China and the Internet

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China announced this week it was imposing harsh new regulations on Internet news content – banning the spread of any "content that is against national security and public interest," according to the official government voice, Xinhua.

New sites would only be tolerated, the report continued, when they are "directed toward serving the people and socialism and insist on correct guidance of public opinion for maintaining national and public interests."

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The new rules will be enforced by cyber cops who patrol the Internet, removing content that is critical of the government.

Maybe you think that's sad. Maybe you consider it tragic for the people of China. Maybe you don't think it will affect you.

Let me tell you why it surely will.

You see, China is playing its Google card. It's playing its Yahoo! card.

Prepare yourselves to get less news than ever on the abuses of the totalitarians in Beijing.

I predict major news agencies that rely on business in China will begin self-censoring their news to avoid any confrontations with the emerging new market of China.

In fact, it's happening already.

Internet giant Google recently began blocking searches of news stories critical of the nation's Communist government. Researchers at Dynamic Internet Technology found that Chinese Net users who use Google's news search are prevented from seeing certain newssites that normally would come up in the list of results, the New Scientist reported.

As a matter of routine, state-sponsored Internet service providers block certain newssites from Chinese computers, but Google appears to be aiding Beijing's censorship by not even bringing up those restricted sites in its search results.

New Scientist reports Google admits to omitting some news sources within China, but the firm says this is meant to improve the quality of the service.

"In order to create the best possible news search experience for our users, we sometimes decide not to include some sites, for a variety of reasons," says a statement issued by the company. "These sources were not included because their sites are inaccessible."

But that's not the way Bill Xia, chief executive officer of Dynamic Internet Technology, sees it. He accuses Google of complicity with the communist government.

"When people do a search they will get the wrong impression that the whole world is saying the same thing," he told the magazine.

China restricts Web surfers by identifying their origin through the Internet protocol, or IP, addresses of each machine. Xia's company has developed a way for Chinese computer users to circumvent the government's censorship by accessing the Web through computers outside the country.

Google isn't the only company to alter its search results to please Beijing.

Back in 2002, I reported Yahoo! began restricting its Chinese results for queries related to the banned religious group Falun Gong. The Internet company signed a pledge to purge its Chinese website of material that China's control-freak dictatorship might deem subversive.

According to the agreement, Yahoo! promised to avoid "producing, posting or disseminating pernicious information that may jeopardize state security and disrupt social stability." It agreed to monitor information posted by users and to "remove the harmful information promptly." Further, it pledged to avoid linking to sites whose content might not be "healthy."

In other words, Yahoo! is pledged to become a private asset of the repressive Chinese government's thought police.

Just two years earlier, a group of anti-Nazi activists in France sued Yahoo! for selling Nazi paraphernalia – a violation of French law. At that time, Yahoo! management claimed the Internet was borderless and could not be held accountable to local laws – a sensible position in most respects.

Why would Yahoo! cooperate more closely with the Chinese dictatorship – one of the most brutal regimes in the world – while fighting the local claims of a free European nation?

I think you know the answer. China represents the biggest developing marketplace in the world. Yahoo! sees great potential for commercial rewards in China – just as clearly as China sees it. If it takes compromising with basic human rights to position the company with the Beijing leadership, Yahoo! will do what it needs to do. So will Google.

Has Yahoo! re-thought its policies at all in the last three years? No way.

Earlier this month, Yahoo! was accused of helping China's state security police actually track down and jail a dissident. Reporters Without Borders said it had learned that Yahoo was approached over the case of Shi Tao, a Chinese journalist. Shi, 37, had posted a copy of an internal Chinese government document banning media comment on the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre last year.

Yahoo Hong Kong provided the investigators with information that enabled them to track down Shi's e-mail and Internet details, according to the group. As a result, he was jailed for 10 years in April for "leaking state secrets."

These developments illustrate why it is more important than ever that independent, freedom-loving news agencies like WorldNetDaily survive and prosper.

In fact, WND has been mentioned by name by part of an "anti-China" media axis in cahoots with the Washington Post and others.

Characterizing WND as "most famous," the Chinese report said: "WorldNetDaily [like the] Washington Post has all along been known for their 'rightist,' 'conservative' and 'anti-China' stand."

For what it's worth, as long as I remain at the helm of the "most famous" WorldNetDaily, you can rest assured we will never capitulate to the totalitarian whims of the brutes of Beijing.