The Chinese government is trying to force makers of personal computers to provide censorship software with every PC sold in the country from next month.
The move is being presented as an attempt to protect children from online pornography but is raising suspicion that Beijing could be trying to take its internet censorship to a new level. In recent weeks, China blocked access to many websites, including Hotmail and Twitter, ahead of the 20th anniversary of the suppression of the Tiananmen Square protests.
In a notice to PC makers, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said all PCs shipped in China needed to offer Green Dam/Youth Escort, identified as a “green internet filtering software”, either pre-installed or as part of basic software packages.
“We are aware of this policy,” said Sharon Zhang, a Dell spokeswoman in China. “Along with the rest of the industry and relevant trade associations, we are studying it and working with relevant government and other parties to seek clarifications.”
The notice is an attempt to push through a policy decided more than a year ago but delayed partly because of resistance from PC makers. In May 2008, the government picked Jinhui Technology and Dazheng Language Technology, two Chinese software companies, in a Rmb41m ($6m, €4.3m, £3.8m) tender to develop the software, according to a contract award notice from the MIIT.
All new computers sold in China were then due to be packaged with Green Dam software but this was delayed as PC makers demanded longer testing periods, said Bryan Zhan, Jinhui chief executive.
Last month the government required all primary and middle schools to install the software.
PCs also have to be bundled with Green Dam software to be eligible for the government’s subsidy programme for computers for rural households.
Mr Zhan rejected the idea that Green Dam could be used for anything other than blocking pornography. He insisted his company’s product worked through a picture recognition mechanism. However, an engineer at a PC company said he could not exclude the possibility that the software could also be used to block content or websites considered politically subversive by the Chinese government.
China has the world’s largest internet population with about 300m users. But Beijing censors the internet widely by blocking entire websites, forcing hosts to censor content and using paid bloggers who speak up for the government.
The existence of these activities often discredits Beijing’s attempts to protect under-age web users from non-political harmful content.
Rebecca McKinnon, an internet expert at the University of Hong Kong, said China stood out for the scale and lack of transparency of its filtering. “But the whole argument about civil liberties versus ‘protecting our children’ is universal and very much unresolved around the globe, even in the most ostensibly liberal and democratic societies,” she said in a blog.
“Companies are going to need to come up with globally consistent strategies to deal with government demands for censorship, from China to Australia . . . and everywhere in between.”
