Dot-Commies

...The potential influence of the Internet in China is now a major selling point in the White House campaign for permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) and entry into the World Trade Organization for China—the apotheosis of the Clinton administration's engagement policy...

...However, most of our companies would like to make sure it's our base technology that's in on the beginning of this process...

...Even with the exponential growth claimed by various analysts, very few Chinese will be able to connect to the Internet, or get the benefits of liberty it supposedly brings, anytime soon...

...In order that the Internet shouldn't influence traditional print media such as newspapers and magazines, the government has issued an edict called "Circular on Further Strengthening the Management of Reprinting by Newspapers and Periodicals...

...And if there is one thing the Communist party is serious about, it is running the country," as Peter Lovelock, a Hong Kong academic and Internet expert writes...

...Clinton's pursuit of trade with China at the expense of other issues makes congressman Holt uncomfortable...

...But these were integrally related to other objectives...

...China has made efforts to develop a China-only Internet...

...First consider the numbers...

...Smaller Internet service providers depend on access to these state-owned networks, and consequently must stay in the good graces of the state politically and financially to survive...

...On April 28, EIA held a breakfast for representative Rush Holt, a freshman Democrat from New Jersey, and local representatives of high-tech companies at the New Jersey headquarters of Armand Ellen Bork is a writer and consultant on Asian affairs...

...The U.S.-China Bilateral Trade Agreement concluded last November purportedly grants foreign investors rights to 50 percent ownership of Internet service and content providers, phased in over two years...

...It requires Chinese news organs to verify the accuracy of news and information taken from the Internet...

...This project, known as Golden Sea, provided "immediate access to reference data from other institutions, organizations and offices under the direct jurisdiction of the Communist party central committee...

...It's a question of leadership...

...Much of the evidence points to it being right in this belief...

...The administration peddles the November agreement as "all one-way": China gives up everything and the United States nothing...

...The government also uses old-fashioned low-tech methods to restrict the power of the Internet...

...China's Internet experience has its origins in scientific and academic computer networks in the late 1980s...

...Investment is completely prohibited in the four Internet service providers which are authorized to conduct business online...

...Using the Internet as a selling point for trade with China is just the latest example of wishful thinking by proponents of unconditional trade with China...

...In the early 1990s, the Chinese launched an initiative known as the Golden Projects to upgrade its telecommunications and information infrastructure...

...We will count on their good intention...

...In exchange for granting permission to Chinese Internet portals to list on overseas stock exchanges, the authorities have forced companies to limit the content of their sites and structure the public offerings to limit foreign holdings to special entities divorced from the main assets of the companies...

...Internet access is controlled by state owned or related companies with links to the bureaucracy...

...Chinese leaders from Jiang Zemin on down are serious about developing China's information technology and the Internet...

...Last summer, investors in one such state-owned telecommunications company were forced to divest themselves of their holdings...

...Holt didn't seem to buy it...

...The Golden Projects were intended not only to make China more efficient economically, but also to respond to the breakdown in control and coordination that had come about as a result of Deng Xiaoping's economic liberalization and decentralization...

...He noted that the United States does more business with the Netherlands than with China, and wondered why no one in the room talked about getting China to improve its record on political freedoms, labor rights, and environmental standards...

...What's important is market reform coupled with political reform...

...A software designer admitted he didn't know the provisions of the November deal, but that he thought it would encourage, though not force, compliance with commitments to the protection of intellectual property...

...The government's projects included using information networks to advance reform of banking and the financial sector, customs, tax, and state-owned enterprises...

...How credible are the arguments that the Internet actually challenges Beijing's control...

...It's also not clear what investors will be allowed to own...

...He says most Americans don't consider trade with China the "end all" and "be all" of our economic policy...

...As China creates a market economy and liberalizes politically, that will bring about the growth of the Internet—not the other way around...

...Politically, Beijing perceived that extensive wiring of the country would provide the basis for increasing central coordination and administrative compliance," said Lovelock...

...The most commonly used estimate puts the number of users at 8.9 million, or less than 1 percent of China's 1.3 billion population...

...Lin Hai served 18 months for advocating the overthrow of the Communist party as punishment for providing 30,000 Chinese e-mail addresses to an overseas dissident magazine...

...The president claims China's entry into the WTO will make information technology products "cheaper, better and more widely available" in China, ensuring that "in the new century liberty will spread by cell phone and cable modem...

...High-tech industry has taken the president's cue...

...As for domestic content, there is a new Internet Information Management Bureau charged with regulating the news content of Chinese websites and guarding against "infiltration of harmful information...

