Folks who study internet filtering found their phones ringing yesterday as reporters sought comment on the news that Chinese internet authorities were warning a number of major websites to clean up “large amounts of low and vulgar content that violates social morality and damages the physical and mental health of youths.” The sites listed by the China Internet Illegal Information Reporting Center included Google’s web page and image searches as well as several major Chinese internet portals.
The questions I got focused on whether a crackdown on pornography was likely to be a smokescreen for restrictions on other types of speech. Rebecca MacKinnon – who is far better qualified to answer these questions than I am – agrees that technology used to restrict the internet in China is almost always used to restrict political speech. But she notes that this is hardly the first crackdown: “Chinese domestic websites hosting blogs, chatrooms, and other user-generated content never let up on political censorship. It’s just that foreigners only seem to notice what happens to foreign websites…”
In talking to reporters, I tried to make the point that a crackdown on pornographic material might backfire in an interesting way. Research at Berkman that Hal Roberts and I have conducted suggests that there’s only a small percentage of Chinese internet users looking for ways to evade the Great Firewall using tools like proxy servers. There are, I suspect, lots, lots more users who are interested in accessing pornography. Should China make a strong effort at blocking pornographic content, we’d likely see many, many more users learning how to use proxies to evade censorship.
I’ve observed in the past that when governments overblock, preventing people from accessing innocuous content in the hopes of keeping them from controversial content, they actually call more attention to the controversial content. (See my blogpost on the Cute Cat Theory for far more on this idea.) If China blocks pornography effectively, they will inadvertently create a new generation of webusers experienced with evading filters. They may not even notice until local or national events inspire people to write and organize online. If this is a way of hiding a crackdown on speech, it’s a really foolish way for authorities to do so – censoring content that lots of people want to access is a surefire way to generate increased resistance to censorship.
good point. i agree with your observation, the tighter china clenches its fist the more control will slip through its fingers. however, i’m not sure if i agree with your assumption, that the government is consciously blocking porn as a ruse for blocking political speech.
i think they’re really ardently anti-porn. in my experience, a large percentage of people in china would expect their government to regulate morality. indeed, they have for thousands of years.
this doesn’t mean chinese people or officials are prudes (50% or more of those same officials might have a second mistress, etc), but it does mean that the chinese concept of public morality, especially when it comes to youth, is quite strong. so, in essence, i believe the average chinese person would not be shocked that people look at porn, but they would be shocked if their government publicly said it was ok to do so.
i guess, in the end, my rights-based ideology tells me you’re right, but my experience in china tells me to pause before projecting a certain type of intentionality on “the government.”
what do you know about china, man? where did you get that 50%?
it’s weird: when it comes to anything about china, almost all western people tend to view it in a carping way.
yes, many young people in china watch those pornography, it’s not unlike young people of any other country
there are some corrupted officials in china, and it’s not unlike that of any other country
think about yourself before pick on someone else, man!
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@michael
I don’t think that he was carping on China. At least I didn’t read it in that way. The point that I took away from his post is that he believes — possibly based on personal experience in China, which he sort of alludes to — that most Chinese people expect the government to mandate morality, or at the very least for the government’s “official position” on various topics to be in line with the majority culture’s view of what is moral. Therefore, if the majority culture views pornography as bad, but something that is hidden away — possibly done in private but you’re supposed to feel bad/dirty about it — then they would expect the government to have a similar view/stance on the subject (i.e. making porn harder to find/access).
But I believe that it’s also very hard to ‘generalize’ China because it’s so huge there are a number of different cultures that make up ‘China’ — though from what I understand the Chinese government does not really want to recognize cultures like Tibetan and the muslim cultures of (North) Western China. Just because someone spends a few years living in Beijing wouldn’t necessarily be the entire picture of “China” as a whole.
The last thing they need is teenage pregnancies.
This is an exsaduration, but honestly from the other angle they are trying to deglamourise sex which is a good thing in one way.
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