Western companies help Peking to censure web content
Peking (AsiaNews) China's shutting itself off from the external world is also seen in its relationship to the World Wide Web. Its government has instituted a veritable iron grip on web content by creating a special cyber-police force with powers of media censorship.
In order to have more rigid control over material published on the web, more severe laws were passed regarding companies managing internet addresses. On the Ministry of the Information Industry web site one reads that companies "must have strict filtering mechanisms to eliminate offensive dominion names, a task which must be executed daily." Around 30,000 persons are employed each day to monitor and censure pornographic and policed web content.Hence the complaints from the international organization, Journalists Without Borders (JWB). JWB states that some countries like America, Europe, Japan and South Korea, in order to do business with the colossal country of China, facilitate its spying activities on web material. In particular, JWB revealed it suspects that Cisco Systems furnishes on-line spy ware and that Yahoo agreed to favor censorship in order to gain access into the Chinese market. Intel and the South Korean company, Samsung, state they are simply selling their own products.
The Chine government has already shut down hundreds of web sites, including those coming from the West and blog sites (on-line diaries and personal commentaries) through which filter the echoings of public opinion forever impossible to speak about openly. JWB reported that currently 46 persons have been arrested after being accused of publishing independent news on web sites or criticizing the government on-line. China is the first country in the world to have created "cyber-prisoners". At any rate, after the United States China has the highest number of internet users. China's Internet Information Center, which published last July estimates on the number of internet users, noted that the rate (48.5%) had increased, with respect to last year, for a total of 68 million people connected and 56% internet surfers under age 25. By the end of 2003 it is predicted that there will be 78 million users in the country.
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