De Volkskrant (Holland): China Closes Down Search Engines Again

Beijing – After Google, internet search engine Altavista has been blocked as well in China since last Friday, and again this happened without any explanation. The measures, however, fit in a campaign of censorship with an eye on the upcoming congress of the communist party.

The number of Chinese internet users increases explosively. Within six years it has grown from 1 to 46 million. Many internal sites as well as sites abroad are unreachable because the party finds them politcally or morally unsuitable. But never before have complete search engines been blocked. Google, particularly, was very popular because of the large number of sites it’s Chinese version gave access to.

The five yearly party congress starts on November 8th, two months later than usual. This indicates a big fight at the top about the follow-up of the highest leaders. Foreign media speculate abundantly about this. The internal ones do not, because last month they have been given orders by party leader Jiang Zemin to create a “healthy atmosphere” for the congress. One of the 34 forbidden subjects is the congress itself.

The healthy atmosphere on the world wide web is to be guaranteed by special internet police, filters which do not pass unwanted materials and with ever more orders and prohibitions. Providers and webmasters have to keep everything that is not to the liking of the party off their sites, and they are responsible for that themselves. The big Chinese sites and the search engine Yahoo! have declared in writing that they will behave politely in political and moral regard.

The censorship on non-Chinese sites cannot be controlled. Except for human rights groups and other clubs that are regarded dangerous, the media sites like BBC, CNN and The Los Angeles Times have been blocked. Maybe this is a way to satisfy the handful of old-left gammers in the party, who complain about the forging influence of the West. But the campaign that has been launched now goes much further than that.

The party is particularly afraid of new stunts by Falun Gong [practitioners]. In the last months practitioners have interupted the cable network TV-signals of a satellite at least four times to [clarify the truth]. Friday it was made public that technically skilled Falun Gong adherents again broke into a TV-satellite last month.

For the communist party leaders it must be a nightmare that the same thing happens during the party congress. The government has therefore ordered to react with force against illegal use of satellites.