Most Chinese Say They Approve of Government Internet Control
March 27, 2008
by Deborah Fallows, Senior Research Fellow, Pew Internet & American Life Project


Many Americans assume that China’s internet users are both aware of and unhappy about their
government’s oversight and control of the internet. But in a new survey, most Chinese say they
approve of internet control and management, especially when it comes from their government.

According to findings from the fourth and most recent of a series of surveys about internet use in
China from 2000 to 2007,
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over 80% of respondents say they think the internet should be
managed or controlled, and in 2007, almost 85% say they think the government should be
responsible for doing it.

This survey was funded by the New York-based Markle Foundation and directed by an
internationally respected research team at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
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As required
of all public-opinion polling in China, either the survey or the surveyors must be approved by the
government, and some topics that Westerners might have liked to see addressed directly, such
as censorship, were not. But a close reading of the results and findings highlights the Chinese
perspective on some sensitive issues.

The Chinese government has long tried to control its internet in many ways. It censors or blocks
politically-outspoken blogs. It has arrested citizens on charges of “inciting subversion” for posting
articles in chat rooms critical of the Communist Party. It passes internet traffic through a “Great
Firewall” designed to deny access to such international websites as Wikipedia, Technorati, all
blogs hosted by Blogspot, and many sites maintained by the BBC. It also censors content on
Chinese-based sites dealing with a host of topics, including the religious group Falun Gong, the
1989 Tiananmen incident, corruption among government officials, the independence movement
in Taiwan, a free Tibet, various human rights issues, political incidents, or citizens’ uprisings.

The government justifies its control of the internet -- like its control of all broadcast and print
media -- with familiar broadsweeping rhetoric. Most recently, on the brink of ushering in the Year
of the Rat, the government issued a regulation forbidding online audio or video content "that
damages China's unity and sovereignty, harms ethnic solidarity, promotes superstition, portrays
violence, pornography, gambling or terrorism, violates privacy, damages China's culture or
traditions."
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Most readers of the Western press are aware of efforts by the Chinese government to control
what its people can read and discuss online. Outside observers and human-rights groups monitor
and criticize the government’s actions and publicize the techniques through which technologically
savvy Chinese internet users can work around restrictions. Some analysts also track and interpret
the government’s subtler shifts in balance that seek to encourage internet development while still
exercising control over it.
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Some information on internet control issues makes its way inside China as well, within notice of
ordinary citizens. Online stories may spread like wildfire before they are discovered and removed
by authorities. And an influential and highly informed group of elite Chinese bloggers continues to
test the limits and vigilance of the censors.

Alongside outside criticism and internal pressure for liberalization, other evidence suggests that
many Chinese citizens do not share Western views of the internet. The survey findings discussed
here, drawn from a broad-based sample of urban Chinese internet users and non-users alike,
indicate a degree of comfort and even approval of the notion that the government authorities
should control and manage the content available on the internet.

The Chinese view of the internet environment: unreliable content and risky experiences

Findings from the survey depict mainstream urban Chinese people as holding a negative
impression of many aspects of the online environment, from online content to the effects internet
use can have on life. These include:

Declining trust in reliability of online content. Over four years of tracking user reaction, trust in the
reliability of online content has fallen by one-half, from 52% in 2003 to 26% now.

Only about one-third of internet users (30%) said they considered online content reliable.
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Non-
users were even harsher in this regard with only 18% saying they considered online content
reliable.

When internet users were further queried about their trust in different kinds of online content, they
overwhelmingly said that they trusted information on government websites more than any other
kind of online information. Three-quarters of respondents deemed reliable most or all the
information on government websites, compared with 46% for pages from established media, 28%
for results from search engines, 11% for content on bulletin boards and in advertisements, 4% for
information from individuals’ web pages, and 3% for postings in chat rooms.

In addition, an overwhelming 93% of internet users said they considered much of internet content
to be unsuitable for children.

Worries about the pitfalls of internet use. Internet users thought internet use could lead to several
bad outcomes: About six in ten, 61%, thought internet users could easily become addicted to the
internet, and the same number thought users could easily be affected by online pornography.
More than two-fifths, 43%, said the internet could lure users into making the wrong kind of friends,
and another 42% said internet use easily presented risks to personal or private information.

