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CHINA’S CENSORSHIP OF THE INTERNET AND SOCIAL MEDIA: THE 

HUMAN TOLL AND TRADE IMPACT 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE 

COMMISSION ON CHINA 

ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

NOVEMBER 17, 2011 

Printed for the use of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China 

( 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.cecc.gov 
CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA 

LEGISLATIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS 

House Senate 

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey, 

Chairman 

FRANK WOLF, Virginia 

DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois 

EDWARD R. ROYCE, California 

TIM WALZ, Minnesota 

MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio 

MICHAEL HONDA, California 

SHERROD BROWN, Ohio, Cochairman 

MAX BAUCUS, Montana 

CARL LEVIN, Michigan 

DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California 

JEFF MERKLEY, Oregon 

SUSAN COLLINS, Maine 

JAMES RISCH, Idaho 

EXECUTIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS 

SETH D. HARRIS, Department of Labor 

MARIA OTERO, Department of State 

FRANCISCO J. SA ́ NCHEZ, Department of Commerce 

KURT M. CAMPBELL, Department of State 

NISHA DESAI BISWAL, U.S. Agency for International Development 

PAUL B. PROTIC, Staff Director 

LAWRENCE T. LIU, Deputy Staff Director 

(II) 
(III) 

CO N T E N T S 

Page 

Opening statement of Hon. Chris Smith, a U.S. Representative from New 

Jersey; Chairman, Congressional-Executive Commission on China ................ 1 

Brown, Hon. Sherrod, a U.S. Senator from Ohio; Cochairman, CongressionalExecutive Commission on China ........................................................................ 3 

Walz, Hon. Tim, a U.S. Representative from Minnesota; Ranking Member, 

Congressional-Executive Commission on China ................................................ 5 

Li, Alex, College Student and son of Li Yuanlong, who served two years 

in prison for commenting on the Communist Party online .............................. 6 

Zhang, John, Christian political dissident who was imprisoned for two years 

following the 1989 Tiananmen protests and who currently assists families 

of Chinese political prisoners .............................................................................. 7 

Wu, Harry, Founder, Laogai Research Foundation and Laogai Museum .......... 10 

Xiao, Qiang, Adjunct Professor, Graduate School of Journalism, University 

of California-Berkeley, Founder and Editor-in-Chief, China Digital Times ... 12 

Kaplan, Gilbert B., Partner, King & Spalding; President, the Committee 

to Support U.S. Trade Laws ................................................................................ 13 

Black, Ed, President and CEO, Computer & Communications Industry Association .................................................................................................................... 16 

APPENDIX

Li, Alex ..................................................................................................................... 32 

Zhang, John .............................................................................................................. 34 

Xiao, Qiang ............................................................................................................... 57 

Kaplan, Gilbert B. ................................................................................................... 60 

Black, Ed .................................................................................................................. 67 

Smith, Hon. Chris .................................................................................................... 71 

Brown, Hon. Sherrod ............................................................................................... 72 

(1) 

CHINA’S CENSORSHIP OF THE INTERNET AND 

SOCIAL MEDIA: THE HUMAN TOLL AND 

TRADE IMPACT 

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2011 

CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE

COMMISSION ON CHINA, 

Washington, DC. 

The hearing was convened, pursuant to notice, at 10:08 a.m., in 

room 2226, Rayburn House Office Building, Representative Chris 

Smith, Chairman, presiding. 

Also present: Senator Sherrod Brown; Representative Tim Walz. 

Also present: Harry Wu. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. CHRIS SMITH, A U.S. REPRESENTATIVE FROM NEW JERSEY; CHAIRMAN, CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA 

Chairman SMITH. The Commission will come to order. 

I want to welcome all of our distinguished witnesses to this very 

important hearing. We really appreciate the attendance of all of 

our panelists and guests. It’s a pleasure to welcome everyone to 

this important hearing on ‘‘China’s Censorship of the Internet and 

Social Media: The Human Toll and Trade Impact.’’ 

As recent events have shown, the issue of Internet censorship 

has only grown in terms of importance and magnitude, and I thank 

the Congressional-Executive Commission on China’s staff for organizing a hearing on this pressing issue and for the tremendous 

scholarly work they have done not only in presenting our annual 

report, which is filled with facts and information that is actionable, 

but for the ongoing work that they do to monitor the gross abuses 

of human rights in China. 

As the Congressional-Executive Commission on China’s report 

demonstrates, China’s leadership has grown more assertive in its 

violation of rights, disregarding the very laws and international 

standards that they claim to uphold while tightening their grip on 

Chinese society. 

As Chinese citizens have increasingly called for freedoms and reforms, China has only strengthened its controls over the many 

areas of society, particularly over the Internet. While China has 

witnessed a boom in the popularity of social media and Internet 

sites, China’s citizens that access online sites today remain under 

the watchful eye of the state. By some accounts, China has imprisoned more Internet activists than any other country in the world, 
2 

and its Internet invariably ranks among the most restrictive globally. 

Chinese citizens are unable to voice a range of criticism that 

Americans undoubtedly take for granted each and every day. Chinese citizens that Tweet about local corruption may face the threat 

of abuse or harassment. Citizens that express dissatisfaction over 

tainted food supplies that injure children, the most vulnerable population of our society, may come to hear a knock at the door. And 

citizens that voice the yearning desire for democracy and right to 

protections we value so dearly may disappear into the official custody of the state, where they face torture and incarceration. 

For Chinese citizens, the line that can’t be crossed is unclear. 

While mentions of the 1989 Tiananmen protests are surely prohibited, China’s censorship remains at the whims of governmental 

agencies that seek to limit any of what they perceive to be destabilizing commentary. In China, the Internet provides no transparency and citizens must weigh their choices each time they click 

to send an email, or press a button, or post personal views. 

Who can forget Shi Tao, who for merely posting information 

about what he’s not allowed to do with regard to Tiananmen 

Square, garnered a 10-year prison sentence when Yahoo! opened up 

their personally identifiable information and gave it to the Chinese 

secret police that led to his conviction. There are no lists of banned 

words, as we know. There are no registers of prohibited topics. It’s 

all kept secret. In China, there is no transparency and there are 

only consequences, and dire ones at that. 

Today we welcome two panels that will address China’s Internet 

censorship from two perspectives. The witnesses will not only provide personal accounts of how China’s censorship affects individuals and families, but also detail how China’s actions hinder the 

rights of U.S. businesses that seek to compete fairly in the People’s 

Republic of China. These panels will expose China’s bold disregard 

for its own laws and its international obligations, specifically in 

terms of its controls on Internet activity and expression. 

In the first panel today we will hear personal accounts of the 

consequences Chinese citizens face in seeking to express their fundamental right of expression. We will hear from a son and a pastor 

that have seen firsthand the actions of an unforgiving hand of China’s Internet police. We will hear how the simplest calls for freedom and reforms lead to the separation of loved ones and the partition of families. 

In the second panel we will hear how China’s Internet restrictions and controls not only hurts its citizens, but also hurts countries seeking to better China through international trade and cooperation. On a commercial level, China simply lacks the kind of 

transparency and fairness that we expect in global trading partners. 

China has not only failed to comply with its WTO commitments, 

it has exploited our expectations to create an unlevel playing field, 

hurting the competitiveness of U.S. businesses and workers alike. 

We recognize that the Internet and social media can and should be 

used to provide people with greater access to honest information 

and to open up commercial opportunities for businesses operating 

in global markets. 
3 

We know that the promise of information technology cannot be 

achieved when it is used by repressive governments to fine, capture, convict, and so often torture ordinary citizens for voicing concerns publicly. Information technology cannot be advanced when it 

involves the systematic exclusion of commercial competitors in 

rampant disregard for transparency and intellectual property. 

China is one of the most repressive and restrictive countries 

when it comes to the control of the Internet and the impact goes 

far beyond the commercial losses of U.S. companies that want to 

participate in that market. There are serious human rights implications. We have seen the damage inflicted countless times through 

the arrest of bloggers and pro-democracy activists who have used 

the Internet to communicate with colleagues or disseminate views 

and then have been arrested. 

What makes this situation even worse is that sometimes it is 

U.S. companies, and my colleagues will recall I held the first of a 

series of hearings where we had Microsoft, Yahoo!, Cisco, and 

Google before our committee. It was my Subcommittee on Human 

Rights. They held up their hands and promised to tell the whole 

truth and nothing but, and then said they couldn’t tell us what 

they were censoring and would not tell us how they were being 

complicit. 

Harry Wu was here, and obviously has been a leader in that. He 

pointed out that Cisco has so enabled the secret police to track 

down people using Police Net, and that the use of cyber police is 

ubiquitous throughout all of China in order to capture the best and 

the bravest and the smartest in China who would bring that country to democracy, if only allowed to do so. 

So this hearing will focus on these very important issues. We are 

joined by, obviously, our Cochairman, Senator Brown, Sherrod 

Brown from Ohio, who will speak, and then Mr. Walz, who is the 

Ranking Member, and then we will go to our witnesses. 

{The prepared statement of Representative Smith appears in the 

appendix.] 

STATEMENT OF HON. SHERROD BROWN, A U.S. SENATOR 

FROM OHIO; COCHAIRMAN, CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE 

COMMISSION ON CHINA 

Senator BROWN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you all for 

being here. It is an honor to have you. Pastor Zhang, thank you. 

And Alex Li, who goes to one of Ohio’s great universities, Bowling 

Green State University, located in a small town outside Toledo. 

Alex got here at 4 o’clock this morning after riding a bus all night. 

Thank you for your extraordinary effort to get here. You can do 

that at your age and not pay a price like the rest of us, riding all 

night. But thank you. You look great today. Thanks. 

Chairman Smith, thank you. Chris and I have worked together 

when I was in the House in the 1990s and into the next decade 

on China human rights issues. I am so appreciative of the work 

that he’s done. And Tim Walz, who has been a stalwart on this 

Commission and on these issues, having lived in China many years 

ago for a while and taught there for a couple of years. Thanks for 

the work that you’re doing. 
4 

The business of the Internet and social media is changing the 

way the world works. Just take a look at all the smart phones in 

this room. It has changed the way we live, the way we do business, 

the way we act as a society. It’s changed the world. It’s made people closer in many ways to their governments. It’s made these governments more accountable and interactive. In the case of the Arab 

Spring, it’s helped to topple dictators. 

The purpose of today’s hearing is to shed light on the darkness 

of China’s repressive Internet and social media censorship. It’s a 

policy that takes a human toll, as Chairman Smith said, undermining human rights freedoms and freedoms of expression and 

speech. It’s a policy that’s unfair to U.S. trade interests, especially 

for U.S. tech companies. 

It’s well documented that Chinese officials block access to far too 

many Web sites, including this Commission’s. Some sites are 

blocked because they’re considered politically sensitive, others for 

reasons that we could only guess. China’s Internet control forces 

private companies, including U.S. companies, to censor the Internet 

based on vague and arbitrary standards. 

Many companies are forced to operate in an opaque world that 

we know surprisingly little about. This policy benefits Chinese domestic companies at the expense of companies like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, who are completely blocked in China. Companies 

whose business models rely on openness and transparency are 

forced to be an arm of the Chinese Government or to turn their 

backs on 1.3 billion customers. 

But it is not just Silicon Valley companies that are blocked, it’s 

also companies in my State, like GrafTech and Edgetech that risk 

having their Web sites blocked or disrupted as they try to sell their 

services and products to reach Chinese consumers. 

When a company goes public with complaints about these restrictions, as Google did last year, they risk retaliation by the Chinese 

Government for doing so. Google is a company that made the unfortunate controversial—and some decision that many of us weren’t 

wild about—to work with the Chinese Government. In the end, of 

course, it didn’t work out so well for them. 

In the absence of meaningful competition, copycat versions of 

Twitter and Facebook flourish in China and raise hundreds of millions of dollars, ironically, on our capital markets. For instance, in 

May of this year, Renren, China’s version of Facebook, raised $743 

million in an IPO listed on the New York Stock Exchange. These 

Chinese companies are beholden to the Chinese Government and 

Communist Party and censorship has increased, yet they want access to our free and open society. 

As arms of the Chinese Government, these moves should be 

closely scrutinized. China now has over half a billion Internet 

users, more of course than any country in the world. Most of these 

Internet users are young, far more aware of Chinese and world developments than their parents. Knowledge and openness are 

threats to totalitarian regimes. We know that. The Chinese Government knows that. 

In our country, knowledge and openness are pillars of our form 

of government. Take the case of outspoken dissident/artist Ai 

Weiwei. His savvy social networking skills and unabashed criticism 
5 

of the government landed him an 81-day detention at a secret location earlier this year. Now the government wants him to pay $2.4 

million in alleged unpaid taxes and penalties by Tuesday. Thousands of supporters in China have sent him money over the Internet. 

Ai continues to defy government orders by using Twitter to publicize his case. In recent years, the Commission has documented a 

growing number of cases of political imprisonment involving the 

Internet. Behind each case is a story and a family. One of those 

cases is Li Yuanlong. Li is a journalist who was imprisoned for two 

years for criticizing the Communist Party online. That’s why we’re 

so grateful that Alex, his son, is here to tell Li’s story. 

Last month, the U.S. Trade Representative filed a request for information from the World Trade Organization on China’s Internet 

censorship. I applaud this move as a positive first step. I look forward to learning what we can do to address this pressing issue. 

Too much is at stake. The human toll becomes insufferable. The 

economic threat undermines our innovation. 

China plays by its own rules because we regrettably, in this institution and in our government, let them. We cannot simply wait 

out the inevitable power of the Internet to move the hearts and 

minds of the Chinese people. We must do all we can to shine a 

light where free expression, thought, and commerce are too often 

kept in the dark. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Walz? 

[The prepared statement of Senator Brown appears in the appendix.] 

STATEMENT OF HON. TIM WALZ, A U.S. REPRESENTATIVE 

FROM MINNESOTA; RANKING MEMBER, CONGRESSIONAL– 

EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA 

Representative WALZ. Well, thank you Chairman Smith and Senator Brown. It’s an honor to be up here with two of the most passionate and thoughtful members of Congress, and I appreciate the 

long work that the two of you have done to bring about human 

rights, to bring about a sense of fairness, and today is another example of that. 

I would also like to thank the witnesses for being here. It is very 

humbling to be on this Commission because the witnesses who sit 

in front of us are people that have paid heavy prices for freedoms, 

not just in China but worldwide, to make us understand those precious liberties we have. The folks in front of us today are no exception. 

To Alex and his father who paid a price for that, we all benefit 

from that courage. We all benefit from keeping in mind that 

human rights are above and supreme to the other issues at hand. 

But I’m also very appreciative of the second panel here, a group of 

experts to help us understand the impact of what’s happening with 

social media, and also understanding how it’s impacting markets. 

