U.S. Boosts Web Freedom Efforts in China, Iran

By LORETTA CHAO

Amid turmoil in the Middle East, the U.S. intensified efforts to pierce government barriers to social networking in China and Iran.

A day after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's pledge to promote Internet freedom, efforts by U.S. diplomats to generate debate on the issue on Twitter-like microblogs in China—which has the world's most Internet users—ran up against the country's sophisticated censorship system.

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Associated Press

Chinese Internet users are seen at an Internet cafe in Beijing

The virtual tussle on Wednesday highlighted the growing importance of such microblogs in China as a new frontier for lively discussion and information sharing that is so fast-paced that censors often have difficulty keeping up. It also pointed out the growing efforts of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing in trying to interact with Chinese citizens.

The Obama administration has sought to significantly increase the use of social media over the past year, but the recent Middle East turmoil has catapulted such initiatives to the forefront. Mrs. Clinton specifically ordered up the use of Arab-language and Farsi-language tweets as democratic protests gathered force across the Middle East in recent weeks.

On Sunday, the State Department began tweeting messages ahead of expected demonstrations called by Iranian opposition leaders vowing solidarity with the protesters in Egypt and Tunisia. Some of the tweets simply stated that the Obama administration wanted to engage with the Iranian public on the nature of U.S. foreign policy.

But others expressed overt support for the rights of the Iranian opposition—known as the "Green Movement"—to protest.

"U.S. calls on Iran to allow people to enjoy the same universal rights to peacefully assemble, demonstrate as in Cairo," said one Tweet.

The introduction of Farsi-language tweets coincided with a significant strengthening of U.S. rhetorical support for Iran's opposition. On Tuesday, President Barack Obama said: "My hope and expectation is that we're going to continue to see the people of Iran have the courage to be able to express their yearning for greater freedoms and a more representative government."

In China, Twitter is blocked by the government. But similar, locally operated services like Sina Corp.'s Sina Weibo and Tencent Holdings Ltd.'s Tencent Weibo have attracted tens of millions of users and are emerging as a new battleground for control of information and media. Chinese websites are developing creative ways to filter content on microblogs in accordance with government regulations that are less conspicuous than other censorship tools—even as microblog users come up with ways to evade them.

In a speech delivered Tuesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for the world community to adopt common standards for Internet use, while criticizing countries that suppress citizens with web-based tactics.

Wednesday's discussions about Internet freedom were initiated by U.S. Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman and others in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, tied to Mrs. Clinton's speech on Internet freedom Tuesday.

The embassy has been using microblogs and other online services as public-relations tools in China since 2009, posting information about U.S. customs and policies, among other things.

One post on Tencent Weibo by Mr. Huntsman quoted Mrs. Clinton's remarks that "Liberty and security are often presented as equal and opposite," and asked: "What do you think is more important, liberty or security?" Another post questioned whether other users agreed with Mrs. Clinton that "freedoms to assemble and associate also apply in cyberspace."

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A screenshot of the U.S. Embassy's microblog

Some of the embassy's posts were reposted by Chinese Internet users, but the posts quickly began disappearing as government censors demanded that the sites remove them.

"We are disappointed that some Chinese Internet sites have decided to remove discussion of Secretary Clinton's Internet Freedom speech from their websites," Mr. Huntsman said in a statement. "It is ironic that the Chinese are blocking an online discussion about Internet freedom."

While the efforts to censor the U.S. microblogs indicate that the Chinese government is paying close attention to the embassy's efforts, there was no official comment. Chinese officials, Sina and Tencent couldn't be reached to comment.

Beijing has tried to quash discussion of events in Egypt, where an Internet-driven uprising felled another authoritarian regime. Mrs. Clinton's speech highlighted Egypt, and said that China and other governments that censor the Internet "will eventually find themselves boxed in."

Qiao Mu, director of the Center for International Communications Studies at Beijing Foreign Studies University, said he published about 10 posts on Mrs. Clinton's speech Wednesday morning that were deleted by early afternoon. He received a message from Sina Weibo administrators saying that his account had large quantities of "harmful information," and threatening to review the account if he continued.

"Lately I've noticed that they are deleting more" posts, especially after protests broke out in Egypt, Mr. Qiao said. Searches for "Egypt" and "Mubarak" were blocked on Chinese microblogging websites after the unrest there.

The most popular posts on microblogging websites are usually not political. But the "transmission velocity and breadth are orders of magnitude greater" on microblogging websites than on online forums, said Bill Bishop, a Beijing-based investor who watches the China Internet.

"All it takes is a retweet by one of the 'spreaders,' like a famous journalist or one of the folks with a huge following, and you have tens of thousands or more who see it almost immediately."

Censors targeting microblogs have adapted their methods to contain sensitive discussions unobtrusively. They sometimes allow such discussion to take place among certain users, while blocking related keywords that could lead others to join in.

Sometimes the censors allow users to post comments to their own micro-blogging websites, but block other users from seeing the posts—so the author may not realize he has been censored. Censors also are known to temporarily suspend publishing privileges for some users as a warning, or to delete accounts.

These new filtering methods add to an already multilayered Chinese censorship system that is unrivaled in its complexity and reach, according to analysts who have studied it.

But as quickly as censors can catch up to and filter discussions, microblog users are coming up with strategies to evade them as well, from using roman letters to spell Chinese words out phonetically, or substituting sensitive characters for similar-sounding innocuous characters.

Isaac Mao, director of the Social brain Foundation, a Shanghai-based Internet and new-media research group, said microblogs are the newest challenge for censors, "brewing more social power" for regular Internet users.

Locally-operated websites like the Chinese microblogging services, search engines, online video websites and blog hosts, are required by the government to remove any objectionable content.

In addition, the government blacklists select overseas websites, including Facebook and Youtube, and use Web-filtering technology to sporadically interrupt Internet traffic that includes sensitive keywords. But because authorities don't discuss the methods or tools they use and don't notify users when it is interfering with their Web access, the filtering mechanisms can look like technical glitches, such as an error message in a user's browser that makes it seem like his connection to the Internet malfunctioned.

Chinese authorities routinely tighten restrictions on the Internet and traditional media in the run-up to the annual meeting of the National People's Congress, China's parliament, which begins on March 5 this year. Chinese journalists and political analysts expect the censors to be especially vigilant this year, because the Party is preparing for a once-a-decade leadership change in 2012 when Chinese President Hu Jintao is due to retire as Party chief.

Mrs. Clinton said in her speech Tuesday that China faces a "dictator's dilemma": confront the political consequences of lifting restrictions on the Internet, or invest huge amounts in strengthening those limits while missing out on the potential benefits from the free exchange of ideas.

The top U.S. diplomat made a related speech last year, naming China as part of a global threat to the free flow of information shortly after Google Inc. announced a decision to stop cooperating with Chinese censorship regulations. At the time, Chinese officials pushed back, insisting that the Internet was open in China and accusing the U.S. of "using the so-called Internet freedom issue to make groundless charges against China."

In Beijing, the U.S. Embassy also now regularly hosts briefings for prominent Chinese bloggers ahead of events such as President Obama's visit to China in November 2009. The guest lists have included artist Ai Weiwei, who is often critical of the Chinese government, and Rao Jin, who started a website to criticize Western media coverage of China.

After a briefing about Mrs. Clinton's speech last year, one blogger, Zhou Shugang, said such events showed "that the U.S. government and Beijing have totally different ways of working. In the U.S., the government pays attention to public opinion and they know how to promote a policy through opinion leaders. That's why they are now paying extensive attention to active Chinese Web users."

Write to Loretta Chao at loretta.chao@wsj.com