These negative impressions were significantly stronger among non-users: 72% were concerned
about pornography, 81% about internet addiction, 66% about making the wrong kind of friends,
55% about risks of exposing personal information.

The Chinese solution for internet housekeeping: control and management.

How would the Chinese clean up what they see as a bad online atmosphere? An overwhelming
number of Chinese, almost 84%, agreed that the internet should be controlled or managed, a
response rate that has varied little in the surveys conducted since 2003 by Guo Liang, deputy
director of the Research Center for Social Development, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
But Guo argues that it is particularly significant now because of stepped-up negative coverage of
the internet in the Chinese press, which keeps the topic on the public’s mind.

When asked which online content they thought should be controlled, more internet users targeted
the most offensive or annoying content: 87% of internet users would control or manage
pornography; 86% violent content; 83% spam or junk mail; 66% advertisements; 64% slander
against individuals.

Fewer respondents targeted the very popular but less malicious entertainment and recreation
opportunities. Half of respondents said online games should be controlled, and more than one in
four (27%) said online chatting should be controlled.

The findings for one type of online content -- politics -- may seem more puzzling. Since 2005, the
percentage of users who say that online content about “politics” should be controlled or managed
jumped from 8% to 41%, by far the biggest increase of any items tested.

Guo said that the explanation for this increase probably lies in the spate of widely publicized
incidents of fraud, blackmail, sensationalism, and other abuse of Chinese citizens via the internet.
The Chinese word used for “politics” in this survey, zhengzhi, is not confined simply to political
rights or competition for political control but may be understood to include larger questions of
public morality and social values.

When asked who should be responsible for controlling or managing the internet, more Chinese
identified the government, 85%, than any other entity. In addition, 79% of Chinese said internet
companies should manage or control the internet, just over two-thirds, 68%, identified parents,
64% schools, and 59% internet cafes.

Why are Chinese impressions of the internet so negative and why is government control
the answer?

The negatives: a barrage of worries from the press, particularly about children. Guo Liang, who
authored the 2007 survey report as well as directing the project, has had much international
experience as the Chinese member of the World Internet Project and as a visiting lecturer and
scholar at numerous Western universities and institutions. He writes that during the five years of
surveying internet use in China, “media reports about negative aspects of the internet have
increased both in scope and number.” Indeed, reports linking the internet to unfortunate or
unsavory events abound. Many are personal, heavy with human interest and include names,
hometowns, and photos. Here is a sampling:

- In January, Beijing Today6
reported on a blogger who documented the two-month
evolution of her husband’s affair with a work colleague and her own planned suicide,
before she leaped 24 floors to her death. A curious netizen, as internet users are called in
China, followed blog clues to track down the unfaithful husband and posted excerpts of the blog on a major Chinese portal, causing a firestorm of interest in the blog world and
the philanderer’s company, which promptly suspended the man (and his paramour) from
work.

- Columnist Li Xing describes vicious and often anonymous attacks exploding on the
popular blogs or bulletin boards. Sometimes these attacks are leveled against the
famous, like film star Zhang Ziyi, for allegedly posing nude. Li Xing likens the violent and
vicious postings and their hurtful effects to slanderous posters plastered on walls during
the Cultural Revolution.
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Much of the highest profile press focuses on children and their internet use and abuse. Over half
of all internet users in China are under the age of 25, and 20% are under the age of 18. Many
have parents who are less sophisticated and more wary about computers and the internet than
their children are.

The media, which all operate under direct or indirect state control, warn frequently about internet
addiction when discussing technology’s effects on youth. At the end of 2006, the media reported
that the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League stated that more than 2 million
children and teens were internet addicts. In 2008, the Xinhua news agency reported that 11% of
youth ages 18 to 23 are addicted to the internet.
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Online games are generally considered the
main culprit of addiction, and the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), which has
tracked the online population since 1997, reported in their latest survey in January 2008, that
three-quarter of netizens under the age of 18 have played online games.
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The number of online
gamers reportedly grew 23% in 2007.
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Dramatic stories are recounted in the press, telling of young lives ruined, such as those of An
Zhiban and Zhang Fei, both of whom beat the odds to escape from rural backgrounds to enroll in
China’s prestigious Peking and Tsinghua universities. But then, their internet addiction led to
expulsion, which was followed by rehabilitation and readmission, which then led to relapse and a
second tragic expulsion.
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Other stories detail life in the military-like internet addiction rehabilitation centers, and there are
statistics from the Beijing Reformatory for Juvenile Delinquents claiming that online violence and
pornography influenced criminal behavior in a third of the youthful detainees.