It is our responsibility, as Senator Brown said, for this institution 

to uphold the human rights as well as trade deals that were signed 

onto. 
6 

Our companies are being unfairly punished by the behaviors of 

the Chinese Government and that is what this Commission was set 

up for. That was the mandate that this Commission was given, and 

I can tell you that my two colleagues sitting up here take that very 

seriously. So I look forward to the testimony today. Again, thanks 

to the witnesses. I always make sure I say this here. I am always 

incredibly impressed with the staff of this Commission. They are 

the most professional and best prepared of any I’ve seen, and I 

thank them. 

So, Mr. Chairman? 

Chairman SMITH. Mr. Walz, thank you very much. Thank you for 

the expertise you bring to this Commission, especially having lived 

there and having gotten to know the on-the-ground situation in 

China. You are a great asset to our Commission, so thank you. 

We’ll begin with our two witnesses on the first panel. We’ll begin 

with Alex Li, who is currently an undergraduate student at Bowling 

Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio. In 2006, a Chinese 

court sentenced Li’s father, Li Yuanlong, to two years’ imprisonment for posting comments online about the Communist Party. 

Then we’ll hear from Pastor John Zhang, who is a rights advocate 

who was imprisoned for two years following the 1989 Tiananmen 

Square protest. Pastor Zhang currently assists families of political 

prisoners and serves as a pastor at California Bay Area Church. 

Mr. Li, if you could proceed. 

STATEMENT OF ALEX LI, COLLEGE STUDENT AND SON OF LI 

YUANLONG, WHO SERVED TWO YEARS IN PRISON FOR COMMENTING ON THE COMMUNIST PARTY ONLINE 

Mr. LI. Greetings. My name is Muzi Li. I’m from Bowling Green 

State University. In 2005, my dad had published four articles online and was arrested because he published four articles online. At 

that time I was 17 years old. A few weeks after my dad was arrested I was brought to a hotel and questioned by the police from 

the Ministry of Public Security. I was questioned without a parent 

with me. One of the questions was, ‘‘What did your father do with 

your email address at omegacepearee@hotmail.com? ’’ Nothing. 

Nothing. But according to the verdict, my dad published four articles through my email address. That was wrong. Why? The police 

say my dad published the articles through my email address. 

That’s the case. 

At that time my computer was operating a Windows XP system. 

I would just use the Windows Live to watch more news and the account number was totally omegacepearee@hotmail.com. It’s not an 

email address, it’s an account number. The police tracked my IP 

address and then the account number showed up. They thought it 

was an email address, but it wasn’t. So they thought my father 

published those articles through the email address, but my dad 

didn’t. 

So it was all the Golden Shield. The police cannot track my IP 

address and they cannot find the account number. So according to 

the verdict, my dad used my email address, but that was wrong. 

So I think that proved that the police tracked my IP address 

through some technology and they used the Golden Shield to arrest 
7 

those who have opposed political voices, and that happened to my 

family. 

At that time I was 17 years old, a teenager. I was choosing a college. I needed my father, but he was taken away. So I think this 

was totally a tragedy. Moreover, when my dad committed these articles for a foreign Web site, and if somebody wants to publish 

something on a foreign Web site, what he needs to do is copy, 

paste, and post. An email address is not necessary. However, even 

if my dad needed an email address, he has his own. Why did he 

use mine? It’s ridiculous. So the police tracked my IP address 

through technology and my dad suffered two years in prison. I also 

suffered two years without my father with me. That’s the story. 

Chairman SMITH. Mr. Li, thank you so very much. 

Mr. Zhang? Pastor Zhang? 

STATEMENT OF JOHN ZHANG, CHRISTIAN POLITICAL DISSIDENT IMPRISONED FOR TWO YEARS FOLLOWING THE 1989 

TIANANMEN PROTESTS AND WHO CURRENTLY ASSISTS FAMILIES OF CHINESE POLITICAL PRISONERS 

Mr. ZHANG. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for 

holding this hearing. My name is John Zhang. I am currently a 

pastor in the Bay Area of San Francisco. 

Twenty-two years ago in 1989, I was a student at the Beijing 

Language Institute. I actively participated in the 1989 Patriotic 

Democratic Movement in Beijing. After the Tiananmen Square incident, I organized a large memorial service to mourn for the Beijing 

residents and university students who were massacred at 

Tiananmen Square, and was arrested on June 15. I was arrested 

and sent to Qincheng prison in Beijing for two years. 

In 2001, I was baptized as a Christian. Soon after, I became a 

house church preacher in an underground house church. Every 

Sunday I led dozens of Christians to hold Sunday worship at hotels, restaurants, and at the houses of some Christian followers. In 

2004, on the eve of the 15th anniversary of June 4, I was arrested 

again. Why? Because I tried to organize an evangelism and invited 

many dissidents by phone or via email to attend our church’s worship, but my phone was bugged and email was hacked by policemen, so I was once again illegally detained by the policemen and 

taken into custody for 10 days. 

In 2006, I thanked God for bringing me to America, where I attended theological seminary and got my master’s degree after three 

years’ study. 

Today, I just want to introduce a girl to everybody. This is Chen 

Qiao. Her English name is Bridgett. Her father, Liu Xianbin, is a 

famous Christian dissident in China. When she was only two years 

old, her father was taken away from her life. So her father disappeared from her life for nine years. When she was 11 years old, 

her father appeared in her life, but he felt like a stranger. She is 

14 years old now. But she only lived with her father only less than 

four years. In her adolescence, she needed her father most. But unfortunately, her father was sent to jail for 10 years. This is the 

third time he was sent to jail. 

So I think the American company Cisco has played a disgraceful 

role in this sad story. According to the reports, Cisco helped Chi-
8 

na’s Ministry of Public Security construct the ‘‘Golden Shield 

Project’’ as well as provided equipment, technology, and training. 

The ‘‘Golden Shield Project’’ is a national surveillance network system that has a huge database and a sophisticated tracking network 

system. Policemen can track dissidents’ IP addresses and then 

track, harass, and arrest them. I saw this in four articles published 

on Cisco’s Chinese Web site, clearly showing the cooperative relationship between Cisco and China’s Ministry of Public Security. 

Without a doubt, Cisco is responsible for the deterioration of Internet freedom in China. I hope that the Commission will enter these 

documents into the record. 

Today, I just want to remind everyone that freedom of speech is 

an inherent right given to man by God, which is an inalienable 

right. The United States was established on the values of Christianity. The United States should defend and adhere to these universal human values and promote ‘‘non-evil’’ business practices. 

Each Member of Congress has the responsibility to monitor American companies like Cisco while trying to maximize the business interest in China. These companies should not ignore the most basic 

morals and principles of business ethics. In order to regulate the 

business practices of companies that violate American law, they 

should be subject to public criticism, condemnation, economic penalties, and sanctions. 

Thank you for your patience. 

[The information appears in the appendix.] 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Zhang appears in the appendix.] 

Chairman SMITH. Pastor Zhang, thank you so much for your testimony and for bearing witness to an extremely troubling truth in 

China, the mistreatment of house pastors, the mistreatment of all 

people of faith who are not registered and, to a large extent, coopted by the government. 

I would note parenthetically that Frank Wolf and I, right before 

the Olympic Games, traveled to China with the express hope of 

meeting with a number of religious leaders, including underground 

pastors. Every one of them, except one, was arrested, denied, precluded the opportunity to meet with two visiting Members of Congress. 

Second, the one who did meet with us for dinner was subsequently arrested and interrogated very severely. So I thank you for 

bearing witness for fellow pastors and other men and women of 

faith in China who suffer daily, and now with the increased or the 

enhanced use of surveillance provided by the Internet. 

And Mr. Li, thank you as well for your testimony. 

All of us thought we might ask a question or just make a brief 

comment, and then we’ll get to our second panel. If I could, were 

you in Beijing Prison Number One, by the way, Pastor? Which prison were you held in after Tiananmen Square? 

Pastor ZHANG. Qincheng prison in Beijing. 

Chairman SMITH. Okay. I would just note, right after Tiananmen 

Square, Mr. Wolf and I got into Beijing Prison Number One, where 

there were 40 activists, all with shaved heads. It looked like a concentration camp, because it was. They were making, as you know, 

Cochairman Brown, jelly shoes and socks for export to the United 

States. Under our very ineffective MOU [memorandum of under-
9 

standing] with China, unless we have real-time information about 

what’s being made by those prisoners, there’s no actionable direction that the U.S. Government could take. 

We tell them—they, the Chinese—we have suspicions and then 

they investigate. In this case Mr. Wolf and I walked out with the 

living proof of what we had gotten ourselves, and I was just wondering if you might have been at that prison because it was horrible. Thin, gaunt men, working around the clock, Reform Through 

Labor signs all over the place, and their only crime was asking for 

democracy. So again, I want to thank you and Mr. Li for presenting 

your very powerful testimony here today. 

Chairman Brown? 

Senator BROWN. Thank you. I appreciate the discussion of Cisco 

and some of the comments from Cisco. I know Chairman Smith, 

and I know Congressman Walz and I, all are troubled by that and 

we take it seriously. The Commission is looking into its role in the 

oppression that we see. 

Alex, if I can ask you just a brief question. Tell me how your 

family is doing. Might they suffer from your testimony today? If 

you would, tell us a little bit about how your family is doing. 

Mr. LI. Do you mean now or—— 

Senator BROWN. Today. Yes, now. Yes. 

Mr. LI. I think it will because obviously American—the police— 

last year I joined a June 4th celebration in San Francisco and the 

police knew that, and they called my dad to threaten him to warn 

me not to do anything bad. So I’m pretty sure they know this, and 

called my dad to threaten. 

Senator BROWN. Please let us know. The Commission will monitor any of this. Please let us know if there are any repercussions 

from your testimony today with your family. 

Mr. LI. Sure. Thank you. 

Senator BROWN. We want to be on your side and help to protect 

them as much as we can, as much as you can, together. So, thank 

you. 

Mr. Wu, it’s nice to see you again. Thank you for your outspokenness and courage. 

Representative WALZ. Well, thank you both. Again, as I said, it’s 

always humbling to sit here and see the folks who are on the front 

line of fighting for human rights. 

Mr. Li, I’m just curious if you can help me. How did your family 

connect to the Internet? Who is your Internet provider, and how do 

you do that in China? Who did you pay to have access to? And then 

your Gmail account you mentioned with your father, how did that 

work? 

Mr. LI. I think it’s similar to America. The Internet service was 

provided by the China Mobile Company. 

Representative WALZ. So you had an account. You can get on the 

Internet. You had a Gmail account. 

Mr. LI. Yes. And those Web sites my dad committed on—he 

was—wanted to overthrow something called Freegate. So those 

Web sites are blocked in China. That’s why he got in trouble. 

Representative WALZ. Okay. Well, again, I thank you very much. 

We’ve got a panel coming on next that’s going to talk about how 

some of this is done. We’re deeply troubled by your account, and 
10 

I associate myself with Senator Brown’s concern for your family. 

So, thank you for the courage of coming today, and thank you, Pastor Zhang. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you both. Anything you’d like to add before we go to panel two? We’ll be inviting Harry Wu, without objection, to join panel two, a man who has done extraordinary work in 

exposing the exploitation of the Internet, and especially has 

brought focus on Cisco. So Harry, if you would just stay there for 

the second panel, we’d appreciate it. 

But would either of you like to add anything before we go to 

panel two, Mr. Li or Pastor Zhang? 

[No response]. 

Chairman SMITH. Then Harry, we’ll go to you in panel two. 

Mr. WU. Shall I go? 

Chairman SMITH. Yes. Just stay put. 

STATEMENT OF HARRY WU, FOUNDER, LAOGAI RESEARCH 

FOUNDATION AND LAOGAI MUSEUM 

Mr. WU. I don’t have any connection with any American company 

that has business with China or the Chinese Government, Chinese 

companies. I just focus on the Cisco case. There were a number of 

contracts with China’s Security and Public Security Department 

since 2002 until 2007 or 2008. 

China has a national program, the so-called ‘‘Golden Shield.’’ Entirely, the whole cost is $5 to $6 billion. So far, I understand that 

only a few provinces have signed a contract with another American 

company. Most of them, they signed contracts with Cisco. So we 

have some quotes here. This is from Chinese information. They so 

appreciate this cooperation with Cisco, and Cisco has a proposal to 

them not to only sell the products, sell the equipment, but also to 

include training. 

Last December, I was in Oslo. I wanted to participate in the 

Nobel Peace Prize award for Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo. As you 

know, Liu Xiaobo, since 2002 until 2009, sent 248 articles to our 

Web site ‘‘Guancha,’’ and we published his book. 

But unfortunately we saw the Nobel Peace Prize had a menu. On 

one of the pages, John Chambers, the CEO of Cisco, was there because the CEO supports the Nobel Peace Prize, the financial support for the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to a Chinese dissident. So 

this is one face to tell the people what Cisco is doing. They sponsor 

the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to a Chinese dissident, but the 

other face, they sign a contract—many contracts—for Chinese security to set up the ‘‘Golden Shield Program,’’ to arrest Chinese dissidents, including Alex’s father, Li Yuanlong and Chen Qiao’s father, Liu Xianbin. 

You have to know, Liu Xianbin, Chen Qiao’s father, was sentenced three times. The first time was two and a half years. The 

second was 13 years. Recently, this year, he was sentenced to another 10 years in a prison camp. Just because of what? Because he 

wrote an article on a Web site. How come the Chinese Internet can 

effectively control everything, control everyone? 

I don’t think that without Cisco support they could have done it. 

But we heard Cisco’s attorney testify twice in the Senate, in the 
11 

House and say, we have to follow Chinese law. We sell the products 

to anyone. We don’t care what they’re doing. 

But they never mentioned that when they sold the product to 

Chinese security. They say, ‘‘Well, if a car accident happens in a 

city, the patrol car has to write a report to the supervisor. So, the 

Internet helps.’’ I say, okay, well, car accident. But if there’s a dissident that posts something online, are the police going to report 

it or not? This is not a security problem, this is a political issue. 

I want to know that Cisco in China is now training the police. 

Let me stop here. I sent a letter to John Chambers, the CEO. I 

said, ‘‘Remember recently IBM apologized to the Jewish because 

they sold technology to Hitler’s Germany 60 years ago. Are you 

going to apologize later to Chinese dissidents? Because Cisco in 

this business is entirely working with Chinese Public Security.’’ 

Thank you. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you. And let the record note that it was 

Harry Wu, at the first hearing that I held on Internet exploitation 

in China, who brought forward the information on Cisco. When we 

had the Cisco representative, after being sworn in, tell us that they 

could not disclose what it is that they were doing, and like Google, 

Yahoo!, and Microsoft, said it was a matter of Chinese law that 

there was all of this cloak of secrecy. 

