Shanghai

Music

00:00

MCDONELL: Shanghai is the jewel in the crown of a decade of Chinese economic growth.

00:24

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00:29

MCDONELL: It’s a slick, outward looking city.

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00:36

MCDONELL:  If it was the only place you visited in China, you could easily believe that this country has always embraced an open modern outlook – but that’s not the case.

00:42

ISAAC MAO: They know they cannot control it totally, so they are trying

01:00

Isaac

to slow it down, trying to put more barriers to get the mass audience to know the truth.

01:05

Shanghai

Music

01:13

Isaac Mao in taxi around Shanghai

MCDONELL: Isaac Mao is a young venture capitalist. He invests other people’s money in new technologies. It’s a high risk, high return business. At thirty-six he’s already an old hand.

01:20

ISAAC MAO: I think I may be one of the earliest bloggers in China

01:39

Isaac Mao. Super: 
Isaac Mao
Blogger

because I have tried many ways to find some other peers at that moment in year 2002, but I didn’t find so many of them. Only a few people could be seen as bloggers at that moment.

01:43

Shanghai

MCDONELL: By the end of 2002, Chinese bloggers were still in their hundreds and Isaac Mao knew most of them, but the last six years have seen a massive change.

ISAAC MAO: There’s really a dramatic boom in China for blogs here

01:57

Isaac walks on street

because we can say that there are already sixty million bloggers now and it’s impossible that you know every one of them.

MCDONELL: The Chinese Government

02:21

has responded to this boom in potentially disruptive internet chatter with heavy-handed censorship.

ISAAC MAO: I think it’s a game -

02:32

Isaac and McDonell on street

like a cat and mouse, you know - because people always trying to be more free, freer to access information.

MCDONELL: People are the mouse and the government’s the cat?

ISAAC MAO: And the government always wants to try to act like the cat, you know, to control and to limit people’s access to the whole world of information. But I think the mouse is running faster.

02:41

Shanghai/ Internet sites

Music

03:07

MCDONELL: Until recently Chinese people have been denied access to famous websites like You Tube, Flickr and the BBC.

03:11

Internet sites

In the run up to the Olympics they’ve been given access to certain pages on these sites but not those revealing information on Tibet or Taiwan. The online encyclopaedia, Wikipedia, is usually completely blocked.

03:22

Isaac and McDonell in café with laptop

ISAAC MAO: If you really count the number of websites here that have been blocked, it’s a long list.

03:38

Especially those grass root publishing websites, you know. They are strongly forbidden here.

03:46

MCDONELL: Let’s have a look at one of them. What happens if you try and type in Wikipedia?

03:52

ISAAC MAO: Yeah your browser will suddenly get cut off for minutes. It just shows a disrupted connection here, but actually you know from a technical perspective you can know that it’s someone monitoring the traffic of all your access.

03:56

Hong Kong

Music

04:15

MCDONELL: Hong Kong is officially part of China, but the former British colony enjoys extra freedoms. When Chinese people visit here from the mainland,

04:24

Internet users

they get to see what the internet is really like, because they’ve crossed what’s called the Great Firewall of China.

04:39

Mackinnon. Super:
Rebecca Mackinnon
University of Hong Kong

REBECCA MACKINNON: [University of Hong Kong] It’s blocking websites that are hosted on computers outside of China, so that people inside China cannot see them.

04:49

Mackinnon walks on street

Music

04:59

MCDONELL: Rebecca Mackinnon is a Hong Kong based academic who grew up in Beijing. She’s one of the leading experts on Chinese internet censorship.

05:04

REBECCA MACKINNON: The way it works is that the internet enters China

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Mackinnon

at about nine points -- eight or nine points -- and then that enters the national network. And so there are routers that control access

05:17

Internet diagram

to the international internet and through those routers you have a filtering system so the routers are configured to block certain words, certain kinds of content, certain web addresses and so on.

05:28

Mackinnon in café on laptop writing blog

MCDONELL: When she’s writing her own blog, Rebecca Mackinnon also documents the censoring of material which is generated inside China.

05:46

REBECCA MACKINNON: And it’s actually very rare that somebody gets a knock on the door as a result of something they wrote on a website in a blog. I mean extremely rare. You can count those cases on you know a couple of hands practically.

05:59

Hong Kong internet users

There certainly is surveillance, there certainly are Internet police and there certainly are people whose job it is, who work in the public security apparatus, to track speech on the internet, but when it comes to most Internet users, their speech is actually being controlled by private businesses.

