"SARS' Impact on Media Control and Governance"

Mr. Chairperson, and distinguished members of the Commission,

Thank you for the opportunity to share my views and observations on this very important subject. The recent, and on-going SARS epidemic, which has spread from China to much of the rest of the world, is a tragic public heath disaster. This crisis illuminates many issues within China’s political system, including the government’s capacity to control information, especially information transmitted over the Internet.

During the last six months, I have closely monitored some of China’s most popular BBS discussions and on-line media reporting, including official sites such as People’s Daily’s Strong Country Forum, popular locally-based discussion spaces such as Xici.net, and some commercial portal’s on-line forums such as sina.com. I have also been in contact with many China Internet researchers and Internet users within China and have learned from their experiences, observations and analysis regarding the on-line information flow about SARS epidemic in China. Please let me start my presentation with some background information on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) development in China as well as the governmental control mechanisms over the Internet.

This year, China’s Internet users reached to 59.1 million, becoming the second largest on-line population in the world, and the number of mobile phone users reached to 221 million, the largest mobile phone users in the world. Only a few years ago, optimists argued that the rapid spread of ICT, especially the Internet, will inevitably revolutionize Chinese politics and bring human rights and democracy to China. They argues that because the Internet is an inherently free technology with a decentralized, end-to-end architecture, it will make government censorship impossible. However, recent reports and research have proven that Chinese state control mechanisms have showed increasing technical sophistication and adaptability to effectively control the Internet.

Since the Internet first reached China, the government has used an effective multi-layered strategy to control Internet content and monitor online activities at every level of Internet service and content networks. This control is built on a mixture of legal regulations and blocking, filtering and surveillance technology. Since 1995, more than 60 laws have been enacted to govern Internet activities in China. The latest regulations, enacted in August 2002, require Internet publishers to censor their own sites or risk being shut down. More than 30,000 state security employees are currently conducting surveillance of web pages, chat rooms, and private email messages. Indeed, the PRC government has made information security the main priority of Internet development and has devoted enormous financial resources to this end.

Despite these government controls, the Internet has still provided Chinese netizens with access to a much broader range of news and opinion than they get from traditional media, which remains under governmental control. A number of stories that have been censored in the official media have been broken on the Internet in China in recent years as people have learned to circumvent the government’s barriers. For example, when local officials in Guangxi tried to cover up a local mining disaster, journalists and witnesses published their reports online and soon the central government was forced to conduct an investigation. Similarly, while the U.S was at war in Iraq, Chinese intellectuals engaged in heated debates over the military action and aired views that ran counter to the official government line. In these instances, the Internet offered much more freedom to publish a wider variety of news and opinion than the official media.

What is not clear is the impact of ICT on a social crisis. In a situation such as the spread of SARS, do new technologies play a role in breaking the government censorship? How effective is the Government control at a time of social crisis?

The information flow about SARS in China can roughly divided into three periods. From November 2002, when the first case of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) appeared in Guangdong province in southern China, until early February, can be called the "rumor period." During this period, the public did not have access to any official information about the disease, which was just starting to spread. Guangdong residents who heard rumors of a fatal contagious flu through word of mouth, email and especially through mobile phone’s Short Messaging Service (SMS), or text messaging, began to panic. The Guangdong-based Southern Metropolis News and other local media reported on the spread of the disease, and the public panic, in February. After the news reports appeared, including one in the influential Southern Weekend newspaper on February 8, the local propaganda departments cracked down on media coverage and issued an order that all reports about SARS must be in line with official statements, which essentially denied the seriousness and the true scale of the epidemic.

The "cover-up period" started in early February and lasted until April 20. During this entire period, information about SARS on websites, bulletin boards, and chat rooms, as well as in the traditional media, was strictly monitored and censored. One could hardly find any independent account or substantive public information about the disease in China. In contrast, when the disease broke out in Hong Kong months later, individuals immediately began publishing and distributing vast amounts of SARS-related information and opinions online. As a result of the censorship in China, however, mainland residents remained largely in the dark about the spread of the disease, causing the virus to quietly spread to other cities and provinces including Beijing, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Hong Kong, and eventually the world.

The third period of SARS reporting is the "recognition period," which began on April 20 when Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao made a public pledge to be transparent about the issue and the central government fired the Minister of Health and the mayor of Beijing. This sudden change in attitude was clearly triggered by the overwhelming response of international opinion, including a Time Magazine article that revealed information provided by whistleblower doctor Jiang Yanyong. Only after that, the Chinese official media and on-line forums were encouraged to discuss and report on SARS. However, it now seems unclear whether the Chinese government is being completely candid about the current situation of SARS, and the World Health Organization has questioned the most recent statistics provided by Chinese authorities.

During the entire "rumor period," SMS, not the Internet, emerged as the major channel to exchange SARS information-and misinformation.

