Sergey Kirukhin. Red-Net?

Red-Net?
Sergey Kirukhin

Publication date: May 29, 2000

Something about the experience of Chinese comrades on the Internet

Last week, the process of normalizing trade and economic relations between China and the United States ended. A little earlier, the same thing happened with the European Union, and now the path to the WTO is open for China. The successful vote in the US Congress has already been hailed as an outstanding achievement in American international politics. Let's not talk about the fact that for this Clinton had to split his own party (the Democrats voted rather against it, and the decision passed only thanks to the Republicans). Let’s not even talk about the fact that the White House did the necessary “preliminary work”, negotiating with accommodating congressmen on the conditions (in one case, as they say, a personal zip code even appeared as greyhound puppies). And let’s not remember at all about the long-winded investigation into the participation of the Chinese in Clinton’s second election campaign.

Let's talk about something else - about the information situation in China, especially since it is connected with economic policy and with what is happening in this country in general.

At the beginning of the year, the Chinese leadership issued surprising orders to control information posted on the Internet. Gradually it became clearer what exactly this control would look like.

The first concrete step was directed against private Chinese companies already successfully operating on the Internet (such as sina.com - this is the most popular portal at the moment - sohu.com, netease.com). Their access to foreign exchanges (primarily, of course, in the USA) was blocked, which significantly hampered their growth opportunities. Meanwhile, portals of party-state structures are being hastily built: the Ministry of Information Technology (ccidnet.com), the Xinhua News Agency, the party organ of the People's Daily newspaper, and the state television and radio. At the same time, ccidnet.com has already received permission to enter foreign exchanges, so these new Internet enterprises are provided with all possible advantages.

The next step was regulation - and practically banning - work on the Internet with audiovisual products. First, foreign companies are prohibited from distributing CDs and videos over the Internet. Secondly, it is prohibited to download audio recordings in MP 3 format from the Internet.

Finally, it was announced that a special unit was being created in the police, whose task would be to monitor compliance with the relevant orders. The orders themselves are expected to continue to arrive in the near future and will regulate issues of property rights, business purposes on the Internet and the content of information provided via the Internet.

Thus, a bold experiment has been launched in China, which is an attempt to put the network’s activities under the control of state-party structures. Over the past year, the number of Internet users in the country has doubled and is approaching 10 million. The number for China is, of course, tiny, but at the same time it is the most active part of society. So the comrades quite correctly came to the conclusion that they could not delay any longer. It should be noted that the Chinese here also show healthy pragmatism, combining actual information control with economic control: they strive not only to regulate the content of the network, but also to secure for themselves a dominant economic position on the Internet. Having “opened,” as the EU believes, its information market, China has strictly limited the share of foreign capital in companies to 49%, thereby guaranteeing itself control over their activities.

Who even said that the Internet and other information technologies should be carriers of democracy? In the twentieth century, interesting experience has already been accumulated in the use of the most popular means of communication in the interests of totalitarian regimes. On the Internet, as in other information environments, the advantage goes to those who determine the main information flows. Individual small pages are unlikely to make a revolution if the absolute majority, like TV viewers now, use two or three main sources.

Of course, the belief of a technocratic society in the magical power of electricity and other useful inventions is indeed close to religious fanaticism, if not idiocy. However, references by Western politicians to the fact that the development of business relations (including in the field of communications) with China will lead to the inevitable democratization of Chinese society should, as in other cases, be checked with what the business press writes, in which is customary to write to the point, without all sorts of smoke screens. And then in the articles of the German business newspaper Handelsblatt, for example, one finds the refrain: “China, with its population of 1.3 billion, is the largest market in the world . ” True, approximately one billion of this figure can be forgotten for the near future - these people are unlikely to be able to have a significant impact on market processes. However, the fear of missing out on colossal benefits is understandable - including in the information and communication sector, which has become one of the most important in the economy of developed countries.

Meanwhile, more responsible people in the West admit that they simply do not know what exactly is happening in Chinese society, especially in the “outback”, where the majority of the population lives. The number of political prisoners, for example, has recently been growing at almost the same rate as the number of Internet users. Those clichés from which, as a rule, the speeches of Western politicians and appearances in most media are molded, of course, do not clarify anything (rather, on the contrary, they obscure).

In the East one can also encounter a wary attitude towards the “Beijing reforms”. And even just a negative reaction. Thus, Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara recently said that Western countries should urgently reconsider their policies towards China. In their pursuit of the Chinese market, they lose sight of China's hegemonic and expansionist aspirations, the fact that China is essentially fueling the nuclear arms race in Asia. "If Europe doesn't take China seriously, it will become the biggest military threat in the world ," Ishihara said. Of course, the governor is known in Japan as an extreme nationalist, but still, his words should hardly be completely ignored. Japan is much closer to China.

However, we are talking about information and communication. And here are some of the latest messages. At the end of the Cannes Film Festival, China's major media outlets did not provide any information about Chinese director Zhang Wen winning the Grand Jury Prize. Zhang Wen's film about the events of the Second World War and the Japanese occupation does not fit into the framework of the official version of the development of Chinese society. Another Catholic priest was convicted for organizing the printing and distribution of the Bible (Christianity is not prohibited in China, but it is forbidden to disseminate it - as a “foreign” religion; doesn’t it sound like “something native”?). We will wait for new orders. In the end, it is indeed difficult to understand what is really going on in China.