It was Harry Wu who told us how they had enabled, through Police Net, to give the secret police of China the same capabilities 

that the FBI, Scotland Yard, and other world-class enforcement 

agencies have, law enforcement agencies. But we, the United 

States, and especially through corporations like Cisco, had given 

them that capability and that capacity. 

We will be inviting Cisco back to the witness table and we will 

ask them hard questions about what it is that they’re doing. And 

as you pointed out so well, Mr. Wu, having spent almost 20 years 

in the Laogai yourself, and having been tortured beyond belief, 

without this kind—you know, propaganda and secret police are the 

two mainstays of dictatorship. 

The IBM—and there is a book called IBM and the Holocaust, a 

heavily footnoted book that makes it very clear that the Gestapo 

would not have been able to find so many of the Jewish people who 

ended up at Auschwitz and Buchenwald and elsewhere had it not 

been for IBM. 

Now, fast forward to 2011. Now we have Cisco doing the same 

kind of horrific enabling of a secret police to track down these great 

pastors and family members who are behind these lines, going online and then being captured by the secret police because of corporations like Cisco. So, thank you, Mr. Wu, for that. Thank you, 

Pastor. 

Mr. Walz, anything you want to add? 

[No response]. 

Mr. WU. Thank you. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you very much, gentlemen. 

We’ll now hear from Professor Xiao Qiang. Professor Xiao is an 

Adjunct Professor at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley, and a Visiting Researcher at the 

Counter-Power Lab at the School of Information at UC-Berkeley as 

well. Professor Xiao is also Founder and Editor-in-Chief of China 
12 

Digital Times, a bilingual Chinese Web site covering China’s social 

and political transition. 

We will then hear from Mr. Gil Kaplan, who is partner at King 

& Spalding, where he focuses on international trade cases and 

trade policy issues. Mr. Kaplan is also president of the Committee 

to Support U.S. Trade Laws, an organization of companies, trade 

associations, unions, and individuals dedicated to preserving and 

enhancing the trade remedy laws U.S. companies have access to 

which ensure international trade is conducted on a fair basis. 

Professor Xiao? 

STATEMENT OF XIAO QIANG, ADJUNCT PROFESSOR, GRADUATE SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA–BERKELEY; FOUNDER AND EDITOR–IN–CHIEF, 

CHINA DIGITAL TIMES 

Mr. XIAO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Respectful Representative 

Christopher Smith, I have been working with you many years in 

terms of human rights, promoting human rights in China, and I respect your consistent and tireless work. 

I have written a statement to submit to the Commission for the 

record. 

Chairman SMITH. Without objection it will be a part of the 

record. 

Mr. XIAO. So what I’m going to do in the next five minutes will 

be to briefly summarize a few points to give a background of the 

Chinese state censorship and the activities on the Chinese Internet 

of political participation of Chinese netizens and my own analysis 

and observation in order for us to understand better why there is 

such censorship and control in the Chinese cyberspace and the consequences to American companies. 

First of all, I am currently, in addition to documenting, identifying, and indexing censorship in China, I am also working with 

some leading computer scientists at UC-Berkeley to test, evaluate, 

and incubate counter-censorship technologies which can be applied 

to expand the free flow of information around the world. 

The first point I’m going to make on Internet censorship, which 

is already well documented and publicized in many works, including my own research, is to focus on a single case which is the Chinese Twitter-like company, Sino-Weiboa. China blocked Twitter 

and Facebook in 2009, but this particular company, who is also 

raising money from the U.S. stock market, has expanded its own 

microblogging service in China in the last two or three years. Now 

it has over 250 million users. 

According to their own report, this company has an extensive 

and powerful censorship mechanism to back up their operation. 

The company’s executive has publicly stated that monitoring the 

content is Sino-blog services’ biggest headache and it entails intensive communication between editors and state managers, including 

emails, updating guidelines for monitoring content that is sent 

every hour. This company has hundreds of human hired individuals and departments just to monitor the content and censoring 

them. 

On these particular microblogging services, I have just published 

the latest directive from the Chinese state censor. Well, actually 
13 

two of them. One is relating to the artist Ai Weiwei, asking them 

to delete old information about him borrowing money to return his 

tax action online. But the latest directive from the state to this 

company is to prevent three individuals, Chinese individuals, from 

opening an account on this microblogging service. 

These three are Chen Ping, a businessman who is a publisher of 

a Hong Kong-based magazine called Sunshine Affairs, and the second is called Chang Ping, a renowned Chinese journalist, and third 

is Wen Yunchao, an editor of that publication. That publication is 

banned in China and not allowed anywhere in cyberspace, and 

their names are being prevented from opening any microblogging 

services in China. These individuals, actually, their personal safety, is in danger. 

The next point I’m going to say is that despite this kind of censorship, that the Chinese Internet netizens have been increasing 

their criticism to the Chinese Government policies and systems and 

questioning the government accountability and increasing their 

ability to politically participate in Chinese society. 

Precisely because of that, the Chinese Government has intensified its control to a more advanced technological and sophisticated 

level. And here comes the American companies and technologies, 

because controlling individuals is not enough. What they are doing 

is preventing those technologies from search and file sharing, access feeds for blogging, microblogging. They want these Internet 

services totally under their own control so they don’t give foreign 

companies the same level playing field, and they actually blocked 

hundreds of thousands, if not more, Web sites and companies and 

web pages from China, preventing such access for the Chinese 

netizens. 

So it has had both censorship consequences and level trade consequences. My own research group has documented a significant 

portion of such censorship directives over the last five years, and 

some are translated on our Web site, and those search-banned key 

words, over 800 of them, in cyberspace. 

So finally my point is, despite such censorship there is an emerging generation of Chinese bloggers and netizens who are prohuman rights, democracy, and freedom values, and actually they 

are the leading voice on the Chinese Internet. It’s the hope of the 

Chinese Internet to facilitate such speaking voices for a different 

future of China, but in order to achieve that day, the U.S. Government should stand firmly behind the values of the freedom of 

speech and freedom of information and do everything we can from 

this country to mitigate those consequences and violations of 

human rights and Internet censorship, including this consequence 

to American companies. 

Thank you. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you so very much for your testimony. 

Mr. Kaplan? 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Xiao appears in the appendix.] 
14 

STATEMENT OF GILBERT B. KAPLAN, PARTNER, KING & 

SPALDING; PRESIDENT, THE COMMITTEE TO SUPPORT U.S. 

TRADE LAWS 

Mr. KAPLAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and members 

of the Commission, for inviting me to testify here today. I’d like to 

just say briefly that I, too, am humbled, as some of you mentioned, 

to be speaking here with people who have risked their lives, their 

health, and their families on this issue which we look at perhaps 

more as a legal and commercial issue, but I understand the deep 

danger people are in related to this. 

Through my work with the First Amendment Coalition, we’ve 

been working to achieve a breakthrough on China’s Internet restrictions since 2007. I feel that we are finally making some 

progress, in part from our work and also in part from the work of 

this commission and other voices on Capitol Hill and the U.S. 

Trade Representative [USTR]. 

There is a relationship between commerce and the trade problems we face and American values and our ability to promote 

American values around the world, and one of those, of course, is 

free speech. 

China’s censorship of the Internet and its restrictions on the free 

flow of information have a very significant impact on U.S. economic 

and trade interests. These measures have been ongoing for years 

and have had an overwhelmingly adverse effect on market share 

for U.S. companies in China, perhaps to the extent that such market share will never be recovered. 

China’s blocking and filtering measures and the fog of uncertainty surrounding what China’s censors will or will not permit violate numerous of China’s international obligations, including provisions of the WTO General Agreement on Trade and Services, the 

GATS. 

Although there is public information identifying several large 

companies that have been blocked or restricted by the Great Firewall, including YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Vimeo, Google, and 

The Huffington Post, to name a few, there are many other companies that have been blocked from access in China that I am not 

able to identify by name specifically because these companies fear 

retaliation. These companies come from various sectors, including 

energy, labor mediation, tourism, education, web hosting, and advertising, among others. 

The fact that these large, well-established companies and other 

fast-growing U.S. firms, so successful in every other major market 

in the world, are reluctant to come forward with specific information that would form the basis of a WTO complaint against the 

Chinese Government is powerful testament to: (1) the importance 

of the Chinese Internet market, the largest in the world, to these 

firms’ continuing success; and (2) the risk of retaliation these firms 

face if they are seen as lending direct support to a trade complaint 

against China. Moreover, companies not yet in existence but for 

which China could represent a significant business opportunity do 

not even have a voice in this matter, and perhaps never will. 

The First Amendment Coalition was able to persuade the Office 

of the U.S. Trade Representative to take the critical step of requesting detailed information from China on its Internet restric-
15 

tions under Article 3–4 of the GATS, which mandates transparency 

in a member’s application of measures affecting services. 

GATS Article 3–4 reads as follows: ‘‘Each member shall promptly 

respond to all requests by any other member for specific information on any of its measures for general application or international 

agreements within the meaning of Paragraph 1.’’ 

We feel the U.S. request to China under GATS’s Article 3–4 is 

highly significant not only because it is the first time any WTO 

member has utilized that provision of the GATS agreement, but 

also because it is the first time that the U.S. Government, or any 

government, has made a formal submission through the WTO to 

China to address Internet censorship. 

Some of the information requested from China by the USTR included the following: With respect to China’s rules governing Web 

site blocking, who is responsible for determining when a Web site 

should be blocked? What are the criteria for blocking access? Where 

are the guidelines published? Who does the actual blocking? How 

can a service supplier know if their Web site has been blocked? Are 

decisions to block appealable? 

Is the process used to prevent access the same or different for 

foreign and domestic content? With respect to the prevention of ‘‘illegal information,’’ how is illegal information defined? Is a written 

government order required for a private corporation or relevant authority to block the transmission of illegal information? 

We hope, and to some degree expect, that the government of 

China will answer these questions fully and promptly, fulfilling its 

obligations under the WTO. 

Let me just close by making two points. I think it would be very 

useful for this Commission to undertake, directly or perhaps 

through an economic consulting firm, an economic analysis of the 

overall harm caused to U.S. companies by the Chinese blockage 

and censorship of the Internet. There isn’t really hard economic 

data on that that’s available, but it is a study which could be done. 

But, of course, someone has to commission it and pay for it. I think 

that would be a very valuable exercise. 

I have talked to economic firms and there is a methodology that 

could be used. It would be billions of dollars of losses, but I think 

having that number out there would be very helpful. 

Second, in a recent newspaper article a representative of ACT, 

the Association for Competitive Technology, noted that many of its 

member companies with joint ventures with firms in China have 

found their web links back to the United States have been removed 

or the U.S. firm’s Web site has been blocked. He noted, ‘‘It’s always 

difficult for technology companies to draw lines in the sand and say 

this and no further when they are beholden to shareholders.’’ He 

said, ‘‘That’s why we need the USTR and the administration to 

step up to the table.’’ 

I concur with this general point. I think we do need government 

involvement in this and government has to take the lead. Individual companies will not be able to do this without government 

leadership. 

Thank you. 

Chairman SMITH. Mr. Kaplan, thank you so very much for your 

testimony and for laying all of that out for us, and for the work 
16 

you’ve done to help get the USTR to take that very important action. 

Let me now introduce Mr. Edward Black, who has served as 

president and CEO of the Computer & Communications Industry 

Association, a nonprofit membership organization that represents 

technology companies, including Google, Yahoo!, Ebay, Facebook, 

and Microsoft. A consistent supporter of Internet freedom, Mr. 

Black serves on and has previously served as chairman of the State 

Department’s Advisory Committee on International Communications and Information. 

Mr. Black, you may proceed. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Kaplan appears in the appendix.] 

STATEMENT OF EDWARD BLACK, PRESIDENT AND CEO, COMPUTER & COMMUNICATIONS INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION (CCIA) 

Mr. BLACK. Thank you, Chairman Smith, Chairman Brown, and 

Ranking Member Walz and members of the Commission. I appreciate the opportunity to testify before the Commission to discuss 

China’s censorship of the Internet. 

CCIA has promoted openness, competition, and free trade for 

nearly 40 years and we commend the Commission for examining 

how restrictions on the free flow of information online pose not only 

significant human rights concerns, but economic concerns as well. 

I know that freedom of expression has mainly been viewed 

through the lens of human rights. We admire the courage and sacrifice of activists such as Mr. Li’s father and Pastor Zhang, who 

seek freedom for their people and the openness of a free society. 

I firmly believe that the United States must continue its fullthroated support of freedom of expression worldwide. We support 

the State Department’s effort to aggressively promote Internet freedom and I caution our government against taking any actions such 

as misguided intellectual property enforcement bills before Congress that might hamstring these efforts abroad. 

In addition to harming human rights, restricting the free flow of 

information online has serious economic repercussions. American 

companies whose main purpose is to facilitate communications and 

information exchange are some of the biggest and fastest-growing 

companies. Google and Facebook just to mention a few, have estimated market value of $174 and $83 billion respectively. They’re 

both more highly valued than Goldman Sachs. Our industry is an 

important part of the American economy. 

Since China gets full access to U.S. markets in sectors where it 

has a comparative advantage, it is disconcerting that the U.S. Government has not done more to ensure that our Internet industry 

gets the same access in China, a market with more Internet users 

than the entire U.S. population. 

However, we are very encouraged by the USTR’s recent formal 

inquiry into the specifics of Chinese censorship. As Gil mentioned, 

we also had been pushing USTR in this direction for a long time. 

Using mechanisms available under the WTO, USTR has put China 

in a position where it needs to divulge specific details about its notoriously vague censorship policy or face repercussions. 

The first step of dealing with Chinese restrictions is to bring 

them into the light of day. Focusing on the impact that such re-
17 

strictions have on trade provides U.S. negotiators tangible sticks 

and carrots that are not available in the human rights area. While 

the WTO allows exceptions to its rules for matters of public morals 

and national security, it also requires all restrictions be transparent, provide due process, be minimally restrictive, and apply 

equally to foreign and domestic entities. 

As of today, China complies with none of these requirements. 

Compelling China to justify every blockage may dampen its enthusiasm to impose such measures. We would hope China would have 

to scale back and better document its censorship practices. 

The Chinese Government censors, blocks, and discriminates 

against foreign-based Web services and content, as discussed more 

extensively in our written testimony. This directly and indirectly 

advantages domestic Chinese firms. It has repeatedly blocked sites 

and services, including Facebook, Flickr, Google, Twitter, and others, singling out U.S. companies for censorship, even when Chinese-owned services carry the same banned content. This double 

standard strongly suggests that the motivation for censorship is 

often protectionism rather than morals. 

In the past, China has even manipulated the Great Firewall to 

redirect users entering the URL of U.S. search engines to Baidu. 

In addition, content filtering by China degrades the quality of service delivered by foreign providers who must compete against 

unfiltered domestic firms. 

