of 1991, the entire
NFSNET system was using the newer, high speed data lines. That same year, the
Department of Defense shut down the ARPANET and removed it from service and the
remnants of CSNET were also disconnected after a public announcement claiming CSNET
a total success and having achieved its purpose.
In 1992, the World Wide Web is released by CERN, the European Organization for
Nuclear Research, based in Geneva, Switzerland. This had been in development for 3 years

26
and allowed the use of hypertext to quickly access documents located on other computers
around the world (Segal, 1995). The following year, graphics are incorporated as a method
for users to ‘click and get’ software or documents. Today, when someone refers to pictures
placed on a computer screen and refers to it as a ‘goo-ee,’ this is for a graphic user
interface, or GUI. By 1994, almost 4-million networks are interconnected to the National
Science Foundation’s growing backbone, or main connections of the Internet. Also
significant in 1994 is that the Asynchronous Transmission Mode (ATM) starts to see use;
the use of ATM allows the transfer of data at the speed of 145 million bytes of data per
second. Noteworthy of 1994 too, Pizza Hut offered the ability to order food through their
website and the first online bank, Virtual First, began operations.
By 1995, the National Science Foundation no longer allows free access to its
backbone and through a contract with four other companies, it costs $50 per year to own a
web domain, for example, any website address that ends in .COM or .NET, excluding
.EDU and .GOV web sites which continue to come from the National Science Foundation’s
budget. 1996 sees the bulk of data being exchanged and transferred on the web being
carried by independent internet service providers (ISPs) like America Online, CompuServe
and Microsoft Network (MSN) through the use of telephone, or dial-up, connections. As
the 1990s close the world is moving towards broadband, or high speed, connections
provided through cable television, satellite and telephone and fiber optic services. Even
well into the 2000s, the demand for greater speeds grows almost as quickly as new data
speed schemes are released; the hunger for ‘more data’ at faster rates continues. In its
simplest form, the Internet of today, and of 40 years ago, is only defined by its numerous
interconnections and routing policies.

27
History of the Internet in China
As it was in other countries, the first connections between computers in China
started with scientists and those in academia. The history of computer networking goes
back a great deal further than China’s history with the Internet, but China’s first access was
established on March 28, 1988 between the Beijing Institute of Computing Applications
and Karlsruhe University in Germany (Internet in the People’s Republic of China, 2006).
Together, they formed the China Academic Network. One year later, the Institute of High
Energy Physics (IHEP) in Beijing connected to the Internet through their link to CERN in
Geneva, Switzerland. IHEP would eventually host China's first, full Internet connection,
although other institutions had set up links to other universities and overseas networks by
this time. That same year, China’s first international email was sent over the Internet.
There is some debate on the actual date it was sent and on what it exactly communicated;
according to one account, the email was sent on September 14 and titled "Across the Great
Wall we can reach every corner in the world" while another version said that the email was
sent on September 20 and titled "Crossing the Great Wall to Join the World” (Williams,
2004).
In 1990, the domain .CN was registered world wide to identify any user originating
out of the People’s Republic of China. Since China still lacked a direct connection to the
Internet at this time, the first server bearing the .CN domain was understandably located in
Karlsruhe, Germany. It was not until 1994 when IHEP started running China's first web
server within the country; naturally, the server hosted IHEP's home page. On their home
page, visitors could find information about IHEP, about technology in China, and

28
information about Chinese culture and tourism. A few weeks later, the main server using
the .CN domain was moved from Germany to China.
In 1997, the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) was tasked by
the government with making statistical surveys on the development of the Internet in
China. In order to make it a routine and organized effort, the CNNIC publishes its report
semi-annually; the latest information, The 17th
Survey Report, was released in January,
2006. According to the CNNIC, there were 620,000 Chinese using the Internet in 1997.
The CNNIC defines an Internet user as a Chinese citizen that uses the Internet for at least
one hour per week. Worth noting, the statistics provided by the CNNIC do not include
users in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan; Hong Kong and Macau are reported separately
while Taiwan is completely ignored by the CNNIC reports. By 2004, the CNNIC reported
that the total number had reached 79.5 million users. As of the most recent report, dated
January, 2006, the number reached 111-million, a number which had almost doubled in
only two years, and the majority of which access the Internet using a broadband, or high-
speed, connection. At 28-percent, over one-quarter of Beijing’s population is using the
Internet with 25-percent of Shanghai’s population also linking to the Internet weekly.
Based on current estimates, there will be approximately 150 million Chinese Internet users
by the summer of 2006 (CNNIC 17th
Survey Report, 2006).