06:12

McDonell with Mackinnon at computer

MCDONELL: The companies which host Chinese blogs are held responsible for their contents so if a taboo subject is mentioned, the hosting company will often send a polite message suggesting that by changing their words, the blogger can have their article posted.

06:41

McDonell:  So clearly anything about the Olympics

06:59

is a little bit sensitive?

REBECCA MACKINNON: Anything about the Olympics is going to cause the post to get flagged or to get checked before it can get published. Anything about the Olympics has a much higher chance of getting taken down.

07:01

Google office in Beijing

MCDONELL: Multinational companies are also by their own admission, censoring the internet in China. Google has set up a special Google China, which blocks searches on human rights or Tibetan independence.

07:17

Yahoo site on monitor/ Photo Shi Tao

Yahoo has come in for particular criticism. It helped the Chinese authorities track down a journalist named Shi Tao who’s now been jailed.

07:33

Congressional hearing

For this, the company’s executives were called before a US Congressional Committee last year.

TOM LANTOS: [US Congressional Foreign Affairs Committee] If you think our witnesses today are uncomfortable sitting in this climate controlled room,

07:51

Lantos. Super: 
Tom Lantos
Congressional Foreign Affairs Committee

and accounting for their company’s spineless and irresponsible actions, imagine how life is for Shi Tao, spending ten long years in a Chinese dungeon for exchanging information publicly.

08:05

Photos. Shi Tao

MCDONELL: Shi Tao was a business journalist who thought it was safe to use his Yahoo email account. He sent notes to a foreign pro-democracy group about Government orders banning reporting on the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown.

08:25

Congressional hearing

YAHOO LAWYER: My understanding that failure by the Yahoo China operation in Beijing to comply with these lawful orders…

08:41

MCDONELL: To the Chinese Government, this amounted to divulging state secrets. They asked Yahoo for his details and the company passed them on.

08:47

Lantos

TOM LANTOS: Why do you insist on repeating the phrase “lawful orders”? These were demands by a police state to make of an American company a co-conspirator in having a freedom loving Chinese journalist put in prison.

08:57

Yang at Congressional hearing. Super:
Jerry Yang
CEO, Yahoo

JERRY YANG: [CEO, Yahoo] I want to take a moment to recognise the family of the dissidents who sit behind me and I want to say that we’re committed to do what we can to secure their freedom, and I want to personally apologise to them for what they and their family are going through. I’m very open to understanding how we can be helpful.

09:17

BRAD SHERMAN: [US Congressman] I told you how you can be helpful. You can meet their humanitarian

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Sherman

needs. Sir give me a yes or no. Are you going to do it or are you not going to do it?

JERRY YANG: I’m willing to consider

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Yang

it Mr Congressman.

BRAD SHERMAN: You’re willing to consider it. That’s….

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Sherman

that’s a no by any other standard.

09:51

Photo. Shi Tao’s family at  hearing

MCDONELL: Yahoo has now paid Shi Tao’s family an undisclosed amount of money.

REBECCA MACKINNON: It sends a message

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Mackinnon

that it’s okay to have a certain amount of human collateral damage for the sake

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Internet users

of the long-term business success. There’s really no way you can provide an email service hosted on computers inside China and not end up assisting with the jailing of dissidents.

10:08

Mackinnon

It’s almost… I think it’s impossible.

10:20

Snowy North Village

Music

10:22

Zhang Shihe rides his bike through the snow

MCDONELL: The jailing of some cyber dissidents has not stopped others from trying to push out the boundaries. Zhang Shihe is a self-educated guerrilla journalist who travels to isolated areas like the villages in northern Xianxi, by the crumbling remnants of the Great Wall.

10:36

In cyber space he goes by the name “Tiger Temple” or “Laohu Miao“. He documents the lives of poor rural workers and stays out of major trouble by knowing just how far he can go.

10:02

Zhang Shihe arrives at the family house

He’s written about the plight of people in Yanchangbao before. Now they view him as their champion.

11:30

ZHANG SHIHE: When I write my blog, I rely on my instinct. Am I telling truth or lies?

11:39

Zhang Shihe filming sheep

Am I attacking something or am I trying to help improve the situation? I know if I can control this I’ll be fine.

11:47

Zhang Shihe

If I’m thrown in jail or something I don’t really care, because I’m not wrong.

12:00

McDonell walks with villager to well

MCDONELL: What drew Zhang here was the foul smelling water which first appeared around these farmers’ homes a few years ago. Villagers have lived here on the outskirts of nowhere because they could get something to drink. Yet despite the winter snow, life still evolves around the precious commodity of water.