...We're involved in the industry because it's the most exciting industry in the world and it's changing lives...

...Publicly, of course, the line is altogether different...

...Products, which exports potassium carbonate to China...

...Not surprisingly, Chinese leaders gave priority to creating a restricted information network connecting themselves to each other...

...As for the public's access to the Internet, Lovelock writes, "Much as many people might like to think the Internet is part of a bottom-up explosion of individualism in China, it is not...

...The question is, do we want it to be a French product that's being blocked or an American product that's being blocked...

...My constituents don't believe that...

...As for China's efforts to crack down on the Internet, "good luck," he says...

...According to an article in the China Business Review, a great deal of ambiguity exists over the impact of the WTO on foreign investment in the Internet...

...Soon, however, the government caught on to the potential...

...While working to improve the use of the Internet for government and business, China has devoted considerable resources to monitoring, blocking, and censoring the information it considers subversive...

...Senior leaders believed that information networks would allow them to sit in Beijing yet be present in each and every administrative troublespot throughout the country...

...The Internet will foster ideas and communication in China, hence we must be engaged in China to ensure that the Internet thrives," said Robert Holleyman, CEO of the Business Software Alliance...

...Writing about China's developing telecommunications sector, Milton Mueller, a professor at Syracuse University, noted the culture clash between Westerners who assume that exposure to market forces and modernization of technologies will bring about freedom and the Chinese authorities who pursue the "'twin-fisted' policy of grasping economic construction while keeping leftist elements in power to protect party control and ideology from domestic and foreign influences...

...This year, however, there's a new twist...

...That's sort of like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall...

...China's crackdown on information and dissent spread over the Internet doesn't much concern Dave McCurdy of the Electronics Industry Alliance...

...Wu Jichuan, minister of Information Industry, which has jurisdiction over the Internet and telecommunications, has reportedly said that foreign investors still need to get government approval and licenses before investing in the Internet sector...

...T]he information networks offer the potential for power structures to be reinforced rather than weakened...

...According to the State Department's annual human rights report, special police units monitor and control access to the Internet as well as content...

...BY ELLEN BORK THE ALLURE of the China market has always had a seductive hold on America, and successive administrations have relied on American business to make the case for unfettered trade with that country...

...But focusing on the numbers doesn't take into account the most important aspect of the Internet's development in China, and the one aspect the president and others don't talk about...

...And what are the Chinese doing about it...

...One American executive involved in a Chinese Internet business said, "We don't assume China feels bound by international agreements, but it does send a signal in China that there might be limits on what the bureaucrats will do to us...

...WTO membership is not going to change that, and privately American businessmen admit it...

...Technology fuels communication, and communication fuels change...

...A lot of American companies also feel that it's worthwhile to be involved in China's Internet sector despite the restrictions on content and continuing ambiguity over the rules on foreign investment...

...EIA president Dave McCurdy told Holt, "We're not here for profit...

...A closer look at the forces shaping the Internet's development in China counters the president's image of its leaders as keystone cadres powerless to stop an information-led revolution spearheaded by an increasingly "wired" citizenry...

...China's leaders believe the Internet and the telecommunications infrastructure that supports it will be "an extraordinarily beneficial tool in the administration of China...

...I can't tell you the number of times I've heard [from business] over the last few months, 'We want rules-based trade,' and yet in all of these other areas, we don't need rules...

...The Electronic Industries Alliance, EIA, has flown in CEOs to lobby members of Congress and is holding meetings for undecided members with high-tech companies in their districts...

...Internet cafes are required to register and monitor and report on customers...

...Asked if the high-tech sector's involvement in lobbying for normal trade relations and WTO accession made it incumbent on the industries to have a position on China's repression of the Internet, he answered, "We oppose it...

...The government blocks websites, including those of the Voice of America, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the BBC, and wages cyber-attacks on foreign websites, including ones in Taiwan...

...Most Americans don't believe that...

...I would like to see more from corporate America than just a trickle down argument that things will get better...

...According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, student Zhang Ji, who sent emails abroad about the government's repression of the Falun Gong, and Qi Yanchen, a freelance writer who put excerpts of a book called The Collapse of China online, were arrested last fall...

...The commitment, however, was oral, not written...

...So far, Beijing has the Jell-O securely nailed to the wall...

...Although he supports China's WTO membership, Mueller says that people "don't want to hear that technology itself doesn't liberate countries...

...Put aside for the moment whether profit or political liberalization is American business's top priority in China...

...If this approach to the business of the Internet is confusing in the details, it is entirely clear in its overall thrust: China's entry into the Information Age doesn't mean it is about to abandon control over key industries and sectors...