Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
authorities and withdrew from China. Untroubled, the Chinese government pro-
motes its home-grown search engines such as Baidu, Sohu, and Sina.com, which
present few such difficulties.
Finally, the Chinese state has arrested and detained several internet users who
ventured into politically sensitive areas. Although it cannot monitor all websites in
the countries, the state pursues the intimidation strategy popularly known as
''killing the chicken to scare the monkeys'' (Harwit and Clark
2001
). Reporters
Without Borders reported in 2008 that China had incarcerated 49 cyberdissidents,
the most in the world. For example, cyberjournalist Hu Jia, winner of the European
Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, was sentenced to 3 years in prison in
2008 for ''inciting subversion of state power.'' Human rights activist Huang Qi
received a similar sentence that same year for posting criticisms of the Sichuan
earthquake relief efforts. Librarian Liu Jin received 3 years for downloading
information about the organization Falun Gong, which China treats as terrorists.
China's best known blogger, Zhou Shuguang, was prohibited from traveling to
Germany to judge an international blogging competition. Others have been pros-
ecuted for posting or downloading information about Tibetan independence,
Taiwanese separatism, or the Tiananmen Square massacre. No avenue exists to
repeal censorship decisions.
Such measures have helped to limit the use of the web by democracy and
human rights advocates, Tibet separatists, and religious groups such as Falun
Gong. They also help proactively to sway public opinion in favor of the state.
However, given the polymorphous nature of the web, such restrictions eventually
fail sooner or later. By accessing foreign proxy servers, a few intrepid Chinese
netizens engage in fanqiang, or ''scaling the wall'' (Stone and Barboza
2010
).
Using its programmers in the U.S., Falun Gong has developed censorship-cir-
cumventing software called Freegate, which it has offered to dissidents elsewhere,
particularly in Iran (Lake
2009
). Chinese censorship and its resistance thus form a
continually change front of strategies and tactics: As one Chinese blogger put it,
''It is like a water flow—if you block one direction, it flows to other directions, or
overflows'' (quoted in James
2009
).
3.2.2 Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus
The archipelago of countries consisting of Russia and neighboring states—a region
long known for many governments that resist transparency, abuse human rights,
and rely on state-controlled media—exhibits numerous attempts to restrict access
to the internet as well as govern its contents. In Russia, where the conventional
media are already under tight government control, the Putin government gradually
sought to extend its influence over the internet, essentially following the Chinese
model of granting the secret service extensive monitoring powers, ostensibly on
the grounds of fighting corruption (Troianovski and Finn
2007
). As Russia's
penetration rate increased, threatening to broaden the sphere of public debate and
