Fanghong blames middle level government communist party bureaucrats for
the initial decision to exclude her rom the contest. However, who
appointed these folks and gave them power? It should be noted that
publically raising the issue and confronting those in power led to the
Chinese government changing its position.
kelly
the Chicago Tribune
IN CHINA, INTERNET IS OPENING DOORS FOR DISABLED, DISSIDENT
By Liz Sly
Tribune Foreign Correspondent
February 8, 2000
NINGBO, China -- When Chen Fanghong saw that a contest was being held
to find China's first Miss Internet, she entered her name immediately.
Since cancer confined her to a wheelchair three years ago, Chen, 24,
has spent many hours on the Internet, and she figured she had a good
chance.
Though the title suggested otherwise, this contest seemed aimed at
brains rather than physical measurements of beauty. Sponsored by some
leading Web sites and backed by the powerful Ministry of Information
Industries, the goal was to encourage more women to use the Internet.
Contestants were asked to submit photographs, but above all they would
be required to demonstrate skill in navigating the World Wide Web.
What happened next underlines how new technologies are changing rules
in China, and not simply by speeding communications or enhancing
efficiency. The Internet is creating a whole new dimension; a forum
for debate and interaction for people who otherwise would have no
voice.
Chen easily made it through the qualifying rounds, scoring perfect
marks at each stage. But when it came to attending the final in
Shanghai, an event that was to be broadcast live on the Internet as
well as television, the organizers balked.
It wouldn't be possible for Chen to participate, one official
explained, because the competition would require contestants to parade
down a catwalk, something the wheelchair-bound Chen couldn't do.
Chen was dismayed, and angry. She posted a letter on her personal Web
site, reflecting the hurt she felt at being rejected. "The Internet is
the Internet. It is not a substitute for the real world," she wrote
bitterly. "I thought I could walk into the real world through the
Internet, but I found that the door to the real world was shut."
A local newspaper printed the letter, and an Internet campaign began.
Her Web site and the sponsoring Web sites were swamped with e-mails
expressing support for her candidacy.
The organizers backed down, and Chen went to Shanghai. She rolled down
the catwalk in her wheelchair. She also gave precise and insightful
answers to questions on Internet issues. When the judges, representing
China's leading Internet companies, added up the participants' scores,
Chen was the winner.
"Justice was done," said Ruby Yu, one of the judges and general
manager of Zhaodaola, a popular portal. "I personally would have liked
to see the number two win, but Miss Chen was more mature, and she won
the highest marks. This is the Internet. It shouldn't matter whether
someone is disabled or not."
Chen's story illustrates just one of the many small ways in which the
Internet promises to change China by empowering individuals to
circumvent the arbitrary constraints of officialdom.
In Chen's instance, the reluctance of junior organizers to allow her
to participate was not a reflection of overall government policy, she
is anxious to emphasize. "It wasn't because of high-level officials,"
she said. "It was because of some individuals who had a problem with
their attitude."
But the message to authority, at whatever level, is clear: the
Internet is changing the rules for all governments who seek to keep
their citizens in the dark.
"It has changed my life," said Chen in an interview in the eastern
port city of Ningbo, where she lives with her parents. "And it will
change the whole of society because it provides a completely new
platform for ordinary people to express their views. And in China,
that has a very special significance."
China's government is acutely aware of how special that significance
is. Last month it announced new rules that will apply to Internet
users the draconian and arbitrary state secrecy laws used to lock away
political opponents and curb free expression in other media. In
principle, any information broadcast on the Internet that has not
previously been approved for publication will be banned, and violators
can expect to face "severe punishment," the rules warn.
In practice, the rules are likely to prove impossible to enforce. They
coincide with figures showing that Internet use in China has more than
doubled in the past year, to 8.9 million people. It is projected 14
million will be connected by 2001, but already the number of users has
surpassed earlier forecasts.
Yet those online represent a tiny fraction of China's 1.2 billion
people, a privileged elite of city dwellers who are wealthy enough to
buy computers and well-educated enough to make use of them.
The only daughter of two university professors, Chen fits the profile.
A chemical engineer, she had been looking forward to a career in
research before her cancer forced her to undergo surgery to remove
portions of her pelvic bone.
