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BEIJING - Clusters of 20-something hipsters hunch over their computer screens, brainstorming for new ideas to keep their Web site cutting edge.Welcome to people.com.cn - the online version of the People's Daily.
Renowned since the 1949 Communist revolution as China's biggest newspaper - and its biggest bore - the People's Daily always pumped out the party line. But with the Internet revolution sweeping China at warp speed, the gray old daily has repositioned itself.
Now, it's a mouthpiece looking for fresh eyes.
Click a link for the latest news, or join an online chat forum with 20,000 people in real time. Have your say and let off steam.
But be careful.
Behind the hot hyperlinks and snappy Web pages, Big Brother is watching more closely than ever.
A smiling President Jiang Zemin looks down from a colour poster in the third floor offices of the Web site, where 10 full-time censors scan the screens with their fingers poised on the delete buttons. Known colloquially as ``cleaning ladies'' because of their sanitizing duties, they patrol the online chat rooms looking for offending comments on taboo subjects.
Taiwan independence, the banned Falun Dafa movement and criticism of the Communist Party are all off limits. So are state secrets, sex and porn. Offenders are tracked down and reported to the Public Security Bureau for prosecution.
Housed within the heavily guarded compound of the venerable People's Daily, these two separate teams of computer operators - Web censors and Web designers - symbolize the conflicting currents in China's Internet craze. Unlike other totalitarian regimes that ban modems entirely, China's Communist Party is embracing the wired world - but on its own terms.
More than 26 million Chinese are now sending e-mail and surfing China's 260,000 Web sites: cyber-dissidents and party cadres, gay lovers and religious activists, entrepreneurs and academics. All this in a developing country that had fewer than 10 million telephones a decade ago.
``On the Internet, people can find information they couldn't find in traditional media, and they can say things that they can't say in traditional places,'' says Guo Liang, an Internet expert at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
Yesterday, China shut down nearly 2,000 Internet cafes across the country and ordered 6,000 to suspend operations and make changes, the state media announced.
Anonymous cyber cafes are popular because they allow people to evade tough content laws, whose infringement on a personal home page or message board authorities are likely to track to its source.
The Shanghai Daily said the move - China's second major clampdown on the popular cafes in a little more than a year - aims to regulate the Internet service market in line with rules set by state ministries.
Tracking surveys show Internet usage doubling annually, and destined to make Chinese the dominant language on the Web within three years. By giving people unprecedented access to information - and each other - the Web could dramatically transform a country that has historically been obsessed with centralized control and social stability.
Sensing its enormous potential, Communist Party officials rely on the Internet to keep tabs on the chat rooms as a way of taking the pulse of public opinion. With street protests banned, the information highway allows government analysts to take regular soundings so they won't be caught off guard.
``The pressure of public opinion is expressed mainly on the Internet, and the government pays close attention,'' says Wang Xiao Dong, an author on Web issues.
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`(Former) chairman Mao Zedong said there were two elements for the Communist Party to maintain control. It needed the gun and the pen to keep power. The Internet is part of the modern media, and if you want to maintain power, you have to control the Internet.'- Guo Liang
Internet expert, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
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``The Internet is the only place where people can comment on political affairs so freely,'' he adds. ``Without the Internet, the government wouldn't have any idea what people were thinking about - and they really want to know. It's a window for people, and the government, to look in on each other.''
Freedom, however, isn't high on the agenda.
In China's post-ideological age, modernization is the mantra - as long as it's kept under the control of the Communist Party. The government's motive is to improve China's economic competitiveness, helping business to export manufactured products, rather than encouraging individuals to import Western ideals.
``(Former) chairman Mao Zedong said there were two elements for the Communist Party to maintain control,'' muses Guo, a philosophy professor. ``It needed the gun and the pen to keep power. The Internet is part of the modern media, and if you want to maintain power, you have to control the Internet.''
A new generation has grown up in the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, when street protests rocked the government. Now, the occasional words of protest appearing on the Internet attract the attention of the foreign media, but rarely reverberate beyond the chat rooms of the nation.
``People want to change China, but just a little bit,'' explains Guo. ``They don't want to be arrested.''