12:16

ZHANG SHIHE: When I reached the village the situation I saw shocked me.

12:50

Zhang Shihe

A city which is about seven kilometres away dumped waste here without any processing.

12:57

Shi Sheng Huo

SHI SHENG HUO: The water is coming from everywhere. It’s dead water, dirty water, all coming to our area! The polluted water went through the ground, into our well. The well is our drinking water. If we drink that dirty water we will die. Every time people drink the water they get stomach ache. What can we do?

13:11

Village in snow

MCDONELL: Life here’s pretty hard, especially in the winter months. It’s been made even harder by water pollution so these villagers are happy that Zhang Shihe has come along because now somebody has given them a platform to air their grievances.

13:43

Zhang with teenager at laptop in village

Zhang’s blog is full of stories about China’s underclass, along with photos and video footage. When people accuse local officials of corruption, he’s prepared to report it.

13:59

Shi Sheng Huo

SHI SHENG HUO: The government is mean and dirty. It is worse than… a beast. The official came here to talk to me. He told me I made him feel sick, and said “how come you are that dirty?” I am dirty because I am poor! If I were not poor, I would not be dirty.

14:14

Snow/ Shi Sheng Huo digs

Music

14:36

MCDONELL: Shi Sheng Huo was born into a tough landscape. After seventy years living in a sometimes frozen desert, you don’t complain easily. He wanted us to see the evidence of what he was talking about.

14:55

McDonell and Zhange with Shi Sheng Huo

MCDONELL:  Hello Grandpa Shi, what have you found?

SHI SHENG HUO: Ah, this is it.

15:20

ZHANG SHIHE: This is from the pollution – waste water from the nearby city.

SHI SHENG HUO: Dirty water… dead water.

15:27

MCDONELL: Is it pollution from human beings?

ZHANG SHIHE: Right, right… human beings’ shit… and water from washing clothes.

SHI SHENG HUO: The water stinks. We have to drink this water!

15:36

MCDONELL: When you live a great distance from people of influence, it’s easy for your complaints to be lost in the wind and Shi has a particular reason for his grievances to be heard.

15:47

Shi Sheng Huo

SHI SHENG HUO: The polluted water is poisonous. A lot of animals died after drinking the water. My poor wife, eating at the table suddenly got a bad stomach ache and died immediately. I think it was the polluted water that killed her.

16:03

Sheep herding

MCDONELL: Zhang’s articles about these Xianxi farmers have not been censored but he’s not always that lucky.

MCDONELL:  Have any of your articles been blocked?

16:29

ZHANG SHIHE: Yes.

MCDONELL: On what subjects?

ZHANG SHIHE: I can’t remember the titles but they were about the Olympics and the environment.

16:43

Zhang Shihe

MCDONNELL: Any others?

ZHANG SHIHE: The stories about people who’ve died from mining.

16:59

Zhang at laptop

17:06

MCDONELL: In Chinese blogger speak, when Zhang’s writing goes too far, he’s been “harmonised”. This is a play on words, using the Chinese Government’s catchcry of promoting a harmonious society, yet he hopes the authorities will see what he’s doing in a positive light.

17:09

ZHANG SHIHE: I am the son of an old Communist Party member. My father was from this area, the north of Xianxi. He joined the Communist Party in the 1930s. So what am I doing? I just want to see how people live. Is this wrong? I don’t think so.

17:29

Market/Shanghai day to night

Music

17:44

Isaac and men in club

MCDONELL: Many Chinese internet users trust that if their Government is blocking sites it must have good reasons. Others are using special tools like a proxy server to get around the great firewall. For Isaac Mao, all this is stifling his country’s economy.

18:11

Shanghai

ISAAC MAO: If you’ve never been to China, you won’t realise that the censorship is everywhere but to Chinese people they will face such problems every day.

18:37

Music

18:44

Internet users

MCDONELL: But in China, some things are still more important than the economy.

REBECCA MACKINNON: The Chinese Government’s goal is not to control 100% of what people are doing 100% of the time.

18:51

Mackinnon

The Communist Party however does want to remain in power and so in order to remain in power, they want to prevent certain kinds of conversations and certain kinds of uses of the internet that might lead to people organising to overthrow the Communist Party.

19:09

Shanghai

In 1978, Deng Xiaoping said “You open the window and some flies are going to come in”, and that’s inevitable but the main thing is we have to open the window, or we’re going to die of suffocation.

19:32

Reporter: Stephen McDonell

Camera: Rob Hill

Editor:  Bryan Milliss

Producers: Vivien Altman, Charles Li

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