In the nation of 1.3 billion people, where the flow of information has been tightly controlled by the ruling Communist Party for 60 years, the Internet has emerged as a primary means for people to vent social and political discontent.

Google this week threatened to halt its operations in China after a series of cyberattacks against the Internet giant, and also said it would no longer filter its Internet search results as required by the Beijing government.

Experts say the authorities are most concerned about the so-called Web 2.0 -- social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, which have been used in other countries to fuel popular protest movements.

"Web 2.0 websites turn around the information flux -- that means the citizen can get information faster than the government," Michael Anti, one of China's most well-known bloggers, told AFP.

"They see Web 2.0 websites as a real threat."

China has employed a virtual army of censors to patrol the Internet for material deemed unhealthy -- a vast system known as the "Great Firewall of China", which most often is used to weed out politically sensitive information.

Last year, it shut down tens of thousands of websites and arrested thousands of people in connection with what it said was an anti-pornography drive.

It also blocked social networking sites -- Google's video-sharing site YouTube in March; Twitter and Facebook in July after unrest in Xinjiang. Citizens can only gain access to such sites by using proxy servers.

In far-western Xinjiang, where nearly 200 people were killed in the worst ethnic violence the country has seen in decades, the Internet was simply shut off. Service was only minimally restored in late December.

"This demonstrates the link the government makes between the Internet and the risk of social unrest," said Renaud de Spens, an expert on the use of new media in China.

According to a recent report released by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), a government think-tank, the subjects most discussed on the Internet last year were "protection of the rights of citizens, supervision of public use of force, preservation of public order and promotion of public morality".

Chinese researchers Zhu Huaxin, Shan Xuegang and Hu Jiangchun -- who contributed to the report -- wrote of the emergence of a "new class of people offering their opinions".

"When a story erupts, this new class shows more and more its immense power over public opinion," the CASS researchers said.

China's 360 million Internet users -- the world's largest online community -- have already exercised their moral authority a few times to positive effect.

Last year, a young woman tried for murdering a local official who she said had tried to force himself on her walked free after web users latched onto her story, decrying what they say was a corrupt and overbearing bureaucracy.

"They (authorities) can control the majority of the population, the majority of Chinese netizens -- most people cannot use VPNs or proxies to get access to free websites," Anti explained.

"But it doesn't work with opinion leaders, like journalists, lawyers, and human rights activists -- it's very easy to run across the Great Firewall to access information."

Internet analyst Jeremy Goldkorn points out that a vast majority of web users are "not really aware of the censorship -- that's why it works so well".

In early December, Public Security Minister Meng Jianzhu said the Internet had become a means for "hostile forces" to spread panic and damage the nation, adding that security forces had to police the net to preserve social stability.

But Beijing faces a huge task -- according to official statistics, the number of web users grew by 40 million in a six-month period last year.

"Censorship will work on some issues, but it will not hold back the wave, and Internet users will test the limits," said de Spens.

"If there are too many fish, they cannot all be drowned."

del.icio.us	Digg	Reddit
YahooMyWeb	Google	Facebook

Memory Foam Mattress Review

SPACE MEDIA NETWORK PROMOTIONS Solar Energy Solutions Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison ... Newsletters :: SpaceDaily :: SpaceWar :: TerraDaily :: Energy Daily XML Feeds :: Space News :: Earth News :: War News :: Solar Energy News