Information-poor environments: Asian tigers - Environmental Reform in the Information Age - page 267

by strongly pushing for a new UN organization to manage the Internet
instead of the U.S.-based nonprofit organisation Internet Corporation
for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). 56
Especially in the urban centres, and more in (eastern) China than
in Vietnam (Katsuno, 2005 ), Internet access has become widespread
and relatively easy (compared to five years ago; cf. Figure 10.1 ). In
2003, China ranked first in the world in number of mobile phones and
second in the number of Internet users (Harwitt, 2004 ). Digital envi-
ronmental information, both domestic and international, has hardly
been restricted by the state, especially not when controversies are at
stake. During the famous 2005 Harbin disaster, when an accident at
a chemical plant polluted the Songhua River in northeast China and
stopped the drinking water supply in Harbin city for several days, it
was people on the Internet who mobilised public opinion and said
that there was something more at stake than a routine control of the
drinking water supply as authorities tried to let the public believe (cf.
Box 10.1 ). More generally, Chinese environmental NGOs have been
quick to use the Internet, also because of the political restrictions in the
other media in China. More than half of the environmental NGOs in
China have set up Web sites with environmental information, bulletin
boards and Internet campaigns. Some NGOs, such as the Green-web
and Greener Beijing, operate only through the Web and are unregis-
tered. 57 They publicise environmental information, set up discussion
groups, mobilise volunteers, organise activities and campaigns 58 and
catalyse offline campaigns. From a survey among urban grassroots
organisations, Yang ( 2007 ) concluded that their Internet capacity is
still at a low level and that especially the young organisations make
active use of the Internet for publicity work, information dissemina-
tion and networking with fellow organisations, resulting in “a web of
civic associations in China”. In Vietnam, such national environmental
Internet activism is still lacking.

56

At this summit, Reporters sans Frontieres listed these two countries among the
fifteen “black holes of the Web” and “enemies of the Internet”.

57

Web-based groups can escape the formal regulations on registration. In a useful
overview, Yang ( 2005 : 50) distinguished seven different types of environmental
NGOs in China, of which Web-based groups is one category.

58

For example, Yang ( 2005 : 63-64) reports on an online campaign in 2002
organized by Green-web, which successfully stopped the building of an
entertainment complex that threatened a wetland.