29
Figure 1: Internet Usage Growth in China
The Chinese government does block access to certain sites by Internet Protocol, or
IP, address in what has been called the ‘Great Firewall of China.’ As it turns out though,
the blocks used by the Chinese government censors can, at times, be easily bypassed
rendering the Chinese efforts useless in stopping external and internal news from flowing
in to and out of the country. This is not to say China is wasting time and money; their
efforts have been very effective in preventing most any one from using the Internet to

30
organize. Those that have tried usually end up being forced off the Internet and, at times,
in custody facing punishment.
The Internet is not just something China must police and watch, but it is also a tool
for the Chinese government to use. One of the most active and popular Internet bulletin
boards is hosted by the People's Daily newspaper. The Internet has also created an
extensive blog and chat community globally and within China. Internet content providers in
China provide moderators on all blog sites and chat rooms; that censor is publicly known as
‘big mama.’ Big Mama’s job, whether they be male or female, is to monitor the Internet,
especially newsgroups and chat rooms for any sensitive content; if Big Mama feels it is
warranted, then they delete any information they come across. Knowing that Big Mama is
always there, the Internet has spawned new ways of bypassing the censors. For example, it
has become common practice to post potentially sensitive materials and information on a
newspaper’s website and should Big Mama order the information removed, it is then too
late for the censorship to have much of an affect as visitors to the website have already read
the material; it is a cat-and-mouse game played in China that helps negate the work of the
government sponsored censors.
There are still some topics too sensitive for the government to take ‘head on.’ For
example, on June 3, 2004, one day before the fifteenth anniversary of the Tiananmen
Square protests of 1989, access to a great number of Chinese-language websites hosted in
the West were blocked by the Chinese government; only after appeals to the government
were most blocks removed. In 2006, the anniversary came and went basically ignored by
the Chinese media (MacLeod, 2006).

31
As of 2006, over 1 billion people around the world use the Internet (Internet, 2006).
China’s Internet user population, at roughly 115-million, only represents 8.5-percent of the
1.3 billion that live in China. The remaining 91.5 percent of the population are mostly
without Internet access; this represents a huge challenge to the infrastructure of China
(CNNIC 17th
Survey Report, 2006). At of the beginning of 2006, the CNNIC’s report
states that 54.4 percent of all current Internet users are 18-30 years old, 58.7 percent are
male, and 57. 9 percent are unmarried, while 50.7 percent have at least a college diploma.
It is interesting to note the breakdown of which professions are using the Internet the most;
the majority of users are students, closely followed by business people, but only a small
percentage of government workers are using the Internet.
Figure 2. China’s population: Internet users and Non-Internet Users

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Figure 3: Professions of all Chinese Internet Users
Over two-thirds of China’s Internet users access the Web from home, with the rest
using work, Internet Cafés, schools and other public places to ‘surf.’ The greatest activity
starts at 8 a.m. when 16-percent of users access, or start to access, the Internet; this number
steadily increases through the afternoon until Internet access peaks between 8-10 p.m.
Internet usage then drops off significantly after midnight. If one were to provide a
comprehensive list of what Internet services the Chinese are using, it could easily be the
same list of services any user in the United States would be using; news, search engines,
email, instant messaging, bulletin boards, downloading music and videos, gaming, online
shopping; this list goes on and on. In this aspect, Internet users in China are not so different
than most of their western counterparts although there is a lag in the numbers of Chinese

33
using the Internet to shop due to mistrust of online vendors, and the ease in which items can
be returned to retail stores. Some of the same annoyances plaguing Internet users in the West
are also plaguing users in China. Over 22 percent of Chinese Internet are unhappy with
popup advertisements; another 20 percent of the users find Internet and computer viruses
another negative aspect of Internet use. Surprisingly, only 5.1 percent are unhappy with
exposure to inappropriate information and 3.7 percent voiced dissatisfaction with exposure
of their privacy.
Contemporary Issues of the Internet
The Chinese are a proud people renowned for their discoveries and developments
which have helped shape and advance humanity. Some examples of Chinese ingenuity are
the development of gun powder, the compass, spaghetti, paper, kites, and the abacus. The
Great Wall, at 3,948 miles long and built over 1,900 years, was designed to protect those
living in China’s mainland from raids by the Mongols and Turks; today it stands as a
monolith honoring generations of workers that helped build it.
When it came to the arts and sciences, China was far ahead of other countries until
the 1800s when wars, famine, internal crises and foreign occupation took its toll on China’s
ability to influence the modern world. While Mao Zedong’s autocratic society may have
served some purpose during its time, when Deng Xiaoping started focusing on a market
oriented economy, China grew. In just over 20 years, China’s output had quadrupled and
while personal choices have increased dramatically, political control’s remain tight.
Typical to the Chinese mindset, reforms in China are gradual and come in small doses. This
process was evident in 2005 when China began the process of selling equity in some of the
country’s largest banks; these sales were not to others within China but to foreign investors

