www.China.com

__"The Great Firewall of China" by Geremie R. Barmé and Sang Ye, in Wired (June 1997), 520 3rd St., 4th floor, San Francisco, Calif. 94107–1815.__

In China, the Net is hot. Breathless greeting Ni chifanle ma? (Have you eaten?) news reports claim that the traditional is being replaced by Ni shangwangle ma? (Are you wired?). That’s not really so, observe Barmé, a Senior Fellow at the Australian National University, and Ye, a Chinese journalist, but high technology has indeed arrived. "The question on everyone’s mind— the Chinese government and its critics alike—is whether it will also be a cultural and political Trojan horse."

Chinese scientists put together the country’s first extensive network of computers in 1993; two years later came the national university system, with e-mail connections to the outside world as well as within the country. However, Barmé and Ye point out, just a small number of graduate students and professors, mainly in science and engineering, actually have access to the Web.

Overall, only 150,000 Chinese are "wired"—not many in a land of 1.3 billion. According to a Beijing marketing firm, only 1.6 percent of Chinese families own a computer. Even so, the government is worried. The Public Security Bureau (PSB) in Beijing is attempting "to build a digital equivalent to China’s Great Wall," Barmé and Ye write, by requiring Internet service providers to block access to "problem" sites abroad. Off-limits are most of the Western media, as well as the China News Digest, an on-line service run by Chinese exiles. "Eager for a slice of the action, the major global networking companies—Sun Microsystems, Cisco Systems, and Bay Networks, among others—cheerfully compete to supply the gear that makes [blocking access] possible," the authors observe.

Individuals who are, or wish to get, wired are closely regulated. They also need to pay: "Figure a monthly net-plus-phone bill of Y350 (US$42)—roughly half a recent college graduate’s monthly salary," say the authors.

The regime makes use of the information technology itself, of course, Barmé and Ye note. "The ever-vigilant PSB [is linked by a closed network] to every major hotel and guest house where foreigners stay. The minute you register at your fivestar joint-venture hotel, Comrade X [at the PSB] and his associates know you’re there."

Ultimately, the regime may find the information revolution impossible to control. "The one certainty," say the authors, "given the headstrong Chinese bureaucracy and the Maoist mentality that spawned it, is that China’s adaptations of the Net will be unique, and probably bizarre by Western standards."