Censorship tactics used by Chinese blog host providers

Who says the Chinese cannot be creative? With all the recent talk of copyright infringements due to blatant duplication of other people’s goods, it’s refreshing to see something original, even groundbreaking for a change.

___Chinese Censorship 2.0: How companies censor bloggers is a recent publication by Rebecca MacKinnon, Assistant Professor at the University of Hong Kong’s Journalism and Media Studies Centre. Her small study’s findings include:

• 1: The extent of censorship by each blog service provider (BSP) varies drastically.
• 2: Some politically sensitive material can survive in the Chinese blogosphere.
• 3: There is wide variation in censorship methods.
  1. 1. Tester is prevented from posting at all
  2. 2. Post is “held for moderation”
  3. 3. Post is published in “private view,” but is never visible to the public.
  4. 4. Post is successfully published at first, but deleted or “unpublished” some time later
  5. 5. Sensitive keywords or phrases are replaced with “***” but the post is otherwise published
  6. 6. The content is successfully published, but blocked to viewers attempting to read it from inside mainland China.

___It is no surprise that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), with its iron will and infinite funding, wants to censor blogs from the unwashed masses. What’s really interesting is that without any direct action, the CCP can coerce Chinese blog host providers (BSP) to prefilter China’s content. China’s BSPs have come up with ingenious methods of using computer technology to reverse some the Chinese “social computing” wave. Most interesting to me is the use of computing technology for both freedom of speech as well as suppression. This is a China-internal technology arms race.

___These methods of blog censorship also follow the longtime Chinese, or maybe Asian, strategy of punishing a group for the transgressions of an individual. I first heard about this method of coercion from a documentary on Japan, where the lead Laowai had to become fluent in Japanese in 3 years or the Emperor would slaughter the whole village. No pressure here. Of course the whole village helped out and the Laowai became fluent in Japanese. More recently the Pakistani army demolished a border village because they harboured some Taliban. There are obvious benefits to some, or they would not be using this technique.

___Outside of the technology field but still in China, I see similarities to the use of the “Granny Police”, who have red armbands. They patrol and enforce a variety of laws from littering to spitting to enforcing birth control quotas. The Granny Police are the eyes and ears of the CCP at the grassroots level, and locals are all aware of their power. Similarly a woman’s danwei (work unit) would be punished if she gave birth not accounted for on their baby quota. One child is good.

___Overzealous enforcement of rules in China, such as forced abortions and worse, used in birth control quotas, was viewed as a necessary evil in the march towards the overall goal. Too much is not as bad as too little. This also seems true for blog censorship.

___It should be no surprise that the philosophy of the control used for blog censorship have also been the same tried and proven methods used by the CCP to control other aspects of Chinese life. It should also be no surprise that some of the side effects of these control philosophies are also evident when we study blog censorship. If you ran a blog host provider in China would you risk the wrath of the CCP?

___A future study of the underlying attitudes of blog host providers would be enlightening, though I am unsure admins would answer truthfully. Dr. McKinnon’s study was done very impartially, with a set methodology used for all BSPs. To interview BSP administrators would be difficult. No matter the difficulty, do these admins really believe in blog censorship for the good of China, or are their actions due to fear of reprisal from the CCP? Or does their opinion really matter?

___There are so many questions to answer.