Chinese Internet censorship is part of a continuing pattern of 

using trade and regulatory policies that either restrict access to 

Chinese markets or force foreign companies to acquiesce to Chinese 

Government demands as a price of access. 

This Commission’s most recent annual report correctly identified 

a troubling aspect of China’s censorship regime, where China uses 

vague standards of liability and places the burden of enforcing 

those standards on service providers. Pending IP enforcement legislation before this Congress unfortunately shares the same disturbing similarities with China’s approach to Internet control, as 

pointed out by the Commission. 

The bills create vague standards for liability and ask private 

companies and Internet intermediaries to police and censor their 

users. When coupled with blanket immunity provisions for actions 

taken while attempting to comply with the legislation, this bill 

would tolerate and encourage over-broad filtering and will remove 

legal, as well as illegal, content. 

If the United States legitimizes censorship and prior restraints 

on speech for infringement and enforces it through a draconian system of DNS filtering, this will allow China and others to point to 

our own actions to justify theirs and make the job of our diplomats 

very much more difficult. 

As a letter from over 100 law professors, including Larry Tribe, 

recently pointed out, the proposed Protect-IP legislation represents 

a retreat from the United States’ strong support of freedom of expression and the free exchange of ideas on the Internet. We must 

take care not to undermine our own foreign policy and trade goals 

by setting bad precedents. 

Finally, in conclusion, China’s censorship perverts what should 

be a tool for freedom and empowerment, the Internet, into a tool 
18 

for authoritarian control. Addressing Chinese censorship as a trade 

barrier is a legitimate, multilateral, and potentially effective approach that needs to be pursued by our government at the highest 

levels. It may seem a little bit like going after Al Capone for tax 

evasion, but that’s what we need to do. 

Finally, I’d just remind the Commission that I would hope that 

as the U.S. Government takes action and focuses on this problem, 

we also keep in mind we want to make sure we do no harm. 

Thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Black appears in the appendix.] 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you very much. I want the record to 

know that Chairman Brown was called back to the Senate, so he 

conveys his thanks for your testimony and has told me he has read 

it and will have some questions that he’ll pose for the record. 

[The questions appear in the appendix.] 

Chairman SMITH. Mr. Walz, I would yield the mike. 

Representative WALZ. Well, I thank the Chairman. I, myself, am 

going to be called away, so the Chairman’s compassion and tolerance of me is also appreciated. 

So, thank you all for being here. I guess the first question I’m 

going to ask, maybe each of you—Professor Xiao, this might be to 

you. I’ve said this before and I watched it, that everyone said, and 

I watched with Deng Xiaoping’s opening, once the Chinese get television that will change everything. Once the Chinese get land lines 

that will change everything. Once the Chinese get wireless cell 

phones that will change everything. We’ve had this belief that technology would be that overriding social change agent. Is it overly optimistic to believe that this new social media is going to finally be 

the silver bullet that is unstoppable in terms of their ability to censor? 

Mr. XIAO. I don’t think anything is a silver bullet. Managing a 

country is a complicated and huge task, and building democracy 

and human rights in that society, it’s going to be a long, historical 

process. But technology—and here we’re talking about Internet and 

social media—has some—I’m not a technology deterministic person, 

but it has an architectural advantages that can—like TV, which is 

broadcasting an image, the Internet participated and has a 

networked topology that makes every node have very easy access 

to post something and information flow much easier. 

It’s much more difficult for an authoritarian regime to control information, that is true. It’s also making the possibility, which never 

happened before the Internet, for the individuals that can collaborate and coordinate their actions simultaneously or in some kind 

of self-organized fashion, which any authoritarian regime in China 

fears the most, is the self-organization of the people. 

So these things are actually rapidly happening in the Chinese 

Internet, in Chinese society, and my research reveals such a pattern, both from language to actual online actions. You mentioned 

the artist Ai Weiwei, who is right now under the penalty of a $2.4 

million tax. It’s really political persecution, clearly. 

The Chinese censor issued a clear directive to all Internet companies to delete any information regarding the fact that he is using 

the Internet to collect such loans. Regardless of the censorship and 

all the effort and all the mechanisms, there are over 30,000 Chi-
19 

nese individuals, with their real names, sending in their little donations. Actually, it’s so-called lending money to him as a statement of standing by him, not of the regime. Without Internet, the 

30,000 people would not be able to do that. Despite the fact that 

censorship is, by and large, effective and pervasive. 

The Chinese Government is losing their ground to control how 

much information, particularly their ideology to supporting the regime legitimacy, that they need to be constantly facing contests 

from the Chinese netizens. So that’s actually good news. Despite 

that, I don’t expect this will automatically open the entire society 

because it has so many other factors to it, but it is positive. 

Representative WALZ. No, that is helpful. I think for me, one of 

the concerns I have is I would anticipate, as you said, that that 

ability to participate both ways, the ability to self-organize, the 

things that we’re seeing both here and around the world, from 

Arab Spring to events in the United States. The fear I have is, 

though, this accelerates further the desire to clamp on it harder 

will be very tempting. 

Mr. XIAO. It is true. 

Representative WALZ. And I think we’ll see an acceleration in 

human rights abuses very quickly. So I think now is our time to 

continue to push before we reach that critical point when they realize they’ve lost control. 

Mr. XIAO. I agree with you. 

Representative WALZ. I appreciate that. 

I thank both you gentlemen. I appreciate the work you’ve done. 

I think that you’re approaching this the right way. Mr. Black, I 

think your suggestion to us is very good to the American public. It’s 

not that they don’t care, but I’m a high school teacher so I always 

look at what motivates people. It’s Maslow’s hierarchy here. If 

we’re trying to talk about self-actualization on human rights, we’re 

losing them. If you go to the bottom and talk about the money 

you’ll get them, not because they’re greedy, but because it impacts 

them. 

Just for an example, is this true? Would this be true in China? 

I just pulled up Professor Wu’s book here, ‘‘The Bitter Winds,’’ his 

memoir, on my Kindle, on my Ipad from Kindle Store, and I want 

to buy it from Amazon. Could I do that in China? Could I pull up 

his book in China and buy it? A legitimate business, an American 

business, a legitimate person who owns that. We couldn’t buy this, 

Mr. Wu? 

Mr. WU. My simple answer is no. I don’t know about individual 

books, but many, many books have been blocked. 

Mr. BLACK. Your point is well taken. 

Representative WALZ. Amazon is losing money today. 

Mr. BLACK. There are a lot of things in the United States that 

would be blocked for a variety of reasons, commercial activity and 

products galore are basically not allowed. 

Representative WALZ. If you’re a free market capitalist here, this 

has to really appall you, doesn’t it? 

Mr. BLACK. Absolutely. 
20 

Representative WALZ. Here’s an entrepreneur that did this, put 

this on there. He and the company, Amazon, who are benefiting 

from it, the content, would be stopped from doing that. 

Mr. BLACK. There are studies that indicate that Internet commerce over the past year has basically amounted to $2 trillion 

worth of activity. A substantial amount of that was not in China. 

You could imagine how much—when a Web site is blocked, all the 

advertisers, all the products that might flow through that lose that 

channel. So the impact is not on the Web site itself only, it is on 

a wide range of players that interact with that in a variety of ways. 

Representative WALZ. There’s a ripple effect on jobs here. Today 

there’s going to be a worker not needed to box this book, there’s 

going to be a worker not needed to load it on a UPS or FedEx truck 

to send it to this person who would liked to have ordered it and 

couldn’t. 

Mr. KAPLAN. That’s correct. Even more problematic, Amazon 

does function in China but it has had to do a joint venture with 

a Chinese company and have servers set up within China. So one 

of the macro effects of the whole censorship is many U.S. companies have had to move to China, can’t use their facilities in the 

United States, and this has a very pervasive effect on U.S. economic prosperity. 

Representative WALZ. That’s a powerful point. 

I’m sorry I’m going to have to leave, Mr. Chairman, but I look 

forward to hearing the rest of this. I do want to convey how much 

I thank you on this, and I certainly think you are hitting on a powerful tool here that can have multiple benefits, both from human 

rights and economic fairness. So, I thank you for that. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you. 

Representative WALZ. Mr. Chairman, thank you for letting me 

go. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Walz. I want to thank our very 

distinguished witnesses for your insights and counsel. 

Just a couple of questions. Professor Xiao, has the capacity to 

censor and survey within China been developed primarily by U.S. 

IT companies and U.S. corporations, or Western corporations? If 

that is the case, is it still the case—or was the case—today or has 

the technology of the Chinese, Baidu and the others in the government, collaboration with them, caught up and now they’ve taken it 

over? They basically can do it on their own without—— 

Mr. XIAO. At the beginning, early stage of the Internet development, it’s clearly the case that those technologies are almost directly imported from the United States. In the last 10 years, however, China has sort of emphasized to develop such technology capacity by its own companies or own trusted engineers. However, 

those Chinese Government-trusted domestic companies, many of 

them have close relationships with U.S. companies. There is a technology transfer clearly happening in sort of a second or third tier 

to the Chinese censorship apparatus. 

Chairman SMITH. Let me ask, Mr. Kaplan, Mr. Black, has there 

been any effort made by the Department of Defense, Commerce, 

and all of the relevant agencies of the U.S. Government to ensure 

that this technology is not conveyed to the Chinese secret police 

and the military? Obviously the dual use for the military cannot be 
21 

underscored enough. Command and control is essential to an effective operating military machine. 

When you give it to police who routinely torture people who go 

on the Net and try to promote fundamental democratic values, it 

seems to me we should be inhibiting the sale and transfer of that 

capability. Has that happened at all during either the Bush administration, the Clinton administration before it, or now the Obama 

administration? 

Mr. BLACK. Yes. Basically it’s an export control issue which goes 

back for decades to the Soviet Union, et cetera. The rules have kind 

of evolved, but historically were to differentiate between those 

things where getting the product had a tremendous difference, and 

whether or not there was foreign availability, either domestic or 

from a third party, third country. 

Generally, although there are certain things that are clearly so 

obnoxious and repulsive that they remain on what we call foreign 

policy controls and banned, to a large extent I think there was a 

broad spectrum of agreement that when something is widely available in an indigenous way as well, that it is just futile to really 

have those controls. 

Again, carving out some really horrendous things, but one of the 

great examples we went through was with semiconductors. Semiconductors clearly were important to the creation in the East bloc 

of sophisticated computers for weapons control, but they were also 

used for transistor radio and everything else. So they were so widely available from so many sources, so we just can’t control it, so we 

focused on the things we can really make a difference with. That’s 

pretty much a prevailing U.S. law. So there’s not a real effort because they don’t think it would have an impact. 

The question, do you judge it by, will it make a difference at the 

end of the day? The second standard is, even if it will make a difference, is it so abhorrent that you don’t want to be connected to 

it? Those two standards coexist and apply in different ways. 

Chairman SMITH. Well, with respect, as far as you can tell, was 

there any instance where the government said that’s not going to 

be sent over to the PRC because we know it has consequences for 

the dissidents and the religious believers who go online and are 

seeking to—— 

Mr. BLACK. In the software world, I’m not sure. There’s clearly 

a more physical product category. There are those, a number of 

things in that category, but I’m not sure I’m aware of any in the 

software. 

Mr. KAPLAN. Frankly, I’m not sure. But I would like to make a 

related point. The irony about all this in terms of China, is we’ve 

allowed the entire manufacturing base, as it relates to the Internet, 

to be put in China. Knowing the products that you need to run the 

Internet aren’t really made in the United States anymore, or are 

made to a very limited degree, it always was the deal that, sort of 

at the higher end, more intellectual capital would stay in the 

United States and we’d sell that to China. That’s like what we’re 

trying to sell over the Internet. 

So we’ve moved all the hardware to China so they obviously can 

build off that to control the Internet because all the hardware is 

made there. We don’t make it, but we were supposed to be able to 
22 

sell the higher end stuff, like Internet, R&D, and other things like 

that to China, and now they’re stopping our Internet. So, the whole 

deal is, you know, our Internet providers, our Internet—exciting 

opportunities like Facebook, Twitter, and other organizations could 

be very profitable and bring more prosperity here. So the whole 

deal is askew very fundamentally. 

Chairman SMITH. Point well taken. And that continues to this 

day? 

Mr. KAPLAN. It gets worse every day. 

Chairman SMITH. It gets worse. 

Mr. XIAO. It’s getting worse. 

Chairman SMITH. Doesn’t that strike you as absurd that the 

West—I mean, even the idea of foreign availability being a loophole, I mean, Semens, a lot of companies, corporations that have 

tremendous capabilities, but the Chinese wanted what Google, 

what Cisco, what others could provide because it was at least—— 

Mr. XIAO. Let me emphasize this point. The aspects of the Internet innovation, particularly other users and moving the content 

that will make them more easily accessible, more easy to organize, 

more easy for users to use the nature of those Internet innovations, 

but those Internet innovations directly run against the Chinese 

Government interest to control information from the top down. It’s 

not those companies trying to run against China, this is Internet 

innovation. The Chinese companies try to do the same innovation, 

but they cannot do it in China. 

So it hurts the innovation in Chinese society as well. Censorship 

hurts both countries. But also, because the Chinese Government 

feels they cannot control such a new innovation, therefore, especially the empowering users aspect of those innovations, therefore, 

they block the foreign companies for which they think they don’t 

have direct control and they put all kinds of demands and shackles 

on the domestic companies to make the domestic Internet industries also handicapped in that aspect. 

Mr. BLACK. If I could add? 

Chairman SMITH. Yes, please. 

Mr. BLACK. No doubt that China has developed tremendous technological capability. That’s absolutely true. The United States is 

still a leader in Internet innovations in terms of how to utilize in 

creative and imaginative ways the Internet because we care about 

empowerment. Basically what the Internet does in many ways is 

it empowers users. That empowerment allows those users to feed 

back in a social network way to help be part of the innovation process. 

So the U.S. society, not just our companies, is really the dynamic, 

creative component trying to relax from ever being able to do that 

because they’re not letting their people have that empowerment. 

They fear the empowerment. So there’s always going to be some lag 

there, and frankly, our social networks are—if you think in First 

Amendment terms, it’s not just freedom of speech, it’s freedom of 

association. It is a tremendously useful tool. 

The fact that China so fears some of those companies having a 

presence there because of the openness of our companies’ systems, 

therefore they create their parallels and their alternatives and put 

much more, greater restrictions on it. So they recognize the power 
23 

of the Internet and they are trying to use the benefits of it, and 

yet trying very hard to restrict aspects of it which they feel they 

can’t control. 

Chairman SMITH. In your view—all three of your views—my 

sense is that China is becoming much more xenophobic than ever, 

that the dictatorship believes that the restlessness, especially the 

thought of a Jasmine Revolution in what they were seeing in the 

Middle East, sent shivers down their spine, especially when there 

was some crackling over the Internet about freedom and democracy. Those things began to percolate again. Not that they ever 

went away, but they were more suppressed. I’ve held 34 hearings 

on human rights abuses in China. 