34
and constant tweaks to the foreign exchange rates. For example, in July, 2005, China cut
the value of its currency by 2.1 percent against the US dollar, then changed it reference to a
group of foreign currencies. (Yuan Step From The Edge, 2006.) With the start of Deng
Xiaoping’s restructuring of the economy, China’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has
increased tenfold, and when measuring China’s economy against purchasing power parity
(PPP), this rates China as the world’s second largest economy, only behind the United
States. During this same period, China has struggled to create new jobs for the millions of
workers laid off as inefficient state-run factories are closed, or sold off, to private
enterprises. The result of this has been up to 150 million workers on the streets between
rural and urban China looking for any opportunity to work, most of which are only low
paying, part time jobs. China is also grappling with years of corruption and abuse within
the government and within business community, while it also is working hard to control
social unrest, partly through control of the Internet, and environmental damages due to their
rapidly expanding economy. Adopted in 1979, China’s ‘one child’ policy has created some
unexpected consequences. For example, China now has one of the fastest aging populations
in the world as there are simply not enough children being born to tip the scale the other
way; this is another threat to China that it must deal with sooner or later. China is reaping
the benefits of Internet access and use by its population, but this also helps drive the
economy further, causing more pollution, smaller water supplies, and a loss of land that is
usable for farming. With some of China’s economic reforms, foreign investment, once
considered risky at best, is now a boon for the economy as the world’s ‘major players’ are
making their presence known in China. With such a vast market as 1.3 billion potential
customers, there is no doubt corporations like Microsoft, Coca-Cola, and Du Pont see

35
China as their next major market with unlimited potential; understandably, most of the
Western world is giddy about the prospect of having ‘all of China’ as their next market.
This level of investment has been to the benefit of China as this has helped create millions
of jobs in urban areas. Throughout the summer of 2005, China was plagued by reports of
electricity shortages as a result of the continued growth in demand for energy; it is hoped
the recent completion of the Three Gorges Dam in Yichang, primarily meant to control
flooding during the annual monsoons, will also help reduce China’s need for imported oil.
Based on estimates, it will be 2008 before the Three Gorges Dam will begin generating
electricity, but when fully in operation, the dam will provide enough energy to power all of
Shanghai with energy to spare (Guo, 2006).
June 4, 2006 saw the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests passively and
quietly come and go in China. To this day, it is still referred to officially as a moment of
turmoil in Beijing that was rightfully stopped in the name of society and culture. It was
former party leader, Zhao Ziyang, that supported the students and other demonstrators at
the time; from then until his death in 2005, Zhao Ziyang, was kept under house arrest in
spite of his pleas for freedom. As of today, there has not been a full accounting of the
deaths and injuries of that day in 1989, but those that dare ask for it are usually harassed or
at times under arrest. While those in the electronic media are limited in their freedom, John
Gittings (2005, 8) noted in his book, The Changing Face of China, that those in the print
industry have it worse:
In China, the electronic media has more freedom than the printed press.
Even though Beijing has spent hundreds of millions of dollars worth of
yuan on sophisticated surveillance equipment to police the internet, and

36
blocks the most external web sites such as Amnesty International and Radio
Free Asia, they cannot keep up with the spread of information. When
Beijing sought in the spring of 2003 to conceal the spread of the S.A.R.S
virus, millions of Chinese turn to their keyboards and cell phones to access
banned information, foreign reports, and censored domestic data. Many
Chinese who are critical of their own government still find Western
coverage unbalanced. ‘I object strongly to the persecution of the Falun
Gong and other human rights abuses,’ says a graduate from an MBO
program in the US, ‘but I simply did not recognize my country in the one-
sided reporting there.’ Chinese officials tighten a vicious circle of
misunderstanding further by blocking the kind of access that would give a
more balanced picture. A foreign non-Government organization (NGO)
working in the Yunnan province on HIV-AIDS tried for nearly a year
without success to get permission for coverage of its project. ‘The irony is
that the authorities there are doing really good work,’ said the project
director.
It appears that the belief in the minds of some in the Chinese government is simply
that if you can control it, then you own it. This is based on the fact that the harder the
Chinese work to bypass the Great Firewall, the harder the communist government works to
limit information access in spite of their promoting the use of the Internet for education and
for commerce. Any material considered pornographic or subversive, even in the slightest
way, is scrutinized for content and a level of being fit for Chinese consumption. China
does not hide the fact that it does police the use of the Internet within its borders. The

