Such is the hunger for information and debate on the web that news providers and commentators find ways to circumvent restrictions on sensitive material. Companies such as Microsoft help the authorities block sensitive words, but bloggers and forum commentators quickly introduce slang terms to get around these walls. Some use initials, others mix English and Chinese, still more add a space or exclamation mark in the middle of a sensitive word. "When the government bans something, it just makes me want to know more about it," said the blogger, Laoyang.
There are many restrictions on online chat. Controversial blogs are shut down, and chatroom moderators kick out participants who post comments likely to antagonise the Communist party.
But no restriction is entirely effective. Despite Google’s self-censorship, a search for "Tiananmen Square" on its China-based search engine produces several articles and pictures of the 1989 protests on the first page of results. Part of the challenge for the authorities is volume. The number of internet users in China has surged from 620,000 in 1997 to 110 million. It is estimated that there are between 5m and 10m blogs. Censors say they have had to change tactics.
"It is becoming more difficult to block and monitor web traffic so we need to switch to guidance," said an official responsible for internet surveillance. "Strict management didn’t work. It is like trying to control a flood. Guiding is more effective than blocking."
This slang-word work-around is believable given earlier revelations about misspelled words getting through Google's censorship filters.
McQ sums up with this:
China is one of the most pragmatic nations on earth and is trying very hard, at the moment, to control the change which seems inexorable. As you can see, given the switch in tactics from censorship to guidance, it has all but given up the idea it can "control minds". Access to outside information and the inability of the government to completely control that access dooms such control to failure. So now it is left with attempting to "win the battle for ideas". It will attempt that by guiding searchers to approved web sites and shutting down those websites which contain ideas contrary to those the government espouses.
But you do the math. 110,000,000 internet users (which, btw, is growing constantly) and 30,000 internet police. The trickle is turning into a flood, and the flood will eventually overwhelm the effort to police the net.
He makes a persuasive argument. Personally, I'm still more than a little uncomfortable with companies like Google getting in bed with commie censorship, but I'm willing to admit that I may have been wrong about this all along. Maybe Google's move into China will bring about positive change in that country.
I'm still not convinced, but we can hope.