"It's the hundreds of thousands of Chinese bloggers who are the most reliable eyes and ears in China," says Xiao Qiang, professor of journalism at the University of California in Berkeley and managing director of the China Digital Project. But western media also use the Internet to tackle the lack of information from China, in spite of the censorship.
Shoveling snow
Qiang uses the travel chaos in southern China caused by heavy snowfall in recent weeks to illustrate his point. He surfs to a regional television station page and clicks on a video of the disaster. Behind the reporter, tanks file past. Lines of soldiers are filmed shoveling snow to clear the road. Mr Qiang says: "This is how the government wants the disaster reported: it is awful, but we shall do everything we can to resolve the situation. But the human suffering, the millions of people who can't get home, the chaos and the despair are not on camera."
On YouTube, there is footage filmed on a handheld camera, uploaded by Daniel Turb, who shows the other side of the snow disaster.
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Children are almost crushed, a woman is nearly trampled, people are fighting to get on a train.
"This side of the disaster remains invisible on the official channels. Let alone asking critical questions about what has caused the chaos. How can the snow have had such an impact? And why does the government only allow all the millions of migrant workers to return home once a year, all at the same time and thousands of kilometers away? To get the answers you have to look at the blog sites. That's where the discussions are being held."
Both ways
Personal weblogs and home videos like the one showing the chaos at Guangzhou station are also seen by the western media, and sometimes it's broadcast too. Qiang shows it on his own English-language website China Digital Times. This site gathers news on China, both from Chinese bloggers and foreign media sources. He has also set up his own journalism projects. "The relationship between Chinese bloggers and the western media works both ways", says Qiang:"We need the bloggers for information about China, which we didn't have access to before. At the same time, we provide them with news that the Chinese stations do not broadcast."
Of course, the Chinese government does all it can to stop this unsolicited stream of information. The country has an advanced filter system that combs the Internet and shuts down all websites which contravene Chinese censorship rules. Undesired foreign websites, like the China Digital Times, are blocked at the portal.
Professor Xiao Qiang
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However, the Great Chinese Firewall is not 100 percent watertight. Mr Qiang says: "There are so many privately-owned websites and news spreads so fast via the Internet that even the Chinese Internet police aren't able to keep up with it." Then he takes out a map which shows where visitors to the China Digital Times site come from. Most of the red dots which indicate who is logging on are in the US and Europe. But they can also be seen inside China itself. "People are able to break through the firewall."
You never know
I ask Professor Qiang to take a look at Radio Netherlands Worldwide's Chinese-language website. On the homepage is an article on Dutch people working in China, a press review and a story about Dutch politics. Hidden away there's also an article on the death penalty and on the revolt of Buddhist monks in Myanmar.
Mr Qiang considers the chance of this site being blocked slim. "The site mainly focuses on news from the Netherlands. The fact that there is the odd critical article on the death penalty for instance will not immediately lead to the site being banned." He surfs a few pages further and nods in agreement. "But you never know with Chinese Internet censorship."
* RNW translation (nc)
Tags: blogs, censorship, China, firewalls, internet