37
greater conflict comes when Western companies, like Microsoft, Yahoo!, and Google,
which have lived by the precepts of free speech and open communication, are now bowing
to the will of China in the name of business and profit. Both Yahoo! and Google are
immensely popular search engines in Europe and the America’s, but due to Chinese
demands, both companies have had to launch different Chinese versions of their Internet
products in order to gain official government approval to operate within the borders of
China. The problem here is that both corporations are subject to the rules and regulations
laid out by the Chinese government. It is common knowledge that if they do not abide by
these guidelines, then they will not be able to serve China’s population. In order to
maintain operations, Yahoo! and Google, like so many other companies in China, do as
told. Google has publicly said that by promoting its own self-censorship, it has followed
the path of the lesser of two evils in order to continue being available in China (Coonan,
2006). This truth is borne out in China when a visitor to one of these, or other, search
engines and the user searches for information about Taiwan or Falun Gong; all the user
receives is a page saying that the sight is unavailable. This has proven to be to the
detriment of many Chinese citizens as both search engine companies have obliged the
Chinese government when asked for identities of Chinese citizens that of posted
questionable online logs, or blogs, have written emails, or created web sites the government
censors deem un-Chinese. Even the search for words like freedom and democracy can be
rejected as they are considered language that is prohibited. This is not just a challenge faced
by Western sponsored companies either; popular Chinese search engines like Baidu.com
and others face the same scrutiny and limitations to serving their customers.

38
Yahoo! has been under a great deal of fire from the general public in 2006
especially when the news was publicized that Yahoo! Hong Kong and Yahoo! China were
instrumental in providing information to authorities in China about Wang Xiaoning, who
had been posing essays on the Internet that promoted democracy. Based upon the evidence
supplied by Yahoo!, Wang was sentenced to 10 years in prison. This makes Wang the
fourth person to be sentenced to prison due to supporting evidence from Yahoo!. At his
sentencing, the court cited evidence from Yahoo Holdings, based in Hong Kong, as
instrumental to his conviction. The incriminating evidence was not only Wang’s use of his
own name in many of his essays, but also the use of his email address in China when he
originally set up his Yahoo! account. It is crass to say this is ‘just business’ but it certainly
seems to be the stand that Yahoo!’s China-based operations have taken. According to
Pauline Wong though, a spokesperson for Yahoo! Hong Kong, "The Chinese government
has never approached Yahoo Hong Kong for any information, and Yahoo Hong Kong has
never given any information to the Chinese government. We definitely condemn
punishment of any activity internationally recognized as freedom of expression, whether
that punishment takes place in China or anywhere else in the world.” (Yahoo Accused In
Jailing Of Chinese Web Dissident, 2006)
In April of 2006, Google CEO Eric Schmidt held a news conference announcing
the launch of their new China-based search engine Google.Cn. At this event, Schmidt
defended their cooperation with government censors when he said, "We believe that the
decision that we made to follow the law in China was absolutely the right one.” During
this same news conference he announced Google would be employing 150 people within
China and that he expected that number to jump into the thousands sometime in the future

39
as Google made further headway into serving the world’s largest population; even with the
restrictions imposed by the Chinese, the bottom line is that China is good for Google, and
Google is good for China. When asked about Google’s agreement to follow the rules a
censorship set forth by China, Schmidt did not dismiss the chance for future dialog on this
issue with China, but he also said that they abide by similar rules in Germany where
searches for Nazi and other related terms come up empty. According to Schmidt, "There
are many cases where certain information is not available due to local law or local custom.”
Without a doubt, Google has high expectations for it service in China. (Google Defends
China Policy, 2006)
Protection of copyrights has also been a thorny issue for China for some time.
Inexpensive and illegal copies of music, movies, and videos seem to have been available
for years in streets of China’s major cities but the greater problem has come from exports
of illegal copies of entertainment, clothing and machinery. With the 2008 Summer
Olympiad looming, China has been stepping up its efforts to crack down on copyright
violations originating from within its country. Shortly before President Hu Jintao’s visit to
the United States in April of 2006, China announced that it is establishing a center that will
handle questions and complains about intellectual property right (IPR) violations.
According to Beijing’s Intellectual Property Office director Liu Zhengang, "It only took
China about 20 years to build a legal system on IPR protection, a journey that took
developed countries more than a century, but it remains an arduous, long-term task to raise
public awareness." Zhang Guohong, from the Administration for Industry and Commerce,
said, "Counterfeiting of the Beijing Olympic mascots, the Five [Friends], has been on the
rise, but most cases we handled only involved street venders selling key chains, pens and

