The contradictions of the Internet in China

China has more people online than any other country on the planet – and the highest number of imprisoned bloggers in the world. Check out this podcast that explores the issue.

Canada's CBC Search Engine radio show has a new podcast in which they talk to journalist, blogger and educator Rebecca MacKinnon, dissident blogger Wu Wei and journalist Oiwan Lam who is in trouble with authorities over her online activities.

For this episode the show's host, Jesse Brown, travelled to Hong Kong and Guangzhou in Mainland China.

Different views

Rebecca MacKinnon, a former CNN Beijing correspondent and now assistant professor at the University of Hong Kong's Journalism and Media Studies Centre, tells CBC about the oppression and empowerment of the Internet in China:

"... "This is the reality of China today, that China's very contradictory. So on one hand you do have repression, you do have the most sophisticated system of Internet censorship in the world, you do have people going to jail …

" ... "On the other hand, equally true, is the picture of people who do feel that they have more space for discourse that they have ever had before, people saying they have feelings of empowerment and the ability to address issues and get information out beyond what they would ever dreamed possible 10 or 20 years ago"…"

Website shutdown

Interviewee Wu Wei has been in constant trouble with authorities and has had his website shutdown 48 times since 2001. He tells CBC through a translator some of the problems he has had because of his online activities:

" ..."He believes his website is one of the most shutdown websites in China … After The Washington Post reported on his work in 2004, he and his wife were forced out of their living quarters …The police would invite his wife for these friendly chats and impress upon her how unwelcome he was in Guangzhou" ..."

Wu Wei says he continues his online work despite the harassment because "freedom is a human right".

During the show the host also visits an Internet café in China and explains what happens when he goes online and starts looking for things he’s not suppose to, like the Tiananmen Square protests: "There's a YouTube video … it’s starts to load and then, boom, it snaps to the error page," he says.

He ends by saying he has no grand conclusions, he hasn't seen enough.

" ... "But I will tell you this, they let me in. I went through official channels for my journalist visa ... all [they] would have to do is Google my name with CBC and China together and [they] would get a list of all the critical stories I've done, but still they let me in." ..."