More often than not, users indulge their passion for sports, entertainment, consumerism, dating services or financial news. Contrary to Western expectations, millions of Chinese who log on for the first time show little interest in liberal democracy when local Web sites are whipping up patriotic fervour.
Call it nationalism on the Net.
``It has become much more visible because of the Internet,'' says Wang. ``When there was no Internet, there wasn't so much nationalist talk in China.''
During the American spy plane crisis last spring, the jingoism reached its peak.
``Let's cut the ears off the 24 crew members before letting them go,'' read one posting in the chat room at people.com.cn.
Watching from his perch in the Web site's censorship room, Guan Shandu quickly excised the comments before they could attract attention. Pruning anti-American rhetoric from the Web site keeps him busier than censoring anti-party comments, Shandu claims.
``This was our second wave of anti-Americanism,'' he said, with one eye on the screen in front of him. ``That's not appropriate, so we delete such offensive ones.''
And anything else that rocks the boat.
``The only thing more startling than the speed of postings is the speed of deletions,'' complained one frustrated user online.
The chat room was set up after the 1999 bombing of China's Belgrade embassy by NATO warplanes, and quickly dubbed the ``Anti-Bombing Forum.'' Later rechristened, ``Forum for Empowering the Nation,'' its popularity soared.
That the great attraction of the Internet is as a sounding board against America, and a rallying point for patriotism, is a source of comfort to the Communist Party. And it is no accident.
By erecting a firewall to keep offending foreign Web sites at bay, the government has built its own Great Wall of China around the Web. The breaking news that makes it to China's most popular Internet portals comes solely from government-approved purveyors: the official Xinhua newswire, state television, or the venerable People's Daily.
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`The government thought the Internet was a wild animal, that if you let it out of the cage it would destabilize the country.'- Charles Zhang
President, SOHU.com
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During the spy plane incident, for example, the vast majority of Internet users never heard the American version of events, claiming that a Chinese fighter jet had side-swiped the U.S. aircraft. By exposing people only to official accounts about a hostile American intrusion, the government successfully stoked nationalist sentiment.
To oversee content, it has set up the Orwellian-sounding Internet Information Management Bureau, whose task is to counter the ``infiltration of harmful information on the Internet.''
The most adept computer users know how to stay out of trouble, breaching the firewall with special techniques. But a far more powerful obstacle stands in the way of the World Wide Web: the language barrier.
Fewer than 10 per cent of China's Internet users can understand English, which keeps them tied down to conventional Chinese-language sources. Users may not even realize that the most popular Internet portals in China are barred by law from carrying reports from foreign news organizations, which forces most Chinese Web surfers to get their information from only authorized, local sources.
That's a huge advantage for Jiang Yaping, the brains behind people.com.cn. Barring foreign news sources not only keeps out potentially subversive ideas, it also keeps competitors at bay.
Wearing a black mock turtleneck, Jiang looks every bit the savvy Web master, even if his site peddles the same old propaganda with a fresh new look. He boasts that his site has overtaken the competition because of its direct pipeline to the People's Daily news service.
Jiang makes no apologies for the censorship.
``The rules of the forum are like attending a concert, where people are expected to wear a suit and necktie,'' he argues.
Nor is there any doubt about his mission.
``The forum must act as a propaganda site for the guiding principles and policies of the party,'' notes one official brochure.
Not just government Web sites, but private companies toe the official line. In fact, government corporations already hold stakes in the most popular portals, which are required by law to police their Web sites for prohibited content.
Across town at rival SOHU.com, there are no posters of China's president - just the self-consciously cool look of Internet companies around the world: yellow accented designs reflecting the loud corporate colours, and an energy level around the water cooler that is palpable.
Much of the zip emanates from founding president Charles Zhang, who returned from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to help his people get wired in 1998. First, though, he had to figure out how to get along with the government.
``The government thought the Internet was a wild animal, that if you let it out of the cage it would destabilize the country,'' Zhang says in an interview in his office, down the street from Tiananmen Square.
``Now, the government wants to have the Internet develop, but without letting it destabilize society,'' he says. ``I'm sympathetic - I think the government's approach is right.''
