Rialtas.net – Government 2.0

By Gady Epstein , Beijing Dispatch at Forbes.com

The 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China on Oct. 1 took on symbolic importance not only for the Communist Party, but also for connoisseurs of China’s Internet controls. The thinking by some was that with the last of a series of sensitive anniversaries this year now finally behind us, the guardians of China’s Great Firewall might again allow access to some blocked foreign sites, including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Instead, there has been no indication that the censors will loosen up. Forbes asked well-known Beijing journalist and microblogger Zhao Jing, aka Michael Anti, about China’s tightening of Internet controls. Anti already has a personal acquaintance with online censorship: His blog was deleted at the end of 2005 by Microsoft, apparently at the behest of Chinese authorities…

Anti: Web 2.0 Web sites like Facebook and Twitter can offer the public firsthand information, even faster than a government news agency like Xinhua. In fact, the July 5 Urumqi riots news was spreading first on Twitter hours before the first Xinhua English news piece. The Chinese government believes that the situation in Urumqi and other cities would be out of control if they can’t control the information flow. That’s the basic logic behind their decision to block Twitter and other Web 2.0 Web sites.

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