China has 221 million mobile phone users. Almost 30% of mobile users regularly use SMS, more than the total number of Internet users. SMS is an easy and affordable way to connect with people through text messages transmitted between mobile phones, not only one-to-one, but also through mass distribution and forwarding. In Guangdong, where SARS originally broke out, 40% of the population has mobile phones and so SMS quickly became a new mass medium as information, and panic, about the illness spread.

For example, in Guangzhou, a SMS message "There is a fatal flu in Guangzhou," was resent 40 million times on February 8, 41 million times the next day and 45 million times on February 10, according to the Southern Weekend newspaper.

SMS therefore played a very important role during the "rumor" period by influencing public opinion, which likely influenced the government’s decision to crack down on the free distribution of SARS-related information. A week after issuing the report on SMS messaging in Guangdong, the Southern Weekend and other local newspapers was censored and told not to report independently on SARS.

However, the main problem with SMS is that the short messages do not allow for detailed reports and much of the information transmitted is not verified, so there is no way for recipients to judge the quality of information they are receiving. SMS’s limited capacity to convey information, as well as a lack of any accurate and trustworthy official information source, contributed to the spreading of both unofficial news as well as false information during the "rumor" and "cover-up" periods in the SARS epidemic. SMS, therefore, can help spread rumors and word-of mouth reports, but cannot serve as the sole alternative information source in such a situation.

At the same time that SMS messages were becoming increasingly popular, SARS related content was apparently carefully vetted before being posted on-line. During the "cover-up" period, the only news that was allowed to be posted about SARS stated that the epidemic is not as serious as the "rumors" say and was under control. Website publishers told foreign reporters that they would be fined or punished if any "negative" postings about SARS appeared on their sites. In early April, a search of Xinhuanet.com revealed that not a single report about SARS was published since last November. In the mean time, when people overseas tried to post messages about SARS to various commercial Internet chat rooms, the messages never appeared online. It appeared that SARS had become a banned keyword on filtered sites. Official censorship, and self-censorship, worked together so that the BBS and private Web sites were not able to collect independent information about the progression of the disease.

During the "cover-up" period, email played an important role as a catalyst to spread otherwise censored information. Only very few technically savvy Internet users can use proxy servers to get around government blockades to access overseas media, such as Hong Kong and Taiwanese news sites, the Voice of America, BBC, Radio Free Asia and other overseas Chinese-language sites. Starting from March, after SARS spread to Hong Kong and was widely covered by the press there, and when the WHO and international governments and media starting to report and protest the apparent cover-up by the Chinese government, this news gradually leaked back to China, particularly through email from abroad. However, news from overseas sources is necessarily limited as it does not provide Chinese citizens with detailed local reports.

Email also gives citizens who are determined to expose the truth a technical means to reach out. A critical turning event of SARS coverage in China was when Dr. Jiang Yanyong, the former director of People's Liberation Army Hospital No. 301, decided to send an email to Hong Kong describing the epidemic as much more severe than the government had acknowledged. On April 7, Time Asia used his report to expose the government’s cover-up.

During the SARS crisis, Internet censorship in China was powerful enough to prevent websites and BBS from becoming independent, alternative mass media.

By directly blocking and filtering websites, arresting targeted Internet users and publishers, and holding private Internet service providers, Internet cafe owners and Website managers responsible for on-line content, the government established solid control in cyberspace. During the entire "cover-up" period no on-line information and discussions were allowed to contradict the official line. The Chinese government still has effective control over the new medium, when it chooses to exert this control to its fullest capacity, as we saw during the SARS crisis.

However, the use of SMS to rapidly spread information in a crisis can be considered a milestone in the social impact of ICT in China. During the SARS crisis, SMS did challenge the official monopoly of information, but, as we saw, its communication capacities are limited.

Furthermore, the SARS epidemic made clear that overseas information flow is necessary in China today. During the "cover-up" period, news reports from abroad were the only objective and accurate source of information for Chinese citizens about the epidemic. Therefore, it is crucial that the outside world find ways to facilitate the efforts of Chinese netizens to combat Internet censorship so that they can both access information that affects their lives and feel safe and free to express themselves online.

The SARS crisis in China has clearly demonstrated the critical importance of transparency and accountability in handling such a public health crisis. In this globalized world, such a crisis can quickly impact the rest of the world, including the United States. Promoting freedom of expression and information is the key to helping China open up its society, which not only benefits Chinese people but the rest of the world as well. The Global Internet Freedom Act, which was introduced to the House of Representatives on January 7, 2003, can contribute critically needed resources to help private companies and NGOs to develop and deploy technological means to facilitate the free flow of information on the Internet. I support passage of the legislation as I believe it will have a profound impact on the opening of Chinese society and politics.