40
balloons. We have not found any major case or manufacturing base so far." According to
Mr. Liu, "We can understand the anxiety of western countries over China's IPR protection,
but we should acknowledge the fact that Chinese governments at all levels have attached
greater importance [to the issue] than foreign governments. Their expectations are too high
because it takes time to perfect the IPR protection system and raise public awareness. We
have paid a great deal of attention to protecting Olympic symbols and products because it is
a priority for the government. But it does not mean we will loosen control in other areas."
(Shi, 2006)
Harry Wu, a dissident who buried a friend that died in a labor camp where they
were both confined wrote, “Human life has no value [in China,] I thought bitterly. It has no
more importance than a cigarette ash flicked in the wind. But if a person’s life has no value,
then the society that shapes that life has no value either.” (Terrill, 2003)
The government’s phobia of outside influence, especially from the Internet, is really
a fear of rising individualism that could subvert the current leadership. Even with
government efforts to control and guide the use of the Internet by its citizens, the sense if
individuality is nonetheless growing in the cities of China. There is a growing sense
amongst the Chinese youth, especially in urban areas, that encourages people to do what
they want to do. This is certainly a different mindset than the traditional view from a just a
few decades ago when it was ‘right and proper’ to do what was best for the collective
whole (Terrill, 2003). When using the Internet in China, one does need to exercise some
care when looking for information that could be deemed controversial. With some care,
anyone in China, no matter what age or background, can find access to the Bible, Koran
and other religious writings, and they can communicate with most anyone as long as they

41
are creative in covering bypassing the usual controls and censors. If one wants to seek
information about human rights or democracy, it can be difficult due to Chinese controls,
but it can also be a bit easier when one knows how to get around the censors. For example,
to find information about Falun Gong, typing the name into a search engine will most
likely give nothing in return, but type FOFG into any search engine, and a link to the
Friends of Falun Gong’s website may very well be the first link received in the search.
With just a little creativity, the Great Firewall can be bypassed. Chinese citizens searching
for information of this nature tends to be the anomaly though as most spend their time
searching for, and then playing, games or other entertainment that is available from the
Internet.
China’s government has consciously decided to monitor and control what its
population reads and posts to the Internet, but the government also realizes the advantage
of using the Internet for promoting its own policies and views on internal and external
issues; the Internet has not only empowered individuals in China, but it has also
empowered the government too. For many of the outsiders looking ‘in’ to China, it is
hoped that one day the censoring of the Internet and the blocking of many websites
considered un-Chinese will come to an end as the government eventually realizes the
futility of it all. Just like the Soviet Union tried to jam radio broadcasts during the Cold
War, it is hoped that China will also realize the Internet is best when it is left alone.
(Terrill, 2003)

42
In April of 2006, Intel signed a memorandum of understanding with China’s most
popular search engine, Baidu.Com. Baidu.com is currently used by 56.6 percent of all
Internet users, followed by 32.8 percent that use Google and just under 5 percent that use
Yahoo! (Intel Signs Internet Memorandum with Baidu.Com, 2006). As part of this
memorandum, both companies agree to work jointly to develop computer chips that can be
used in mobile, high-speed communication devices, including handheld computers, phones
and personal data assistants (PDAs). In the long run, this will allow the people of China
the chance to continually use the services of Baidu.Com at home and away from home.
Earlier this year, some of China’s main websites for news and information, like
People.Com.Cn, publicly supported proposals for self-censorship as a way to keep adult
material away from the public. "No indecent text or photos, no search engines for such
content, no links to indecent websites, and no games involving sex and violence," was the
promise from at least 14 major Chinese websites. This move is promoted as a way to keep
harmful materials away from the youth of China and as a way to block any threats posed to
China’s stability. In keeping a positive tone on this news, Chinese authorities said this was
in reaction to demands from the public to make the Internet safe; this also falls in line with
the spirit of current Chinese law. This announcement did not go unnoticed by China’s
critics though. To counter this, China was quick to point out that in 2003, when they were
trying to deal with the problems associated with a outbreak of the severe acute respiratory
syndrome (SARS), it was President Hu Jintao who personally promoted use of the Internet
in his comment, "I have seen good advice on the Internet [to combat SARS]." Later,
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao further promoted the use of the Internet saying, "As the

43
people's government, we should be subject to the democratic will of the people, and listen
to the numerous viewpoints on the Internet."
Li Jianping, a journalist and dissident, is currently standing trial for posting pro-
democracy article on the Internet; Li, who has been under arrest since 2005 is accused of
subversion. If convicted, Li could face as much as 15 years in jail. In one of his essays, Li
addressed the lack of freedom for China’s media. In March of this year, a Chinese court
sentenced a school teacher, Ren Zhiyuan, to 10 years in jail for the crime of subversion.
Ren, was arrested after posting political essays to the Internet, one of which was called,
“The Road to Democracy.” (Internet Dissident Trial Begins, 2006)
In a move to raise greater capital and support further growth and development, at
least Chinese Internet firms, including Alibaba.Com, are planning on being listed on the
US stock exchange, NASDAQ, through initial public offerings (IPOs) of stock. The
Chinese firms hope to raise as much as $1 billion US dollars all together to put towards
further development of Internet technologies in China. Alibaba.Com is a leader in online
music sales, especially to users of mobile phones, and in 2005 bought Yahoo! China.
Within China, police complain they have only a few legal tools to use when trying
to prosecute those guilty of Internet fraud. With over 20,000 Internet crimes reported last
year, only a few actually resulted in prosecutions as China’s current laws do not deal with
the problems of Internet crimes, or cyber-crimes. The problem does not lie in the pursuit of
those who clearly are involved in illegal gambling or the distribution of pornography, but
with persecuting those who steal personal information like bank account numbers or those
to illicitly receive money for empty promises to perform some service. Since some of the
services provided are embarrassing to the those that are duped, the police are finding it