The Internet has thrown her a lifeline by linking her to an outside
world almost completely inaccessible from her 4th-floor apartment in a
building without an elevator. Her newest e-mail friend is Sang Lan,
the Chinese gymnast paralyzed during an accident in New York last
year, who now lives in Beijing.
Even though Chen's illness makes her situation special, her seclusion
symbolizes the broader social isolation that characterizes life for
millions of Chinese people. Communist Party structures still dictate
where most citizens live and work, with whom they interact, what news
they read and what views they hold.
Market reforms are eroding that control, but the lack of affordable
private housing and the absence of non-party-approved civic or social
structures mean that most people still lead relatively insular lives,
their horizons defined by their jobs and by the street committees that
continue to hold political "education" sessions.
That is where the Internet can be expected to make a big difference,
analysts believe; by opening minds that had been closed, by creating
choices where none existed before, by linking people whose paths
otherwise might never cross and in providing forums for discussion in
a society accustomed to being told what to think.
"You're talking about the difference between zero information and some
information," said Duncan Clark, a Beijing-based Internet consultant.
"You can't measure it. All this time, Chinese people have been told:
this is how it is. They're starved for information. They're hungry."
Despite privatization of many sectors of the economy, newspapers and
television stations remain under strict party control. They continue
to disseminate a diet of stodgy party rhetoric.
Some newspapers have become bolder, publishing lifestyle stories and
exposing cases of official corruption, but they can be closed or
disciplined whenever the political climate changes. It is not only the
Internet that is being targeted. The government has announced plans to
shut 200 newspapers this year for violating "rules."
The Internet is far less easily policed, although the government has
been trying. Web sites are not allowed to hire their own reporters and
are only permitted to post government-sanctioned news sources. Chat
rooms and e-mail are monitored. Access is blocked when it comes to
sensitive sites including The New York Times and CNN, as well as those
relating to Tibet, Taiwan or political dissent.
But even China's police can't monitor millions of e-mails every day.
And chat rooms, despite monitoring, provide a platform for users to
air views and tell stories that otherwise wouldn't have been told at
all, no matter how innocent.
"Things have already changed. Look at me. Nobody stops me doing the
things I do now, things I wasn't allowed to do in the past," says
Chen, who has learned to understand some English from watching ABC
News broadcasts on the Internet. "Maybe in the past the government
could control it. But not now."
She refused to comment on the new regulations, which will make users
as well as commercial sites liable for the dissemination of
unauthorized material.
But the Internet's potential to serve as an informal parliament of the
people already has begun to show. Rumors of corruption scandals that
would never be reported in official newspapers have surfaced on the
Web, including one brewing now on a customs scam in the southern city
of Xiamen.
Last spring, an Internet campaign forced the state telecommunications
monopoly to slash subscription prices after users threatened a
boycott. It is now possible to access the Internet for the cost of a
local phone call.
The banned Falun Gong sect used the Internet to mobilize supporters
across the country, illustrating the medium's potential as a weapon
against the government.
The majority of Chinese Web surfers have so far demonstrated little
inclination to use the Internet for political purposes. Most forums
focus on subjects such as fashion, sports, the black-market rate of
the U.S. dollar and how to attract members of the opposite sex.
As a window to the world, the Internet's influence is relatively
limited. Few Chinese speak enough English to understand foreign news
sources, and even the most sophisticated "Web worms"--as China's
Internet surfers are called--seem unaware that they can't access
sensitive sites, apparently because they haven't tried.
Chen can't read English, so she hasn't tried to access foreign
newspapers. She is not interested in Taiwan or Tibet. These days, she
devotes most of her time to setting up a Web site that will give
Chinese suffering from serious illnesses the chance to consult with
specialist doctors. She also maintains a site dedicated to
Western-style opera, one of her passions, and something that has had
little exposure in China.
Even though such sites have no political ramifications, they are
opening doors, says Charles Zhang, a U.S.-educated entrepreneur and
founder of Sohu, one of China's first Internet portals.
"All this access to new sources of information is making people more
sophisticated, and also more independent minded, not so easily
polarized to one direction of thinking," he said. "That's what the
information revolution is bringing to China: It's raising the national
IQ."
Chen goes further than that. "A new era is coming to China," she says.
"It will change people's values, people's civilization. The government
is going to have to adjust its policies."
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