Internet Filtering in China in 2004 2005 

overlapping filtering practices that include filtering in China's broader Internet infrastructure.  Thus, we 

caution that any claims about filtering must incorporate analysis of the serious technical complexities of 

China's filtering regime.  

J. Restrictions on University On Line Bulletin Board Systems 

China recently moved to impose stricter controls on the discussions taking place on university 

bulletin board systems (BBS).   These message boards, some of which claimed hundreds of thousands of 

users,

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 were immensely popular with students and with non students users.  As one of the few outlets 

for open, anonymous speech in China, the boards functioned as  virtual communities,  serving as 

alternatives to state run media

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 or as dissemination points for critiques of the Communist Party.

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  The 

boards also hosted tools to circumvent China's Internet censorship as well as discussions on sensitive 

topics like Tibet and Taiwan.

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As part of a Chinese Communist Party campaign to exercise tighter control over culture, 

education, and media, China's Education Ministry ordered the universities to censor the BBS.

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  Its order 

stated that  [h]armful information should be detected and deleted  [message boards] on which harmful 

information has been spread should be shut down. 

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  In justifying the government's reasoning, one 

official explained that  [t]he message boards are too diverse, and students who read them are prone to 

rumor mongering . Students don't watch TV or listen to radio but go to BBS and believe what they read.  

Many students with a right view do not speak on the BBS. 

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The new restrictions limit BBS use to current students, cutting off access to all other users, 

including former students living abroad. 

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  This is a significant limitation on the BBS' reach    one 

current student estimated that as many as half of the users on his university's message board system were 

non students.

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  The new regulations also require registration tied to the user's identity, eliminating the 

cherished anonymity the boards used to provide.

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  These actions will undoubtedly curtail discussion and 

speech on the BBS.  As one frustrated student lamented,  When we use our real names we are lying; when 

we use false names, we speak the truth. 

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 The BBS crackdown provides a microcosm of China's Internet 

content filtering: when the state detects exchange of information on sensitive topics, it employs both legal 

and technical methods to curtail, and ultimately silence, this speech. 

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 Robert Marquand, Beijing Enforces the Party Line, Christian Science Monitor, Apr. 6, 2005, available at 

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0406/p01s04 woap.html 

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 Marquand, Beijing Enforces the Party Line. 

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 Philip P. Pan, Chinese Crack Down on Student Web Sites, Washington Post, Mar. 23, 2005, at A13 

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 Benjamen Walker, Theory of Everything: Freedom on the March (radio broadcast, Apr. 3, 2005), available at 

http://www.toeradio.org/archives/2005/04/broadcast_18_fr.html. 

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 Marquand, Beijing Enforces the Party Line; Pan, Chinese Crack Down on Student Web Sites. 

185

 Marquand, Beijing Enforces the Party Line. 

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 Marquand, Beijing Enforces the Party Line. 

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 Marquand, Beijing Enforces the Party Line. 

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 Walker, Theory of Everything: Freedom on the March. 

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 Pan, Chinese Crack Down on Student Web Sites. 

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 Marquand, Beijing Enforces the Party Line. 

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