44
difficult to get the victims to step forward and be willing to prosecute. With so few willing
to admit to their mistake, it takes the power out of the hands of the police and puts it right
back into the hands of the Internet crooks. (China Says Internet Fraud Laws Are Weak,
2006)
One unexpected outcome of the Internet’s availability in China is the overuse, or
addiction, to its use. While this may not be the greatest social issued China, or any other
country, will ever have to tackle, it is an issue that is making in headlines in China. It
seems to be a problem mostly effecting university students who not only have access to the
Internet all the time, but because of their youth, desire to play games and chat, and a myriad
of other reasons, they have the time and the desire to sit in Internet cafés endlessly; to the
point where they even skip meals. This problem is almost like sending a son or daughter to
a prestigious school only to find out they have spent their time, and their parent’s money,
on parties. The overall result is usually failing grades frustrated parents, and a college
dropout. Is the Internet to blame? No; but those that are prone to obsessive compulsive
addictions are likely to be the same ones using China’s Internet for more than just studies.
Whether is it alcoholism, drug addiction or Internet addition, they are problems society
must deal with in a humane fashion.
Some years ago, the hottest thing for those with Internet savvy was for them to have
their own webpage. Today, the greatest trend is for the new generation of Internet users to
have their own web log, or better known simply as blog. A blog is simply a place to post
materials that covers most any subject the author cares to write about; most are targeted
towards a specific subject or theme. Because of the popularity of blogs, China is finding
most of its anonymous bloggers are not only literate, but they are also opinionated. Blogs

45
have become the form of open and free expression in China that the government authorities
cannot control as well as other Internet aspects. In an effort to warn its citizens about
taking the use of a blog too far, earlier this year, Premier Wen Jiaboa’s comments to
parliament about the dangers of an uncontrolled Internet sent a message heard around the
globe, "Websites should convey correct information, rather than mislead people and bring
negative impact on the social order.” (Coonan, 2006)
Another benefit derived from the Internet is access to information about a world
that some may not have otherwise had a chance to know. Through the Partners In Learning
program established in 1993 by Microsoft China, young student is the poorer rural regions
of China can have an opportunity to not only learn how to use some of the programs
available through Microsoft, but the students are able to use the Internet to learn about their
own country and about the world outside their borders. Over the course of 5 years,
Microsoft China will donate $10 million worth of computers and software towards the
education of today’s youth in rural China. It is one thing to read a book about Paris, France,
but to see and hear of it over the Internet is a greater learning experience that teachers
simply cannot provide by themselves. With two years remaining in the program, the
greatest problem is not the lack of enthusiasm over the program, but simply the lack of
money; those few students lucky enough to be selected for special computer training
classes are usually able to work on the computer one or two days per week, while the
majority of students in the rural school must still get their lessons from books and from
their teachers. No word from Microsoft China yet on whether they will extend or renew
the program. (Rural Students Benefit From The World of Computers, 2006)

46
Calls for self-censorship have been growing louder from within China too. The
Internet Society of China (ISC) is the country’s official industry association; they publicly
announced a call for greater censorship by all of its members. In a statement issued by the
ISC in April, they said, "We should run our business in a civilized way; we should not
produce, disseminate and spread information that harms state security, social stability and
information that violates laws and regulations and social morality." Internet filters that are
already in place do block out many foreign websites from all of China, especially those
related to the Falun Gong religious group, His Holiness The Dalai Lama and Tibet,
democracy in China, and websites dedicated to issues of human rights.
What is the United States doing to bypass the Great Firewall? Certainly through the
work of government sponsored radio broadcasts from the Voice of America and Radio Free
Asia, Congress continues to support a free and open society in China; this transcends itself
to the Internet too. Congress is not sooner to support full and free access to adult materials
any more than any other government in the world, but the US Congress does publicly
promote the need for an open and free society in China so that the exchange of ideas and
opinions can help shape the future of China in a modern and civil manner. As the official
voice of the United States, the mission of the Voice of America is to be a reliable source for
news and also to be a conduit for presenting the policies of the United States clearly and
concisely. Radio Free Asia, also sponsored by an annual grant from Congress, is a
surrogate radio station that is meant to broadcast local and other internal news and
information to specific countries in the local language; one of those countries is China. To
China, Radio Free Asia broadcasts in four languages; Mandarin, Cantonese, Tibetan and
Uyghur. Both the Voice of American and Radio Free Asia have websites where anyone

