ABC (Australia): China blocks ABC Online

This is a transcript of AM broadcast at 0800 AEST on local radio.

China blocks ABC Online

AM - Wednesday, Aprilíí 24, 2002 8:27

LINDA MOTTRAM: The ABC has been caught up in a nationwide campaign by China's security forces to rid the internet of content critical of the Chinese leadership.

For the past week the ABC's website has been impossible to view from inside China, one of dozens of sites blocked by China's internet police and there are calls for foreign governments and technology firms to admit their role in China's censorship program.

The ABC's China correspondent Tom O'Byrne reports.

TOM O'BYRNE: The ABC is not alone in being caught up in China's online war against politically sensitive sites. The big names in global media, CNN, the Washington Post, the BBC, but a handful of dozens of sites impossible to see from inside Chinese territory.

Along with sites involving Falun Gong, Taiwan and Tibet, they're all blacked out because the government sees such material as part of a campaign orchestrated by what it calls "foreign forces hostile to the Chinese government".

A spokeswoman says China's foreign ministry is investigating the ABC and other complaints. She maintains only unhealthy and illegal sites are wiped out.

Last year the website of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade was also blocked. Some are unblocked during high ranking political visits, as was the case when the US President George W. Bush came to China in February.

According to analyst Ethan Gutmann, who's writing a book on the internet, China leads the world in information control.

ETHAN GUTMANN: Clearly China's trying to create its own Chinese intranet, a self-enclosed internet which basically features, in the absence of real political content, nationalism.

The interesting thing I think they've done that no other country has done is use this as a vast surveillance tool. Not to be over dramatic but something of the nature of what George Orwell described. This is technology being used not as a neutral but as a massive surveillance tool.

TOM O'BYRNE: The latest statistics provide one possible explanation. China ranks second to the United States in the number of home internet users having quickly passed Germany and Japan. Currently 56 million people live in internet-connected homes in China and subscription rates are climbing at 5 to 6% a month.

A rating spokesman says that at such a rate, 25% connectivity in a few years would mean 250 million Chinese online which is why, say experts, China has spent years perfecting firewalls and filters to stop its people seeing sensitive sites.

LINDA MOTTRAM: China correspondent Tom O'Byrne reporting from Beijing.

Chinese version available at http://www.abc.net.au/am/s539122.htm

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