Bloggers Cause Headaches for the Tyrants of Beijing

If there's one thing that a tyrant cannot have, it is the free flow of information. All successful tyrannies need to control information flow. Nazi Germany was expert at this. Of course, they didn't have the internet to deal with.

China, after decades of near total control over communication is suddenly finding itself overwhelmed by the massive quantities of information exchange afforded by the internet. And this is a good thing.

Some years after their American counterpart Matt Drudge shook up the US media in the Monica Lewinsky affair, Chinese bloggers are starting to have an impact on their country's conventional print and broadcast media, all tightly controlled by the Communist Party's propaganda department.

Although the party and police this year tightened their licensing regime and keyword filtering mechanisms on internet services, particularly news websites and search engines, the free spirits of the largely amateur, non-commercial blogosphere are slipping around the so-called Great Firewall of China and setting the news agenda.

A harsher crackdown may be in the offing, but for now authorities seem caught between two policies: clamping down on political dissent, and hothousing the development of internet businesses and electronic commerce.

I for one hope that bloggers will continue to get true public-interest stories out and that the People will, in turn, cast off the chains of servitude so carefully forged all these years by the tyrants of Beijing.

posted by The Sovereign Editor | 7:55 PM

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