China’s Net watchdogs: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

WITH the number of users in China soaring to 80 million, the Internet has become an increasingly influential court of appeal.

Internet watchdogs sink their teeth into cases of real or perceived wrongs by the government, foreigners and the rich, and will not let go until forced to do so or when justice is obtained.

This has been good, bad and, in a high-profile case that concluded last week, just plain ugly.

On March 17 last year, police detained Mr Sun Zhigang, a college graduate from Hubei province who had been working in the southern city of Guangzhou, for failing to show a temporary residence permit.

He was sent to a custody and repatriation centre, where he died three days later from police brutality.

Outrage on the Internet over his death prompted the government to abolish a decade-old regulation to repatriate vagabonds back to their home provinces.

This protest was followed by an affair involving one Ms Liu Di, a 23-year-old college student. Known online as the Stainless Steel Mouse, she had allegedly posted, in an Internet chat room, messages that urged fellow Internet users to 'ignore the Chinese regime's propaganda' and 'live in full freedom'.

She was detained for one year on suspicion of 'endangering state security'. However, online petitions and international pressure secured her release last November.

In these two cases, China's Net citizens were good watchdogs protesting political oppression, injustice and unfair practices.

The government's reaction gives people hope that China, under the new leadership of President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao, will move towards political reform and democratisation.

For the Communist Party, however, fear of political dissent is deep-rooted. China's cyber police, keenly aware of the Internet's power, are determined to keep the Internet watchdogs on a short leash.

According to a report released by Amnesty International, the government is holding at least 54 people in jail on Web-related subversion charges.

The government recently issued a document announcing its intention to battle spam, which often includes e-mailed political criticism. It also launched a major crackdown on Internet news discussion groups, the most vibrant parts of the Internet.

The new rules ban independent reporting not approved by the government, discussion of issues deemed sensitive, and Web postings that challenge the Communist Party.

When public anger is not directed at the government or the party, Internet watchdogs have been allowed to chase would-be intruders. A good example was the incident of several hundred Japanese tourists engaging in a sex orgy in the southern city of Zhuhai last September.

Many people were convinced the Japanese wanted to humiliate the Chinese intentionally by hiring several hundred local prostitutes to pleasure them in a hotel during a sensitive war-time anniversary.

Condemnation of the Japanese in Internet forums fuelled a new wave of anti-Japanese sentiment throughout the nation. People were so outraged someone went so far as to suggest Chinese men organise a trip to Japan to hire Japanese prostitutes.

Under the pressure of this popular nationalism, the government swiftly indicted a dozen Chinese people who helped organise the sex orgy. The hotel was closed for internal review.

While this anti-Japanese sentiment was still high, an art performance put on by several Japanese students and a Japanese teacher at Northwest University in Xian was interpreted as intentionally humiliating the Chinese.

The next day, several thousand Chinese students gathered in front of the university's foreign student dormitory to demand an apology from the Japanese students. During the confrontation, angry demonstrators reportedly injured several female Japanese students who had nothing to do with the performance in question.

The Internet thus served as an effective tool to express resentment against the Japanese tourists. And in the end, the culpable Japanese students were expelled.

However, no one was charged with assaulting the innocent Japanese females. In other words, the Internet watchdogs were so overcome by anti-Japanese sentiments and popular nationalism they let emotion overtake their vigilance.

More recently, the Internet watchdogs have had a new cause - a fatal traffic incident known as the BMW case.

Last October, farmer Liu Zhongxia, driving her husband's tractor loaded with green onions, accidentally scraped a BMW parked in a narrow street in Harbin in north-east China's Heilongjiang province.

After an argument, the driver of the BMW, Ms Su Xiuwen, got back into her car and was supposed to back away. However, the car moved forwards, killing Mrs Liu and injuring several others before it crashed into a tree.

In a court hearing in December, Mrs Liu's death was ruled an accident. Ms Su, who happens to be the wife of a rich businessman, received a suspended sentence.

Normally, a story like this would have ended there. Last year, more than 104,000 people were killed in traffic accidents in China.

However, the BMW story attracted a huge amount of attention after it was posted in Internet forums.

In a society with sharp class resentment and a widening gap between rich and poor, the rich wife's BMW and the farmer's tractor became symbols of the haves and the have-nots. Most people accused the rich and powerful of trampling on the underprivileged.

A spate of stories in the media further fuelled the Internet watchdogs' anger. Some stories speculated that Ms Su was the daughter-in-law of a high-ranking local official, implying that her family had used its connections to get her off lightly.

The speculation was later denied by the BMW driver's husband and refuted by the official, but snarls erupted in Internet chat rooms.

In an Internet forum hosted by China's official English newspaper, China Daily, for example, someone commented on Ms Su: 'If she is shot, she would be considered lucky for a criminal like herself. She should definitely be tortured to death, when she thinks she can kill anyone she wants to.'

Another wrote: 'Definitely death penalty in front of the public.'

Yet another commented: 'I wonder how this sort of scum gets to be wrapped in a BMW. The only thing they deserve is to be naked like an animal in a labour camp.'

Although online scrutiny has pushed the boundary of free speech and forced greater government responsibility, it also has its limitations. These are particularly evident in instances like the BMW case, where fact and rumour are mixed like water and dirt in Internet forums.

Nevertheless, one good thing has emerged from this muddy scene. With so much pressure from the masses, Heilongjiang's political and judicial organs re-investigated whether there was any judicial corruption in the BMW case and concluded last week there was none.

News of the panel's decision passed quietly in China on Monday.

The most important thing was that the court conducted the investigation free from outside pressure, be it popular will, power or money.

At the same time, China's Net citizens, if they want judicial independence and genuine rule of law in China, must refrain from taking justice into their own hands or imposing undue influence on the judiciary. They must let the courts do their job.

As for the government, it's time to allow more sensitive issues billing in the media and over the Internet.