Last updated Thursday, Jan. 01 2015, 5:59 PM EST
China, the country that perfected breaking the Internet, has of late been on a campaign to convince the rest of the world that its approach to digital networks is worth spreading. (Sim Chi Yin For The Globe and Mail)
It has been the strangest kind of charm offensive.
China, the country that perfected breaking the Internet, has of late been on a campaign to convince the rest of the world that its approach to digital networks is worth spreading. It’s an effort led by Lu Wei, the man whose chief responsibilities include overseeing the Great Firewall of China, whose heavy veil of censorship is responsible for the damage China has done to the Internet inside its borders.
In November, Mr. Lu was among the headline speakers at China’s first-ever World Internet Conference, which featured corporate guests from around the globe. In December, he flew to Silicon Valley and visited Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook and Jeff Bezos. He appeared at a Washington Internet forum co-hosted by Microsoft and attended by senior U.S. officials. A few days later, he published an article in the Huffington Post that, in a tidy 1,397 words, laid out China’s vision for what the Internet should look like.
It’s a dramatic change from China’s historically favoured way of expressing its Internet views: the silent display of error messages instead of websites it doesn’t like, the deletion of social media posts it considers improper and the banning of foreign companies that won’t toe its line. The latest appears to be Google, whose search and Gmail products have been largely blocked since late spring.
But Mr. Lu, who leads the Cyberspace Administration of China, is on a new mission to convert others to his vision of how the Internet should be run: that digital networks should not allow the unimpeded flow of information, but should instead fall under the “cybersovereignty” of individual nations.
The Internet should be “free and open, with rules to follow and always following the rule of law,” he said, in somewhat contradictory fashion, at the November conference. Asked whether he would consider allowing Facebook in, he was more direct: “I can choose who will be a guest in my home.” He wants others to assert the same power.
It’s a controversial notion, since China has used its control of the Internet to silence dissent, spread propaganda and delete chapters of history . It has also exported its firewall technology to others, notably to African regimes looking for their own god-like powers over online content.
Mr. Lu’s charm offensive suggests the rest of the world must prepare for a more concerted effort by China to export its Internet governance model as well. In a recent column in state media, Fang Xingdong noted that China increasingly has the “hard power” to exert its will.
“China boasts the largest number of Internet users and also world famous companies like Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu. The Chinese market will be critical in reshaping the cyberlandscape in the next decade,” wrote Mr. Fang, director of the Centre for Internet and Society at Zhejiang University of Media and Communications.
