Beijing – The issue of China’s Internet censorship is bigger overseas than at home. Many Web users here shrug off debate about the “Great Firewall” and how it restricts online access.
“Here in China, we get very used to this,” said Jin Kaixiang, an elevator salesman, who added that he spends about three hours online daily.
Like many of China’s 110 million Internet users, Jin sees censorship as a nuisance that he can do nothing about.
“I don’t think it will change in the next few years,” added Hao Mengyuan, who works at a publishing house associated with China Politics and Law University.
China’s Internet-filtering system has become an issue in Chinese-U.S. relations.
At a congressional hearing Wednesday in Washington, legislators grilled executives from Google Inc., Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc. about their role in helping China filter information or track down those who run afoul of restrictions on free speech.
Earlier in Beijing, Chinese authorities dismissed concerns about censorship, denying that they widely block websites and asserting that they’ve never arrested anyone for expressing an opinion on the Web, despite a series of detentions that indicate the contrary.
“No one in China has been arrested simply because he or she said something on the Internet,” said Liu Zhengrong, the deputy chief of the Internet Affairs Bureau of the State Council Information Office, according to the China Daily newspaper.
Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based advocacy group, says 49 Chinese are known to be in prison for “posting on the Internet articles and criticism of the authorities.”
There could be other, unknown cases. Asked at the hearing how many times it had turned in e-mail users to government authorities, Michael Callahan, a Yahoo lawyer and company executive, said Chinese law prohibited revealing such information.
Yahoo complied with a Chinese demand for e-mail information about journalist Shi Tao, who was convicted for sending information about a Communist Party decision through e-mail and sentenced to 10 years in prison. Callahan said his company was distressed over Shi’s case but had no choice because its Chinese employees would have been subject to criminal charges if it had refused to comply.
Most Chinese Internet users appear unaware of the jailings and nonchalant about the barriers that prevent online research into topics such as democracy, religious freedom, human rights and other sensitive matters.
Most Chinese go online for gaming, e-mail, news, weather reports and blogging, and say they rarely encounter signs of censorship.
“I can find all that I want,” said Chen Zhao, 24, a Tsinghua University doctoral student. “I seldom find pages I can’t open.”
