As Egypt sneezes democracy, China fears catching a cold
The rumblings of a popular discontent threatening to overthrow the 30-year-old autocratic government of Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak is being acutely felt in China whose communist dictators fear that the uprising could fuel calls for reform at home. The word "Egypt" has now joined the rank of censored or blocked terms on the internet in china, according to the AFP, the Wall Street Journal online (WSJ), and numerous other media services Jan 31.
The WSJ report said the Chinese authorities appeared to have censored the word "Egypt" on Twitter-like microblogging sites in the country. Almost all of the comments posted beneath the few limited reports on the unrest—mostly from the state-run Xinhua news agency—that have been published on Chinese news sites in the past few days had been deleted by Jan 30, it said.
The report noted that the strict online controls illustrated the Communist Party of China's concern that the Internet was providing China's citizens with a new means of information and organization that could challenge its monopoly on power, as had happened with other authoritarian governments in recent years.
The report said China's state media had provided limited coverage of the unrest in Egypt, including the scores of reported deaths, the cutting of Internet and cellphone access, and president's appointment of a vice president. The AFP report said these stressed the lawlessness in Egypt and the need for order – echoing calls by China's foreign ministry – and Beijing's plan to send two chartered jets to Cairo to bring home more than 500 stranded Chinese.
The WSJ report said internet censors appeared to have been working hard to ensure that China's army of 457 million Internet users did not provide any independent commentary on the events in Egypt—or comparisons to China.
Searches for "Egypt" on microblog functions of Chinese Web portals such as Sina.com and Sohu.com were reported to reveal only messages saying either that the results couldn't be found, or couldn't be displayed. "In accordance with the relevant laws, regulations and policies, the search results could not be displayed," the response on Sina.com's microblogging site, Sina Weibo, was quoted as saying.
Twitter, Facebook and other foreign social-networking sites are blocked in China, and, in addition, Internet censors routinely prevent access to other sites blacklisted as politically sensitive or illegal under Chinese law.
The report said Chinese microblogging services were rapidly becoming a popular alternative source of information, with the number of registered users hitting an estimated 75 million in 2010, up from eight million in 2009. It said the authorities in Beijing appeared to have grown increasingly concerned about the spread of unauthorized news reporting and commentary through microblogging and other websites, especially those under the control of local, rather than national, authorities.
The reports said Beijing's reaction to the Egypt situation reflected similar curbs put in place during the so-called "colour revolutions" in Eastern Europe a decade ago. Indeed, Global Times, the Communist Party of China's international English-language newspaper ran an editorial Jan 30, headlined "Colour revolutions will not bring about real democracy," that warned of the chaos such revolts could trigger.
The "Egypt" censorship is only an extension of continuing tightening of media censorship and restrictions on freedom of speech in China. The report noted that in Nov'10, China's propaganda czars launched a six-month campaign against "fake news," with Zhai Huisheng, senior media official in charge of training journalists, cited as saying the campaign involved teams of media officials holding conferences with journalists at provincial, prefectural and city levels.
Also, state media was cited as reporting in Jan'11 that local police had put up notices in the 29 photocopying rooms in the campus of Peking University, banning the photocopying of politically sensitive material.
