China backs down on internet rule

Anchor Lisa Mullins and The World’s Beijing correspondent Mary Kay Magistad discuss why China is backing down on a new Internet filtering rule that was supposed to go into effect today.
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LISA MULLINS: In China itself, there’ve been protests of a different sort. They have to do with computers, and what the Chinese government allows Internet users to see on their screens. The World’s Mary Kay Magistad is in Beijing. Very interesting story with interesting beginnings, Mary Kay, what’s it about?

MARY KAY MAGISTAD: Right. So this is about the Green Dam Youth Escort Software. And it was introduced about three weeks ago by the government, who said, okay, starting on July 1st, which is today, computers sold in China, whether they’re foreign made, or Chinese made, have to have this software on them. And this will filter out the pornography. Well, okay, fine, except that it does more than that, it filters out politically sensitive words, it filters out images that the government doesn’t want people to see, maybe pornographic, maybe other. What happened was that it became clear quickly, that this software also did other things, like, it allowed remote computers to take control of your computer and get information off of it, which would be bad for businesses, and it would be bad for government departments if they had to have that software on their computers. At the same time, Chinese Internet users were up in arms; there was amazing chatter on the Internet. There were death threats issued to the software makers of the Green Dam Youth Escort. There were some groups that were saying that starting today, if this went ahead, they were going to start a full scale global attack on government censorship systems on the internet.

LISA MULLINS: These are Chinese Internet users who are making these threats?

MARY KAY MAGISTAD: [TALKS OVER] These are Chinese Internet users.

LISA MULLINS: Is that unusual?

MARY KAY MAGISTAD: Well, they’re becoming more vocal as time goes on. But, to be that outspoken is a little unusual.

LISA MULLINS: But hold on Mary Kay, doesn’t the Chinese government censor what its citizens can get on the Internet all the time?

MARY KAY MAGISTAD: It does, but there’s still a lot on the Chinese Internet, and an increasing number of Chinese Internet users know ways of getting around the blocks that are there. Also, a lot of Internet users don’t know how much the Chinese government is censoring, they don’t realize it. And this has been a very ham-handed attempt to censor more. So when people can actually sort of see the seams, they can see what’s actually going on. They get kind of irate. A lot of Chinese don’t necessarily know everything the government’s doing.

LISA MULLINS: So when they found out about this, there was a barrage of threats, and the government said what?

MARY KAY MAGISTAD: And not just that, but also 22 different chambers of commerce or international trade associations took the very rare step of writing directly to Premier Wen Jiabao and saying, “Please don’t do this. This would be bad for business, it would be bad for international investors. This puts our computers at risk, and it, you know, stems the free flow of information.” And it’s just a bad sign coming from China; it suggests you’re taking a step backward.

LISA MULLINS: And did the government listen?

MARY KAY MAGISTAD: Apparently it did, because just today they said, “Okay. We don’t think computer companies are ready yet, the software hasn’t been bundled. We need to do more preparation. We need to double-check the software. So, we need more time.” Now, many people who are watching all of this, think that this just a face saving way of shelving it and moving on. But, you know, we’ll see what happens in the coming weeks. It is a very sensitive time in the two months leading up to the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. That might be part of what was behind this, but also, you know, there have been reports that, in fact, maybe this was just mid level deal that was done, you know, by someone in the government with someone he knew in a software company to, you know, sort of try to help out the business, and it snowballed from there. And then the government felt it needed to justify why it was doing this.

LISA MULLINS: Alright. Well thank you very much. The World’s Mary Kay Magistad in Beijing. Thanks for telling us the story.

MARY KAY MAGISTAD: Thank you, Lisa.

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