47
from within China could go for the latest information, but both are subject to the Great
Firewall and are actively blocked by the Chinese government. According to Constantine
Menges in his book, China: The Gathering Threat (2005: 504):
“In addition, the Program for Democracy in China would use the internet to
transmit information to China. It would use the latest technology to evade
the extensive Internet controls that have been established by the regime, and
it would provide a daily internet report for further transmission by pro-
democracy Chinese exiles that would use their own systems, developed in
recent years, to evade regime censorship. (Richard Long, of the Free China
Movement, has managed with only minimal financial support to establish a
daily internet report that reaches an estimated 240,000 persons in China, and
which has continued since 1998 despite the increased political repression.)
Also, the information might be packaged in innovative ways, such as on
computer discs, through burst transmissions from satellites, and on
microfilm or microdots, so that visitors in China might pass it along to
individuals there who could then reproduce it for further discreet
distribution.”

48
CHAPTER 3
ANALYSIS OF FINDINGS
As the world’s fastest growing economy, China has achieved rapid economic
success and is now favored over the United States for direct foreign investment. With
China’s success, there are also new challenges that its tight-fisted government must deal
with immediately. There have been stumbles along with the successes. China is working
to come-to-terms with how it can regulate the new medium of the Internet and also
manage foreign concerns about the controls it uses. With each criticism, China’s
government counters with positive debate saying that what transpires in China and on the
Internet is being done for the good of the people.
The overall goal of this research was to prove whether the Internet has been
critical to the positive economic growth experienced by China over the past 20 years.
While I found no ‘smoking gun’ that proved this hypothesis wrong, most of the data
gathered lends itself towards supporting the hypothesis that the Internet does at least
contribute to China’s economy. The future of commerce in China is following along the
same trends as their Western counterparts. The trend is generally toward the use of the
Internet for easy price shopping, easy access to vendors, and fast delivery of any items
purchased. When the average consumer needs something ‘today,’ they will usually
frequent a local retailer; when they can afford to wait and want to get the best price
possible, they will go to the Internet to find it. For example, when a manufacturer needs

49
supplies from a wholesaler, the concept is exactly the same; when the manufacturer needs
supplies ‘today,’ they will go though a vendor with that capability; when they can afford
to wait for the best price, then they are forgoing traditional methods of purchasing and
simply going ‘online’ to visit the wholesalers website.
When invitations to participate in the survey were sent out, every recipient
received an email containing a link to the survey; the survey was hosted on
SurveyMonkey.Com but this site had no input into the design of the survey. This site
provides students with free hosting for any survey as long as it contains no more than 10
questions. I was concerned about this at first as I thought, “10 questions would not be
enough space to ask the questions needed to be asked or rated.” After studying the
examples provided by SurveyMonkey.Com, it became obvious that the majority of
questions could be converted into statements, and using a Likert Scale, a survey designer
could combine multiple statements into the first question, per se. Suddenly the size of the
entire survey was slimmed down to 5 questions with an average of 12 minutes to take the
survey; half took 5 minutes or less while the longest duration to take the survey was 1.5
days. It must be noted that the respondent that took the longest also had the most input to
provide. SurveyMonkey.Com does provide basic analysis tools, but it was necessary to
transfer all the data ratings from the first series and incorporate them into bar and pie
charts using Microsoft Excel.
Targeting the survey was the most important task after devising the survey. It was
imperative to find a majority at least familiar with China and its use of the Internet. Of
the 60 invitations sent out to participate in the survey, 27 completed it giving an above
average rate-of-return at 45 percent. For the sake of simplicity, demographic information

50
was not gathered in the survey; it is possibly a mistake on the survey design, but there
seemed little importance on whether age, gender, race, or religion bore any significance
on the results of the survey. If this is seen as an error of this research, then the author
accepts full responsibility for this faux pas. See Appendix A for an example of the full
survey.
The design of the survey is short specifically to help any respondent go through
the survey quickly, but it also gave each respondent an opportunity to voice their
opinions further on the few remaining open-ended questions. Each respondent was also
given an opportunity to volunteer to participate in an interview if needed. For the sake of
expediency, no interviews were pursued for the sake of this research. Approximately 10
percent of all respondents provided thoughtful and thought-provoking answers, which
were very welcomed for this research. A few respondents replied that they felt inadequate
to the task of completing the survey as they did not feel they knew enough about China,
the Internet, or both. Each was nonetheless thanked for their willingness to participate
and encouraged to provide open and honest answers based upon their own belief systems.
What follows are the responses as displayed in a bar chart to show how many responses
were received for each scale rating, and then each is displayed in a pie chart breaking
down each answer again by its percentages. The combination of each chart helps paint a
much broader picture of how this sample group judges the statements posed to them in
the survey.

