Impact of Media Control in China on U.S. Economy and Security
| June 20, 2008 | ||
| By Du Won Kang/Epoch Times Washington, D.C. Staff | ||
Washington, D.C.–The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) held a hearing on “Access to Information and Media Control in the People’s Republic of China” at Washington, D.C. on June 18. In his opening statement, co-chair of the hearing Larry Wortzel said, “Congress has given our Commission the statutory responsibility to examine the potential effects that restrictions on information in China could have on relations between China and the United States, with a particular eye towards the ways in which such restrictions could impact economic and security policy.” Jeffrey Fiedler, co-chair of the hearing, outlined the main topics of the hearing. He said, “In the lead-up to this year’s Olympics, the Chinese government has made repeated promises of greater press and internet freedom, but there are many discouraging signs that these promises are not being fulfilled.” Chinese communist regime says that economic rights “trump” political rights, according to Dr. Randolph Kluver, Director of the Institute for Pacific Asia, Texas A&M University. When the Chinese communist regime takes a step forward, they make a step backwards, said Lucie Morillon, Washington Representative for Reporters Without Borders. When asked about the breakdown in degree of information across China, Dr. Kluver explained that information discrimination has been in place for decades. High officials and cities like Beijing and Shanghai enjoy much greater information freedom than in poorer and rural areas of the country where most Chinese live, according to Dr. Kluver. Col. Susan Puska (USA-R), Defense Group Inc., said that in the 2002-2003 SARS epidemic, information control by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) contributed to the spread of the disease internationally. On a related topic of the hearing, Jeffrey Fideler said that due to media censorship of broader sources of information in China, “Chinese citizens may develop a distorted view of the world that feeds hostility towards the United States and other countries.” He said, “American companies have played a prominent role in facilitating the government’s construction of this internet control regime.” Dr. Ron Deibert, Director of the Citizen Lab at the Munk Centre for International Studies at University of Toronto, said that China employs extensive, technologically sophisticated, and broadest reach Internet filtering in the world. China employs a combination of technical, legal, and social measures, he said. When asked whether or not U.S. companies are contributing to Internet censorship in China, Xiao Qiang, Director of China Internet Project at University of California-Berkeley, replied that although China now has the capacity to do its own research and development of Internet technologies, they are still learning from the U.S. and that China probably would not be as successful in Internet censorship without the U.S. companies. Dr. Deibert agrees with Qiang. He adds that U.S. companies have been backsliding on voluntary compliance of corporate responsibilities, and it is essential to have independent monitors. Qiang says that self censorship in China tends to be far greater than it needs to be because companies take precautions to not get into trouble with police. But the regime does not care about the users – they only care about “political safety”. Qiang emphasized the enormous scope of information control in China. He explained that every level of China’s government from the top, from provinces and cities, all the way to the township level has a propaganda department that monitors the Internet for its own interests, and that this enormous human monitoring system is a far greater filter of information. On another related topic of the hearing, Jeffrey Fideler said, “… angry, defensive Chinese nationalism on display in the wake of international criticism of the government’s policies in Tibet serve to reveal the negative effects produced by the Chinese government’s pervasive nationalist propaganda directed at its own people.” “War is theoretically a real possibility, and that is why it is important for us to understand the dynamics of Chinese nationalism,” said Dr. Peter Gries, Harold J. & Ruth Newman Chair in US-China Issues at the University of Oklahoma. One reason for caring about human rights in China is that it has implications for U.S. security, said Dr. Perry Link, Professor of East Asian Studies at Princeton University. Larry Wortzel said that the original first reported cable from the U.S. embassy on the Tiananmen Square Massacre has been declassified by the State Department. If you have any doubts about the brutality of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA), then you should see those documents about people being shot and run over by tanks on Tiananmen Square, he said. According to the USCC fact sheet, the purpose of the USCC is “To monitor, investigate, and submit to congress an annual report on the national security implications of the bilateral trade and economic relationship between the United States and the People’s Republic of China, and to provide recommendations, where appropriate, to Congress for legislative and administrative action.” See this link for the USCC website: http://www.uscc.gov/ |
