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The Chinese government backed away on Thursday from its attempt to mandate censorship software, "Green Dam" and "Youth Escort," on personal computers, a move that was previously delayed. Ministry of Industry and Information Technology official Li Yizhong denied there was ever an intention to require pre-installation of the programs on Thursday, saying the government's May announcement of its plans were misleading, according to state newspaper China Daily.
While the software will still be on computers in public
places, individual users will be able to view "harmful" content--whether
pornographic or anti-government--in comparative freedom. That is, if they can
bypass the already extensive filtering technology that stymies free Web access
in
Analysts familiar with
Yet the Green Dam chapter remains instructive, underscoring the government's ongoing commitment to controlling the Internet. It has carried on suppressing information in the name of clean-up campaigns and will certainly continue to do so: Internet users are damned either way. Furthermore, Green Dam reveals the growth of censorship as an industry, one from which the Chinese makers behind the software were positioned to garner extraordinary profits through cooperation with authorities.
It also serves as a reminder that the voices of Internet users and editorial pages combined wield more influence than some observers expect in a non-democratic state. We at CPJ are used to drawing attention to China's gargantuan list of imprisoned journalists, a testament to the punitive measures government critics face when expressing their views in the media or online. But that list exists in a context of engagement between citizens and officials that can result in more positive outcomes.
Green Dam, of course, involved non-Chinese companies--often
less experienced at this nuanced negotiation process--importing computers for
sale in
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