Several of those hearings have focused on the grossly destabilizing consequences of the one-child-per-couple policy, forced abortion, the missing girls. The State Department said 10 years ago, 

the State Department reports there may be as many as 100 million 

missing girls in China—that was 10 years ago—through sex-selection abortions and gendercide. 

I work on trafficking, human trafficking all the time. China is becoming a magnet beyond any other comparison for trafficking 

women and girls. The woman who wrote the book, Bare Branches 

recently testified and said that by 2020, 40 to 50 million men—so 

the number has one up in terms of estimation—will not be able to 

find wives because they have been killed systematically through 

the one-child-per-couple policy. 

The point being, the government now looks at this growing instability, more males than females by far, a growing lawlessness. It 

seems there’s a total direct relationship between that and a tightening of just—the Wall Street Journal, on November 6, said, ‘‘Executives from China’s top Internet companies pledged to boost efforts to curb harmful content at a unusual government meeting 

with web firms.’’ It goes on to say that ‘‘Baidu, Alibaba, and Sina 

Corp have said that Internet companies must strengthen their selfmanagement, self-restraint, and strict self-discipline.’’ We all know 

what those words mean. They’re just tightening that iron fist. 

I’m wondering, the instability is going to reach a tipping point. 

I’m deeply worried about what that means for more torture, as you 

are, I’m sure, more killings in the streets, as we’ve seen. I mean, 

Tiananmen Square was the most visible, but there have been others since, as we all know. That connection, if you will—— 

Mr. XIAO. Let me share some of my research and observations on 

this. One, is my research group has documented over 3,000 blocked 

URLs by the Great Firewall. This is far from the entire number of 

them, but these are the Web sites submitted by Chinese netizens. 

So, to some degree it’s they are useful for them directly, so you can 

see the pattern of where they are blocking not only just politicallysensitive information, but any sort of user-generated contents that 

a hosting service feels they cannot control. 

The second is that the directives, we have documented over the 

last five years, as I said, a significant body, a proportion of it. You 

can analyze a pattern of it. The increasing xenophobia is correct by 

how many directives goes after the so-called massive incidents, basically corrective actions at the local level protests in China is in-
24 

creasing. So the control of such information flow online has been 

increasing in the last five years, clearly. 

Also, you can look at the sensitive words that they ban or block, 

a Sino-blog or a microblog service. They ban the search because 

then the user cannot find all the related information. They are 

afraid of such an information aggregation phenomenon in the Chinese Internet. So we documented over 820 such words, which is 

only a portion of it, but it’s already clearly showing what kind of 

fear that they have of the site. Again, there’s a pattern and there’s 

a trend to increasing state instability. 

Finally, regarding the family planning policy, I have a clear example between the Internet and that, which is, as you’ve probably 

heard, about a Chinese lawyer, Chen Guangcheng, the blind man 

who helped villagers in his village and neighborhood to defend 

their rights, including the one-child policy and abusive practices 

and forced abortion, et cetera. 

He’s been sentenced and now he’s been released. He served his 

sentence already and he’s supposedly free, but he’s not free at all. 

He lives in the village and is incommunicado. Nobody can visit so 

no one knows what’s happened to him. So on the Chinese Internet, 

the netizens started this movement of, just go to visit him. 

Those villagers are being blocked, beaten, harassed, and tortured 

and sent away from the village by the local authorities. The central 

authority clearly knows what’s going on and those activities are 

also banned on the Chinese Internet, but the Chinese netizens are 

privately organizing anyway. So it’s an ongoing case at this moment, linked between the government’s fear to some of the policies 

and challenges and the ability of mobilization on the Internet. 

Chairman SMITH. Yes? 

Mr. BLACK. If I could, I think your question basically is, yes, we 

sense a greater assertiveness, boldness, unashamedness about, and 

really defending their approach about how to censor the Internet, 

not backing away at all. In fact, I think they realize that there is 

a global contest going on, whether or not an open model would prevail or a closed model, and they’re competing, I think, to get the 

rest of the world to adopt their model, partly because I think they 

believe in it and partly because it prevents them from becoming an 

outlier. 

The more people they can persuade into being a censorship type 

country, the more they can say, well, we’re doing what everybody 

does. I think that’s a key part of what’s driving them. I think it’s 

important to understand the newest tactic that they’re really using. 

It’s not that new, but in many cases it’s not the government doing 

the censorship, it is imposing liability on Internet intermediaries 

and thereby compelling them, forcing them, encouraging them very 

strongly to be their self-censors. That’s the model. 

I think the model that they’re actually going to sell around the 

world is not that the governments do it themselves, because most 

governments don’t have the technological capability. It will be to 

create this model of imposed liability, economic liability that would 

put people out of business if they don’t become effective censors. 

Mr. KAPLAN. Maybe I could just add, as the United States loses 

more and more ground in the trade battles, I think with China, 

China has become much more assertive and brazen in terms of pro-
25 

moting its values within China, but within the rest of the world, 

too. I’m sure you’ve looked at the situation in Africa, Latin America, the relationship to the World Bank and how they’re competing 

with them in terms of loans. If we keep losing economic power 

we’re going to lose moral power over values. 

This relates to the question that Congressman Walz asked. I 

think China is going to be very successful in controlling the Internet. It will not open up Chinese society because they have such a 

pervasive ability and such a pervasive desire to do it. They will be 

able to do it. They can defeat the positive sides of the Internet. 

There’s been press in totalitarian societies forever, but the press 

has not meant freedom of the press. There’s not going to be freedom of the Internet in China, I don’t think. But they are being successful in controlling the Internet, essentially, unless this commission and other people can do something about it. 

Mr. XIAO. If I could add one more point, which is demanding 

transparency, why it’s important. Clearly it’s important to demand 

transparency in how they censor the Internet because the business 

is imperative to have such a level playing field. It also has very 

positive consequences for human rights, expanding human rights in 

Chinese society, because the whole censorship is about controlling 

people’s minds. 

The most effective censorship is not letting people know what’s 

being censored and what’s being controlled. The more what is being 

censored and what exists in the censorship itself is known more 

clearly in detail by many people, the less effective that censorship 

is and the more people will demand more human rights and freedom of speech in Chinese society. 

Chairman SMITH. You know, Professor Xiao, last week members 

of our Commission staff and myself sought the ability to go to meet 

with Chen Guangcheng and his wife, Yuan, and were denied a visa. 

We are repeating that request to the Chinese Embassy in the hope 

that we would be able to. I believe it was his 40th birthday on Saturday. 

We wanted to be there with him and his wife and show solidarity, and hopefully to let the Chinese know that we are watching 

and the world is watching, because our great fear is that they will 

beat him, and beat him to death, which they’ve been doing since 

he was in prison and since he’s been released. So, thank you for 

bringing that up, because that’s so very important. 

Let me ask about—and I only have two final questions to this excellent panel. In 2006, I introduced the Global Online Freedom Act. 

I am going to reintroduce it very shortly. The idea, and we’re working on text to see what might be the best way of accomplishing 

what I know we all agree to, but obviously means to that end are 

sometimes open to debate—always open to debate. 

But the idea would be to establish an Internet-restricting country 

designation, because obviously China is not the only country in the 

world where this is a problem. I just chaired a hearing on Belarus 

yesterday, or two days ago. Belarus, with President Lukashenko remains one of the worst dictatorships—is the last dictatorship—to 

do it, and they use Internet censoring, courtesy of the Chinese 

model, with great impunity and obviously capture a lot of dissidents and democracy activists. 
26 

So they would be surely designated an Internet-restricting country and would require disclosure of what is being censored, whether 

it be Microsoft, Google, or any of the others. It would require that 

personally identifiable information be put out of reach of the Chinese or any other Internet police. 

To their credit, Yahoo! made a move when they went to Vietnam 

to put that information out of reach, and it’s in another ASEAN 

[Association of Southeast Asian Nations] country, I’m happy to say, 

because there was instance after instance where Internet bloggers 

and the like were put into prison simply for expressing concerns 

about the dictatorship in that country. That’s one approach. 

The other approach, and I would appreciate your views on this 

as well if you would, the Falun Gong practitioners and some of 

their IT experts have developed a capability that I have spent 

hours, and as I said, Frank Wolf and others, trying to understand 

because it is above my pay grade in terms of technological understanding, but they seem to have a means of piercing the Great 

China firewall, and to do so almost at will, if not at will. 

We’ve asked the administration repeatedly to honor the appropriations amount that was set aside by Mr. Wolf on the Appropriations Committee to take this and run with it and to fund it so that 

this firewall is not impenetrable, and they have shown that, and 

it can also be used in other Internet-restricting countries as well. 

So your take on the Falun Gong’s technology, GOFA [Global Online 

Freedom Act], those two things. 

Mr. XIAO. Okay. Since my research lab has done a lot of focus 

on this area, let me just say some general points. One, is that the 

Great Firewall is far from watertight. It actually has thousands of 

leaks all the time. They are doing a quite incredible job in terms 

of preventing information from reaching the scale of the masses, 

millions of certain information, but also they have not been doing 

it in their full capacity because I don’t think they’re better resources, but their sort of policy decision about what time, it’s not 

a time of crisis to do such more intensive blocking at this moment, 

but it’s cranking up all the time. 

There’s probably four types of technology and practices that are 

sort of leaking the otherwise blocked information into the Chinese 

cyberspace. The one type of practice is mostly set up by Chinese 

techies themselves using the U.S. servers or servers outside of the 

Great Firewall and set up some circumvention tunnels. So if you 

know a little bit of technology, it’s not hard to do it by yourself, to 

share it with your friends. 

Those activities are small enough that the Great Firewall will 

never find out all of them. There’s just too many of them. Those 

practices have been shared, the knowledge is being shared, and the 

total number doing that actually in Chinese cyberspace is very significant, I would say a significant portion of the entire sort of information flow that way. 

The second significant portion of people doing that is by VPN, 

the commercial tunneling technology, because the company needs 

that, or many services need that. People just pay by the service 

and then you can circumvent the Great Firewall, but you have to 

pay the money for it. A lot of people for a variety of needs, not only 

political needs, business and other things, have to do that. The 
27 

Great Firewall can block them, but because they are afraid of consequences and collateral damage, they’re not doing so at this moment most of the time. 

Third, are those circumvention tools, including the Falun Gong 

group’s introduced and managed tools. It has been, in a variety of 

situations, very effective for the other users, particularly that are 

user-friendly, when they are user-friendly and simple to download 

or simple to use. They’re not limited to Falun Gong tools. There’s 

other tools out there. But they all have different strengths and 

weaknesses. 

None of them can be absolutely blocked by the Great Firewall at 

all, but there’s a battle of cat-and-mouse going at it all the time. 

So this side of the research and development and deployment of 

circumvention tools does need to be supported and expanded and 

helped by the information flow. So, all of these activities are important. 

Mr. KAPLAN. The issues that were just discussed, certainly that’s 

my understanding also. There are means to get past the firewall, 

but as soon as they become generally known I think the Chinese 

will find ways to patch those holes and then other means will be 

found. But it is not airtight, by any means. There are people who 

have gotten through in any number of ways, so I think that can 

be done. 

But it’s a cat-and-mouse game: You do one thing, they’ll do another; you do another, and it slows down the ability to get information in China. I mean, if you talk to U.S. students or U.S. citizens 

in China, most of them have given up trying to use U.S. Web sites. 

It just takes so long and it’s so undependable. So you don’t have 

to stop it entirely to make it essentially not useful. 

Mr. XIAO. Right. I’ll give you an example. The Google Gmail server, the Gchat, and the Chinese Government, since the spring, has 

disconnected that connection to the Gchat every 10 minutes or 

every 15 minutes. So that type of thing is annoying enough for a 

lot of people to stop using those services and that’s what they’re 

doing. They don’t completely cut it off, but they’ll create such a 

burden that it forces the users to use other Chinese services. 

Mr. BLACK. I might use a metaphor to make the same point that 

has been made, which is, if you don’t think of it as the wall, think 

of it as a dam and the fertilizer for freedom and it’ll trickle out. 

They’re never going to have a 100 percent sure way that nothing 

has penetrated. But the trouble is, it’s really successfully blocking 

the valley below from being fertilized with the full knowledge of the 

Internet and that’s sad. 

Chairman SMITH. Mr. Kaplan, if I could ask you, and all of you 

if you want to answer, prior to China’s ascension into the WTO and 

PNTR, I held a series of hearings in my Subcommittee on Human 

Rights about why we were so naive to think that China would adhere to the rules and regulations prescribed by the WTO, since 

they did not live up to virtually any of the human rights commitments that they had made, including the Universal Declaration of 

Human Rights. 

As we all know, they have so deigned the International Covenant 

for Civil and Political Rights, which they violate with impunity. For 

at least a half a dozen years before any Chinese official came to 
28 

the United States, they would announce that they were close to 

signing it to try to mitigate any kind of criticism that official would 

receive here. Totally gamed it. After a while, you say, how many 

times are we going to get hit and say, oh, they didn’t really mean 

it? 

Now, you have brought out, Mr. Kaplan, in great detail, and I 

join in what you helped to bring about and I thank you for that, 

but under WTO the rules have been broken. At least, we believe 

they are, and I think they are. What can the WTO—where’s the enforcement, because that’s what always seems to be lacking? A slap 

on the wrist. At what point is there a genuine, durable penalty for 

violating, in this case, the trade laws? 

Mr. KAPLAN. Well, I think there are two answers to that question. One, is I think there’s an awful lot the United States could 

be doing to impose consequences on China for the violation of our 

trade rights. We could be self-initiating many more cases, we could 

take some of the emergency powers that are available to impose 

tariffs on products coming into the United States. 

We could start acting much more vigorously on currency. We’re 

doing, I would say, a very small percentage of what we could do 

to pressure China to comply with their international trade obligations, putting aside the WTO, and we ought to be doing a lot more 

than we’re doing in that regard. 

I hope at some point we do turn up the heat, because I think it 

will have consequences if our actions have direct consequences on 

Chinese imports to the United States of major high value items, I 

think we’ve got to start doing that. 

As to the WTO, if they do not answer these questions that USTR 

has asked fully and honestly we can start a WTO case. Now, that’s 

litigation, it takes a while. But the WTO has shown itself willing 

to impose decisions on everybody, including the Chinese, if they 

close their market unfairly. This is a market-closing device they’re 

using. If they don’t comply, we can retaliate. 

We can put duties on their computers coming into the United 

States. We can put duties on other products coming into the United 

States. It might be appropriate to pinpoint Internet-related technologies. We are able to do that. Usually when that happens, foreign governments, even very big and strong ones, do change their 

conduct. 

