China's Hu vows to "purify" Internet

[rs]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070124/tc_nm/china_internet_hu_dc_1

1 hour, 18 minutes ago

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese Communist Party chief
Hu Jintao has vowed to "purify" the Internet, state media reported on Wednesday, describing a top-level meeting that discussed ways to master the country's sprawling, unruly online population.

Hu made the comments as the ruling party's Politburo -- its 24-member leading council -- was studying China's Internet, which claimed 137 million registered users at the end of 2006.

Hu, a strait-laced communist with little sympathy for cultural relaxation, did not directly mention censorship.

But he made it clear that the Communist Party was looking to ensure it keeps control of China's Internet users, often more interested in salacious pictures, bloodthirsty games and political scandal than Marxist lessons.

The party had to "strengthen administration and development of our country's Internet culture," Hu told the meeting on Tuesday, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

"Maintain the initiative in opinion on the Internet and raise the level of guidance online," he said. "We must promote civilized running and use of the Internet and purify the Internet environment."

In 2006, China's Internet users grew by 26 million, or 23.4 percent, year on year, to reach 10.5 percent of the total population, the China Internet Network Information Center said on Tuesday.

The vast majority of those users have no access to overseas Chinese Web sites offering uncensored opinion and news critical of the ruling party. But even in heavily monitored China, news of official misdeeds and dissident opinion has been able to travel through online bulletin boards and blogs.

Hu told officials to intensify control even as they seek to release the Internet's economic potential. "Ensure that one hand grasps development while one hand grasps administration," he said.

A couple of questions for Hu to consider:

1) if one hand is on development and the other on holding development back ("undevelopment"), isn't there a risk the two will cancel? or at least that development will be held back?
2) won't Darwinian pressures on information exchange in an environment of censorship manifest itself as a high "rate of change" of language? The analogy is the standard type 'A' US teenager. Their language is constantly changing so as to cause maximum confusion to their parents. My generation did the same thing to our parents when we were young. There will always be new and clever ways to "dis" the government or to communicate anything people desire to communicate while hiding that communication "in plain sight".
3) the true "powers that be" behind the scenes seem to benefit, on balance, by the out-of-control salacious side of the internet. It gives lots of leverage. Does Hu realize who (or what...) he is dealing with?
4) Or perhaps this is just exactly the ticket. The Chinese are known to have a more relaxed attitude to sex compared to "western" culture (especially the truly uptight US). Like the whole religion scam, if there is no battle, you must create one to have control. The way to better control the Chinese is to teach them that there is forbidden fruit and that if they try just a little harder, they can reach it and see that it is sweeter. We all know what this did to Eve... (speaking of religion... :) )

 

[Petey of Lone Tree]

It's the lead article (as of this post) at the "People's Daily Online", which is one of the MSM news sources I have bookmarked, the url for which is
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/
Readers might be interested in what the "other side's" MSM has to say about things.

(On edit): And now that I think about it, another interesting, similar source is "Xinhua" (China View) at
http://www.chinaview.cn/