Zhang argues that the impact on the ordinary Chinese citizen was unforeseen six years ago, when the first stirrings of an Intranet - an internal network shut off from the outside world - gave way to today's full-fledged Internet.
He rattles off the revolutionary changes: gay people who have not yet come out of the closet can link up with potential partners on hundreds of Web sites and surf local maps for meeting places; environmental activists can forge contacts and compare notes; and the consumer rights movement is gathering momentum.
``Every individual in China knows much more about what's going on than five years ago,'' he says. ``The average Chinese has become more sophisticated, more informed, and can now think for themselves.''
But it's easy to get carried away by the hype. Internet users remain a minuscule percentage of China's over-all population, with barely 2 per cent of its 1.2 billion people logging on. Most of them are urban, educated people with jobs giving them access to office computers.
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`They (private-sector firms) have to find a balance between the interests of viewers and commercial interests and not being shut down. It's no mean feat.'- Duncan Clark
Managing director, BDA China Ltd.
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``The typical Internet user in China is in their late twenties, has a college degree, is working as a manager or professional, and has an above-average household income,'' according to a report by imasia, an Internet consulting firm.
Those who go online soon learn to walk a fine line. Log on to the chat room of SOHU.com, for example, and a stark Web page awaits you:
``Warning! Please take note that the following issues are prohibited according to Chinese law: 1) Criticism of the PRC (People's Republic of China) Constitution. 2) Revealing State secrets, and discussion about overthrowing the Communist government. 3) Topics which damage the reputation of the State.''
Lest there be any doubt, the Web site offers a chilling final admonition:
``If you are a Chinese national and willingly choose to break these laws, SOHU.com is legally obliged to report you to the Public Security Bureau. Thank you for your co-operation.''
Like other private firms, SOHU.com realizes that its corporate fortunes are closely tied to co-operation with the government. One misstep could jeopardize its licence and rattle its blue-chip foreign investors.
Its annual report to shareholders notes reassuringly that SOHU.com's internal security committee ``exchanged information with the local public security bureau . . . and is therefore fully compliant with the above (content) regulations.''
A news release targeting foreign investors last December boasted about getting a government licence to distribute approved Chinese news services: ``This is the first time the Central Government has given us such an important formal stamp of approval. It is a historic breakthrough for the Internet industry in China,'' it declared breathlessly.
Behind the scenes, SOHU.com goes to even greater lengths to stop users from crossing the line. There's too much Internet traffic to filter out taboo topics manually, so the Web site uses special software.
``In China's, it's not so hush-hush,'' says Nick Yang, the company's 26-year-old vice-president of technology, boasting about his censorship expertise.
Yang is especially proud of the software he developed to search out so-called ``hot words,'' such as Tibet, Taiwan, and the names of top Communist leaders. Any of these terms trigger alerts for the company censors to comb through the chat rooms.
To give censors enough time to excise problematic postings, after they've been tipped off by the software, the forum operates with an unpublicized two-hour lag. That way, censors can delete the offending remarks before anyone else sees them.
But people who are sending in messages remain oblivious to the censorship process. When a user posts a message, it appears almost immediately when he scrolls down his computer screen - even though no one else in the country will see it - thanks to special software that maintains the illusion of real-time messaging.
The software is designed to disguise the censorship process, so people won't be discouraged from posting messages. Most users have no idea that until the two-hour lead time elapses, they are actually only chatting with themselves.
``It's a real switcheroo - a two-hour delay,'' Yang says, chuckling.
When message traffic heats up - as it did 10-fold - during the spy plane incident, the lag lengthens to four hours to give monitors more lead time. If a monitor spots an offending message, he can send an e-mail warning the user. And even though unsuitable messages are weeded out, the author's details are kept on record so that the government can pursue the offender.
``Watch out, we're watching you,'' Yang says, chuckling again.
New Chinese laws now require Internet companies to keep records of all users and content, including ``the time of . . . subscribers' access to the Internet, the subscribers' account numbers, the addresses or domain names of the Web sites, and the main telephone numbers they use,'' according to the Public Security Bureau.