Mr. BLACK. One thing I think is not fully understood is, again, 

I think there’s a great way to bring pressure on China by focusing 

on the rest of the world as well. There are difficulties in bringing 

China cases, but we should bring them. I totally agree that’s there. 

But there are other countries doing similar things. It may be much 

easier to establish a string of precedents against some countries 

without the capability, frankly, to push back both politically, diplomatically, and legally. 

Setting a string of WTO precedents in this area might be very 

helpful. Since, again, my focus is Internet freedom in general, although China has to be a big part of that discussion, I would step 

out of focus here and mention that right now Russia is in the process of seeking WTO admission. Because of the U.S. Jackson-Vanik 

legislation there is a unique lever. 
29 

I am not aware of what confirmed enforceable commitments in 

the area of Internet freedom are being requested of Russia, but I 

would certainly think it would be within the framework of anybody 

who cares about these issues to try to make that so, and again that 

would then be a fantastic precedent to deal with China. 

Chairman SMITH. Is there anything else any of you would like to 

add before we close? 

Mr. BLACK. If I could make one short—— 

Chairman SMITH. Mr. Black? 

Mr. BLACK [continuing].—sentence I didn’t get to read. Our Nation invented the Internet. We invented a First Amendment. We’re 

the global standard-bearer for both economic and political freedom. 

It’s critical that we continue as a country to lead in holding Chinese and other governments accountable. Part of that is, we also 

do have to remember, you must lead by example as well as by 

word. Thank you. 

Chairman SMITH. If I could ask—I should have ended on that, 

but would any of you like to make a comment on Cisco and their 

enabling of the Police Net and other means by which they enable 

the secret police? 

Mr. XIAO. I’m sorry. I actually would rather echo what was just 

said about, America invented the Internet and the First Amendment. I grew up in China, but became a U.S. citizen five years ago. 

When I swore into this country’s citizenship, I was deeply, profoundly moved by the diversity of the people to unite in the same 

house on fundamental human rights and dignity. But I am always 

Chinese in a sense of cultural heritage, and for my work am deeply 

connected with the people in China. Particularly, I became an activist since the 1989 Tiananmen massacre. 

I actually know for a fact that when the Internet was introduced 

to China in the middle 1990s, many of the enthusiastic people, entrepreneurs, and technologists and the Internet industry with the 

hope that they are the Tiananmen generation. Our dream of China’s democracy has been crushed by tanks in 1989, but they’re the 

same people that have hope that this time technology will be on 

our side and we will change China. 

There are so many Internet entrepreneurs and the business people and content providers that I know that share that dream. Even 

though they are working under the censorship, and some of them 

are working inside of the system, but that dream never died. So the 

freedom of the Internet is not only an American dream, but it’s also 

a new Chinese dream that has not been flourishing. I still continue 

working toward that. 

Mr. KAPLAN. I think that was a very moving statement. I would 

just add, I really think the United States has to be prepared to 

take action in terms of real economic consequences. I think if we 

did do that more frequently it would make an enormous difference 

and I hope we will be more willing to do that in the future. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you so very much for your testimony, 

for your leadership, and those very uplifting and encouraging 

notes, but also challenging notes. 

The hearing is adjourned. 

Mr. LI. I have one last comment. 
30 

Chairman SMITH. Okay. We’ll reopen for a moment to hear Mr. 

Li. 

Mr. LI. This is pretty short. I am sitting here today because I 

have the hope that more people will come over in the future, so I 

wish those companies have some confessions on those who suffered 

and those victims here. 

Chairman SMITH. I would agree. We had a hearing with Shi 

Tao’s mother a few years back, and Jerry Yang sat right behind 

where Shi Tao was. At the time there was an ongoing lawsuit 

against Yahoo!. Frankly, Jerry Yang seemed to have been truly 

moved by the plight of Shi Tao in particular, and his mother’s 

agony as she talked about her son still to this day in prison, but 

obviously then having gotten a 10-year sentence. 

I asked him if he would settle that lawsuit and help the individuals who were—the families, as we all know, get impoverished 

while a loved one goes off to the laogai, and Harry Wu has been 

working very closely with them and others to make sure that the 

families are helped. So there is a conscience, I think, in corporate 

America. I think it needs to be prodded sometimes. I do believe 

that Google thought at first that they were opening China rather 

than contributing to its further closure. 

But as Professor Xiao pointed out, almost like judo, no matter 

how hard the secret police hits you can still throw them if you have 

the skill and the technological acumen. But there is that sense that 

an apology or tangible help, and to realize that you can’t enable a 

dictatorship. I would conclude my comments, that I believe dictatorships need two things to survive: The control of the message, the 

propaganda message, and secret police. 

In Cisco, they’re getting both, especially the secret police enabling, but I think many—I mean, Google actually supports the 

Global Online Freedom Act. At first, they were vigorously opposed 

to it. Again, no legislation is panacea or a silver bullet ever, but 

it may be a useful tool if we can get it enacted. So, thank you for 

that very important note. 

Mr. Black, did you want to—you leaned forward like you wanted 

to join in. 

Mr. BLACK. I wanted to add, when you mentioned Falun Gong, 

the kind of circumvention tools that it uses are in fact one of the 

things that makes us concerned about this intellectual property 

protection legislation, SOPA [Stop Online Piracy Act]. Those kind 

of tools would probably be made illegal. So again, lead by example 

is a big issue. I guess I’d also maybe use this occasion to mention 

that we have just begun and have created a new foundation to ensure Internet freedom for an innovative future. It’s the Foundation 

for Innovation and Internet Freedom. We believe that there needs 

to be another voice that can work globally for this, again, focusing 

on innovation, the economic component, as well as Internet freedom itself. So we’re in this fight for a long time. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you. And thank you all for your testimony. 

The hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 11:51 a.m. the hearing was concluded.] 
(31) 

A P P E N D I X 
32 

PREPARED STATEMENTS

PREPARED STATEMENT OF ALEX LI

NOVEMBER 17, 2011

My name is Muzi Li (or Alex). I am from Bijie City, Guizhou Province, China. My 

father is Yuanlong Li, a man who was sent to jail for two years for publishing four 

articles online. I came to the United States on December 28, 2009 and became an 

undergraduate student at Bowling Green State University. I am majoring in Economics and minoring in Philosophy. Due to my fear of the Chinese Government’s 

Ministry of State Security, I applied for political asylum in the United States in December 2010. I was approved on March 8, 2011. 

My family bought a computer when I was in middle school. My father didn’t know 

how to use a computer, so I taught him. He learned some basic skills, such as how 

to use the Internet. However, my father and I found that we could Google some 

websites, but we could not visit them because those websites’ opinions differed from 

the Chinese government’s. At the beginning of 2005, I got Freegate from a friend. 

Freegate is proxy software; through Freegate, I could cross the firewall to visit foreign websites with different ideas. Later on, my father published his articles overseas through Freegate’s software. 

Unfortunately, those four articles became my family’s nightmare. The nightmare 

lasted for two years and five days. On the morning of September 9, 2009, my stepmother called me and told me not to come home until that afternoon. In the afternoon, I went back home and saw that the computer was missing and my house had 

been searched. My stepmother was weeping. Then I found out my father was arrested that day at his working place by the agents from the Ministry of State Security without any notice. Meanwhile, another group of agents visited my stepmother 

at her work place. They drove her home and rummaged through my home in front 

of her. She told me not to go home in the morning because she did not want me 

to be scared. 

Later the agents found out that I taught my father how to operate the computer; 

they decided to interrogate me. I was 17 in 2005, not yet an adult. They took me 

to a hotel to interrogate me without my parents’ permission; they did not allow my 

mother or my stepmother to stay with me during the interrogation. During the interrogation, the agents tried to prove that I was an accomplice of my father. They 

asked me some questions such as, ‘‘How much do you know about your father’s articles? ’’ ‘‘Did you help your father write the articles? ’’ They told me that my father 

had already told them what he did. They wanted me to tell them what I knew. If 

our stories matched, my father would be safe, and nothing would happen to him. 

In that case, I told them that I taught my father how to use the computer, and how 

I got the Freegate software. The agents lied; they threw my father to the jail then. 

A few weeks later, the agents came to my home. They asked me a confusing question: ‘‘How did your father publish those articles? Did he use your email address? ’’ 

I explained that everyone knows to publish an article on a forum website, instead 

of using email, all you need to do is copy and paste. Besides, my father had a Yahoo! 

email account, so he didn’t even know my Hotmail password. How could he have 

used my email address to publish articles on a forum? Thus, I told the police officers 

it was impossible for him to have used my email address. The reason why the 

agents could see my omegacepearee@hotmail.com email address was because I used 

it to register for our family’s Windows software. So, when the agents found my IP 

address, they found the email address for the operating system, and assumed it was 

what my father used to post the articles. 

Nevertheless, the agents heard what they wanted, and ignored the rest. They ignored my answer about the email address. They also adopted my words during the 

first interrogation as part of their evidence. 

The reasoning behind the sentencing was that my father published four articles, 

which were viewed 1,532 times and received responses from over 25 people. The 

court stated my father was guilty of ‘‘inciting subversion of state power and overthrowing the socialist system.’’ First of all, my father posted his articles on foreignoperated websites. Without a proxy, people in China could not visit them. In 2005, 

few people knew of and made use of proxy software. Secondly, I could not imagine 

a nation with 1.4 billion people would be overthrown by an article with 1,532 views 

and responses from 25 people. So, I believe the agents were just using this as an 

excuse to persecute my father. 
33 

Moreover, I suspect China’s judicial system. While my father was detained, the 

Ministry of Police and State Security, the Court and the Procurator spoke with one 

voice; they all thought my father sinned by publishing four articles. They threatened 

me saying that if I talked of my father’s case to overseas media, the penalty for my 

father would be even more serious. 

This is the disparaging situation and terrifying government that I faced while in 

China. Finally, my father advised me to leave the country. He sacrificed by selling 

his house to pay my tuition in the United States. He repaid the house mortgage 

with the help of the Yahoo! Foundation, and then he sold it. In the United States, 

I took part in some activities like the memorial event for Tiananmen Square. The 

agents in China knew exactly when and where I was and what I did at these activities. 

I do not believe the agents could get this detailed information without collaborating with an information technology company of the likes of Cisco Systems, who 

has built China’s Golden Shield from the ground up. 

This is my testimony. 
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PREPARED STATEMENT OF XIAO QIANG

NOVEMBER 17, 2011

FROM ‘‘GRASS-MUD HORSE’’ TO ‘‘CITIZEN’’: A NEW GENERATION EMERGES THROUGH

CHINA’S SOCIAL MEDIA SPACE

Respectful Chairman, Representative Christopher Smith, Chairman, Cochairman 

Senator Sherrod Brown, and Distinguished Commission members, 

My name is Xiao Qiang. I am the Founder and Chief Editor of bilingual China 

news website: China Digital Times, and the Principal Investigator of the CounterPower Lab, at School of Information of UC Berkeley. My research focuses on identifying, documenting and indexing censorship in Chinese cyberspace and generating 

an online aggregator of censored, blocked and marginalized content. As part of this 

work, I closely follow the political conversations of Chinese netizens and interpret 

their coded discourse and terminology. 

It is a privilege to speak in front of this important commission alongside my distinguished fellow panelists. My talk today will focus on the intensified and increasingly sophisticated Chinese state control and censorship of the Internet; the growing 

resistance to such censorship; the expanding online discourse; and the capacity of 

the Internet to advance free speech, political participation, and social change in 

China. 

1. GOVERNMENT CENSORSHIP

Since the mid-1990s, numbers of Internet users have grown exponentially and by 

late 2011, there are an estimated 450 million Internet users in China (perhaps tens 

of millions more if one counts the people who access the web through cell phones). 

While most of these people use the Web for entertainment, social networking, and 

commerce, the numbers of netizens engaged in political criticism are steadily growing and are now estimated to be between 10 and 50 million. 
58 

The government has employed a multilayered strategy to control and monitor online content and activities since the introduction of the Internet in China in 1987. 

Authorities at various levels use a complex web of regulations, surveillance, imprisonment, propaganda, and the blockade of hundreds of thousands of international 

websites at the national-gateway level (‘‘the Great Firewall of China’’). 

The government’s primary strategy for shaping content is to hold Internet service 

providers (ISPs) and access providers responsible for the behavior of their customers; thus business operators have little choice but proactively to censor the content on their sites. 

Business owners must use a combination of their own judgment and direct instructions from propaganda officials to determine what content to ban. In an anonymous interview with me, a senior manager at one of China’s largest Internet portals 

acknowledged receiving instructions from either State Council Information Office or 

other provincial-level propaganda officials at least three times a day. Additionally, 

both the government and numerous websites employ people to read and censor content manually. 

Sina Weibo is China’s largest Twitter-like microblogging service with 250 million 

users, according to their own report in late 2011. It is also one of the most tightly 

controlled spaces on the Chinese Internet and is an example of how control works 

on various levels. According to one of the company’s top executives, ‘‘Sina has a very 

powerful content censorship and infrastructure backup,’’ which includes the ability 

to automatically monitor its users 24 hours a day while also utilizing hundreds of 

human monitors. 

The same executive noted that monitoring content is Sina’s ‘‘biggest headache,’’ 

and entails intensive communication between editors and censors including emails 

updating the guidelines for monitoring content that are sent every hour. Editors are 

obligated to report on any ‘‘malicious’’ content, and repercussions for users can include private or public warnings, deletion of content or cancellation of user IDs. 

Users are rewarded for reporting malicious or pornographic content by clicking a 

button on the site’s homepage. Individual keywords are also filtered on Sina Weibo 

search; my research group has uncovered over 820 filtered search terms, including 

‘‘Cultural Revolution,’’ ‘‘press freedom’’ and ‘‘propaganda department.’’ 

2. NETIZENS’ CODED RESISTANCE

The results of government censorship efforts are mixed at best. The government’s 

pervasive and intrusive censorship system has generated equally massive resentment among Chinese netizens. As a result, new forms of social resistance and demands for greater freedom of information and expression are often expressed in 

coded language and implicit metaphors, which allow them to avoid outright censorship. The Internet has became a quasi-public space where the CCP’s dominance is 

being constantly exposed, ridiculed, and criticized, often in the form of political satire, jokes, videos, songs, popular poetry, jingles, fiction, Sci-Fi, code words, mockery, 

and euphemisms. 

In early 2009, a creature named the ‘‘Grass Mud Horse’’ appeared in an online 

video that became an immediate Internet sensation. Within weeks, the Grass Mud 

Horse—or cao ni ma, the homophone of a profane Chinese expression—became the 

de facto mascot of Chinese netizens fighting for free expression. It inspired poetry, 

videos, and clothing lines. As one blogger explained, the Grass Mud Horse represented information and ideas that could not be expressed in mainstream discourse. 