51
Analysis of Data
In question number 1, the respondents were asked to rate the 8 different
statements using a Likert Scale. With each statement, respondents are asked to mark
their level of agreement with each; 1=Strongly Agree; 2=Agree; 3=No Opinion;
4=Disagree; or 5=Strongly Disagree. Below are the results for each statement:
Figure 4: Bar chart of survey results for statement 1.

52
Figure 5: Pie chart results for statement 1.
There is no doubt the majority, 96 percent, agree with the statement, “The Internet
is contributing to changes in Chinese life. One person still gave the response of ‘no
opinion’ and while that is a very small percentage, 4 percent, it is important to note that
not one single respondent disagreed with this statement. It is interesting to note that for
statement 2, “The Internet is changing Chinese life faster than the Chinese government
would like,” received the exact same rating as the previous statement. The same
respondent that marked ‘no opinion’ for statement 1, also marked the same for statement
2; there had been some thought of deleting this survey as results were statistically an
‘outlier’ but to give the respondent credit for their participation, the survey remained a
part of this study.

53
Figure 6: Bar chart results for statement 2.
Figure 7: Pie Chart results for statement 2.

54
Statement 3 was designed to judge the effects of the Internet up China’s economy.
Since this survey was done from the confines of the United States, it would be impossible
to research this statement within the confines of China’s border, but one respondent
living in Hong Kong filled out the survey and was with the majority and agreed with the
statement. With this statement there came an increase in ‘no opinion’ ratings and also an
equal share of ‘disagree’ ratings. Again, the majority agreed with this statement, “The
business environment in China is stronger due to the Internet, at least in part,” but 11
percent had ‘no opinion’ and another 11 percent ‘disagreed.’ As each statement is
asking an opinion of the respondent, it must be pointed out that these results are just that,
opinions of the respondents. In this research, we cannot simply say this is as exact as
flipping a coin and record which flip comes up ‘heads’ and which comes up ‘tails;’ the
ratings are varied as the backgrounds of the respondents and reflect this throughout.

55
Figure 9: Pie chart results of statement 3.
The next statement posted in the survey, “Chinese culture is becoming more
Western due to the influences of the Internet,” was used to sense whether most felt the
Internet was making inroads to the population of China and exposing it to life beyond
their geographical borders. Not surprisingly, there were a few that disagreed with this
sentiment, but again, the majority agreed that the Internet was influencing the culture in
China. In his book, The Changing Face of China: From Mao to Market, John Gittings
exposes how a stalwart system like China that has pursued its destiny with a purely
Chinese twist to everything, is suddenly finding that it people are beginning to emulate
Western culture and demanding more of its trappings, from clothing, to movies and
music, and even to the cars the bourgeois Westerners flaunt in the face of the world’s
poor.

56

57
In 2001, US President Clinton made the observation that China’s attempts to
control the Internet is like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall. There are many examples of
this being very true, but there are also examples of this not being the truth. When
someone has wanted specific information from the Internet, even from within China, one
only needs to be creative on how they find or access it. Generally, with enough patience,
most anyone in China can find the data they want. But is China unsuccessful? No; the
recent announcement that China now has over 30,000 Internet censors is an indicator that
the use of the Internet in China is growing, and that the Chinese government is staying
fast to its commitment to police the Internet at every turn. In the case of this one
statement, it seems the respondents are generally split on support for President Clinton’s
statement with most leaning towards agreement.

58
By some estimates, there are now well over 30,000 employed in China to monitor
what is posted to the Internet in China; this means reading each and every blog entry,
every email, every page of a website, and knowing every little trick there is to bypass this
group. For the sake of this research, it was important to see if the respondents felt this
effort was impeding the pursuit of commerce, whether through traditional means or via
the Internet. Almost half agreed with this statement; twice as many agreed over those
that disagreed. As China does have the fastest growing economy in the world, it makes
one wonder what effect there would be on the economy if the Internet were to be used
unimpeded in China; this is a good subject for a future research project.

59
Figure 14: Bar Chart results for statement 6.
Figure 15: Pie Chart results for statement 6.

60
The next to last statement was simply a chance to refocus the survey back to the
main point of the research, and that is to determine if the Internet is contributing to
China’s economy. The majority stuck with the original ratings laid out in statements 1
and 2 earlier, they agreed the Internet is contributing and supporting the success of
China’s economy.

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