Ellen Bork, a former Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffer, recently wrote a marvelously illuminating piece for The Washington Post that captured President Clinton’s Pollyanna-ish view of high-technology in the New World Order.
Bork contrasts, on the one hand, Vice President Gore’s concern about the Internet’s threat to civil liberties via privacy invasion with President Clinton’s glib prediction of the seductive, democratizing influence of the Internet and mobile phones on China.
The problem, Bork points out, is that Communist China sees digital networks not as a means to empower individuals but rather as an opportunity to monitor and, ultimately, control them.
But it’s not just China. Internet access in Vietnam reportedly has slowed to a crawl as government authorities look for `libelous’ material.
“In the new century, liberty will spread by cell phone and cable modem,” Clinton declared in a March 8 speech.
At the same time, Clinton acknowledged Chinese efforts to rein in free speech on the Internet. “Good luck,” he cracked. “That’s sort of like trying to nail Jello to the wall.” The line drew laughter from the audience.
Well guess what? If China can build the Great Wall, nailing Jello to the wall should be a piece of cake. All that’s needed is a dose or so of intimidation.
Perhaps, suggested Bork, that’s what Beijing had in mind when Web site operator Huang Qi was arrested two weeks ago. The charge? Subversion. Huang, based in the Chengdu, Sichuan province, posted news stories commemorating the bloody, June 4, 1989, Tiananmen Square crackdown on Chinese pro-democracy protesters.
Before Huang was deleted from the Internet, Chinese authorities threw Lin Hai in jail for 18 months for e-mailing addresses to an anti-Communist publication abroad. Others who traded notes on the Net about arrested Falun Gong members met the same fate.
It’s actually hard to tell whether Clinton’s high-tech trade blather is naivete or simply political cynicism, a calculated campaign to say anything to get China trade passed by Congress and on his presidential resume.
Bork said the State Department says China has established “special police units to monitor and increase control of Internet content and access.”
Moreover, she noted Chinese expert Peter Lovelock’s understanding that China’s grand plan is to leverage digital information networks for economic gain while squelching the kind of subtle, long-term democratizing effect on China breezily assumed by Clinton and others.
“Senior leaders believed that information networks would allow them to sit in Beijing yet be present in each and every administrative trouble spot throughout the country,” Lovelock is quoted as saying.
If true, close Chinese military ties to mobile-phone operator Great Wall Network take on added meaning. Why, I bet Beijing is as hot on location technology as wireless dot-coms are here in the states.