The Grass Mud Horse was particularly suited to the contested space of the Chinese Internet. The government’s pervasive and intrusive censorship has stirred resentment among Chinese netizens, sparking new forms of social resistance and demands for greater freedom of information and expression, often conveyed via coded 

language and metaphors adopted to avoid the most obvious forms of censorship. As 

a result, the Internet has became a quasi-public space where the CCP’s dominance 

is being exposed, ridiculed, and criticized, often by means of satire, jokes, songs, 

poems, and code words. 

Such coded communication, once whispered in private, is not new to China. Now, 

however, it is publicly communicated rather than murmured behind the backs of the 

authorities. For example, since censorship is carried out under the official slogan of 

‘‘constructing a harmonious society,’’ netizens have begun to refer to the censoring 

of Internet content as ‘‘being harmonized.’’ Furthermore, the word ‘‘to harmonize’’ 

in Chinese (hexie) is a homonym of the word for ‘‘river crab.’’ In folk language, crab 

also refers to a bully who exerts power through violence. Thus the image of a crab 

has become a new satirical, politically charged icon for netizens who are fed up with 

government censorship and who now call themselves the River Crab Society. Photos 
59 

of a malicious crab travel through the blogosphere as a silent protest under the virtual noses of the cyber-police. Even on the most vigorously self-censored Chinese 

search engine, Baidu.com, a search of the phrase ‘‘River Crab Society’’ will yield 

more than 5.8 million results. 

In recent years, Chinese netizens have shown they possess boundless creativity 

and ingenuity in finding such ways to express themselves despite stifling government restrictions on online speech. This ‘‘resistance discourse’’ steadily undermines 

the values and ideology that reproduce compliance with the Chinese Communist 

Party’s authoritarian regime, and, as such, force an opening for free expression and 

civil society in China. At China Digital Times, we have created an online ‘‘GrassMud Horse Lexicon,’’ or a translated glossary of more than 200 such terms created 

and spread by netizens in China. Without understanding this coded but widespread 

(thanks to the Internet) ‘‘Grass-Mud Horse Discourse’’ through the lens of censorship and resistance, one cannot fully understand the contradictions in Chinese society today, and the potential and the possibilities for tomorrow. 

3. ONLINE MOBILIZATION

Through online social networks and virtual communities, the Chinese Internet 

has become a substantial communications platform for aggregating information and 

coordinating collective action especially through the use of shared language, experiences and images. 

For example, this information aggregation process can happen when a local issue 

resonates with a broader audience and spreads beyond the limited jurisdiction of 

local officials, sometimes even making it into the national media. When corruption 

or environmental damage, for example, are exposed, local authorities implicated in 

the scandal often crack down on news websites hosted within their respective jurisdictions. But when such news finds its way to a website based outside the relevant 

local jurisdiction, the officials of that jurisdiction will have no means of directly suppressing it. This gap in control between local authorities as well as between local 

and central authorities opens a space for netizens to transmit information. 

Influential bloggers may also mobilize their fellow netizens by acting as spokespersons for certain issue positions, or by giving personal authentication to messages 

that resonate with the people, or by articulating what others could not say in the 

face of political censorship. Bestselling author, race-car driver, and blogger Han Han 

is one such figure. Han is an outspoken critic of government censorship, and his 

blog posts are often deleted by censors. Nevertheless, his main blog received more 

than 300-million hits between 2006 and 2009. In April 2010, Time magazine listed 

Han Han as a candidate for the hundred ‘‘most globally influential people.’’ Han 

Han subsequently wrote a blog post asking the Chinese government ‘‘to treat art, 

literature, and the news media better, not to impose too many restrictions and censorship, and not to use the power of the government or the name of the state to 

block or slander any artist or journalist.’’ This post generated some 25,000 comments from his readers and was viewed by more than 1.2 million people. The article 

has also been widely reposted online; in May 2010, a Google search found more than 

45,000 links reposting all or part of the essay. Despite official efforts to use the 

Great Firewall to block Chinese netizens from voting for Han Han on Time’s 

website, he came in second in the final tally, showing the mobilizational power of 

his writing. 

4. ROLE OF SOCIAL MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES AND AMERICAN COMPANIES

It is not just Han Han’s words that are so influential, but the social media technologies – search, file-sharing, RSS, blogging, microblogging, image and video-sharing, social networking, etc – that allow them to spread freely, despite government 

censorship. 

On November 2, 2011, the State Council of Information Office issued directives 

to all national and local websites: ‘‘Thoroughly delete all information and commentaries about Ai Weiwei’s ‘‘borrowing money to pay tax’’ event.’’ This refers to the 

penalty of a $2.4 million back tax bill levied on dissident artist Ai Weiwei, who 

spent three months in jail this spring. Through the Internet, Ai called for loans from 

supporters around the world to pay the bill. Searching on Sina Weibo, one will 

found over a dozen words and phrases relating to ‘‘Ai Weiwei’’ have been recently 

blocked, and many such posts were soon deleted; however Ai Weiwei’s call for loans 

has been reposted by devoted readers, and circulated through emails, instant chats, 

closed forums and private messages among users on a variety of social networking 

services. Ten days after the censor’s decisive directive, days, about 30,000 people 

had sent in a combined total of 8.7 million yuan ($1.37 million) to pay Ai Weiwei’s 

penalty, despite the state censor’s full efforts to suppress his words from spreading. 
60 

1http://money.cnn.com/2011/04/18/technology/renren—IPO/?section=money—latest 

This is what China’s leaders most fear: the power of truth-telling among the Chinese population, which directly challenges their privilege, ideological control, and 

the legitimacy of the regime. The Chinese government has learned that it can’t 

merely target Internet users, but must focus on information technologies, access to 

the network, and the companies that provide these tools. 

That’s where American Internet companies enter the story. Because American 

Internet companies are not under the control of the government and therefore cannot be trusted to abide by the government’s rules, they are most often prevented 

from entering the market on a level playing field, or simply blocked by the Great 

Firewall. Several top global websites, including Google, YouTube, Twitter, and 

Facebook, as well as thousands of other websites, are no longer easily accessible. 

China’s intrusive government policies effectively mark the beginning of a cyberworld 

divided into the internet and the ‘‘Chinternet’’, with the Great Firewall marking the 

boundary. 

5. EMERGENT NEW POLITICAL IDENTITY

The Chinese government has the determination, resources and technology to 

make the Internet work in support of its ruling status quo. However, its dominance 

is constantly being contested by netizens’ online civil disobedience and public demands for rights. The result of such interplay of censorship and digital resistance 

is an emerging pattern of public opinion and citizen participation that represents 

a shift of power in Chinese society. The Internet allows citizens to comment on certain (albeit limited) topics, and create their own shared discourse which is outside 

the bounds of government censorship and propaganda. In addition, an entire generation of online public agenda setters has emerged to become influential opinion leaders. I have observed a remarkable phenomenon that many of the most influential 

online opinion leaders appear to hold in common values supporting democracy, 

human rights and freedom of expression. These netizens, with their growing numbers, expanding social networks, political resilience, and increasing influence, seem 

to be evolving from ‘‘voices under domination’’ to ‘‘universal values advocates.’’ This 

new, emerging generation of ‘‘Internet citizens’’ is becoming one of the most dynamic 

forces in setting the media agenda and fostering civil engagement on public issues 

in China, despite the government’s control efforts. This new generation—embodying 

alternative (liberal, democratic) political values and connected through the Internet—will certainly change China’s future course. 

6. RECOMMENDATIONS TO THE US GOVERNMENT

Increasing funding to projects which aim to expand the free flow of information 

on the Internet, such as (1) projects which monitor Internet censorship, identify and 

archive censored content and make such contents re-accessible for netizens (2) development and deployment of counter-censorship technologies in support of online 

civil society, human rights and journalism communities in China and other countries with a censored Internet. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF GILBERT B. KAPLAN

NOVEMBER 17, 2011

INTRODUCTION

China’s censorship of the Internet and its restrictions on the free flow of information have a very significant impact on U.S. economic and trade interests. China continues to impose debilitating burdens on foreign Internet service providers through 

its censorship regime, its blocking of foreign websites, and its ‘‘Great Firewall’’ infrastructure, which inhibit or prevent all together U.S. companies’ ability to do business in China, and their ability to compete with Chinese domestic companies. China’s Internet service providers have capitalized on this discriminatory treatment of 

U.S. companies and have consequently experienced great success. Earlier this year, 

for example, RenRen (known as ‘‘China’s Facebook’’) filed for a U.S. public offering, 

symbolizing its success to date and its plans for expansion.1 Meanwhile, Facebook 

is blocked in China. These measures have been ongoing for years, and have had an 
61 

2 A panel has previously interpreted the term ‘‘publish’’ in the WTO Agreements as more than 

‘‘making publicly available.’’ In Chile-Price Band System and Safeguard Measures Relating to 

Certain Agricultural Products, the panel held that the requirements to publish a report in the 

Agreement on Safeguards meant ‘‘to make generally available through an appropriate medium.’’ 

Appellate Body Report, Chile-Price Band System and Safeguard Measures Relating to Certain 

Agricultural Products, WT/DS207/AB/R (adopted 23 October 2002), para. 7.128. Further, ‘‘[t]he 

obligation is of an absolute character and due diligence obliges WTO members to publish more, 

rather than less, because of the terms ‘relevant’ and ‘affecting’ invite a wide reading.’’ Mitsuo 

Matsushita, Thomas J. Schoenbaum, & Petros C. Mavroidis, The World Trade Organization, 

Law, Practice, and Policy (2003). 

overwhelming adverse impact on market share for U.S. companies—perhaps to the 

extent that such market share can never be recovered. 

China’s blocking and filtering measures, and the fog of uncertainty surrounding 

what China’s censors will and will not permit, violate numerous of China’s international obligations, including provisions of the WTO General Agreement on Trade 

and Services (‘‘GATS’’) and China’s WTO Protocol of Accession. 

The negative impact of these violations on America’s premier Internet companies 

is profound. There are several corporate victims of China’s exclusionary practices. 

Although there is public information identifying several large companies that have 

been blocked or restricted by the Great Firewall, including YouTube, Facebook, 

Twitter, Vimeo, Google, and the Huffington Post, to name a few, there are many 

other companies that have been blocked from access in China that I am not able 

to identify by name specifically because these companies fear retaliation. These companies come from various sectors, including energy, labor mediation, tourism, education, web hosting, and advertising, among others. The fact that these large, wellestablished companies and other fast-growing U.S. firms, so successful in every 

other major market in the world, are reluctant to come forward with specific information that would form the basis of a WTO complaint against the Chinese government is powerful testament to (1) the importance of the Chinese Internet market— 

the largest in the world—to these firms’ continued success, and (2) the risk of retaliation that these firms face if they are seen as lending direct support to a trade complaint against China. Moreover, companies not yet in existence, but for which China 

could represent a significant business opportunity, do not even have a voice in the 

matter and perhaps never will. 

I represent the First Amendment Coalition, an award-winning, non-profit public 

interest organization dedicated to advancing free speech for individuals and companies just like those denied access to China’s Internet market. I have been working 

with them to address the issue of China’s Internet restrictiveness since 2007. The 

issues regarding internet censorship and internet blockage are trade issues cognizable under the WTO, as well as freedom of speech issues. They are a harmful 

trade barrier to U.S. business which must be ended. 

The First Amendment Coalition was able to persuade the Office of the U.S. Trade 

Representative (‘‘USTR’’) to take the critical step of requesting detailed information 

from China on its internet restrictions under Article III:4 of GATS, which mandates 

transparency in a Member’s application of measures affecting services. GATS Article 

III:4 reads as follows. 

Each Member shall publish promptly and, except in emergency situations, 

at the latest by the time of their entry into force, all relevant measures of 

general application which pertain to or affect the operation of this Agreement. 

USTR’s request to China follows a three year effort by the First Amendment Coalition to get the U.S. government to take a tough stance to address China internet 

restrictions in violation of international trade rules, free speech, and human rights. 

The U.S. request to China under GATS Article III:4 is highly significant not only 

because it is the very first time any WTO Member has utilized that provision of the 

GATS agreement, but also because it is the first time that the U.S. government, or 

any country, has made a formal submission through the WTO to China to address 

internet censorship. 

Contrary to GATS Article III:4, China’s measures with respect to Internet services 

have not been published promptly, and in fact, the blocking and filtering measures 

have not been published at all.2 In this regard, we have been unable to document 

written directives or specific governmental instructions concerning China’s measures 

constituting the ‘‘Great Firewall,’’ but this in effect lends support to the argument 

that China is not transparent in its practices related to controlling and censoring 

Internet content. Indeed, China has published few, if any, regulations related to 

Internet services. The Chinese government recently issued an official decision, currently available only in Chinese, which appears not to contain ‘‘any new concrete 
62 

3See ‘‘6th Plenum Report Suggests China Will Strengthen Internet Management,’’ Digicha 

Internet and Digital Media in China, October 26, 2011, citing from the ‘‘Central Committee Decision Concerning the Major Issue of Deepening Cultural System Reforms, Promoting the Great 

Development and Prosperity of Socialist Culture’’ from the 6th Plenum of the 17th Communist 

Party Congress (currently available only in Chinese), available at http://digicha.com/index.php/ 

2011/10/6th-plenum-report-suggests-china-will-strengthen-internet-management/. 4 According to measures issued by China’s State Council, Internet services providers may not 

disseminate information with content that: (1) opposes the fundamental principles determined 

in the Constitution; (2) compromises state security, divulges state secrets, subverts state power 

or damages national unity; (3) harms the dignity or interests of the state; (4) incites ethnic hatred or racial discrimination or damages inter-ethnic unity; (5) sabotages state religious policy 

or propagates heretical teachings or feudal superstitions; (6) disseminates rumors, disturbs social order or disrupts social stability; (7) propagates obscenity, pornography, gambling, violence, 

murder or fear or incites the commission of crimes; (8) insults or slanders a third party or infringes upon the lawful rights and interests of a third party; (9) disturbs the public order by 

instigating illegal gatherings, associations, parades, demonstrations, or assemblies; (10) organizes activities in the name of illegal civil organizations; contains other content prohibited by 

the laws and administrative regulations, or by the state. 

policies but it does set the stage for future moves to rein in parts of the Internet 

at the possible expense of the commercial Internet companies.’’ 3

The historic action taken by USTR is also a significant and important step because, in addition to promoting transparency and free speech, it may result in China 

providing information in response to U.S. questions that will assist small and medium-sized U.S. businesses in entering the Chinese market, which they currently 

are unable to do given the lack of certain vital information involving use of the 

Internet. As USTR indicated in its press release, 

[a]n Internet website that can be accessed in China is increasingly a critical 

element for service suppliers aiming to reach Chinese consumers, and a 

number of U.S. businesses, especially small- and medium-sized enterprises, 

have expressed concerns regarding the adverse business impacts from periodic disruptions to the availability of their websites in China. 