Guo Liang suggested in an interview that stories about children’s internet use, particularly the
heavy use of online entertainment, play easily into Chinese parents’ current worry-scheme at this
particular moment in China’s history. This is a new era of China’s “little emperors” -- the single
children born of the one-child policy that began in the early 1980s. These children, often
portrayed as pudgy, spoiled children over-indulged with Western fast food treats, are the sole
bearers of the burden of hopes and dreams (and future ) of their two parents and four
grandparents. In a culture where education is the key to realizing these hopes and dreams, and
where studies and exams are the determiner of academic opportunity, the allocation of children’s
time is seen as a zero sum calculation: time spent playing on the internet comes at the expense
of time spent on studies.

The perceived inevitability of government control. “Who should control the internet?” Guo Liang
says, is a “typically American question.” When he decided to include the question in his survey,
he knew it was a rhetorical question, and he guessed the answer would be “the government”.

Guo explained that people’s acceptance of government control and management of the internet is
born of the realities of modern Chinese governance and a historical sense in which the state is
assumed to be broadly responsible for social management and public values.

Since the only legitimate source of authority in many aspects of Chinese life is the state, when
Chinese citizens are of the opinion that some aspects of the internet should be controlled, it is
natural for them to assume that the state should take the lead in doing the controlling.

Despite the negatives, staggering increases in the Chinese internet population.

According to CNNIC estimates, there were 137 million Chinese internet users at the end of 2006,
165 million by mid-2007, and a whopping 210 million by the beginning of 2008.
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Why, in a highly-charged negative internet atmosphere, are the numbers of Chinese who are
going online for the first time simply soaring?

The culture of cool. Despite negative press and despite anxieties and fears about dangers
lurking online, Chinese users appreciate the internet for unprecedented opportunities to play and
be entertained with cheap games and movies, and to be in touch via blogs and discussion boards
with trends, movie stars and bands. Non-users, especially young people, pick up cues that they
will be left behind if they don’t get online.

In China, Guo Liang says, internet culture is definitely considered cool. In his survey, more than
80% of Chinese think they might feel out of date or out of touch if they don’t know about the
internet.

The demography of the internet user population plays into this sentiment. It skews heavily toward
young, well-educated, urban, and male, and its new recruits follow this pattern. Computers and
the internet are also seen as a future for many. China claims to turn out more than 350,000
university graduate engineers annually, compared with 134,000 in the United States, although the
validity of this estimate depends on the definition of “engineer” and who is doing the counting.
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The cup is half full, with new information and a chance to speak. Findings in the 2007 survey
show that although only 26% of respondents consider online content to be reliable, about 95% of
Chinese believe they can learn new things by going online.

At academic conferences, professionals relate almost poignant stories of discovery -- of finding
online content from libraries they could never visit, of virtually sharing ideas with colleagues they
would never have met. Lawyers and judges have new access to archives of decisions. Teachers
share resources and lesson plans across great distances.

CNNIC reported that one quarter of Chinese internet users write blogs,
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and many more take
part in online discussions. Although the West may be most familiar with reports about political blogs in China, most Chinese bloggers -- like most American bloggers -- are actually keeping
diaries of personal thoughts or daily lives and writing about hobbies and pets, about entertainers
and pop culture. The internet represents an original chance for ordinary people to be heard or to
connect with others around the country as never before.

Looking to the future, as online commercial ventures proliferate -- more shopping, more services,
more types of transactions -- the internet will undoubtedly attract even more users, and the cup
will become ever more full.

Co-existence of contradictions. Like many things in China, the internet is struggling into existence
in a compromised and often puzzling way. The balance tips back and forth: heavy
pronouncements and regulations by the government, and large-scale disregard by local
“enforcers” and the users, youthful infatuation with entertainment and deep worry from parents,
forces of commerce and exertion of authoritative control, periods of censorship and lulls of calm.
And so on. In such a bumpy landscape, tolerance and even expectation of a controlled and
managed internet should come as no surprise.