Censorship in China
- Overview
- Business standards in china
- Working toward solutions
- US Companies implicated and their responses
- Take action
- Additional Resources
Hong Kong Democratic Party activists shout slogans and hold a banner, as they prepare to hand in a petition to the Hong Kong Yahoo! office's representative. They condemned the company for passing on information that led to the jailing of Shi Tao, a journalist in China – jailed for 10 years for "illegally divulging state secrets abroad." PHOTO © AFP
Overview
As China's burgeoning economy grows and with its admission in December 2001 to the World Trade Organization (WTO), foreign ownership, investment and involvement of foreign companies in China's information and telecommunications industries has soared. This growth is not without complications. In China, Amnesty International is concerned that in their pursuit of new and lucrative markets, foreign corporations may be directly or indirectly contributing to human rights violations or at the very least failing to give adequate consideration to the human rights implications of their investments. Of particular concern are abuses of the right to freedom of expression and information. More recently concerns tied to privacy issues have also arisen.
Amnesty International first reported on the issue of freedom of expression and information in November 2002. In the report State control of the Internet in China, Amnesty cited several foreign companies - Cisco Systems, Microsoft, Nortel Networks, Websense and Sun Microsystems - which had reportedly provided technology used to censor and control the use of the Internet in China. Following the publication of the report, several companies dismissed allegations that their company's actions might be contributing to human rights violations in China. Cisco Systems denied that the company tailors its products for the Chinese market, saying that "[I]f the government of China wants to monitor the Internet, that's their business. We are basically politically neutral." Microsoft said it "focused on delivering the best technology to people throughout the world", but that it "cannot control the way it may ultimately be used."
Amnesty International considers such responses to be inadequate, and in January 2004 released an updated a Controls tighten as Internet activism grows, which indicated that there was a dramatic rise in the number of people detained or sentenced for Internet-related offences, an increase of 60 per cent in 2003 as compared to the previous year's figures. In addition, an unknown number of people remained in detention for disseminating information about the spread of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) over the Internet. Nearly all of the individuals cited in the 2004 report are still considered to be prisoners of conscience. Many have been denied due process and some have been tortured or ill-treated in custody.
In July 2006, Amnesty published further research on the role of US Internet companies in the report, Undermining of Freedom of Expression in China. The report focuses on Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google's cooperation with the Chinese government's censorship of search engines and email, web and blog content. Amnesty International is further concerned that Chinese Internet service providing companies, including Baidu, Sina and Sohu, are complying with Chinese government requests and demands to censor content online and otherwise repress the rights to freedom of expression and privacy.