SOHU.com keeps the information on file for 60 days for inspection by the police.
Individual censorship and monitoring is costly for the company, with more than 20 monitors working 24-hour shifts. But the firewall applied to foreign Web sites and news services by the government helps keep the company competitive, according to Yang.
``As far as our users, the firewall is a good thing (for SOHU.com) because that means they have no choice but to read our news service,'' he explains.
Still, all is not well at SOHU.com, nor at competing portals.
While state-backed services like people.com.cn are positioning themselves for future growth, and show no signs of financial stress, China's erstwhile dot-com boom has become a dot-bomb phenomenon.
Advertising revenue has dried up and e-commerce has also failed to take off with consumers in China. Parcel delivery services are spotty, and credit card usage is limited. Last month, Dow Jones & Co. and Intel Corp. bailed out of their investments in SOHU.com after share prices plunged.
With private-sector start-ups shutting down, and the portals hemorrhaging cash, they're in no position to stand up to the government.
``They've been co-opted, and so a lot of it (censorship) is a self-preservation instinct,'' says Duncan Clark, managing director of BDA China Ltd.
``They have to find a balance between the interests of viewers and commercial interests and not being shut down. It's no mean feat.''
Sina.com was forced to close its chat room earlier this year when users cast doubt on government denials that school children had died in a fireworks explosion. The government was forced to back down and apologize about misleading the public, but the message to Sina.com was clear: Keep your Web site under control.
Now, fear of being closed down has encouraged compliance by the private portals.
``The occasional crackdown has a deterrent effect, and encourages self-censorship,'' Clark argues. ``It's a real stick, and a virtual stick.''
The delicate dynamic of government regulation and corporate compliance has dampened the democratization trend that so many had predicted soon after the Internet took off in China. Now, nationalism is gaining ground by default.
``It's wrong to assume that the Internet has some value system that democratizes society,'' Clark argues. ``I view the Internet more as a mirror of people's interests. They see what they want to find. . . . The Internet can be a demagogical tool with its ability to fan nationalism.''
While the government strives to keep the Web under wraps, some analysts believe the real message is in the mail. Surveys show that by far the most popular activity for Internet users is sending e-mails.
And while the vast majority of messages are presumably innocuous, the medium provides a valuable outlet for cyber-dissidents and ordinary activists to circumvent government restrictions: monitoring the mail is more difficult than watching Web sites.
Surveys show that 70 per cent of users go online mostly for e-mail, and more than 15 million Chinese have personal accounts that form a potential communication network beyond effective government scrutiny. China's official Internet Network Information Centre says 95 per cent of users cited e-mail as their most frequent activity.
Indeed, cyber dissidents often resort to e-mail to arrange meetings or pass on instructions. Web sites run by the Falun Dafa spiritual movement, banned as an ``evil cult'' by China, are blocked by China's firewall, but activists resort to e-mail as a lifeline. Christian groups also rely heavily on messaging to perform missionary work beyond the prying eyes of the police.
Frank Lu, who runs the Hong Kong-based Information Centre of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China, used to receive dozens of messages on his beeper from mainlanders calling to report an arrest or abuses by the Public Security Bureau. Thanks to the Internet, his sources are more wired than ever.
He also peruses up to 100 electronic bulletin boards every day from among the thousands now online to extract information which he transmits to Western news agencies. Armed with fresh details, he publicizes human rights abuses, such as the arrests of half a dozen Internet activists so far this year.
A typical case: a Sichuan schoolteacher posted a message proclaiming, ``Down with the Communists;'' he was swiftly arrested last March and jailed for two years.
Despite the setbacks, Lu and other Chinese who are watching the Internet revolution - and the government's recurring crackdowns - are confident the message will continue to get out.
Wang concedes government controls have proved surprisingly effective so far. But he argues that time is not on Beijing's side.
As the sheer number of users increases dramatically, and technology becomes more accessible, the government may find itself fighting a losing battle.
Even when a Web site is shut down, the information that the Communist Party wanted to keep under wraps migrates to other Web sites, and is then spread by word of mouth.
``Whether they like it or not, it's inevitable,'' Wang said.
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