China's Trapped Transition_ The Limits of Developmental Autocracy - Minxin Pei [52]
The same office claimed that it conducted a census of Internet providers and users in 2002 and collected extensive data on them. More important, the office disclosed that it organized seventeen “training classes,” which graduated 3,100 “Internet security personnel” (xinxi wangiuo anquanyuan). Among the trainees, 189 came from Internet service providers, 410 were from Internet content providers, and 2,129 were sent by Internet café operators. The annual report of the Beijing Public Security Bureau also claimed that its Internet Division conducted a surprise spot-check of the nine largest news Web sites in Beijing on the sensitive date of June 4, 2002 (the Tiananmen anniversary). It found “harmful links” and “loopholes” on sina.com, Beijing-online, and netease.com and penalized the sites. Most intriguingly, the same annual report said that the Internet Division participated in a nationwide exercise “to deal with emergencies involving the Internet.” This exercise was organized by the MPS, in collaboration with the Propaganda Department, telecom service providers, and regulators of major Web sites. The objective of this exercise was to see how various authorities could purge “harmful information” from major Web sites. According to the report, during the exercise, the police were able to locate the majority of “harmful information” within one hour and deal with it within two hours. In less than nineteen hours, the Beijing police successfully completed the exercise, twenty-nine hours ahead of the forty-eight-hour deadline. This disclosure indicates that the Chinese government has apparently developed an emergency plan and organizational capabilities to make sure that the Internet will not be used against the regime at times of national crisis.155
Besides using such labor-intensive methods, Chinese authorities adopted regulatory and technological tools as well. In 2000, the MPS ordered that all Chinese computing networks connected with the outside world must notify the ministry and file a record.156 Another directive issued by the MPS in 2000 showed that the ministry was establishing a nationwide Internet surveillance system. It mandated that a network of control nodes at the provincial levels be built quickly so that an MPS-centered system of information surveillance and control could soon cover all provinces and municipalities.157 In 2002, a government regulation required that all users of Internet cafés must register their government-issued IDs with café operators.
In its attempt to control the Internet, the MPS enlisted Chinese Internet firms to enforce its rules. According to a manager for sina.com, one of the most popular Web sites in China, the firm would “report illegal and unhealthy information to relevant authorities.” In 2002, more than 130 Web sites signed a code of conduct, pledging to work against the dissemination of “information harmful to state security and social stability.” To gain a technological upper hand, the MPS also issued detailed technical standards for Web software. Internet filter software developed in China must comply with these standards. In 2003 in Liaoning province, the local Internet police developed and installed surveillance software on the computers in all six hundred Internet cafés in Jingzhou city. To access the Internet from the computers equipped with this special surveillance software, users must show their official ID card to purchase a prepaid card. The software has a filter function that blocks access to banned sites and automatically alerts police when the user visits banned sites. In the city’s Internet police station, one computer monitors more than 20,000 terminals in the city’s Internet cafés. Liaoning’s provincial Internet police chief revealed that all 7,000 Internet cafés in the province had this surveillance software installed. Since more than