Small and medium-sized U.S. businesses are particularly disadvantaged by China’s Great Firewall because, unlike bigger U.S. companies, they do not have the resources to physically set up shop in China so they are simply excluded from the Chinese market. 

Some of the information requested from China by USTR included the following: 

• With respect to China’s rules governing website blocking: Who is responsible 

for determining when a website should be blocked? What are the criteria for 

blocking access? Where are the guidelines published? Who does the actual 

blocking? How can a service supplier know if their website has been blocked? 

Are decisions to block appealable? Is the process used to prevent access the 

same or different for foreign and domestic content? 

• With respect to the State Internet Information Office (‘‘SIIO’’) established by 

the State Council: What are the responsibilities and authorities of SIIO? Will 

SIIO handle licenses, approval processes, and questions on filtering and other 

laws? 

• With respect to inadvertent blocking where one site is blocked when it 

shares an IP address with a website China has deemed harmful: How does it 

occur? Can it be avoided? Will Chinese authorities notify the owner of the web 

hosting service so that it may ensure other sites are not inadvertently blocked? 

How can companies resolve inadvertent blocking? 

• With respect to the broad nature of the eleven categories of content which 

Internet service providers may not disseminate: 4 Are there any criteria to determine when content falls within the eleven categories? Are government requests to filer specific terms communicated directly to Internet information 

service providers? Are the same terms subject to filtering made available to 

Internet information service providers inside and outside of China? 

• With respect to the prevention of ‘‘illegal information’’ as that term is used 

in the White Paper on the Internet in China: How is illegal information defined? Is a written government order required for a private corporation or relevant authority to block the transmission of illegal information? What types of 

technical measures are service suppliers expected to use to prevent transmission of the illegal information? Are the technical measures to block illegal 

information applied automatically to domestic and foreign traffic? If not, how 

are they applied? Does Internet content from outside of China go through a separate monitoring process for illegal information than Internet content created 

inside of China? If so, how do they differ? 
63 

5See e.g., ‘‘12VPN and Other VPN Services DNS Poisoned by Great Firewall in China,’’ June 

27, 2011, available at http://www.bestvpnservice.com/blog/12vpn-now-dns-poisoned-in-china-bygreat-firewall; ‘‘Google+ Now DNS Blocked in China,’’ July 5, 2011, available at http:// 

www.isidorsfugue.com/2011/07/google-now-dns-blocked-in-china.html; ‘‘China Strengthens Great 

Firewall, While, Chinese Bypass It,’’ March 3, 2011, available at http://www.bestvpnservice.com/ 

blog/china-strengthens-great-firewall-while-chinese-bypass-it; ‘‘Ahead of Party Anniversary, 

China Poisons the Internet,’’ July 1, 2011, available at http://uncut.indexoncensorship.org/2011/ 

07/ahead-of-party-anniversary-china-poisons-the-internet/. 6See ‘‘You’ve Got Mail,’’ Time Magazine, October 16, 2011, available at http://www.time.com/ 

time/magazine/article/0,9171,2096818,00.html 7 ‘‘Beijing leaps to defense of ‘Great Firewall of China,’’’ Reuters, October 20, 2011, available 

at http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/20/us-china-internet-idUSTRE79J1PU20111020. 8See ‘‘6th Plenum Report Suggests China Will Strengthen Internet Management,’’ Digicha 

Internet and Digital Media in China, October 26, 2011, citing from the ‘‘Central Committee Decision Concerning the Major Issue of Deepening Cultural System Reforms, Promoting the Great 

Development and Prosperity of Socialist Culture’’ from the 6th Plenum of the 17th Communist 

Party Congress (currently available only in Chinese), available at http://digicha.com/index.php/ 

2011/10/6th-plenum-report-suggests-china-will-strengthen-internet-management/. 9 ‘‘Android Marketplace blocked by Great Firewall of China,’’ The Register, October 10, 2011, 

available at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10/10/china—android—blocking/. 10See, e.g., Lin Shujuan, Flutter over New Twitter, China Daily (Oct. 22, 2009) http:// 

www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2009–10/22/content—8829406.htm (discussing the rise in popularity 

of Sina Weibo, a microblogging website with monitored content, since Twitter became inaccessible in China); Glen Loveland, When Will China Unblock Facebook and Twitter? (Sep. 28, 2009) 

http://www.examiner.com/x-/x-15615–Asia-Headlines-Examinery2009m9d28–When-will-ChinaContinued 

We hope and expect that the Government of China will answer these questions 

fully and promptly, fulfilling its obligations under the WTO to maintain an open 

internet and not discriminate against U.S. business. 

The remainder of this submission will review in greater detail the Internet restrictions in China, the adverse trade impact caused by those restrictions, and how 

those restrictions would appear to violate China’s international trade obligations. 

I. CHINA’S INTERNET RESTRICTIONS

U.S. and foreign Internet companies have faced a long history of discriminatory 

treatment in China, to their disadvantage and to the advantage of their Chinese 

competitors. China has for many years maintained a policy, popularly known as the 

‘‘Great Firewall,’’ under which it has exerted strict control over the use of the limited system of fiber optic cables that connects networks in China to the outside 

world. As we understand it, China has installed certain hardware, known as ‘‘tappers’’ or ‘‘network sniffers,’’ at each entry point so that when a user in China attempts to access a good or service located on a server outside of China, the tappers 

create mirror copies of the data packets that flow back and forth between the two 

servers, and the mirror copies are delivered to a set of computers that automatically 

review the data packets. The computers can be, and often are, pre-progammed to 

block a particular domain name server (‘‘DNS’’), Internet Protocol (‘‘IP’’) address, or 

Universal Resource Locator (‘‘URL’’) address.5

The government of China (‘‘GOC’’) also employs tens of thousands of individuals 

whose sole mission is to search the Internet for objectionable content. Their work 

often results in the blocking of additional DNS, IP, and URL addresses.6

Following USTR’s Article III:4 request, China defended its Internet censorship as 

an effort to ‘‘safeguard the public.’’ 7 Although the ruling Communist Party claims 

its monitoring and blocking is to promote ‘‘constructive’’ websites, stop the spread 

of ‘‘harmful information,’’ and develop what it calls a healthy internet culture, it is 

unclear what content is subject to blocking and often the blocked content has nothing resembling ‘‘harmful information.’’ 8 Additionally, the blocking appears motivated by other competitive or political agendas. For example, access to the Android 

Marketplace was blocked within China just after Google announced it would help 

the Dalai Lama to visit South Africa virtually.9

II. HARM CAUSED BY CHINA’S RESTRICTIONS

Chinese internet restrictions have disadvantaged American businesses, to the 

benefit of Chinese businesses. According to news reports, Facebook and Twitter, for 

example, have been blocked in China. In their absence, copycat websites based in 

China (with censored content) have been able to flourish. It seems unlikely that 

Facebook and Twitter will be able to regain the market share lost to their Chinese 

competitors even if they were unblocked at some point in the future. Chinese users 

have already developed a preference for certain social media sites, and it is doubtful 

that they would have an incentive to switch services.10 The loss of a huge potential 
64 

unblock-Facebook-and-Twitter (‘‘Every Chinese user who can’t use the site is that much more 

likely to turn to China’s domestic copycat, YouKu’’); China’s Twitter Clones, Read Write Web 

(Mar. 5, 2010) http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/china—twitter—clones.php (quoting Chinese technology writer Kaiser Kuo: ‘‘Although there would be an uptake in the number of users 

on Twitter, if it was ever to be made available again, Weibo and others will have gained too 

much momentum by then’’). 11 ‘‘U.S., China Clash Over Internet Great Wall,’’ China-U.S. Trade Law, October 31, 2011, 

available at http://www.chinaustradelawblog.com/2011/10/articles/trade-disputes/wto/us-chinaclash-over-internet-great-wall-acaaeaecea/. 12 ‘‘China tangles with Internet access,’’ Politico, citing USTR official, October 30, 2011, available at http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1011/67190.html. 13 Internet Matters: The Net’s Sweeping Impact On Growth, Jobs, and Prosperity, McKinsey 

Global Institute, May 2011, available at http://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/publications/internet— 

matters/pdfs/MGI—internet—matters—full—report.pdf. 14 ‘‘Android Marketplace blocked by Great Firewall of China,’’ The Register, October 10, 2011, 

available at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10/10/china—android—blocking/. 15See e.g., ‘‘Can China’s Economy Thrive with a Censored Internet?’’ Time, October 26, 2011, 

available at http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/2011/10/26/can-china%E2%80%99s-economythrive-with-a-censored-internet/. 16See, e.g., Appellate Body Report, United States – Sunset Review of Anti-Dumping Duties 

on Corrosion-Resistant Carbon Steel Flat Products from Japan, WT/DS244/AB/R (adopted Jan. 

9, 2004), paras. 81–85 (‘‘In principle, any act or omission attributable to a WTO Member can 

be a measure of that Member for purposes of dispute settlement proceedings’’.) (The Appellate 

Body also referred to its earlier opinion in Guatemala–Cement I (AB), which stated that ‘‘ . . . 

a ‘measure’ may be any act of a Member, whether or not legally binding, and it can include 

even non-binding administrative guidance by a government.’’). 17Panel Report, Japan – Measures Affecting Consumer Photographic Film and Paper, WT/ 

DS44/R (adopted Apr. 22, 1998), para. 10.44. 

market for these companies indicates the extent of the harm caused by the Chinese 

actions. In addition to the direct loss of access to Chinese consumers by these companies comes the loss from all of the advertisers that would ordinarily be offering 

their services on the Internet pages of these social media service providers. 

The number of Internet users in China has exceeded 500 million, growing at double digit rates since 2008, roughly twice the size of the U.S. market, which grew 

only 2.5 to 4.5 percent in the same timeframe. China is now the largest market for 

Internet users 11 and U.S. businesses are effectively being blocked from or only 

given highly restricted access to that market. U.S. companies excluded from the Chinese market are not just large tech companies but small and medium businesses 

including ‘‘travel sites, engineering firms and consulting firms, which have found 

their sites blocked and have complained to the trade office.’’ 12 A 2011 report by the 

McKinsey Global Institute estimates that there is a ten percent increase in productivity for small and medium businesses from internet usage.13 This productivity 

growth is denied U.S. companies that are blocked from providing their services in 

China. 

U.S. companies are subject to the strict controls that completely disrupt their 

service, or at a minimum seriously delay the transmission of information. Users of 

these websites, if they actually endure the wait and do not move to a competitor 

service supplier,14 suffer from a decrease in the quality of service, causing commercial harm to U.S. companies.15

It would be very useful for this Commission to undertake, directly or perhaps 

through an economic consulting firm, an economic analysis of the overall harm 

caused to U.S. companies by the Chinese blockage and censorship of the internet. 

I think that would be one useful follow-up to this hearing. 

III. CHINA’S INTERNET RESTRICTIONS VIOLATE ITS INTERNATIONAL TRADE OBLIGATIONS

The Chinese Government’s actions appear to constitute various violations of WTO 

agreements to which China is a party, particularly the GATS Agreement. The Chinese actions in question, although often based on unwritten policies and practices, 

would still constitute ‘‘measures’’ that can be challenged under the World Trade Organization Dispute Settlement procedures. In this regard, the Appellate Body and 

various WTO panels have confirmed that actionable ‘‘measures’’ subject to WTO dispute settlement include not only written laws and regulations, but other government actions as well.16 Panels have also recognized the subtleties of government 

pressure on private companies as ‘‘measures’’ that may be challenged at the WTO.17

In addition to USTR’s current GATS Article III:4 request, there are more aggressive steps that the United States could take to protect its vital economic interests. 

While we believe that China currently is preparing its official response to USTR’s 

Article III:4 request, if China fails to respond or fails to respond meaningfully, the 

United States would then have a readily apparent basis to initiate formal dispute 

settlement proceedings in the WTO. Paragraph 1 of GATS Article XXIII says ‘‘[i]f 
65 

18See US – Zeroing (EC) at paras. 192, 198. 19These commitments appear in an addendum to the Working Party Report on the Accession 

of China and are an integral part of the GATS. Report of the Working Party on the Accession 

of China, Addendum, Schedule CLII—The People’s Republic of China, Part II—Schedule of Specific Commitments on Services List, List of Article II MFN Exemption, WT/MIN(01)/3/Add.2 (10 

Nov 2001) (‘‘Schedule of Specific Commitments’’). 

any Member should consider that any other Member fails to carry out its obligations 

or specific commitments under this Agreement, it may with a view to reaching a 

mutually satisfactory resolution of the matter have recourse to the dispute settlement understanding.’’ 

In addition to a potential violation under GATS Article III on transparency, there 

are other WTO obligations that China appears to violate with its Internet restrictions, including other GATS provisions, as is discussed below. 

Initiation of a WTO dispute settlement proceeding against Chinese Internet restrictions by the United States would signal to the U.S. business community, to consumers around the world, and to China, that the U.S. government will assert its 

rights under WTO agreements when China fails to fulfill its WTO obligations, even 

in those areas that may be of a more sensitive nature. Unfortunately, these sensitivities give rise to a number of obstacles to U.S. initiation and prosecution of a 

formal WTO dispute against China. 

As noted, it is difficult to find companies willing to come forward to support a potential case against China for fear of retaliation. Due to this fear, specific facts 

needed by the U.S. government to support many claims under the WTO are difficult 

to document. In addition, also as noted, many of the Chinese laws, regulations, policies, and practices regarding Internet services are not written down, although they 

are enforced de facto.18

A. China’s Internet Censorship Violates Other Provisions Of GATS 

China made specific commitments regarding market access and national treatment for services in various service sectors.19 China’s Internet policies would appear 

to violate many of these specific commitments under the GATS, including in the 

areas of Data Processing Services, Photographic Services, Telecommunication Services, Mobile Voice and Data Services, Audiovisual Services, Tourism and Travel Related Services, and Transport Services. By pursuing these policies, China denies 

market access to U.S. companies and discriminates against the services of U.S. companies in favor of Chinese companies. 

Although U.S. companies offer a wide range of services over the Internet, four 

service sectors that would appear to suffer disproportionately under Chinese policies 

are: (1) Advertising services (the primary revenue source for U.S. suppliers of Internet-based services, particularly those operating search engines, social networking, 

and data/photo sharing, is through advertising and U.S. services suppliers obtain 

revenue from the development and posting of targeted advertisements on their 

webpages and facilitating access to other websites by their users clicking on the advertisements); (2) Data processing and tabulation services (relevant U.S. services 

suppliers are providing consumers with the ability to access certain tools over the 

Internet that enable them to make, edit, and share videos or photos, or other data 

and that allow them to search for content on other websites and the U.S. services 

supplier is necessarily processing data for the consumer and providing a tool to access defined data bases or the Internet generally); (3) On-line information and database retrieval; and (4) Videos, including entertainment software and (CPC 83202), 

distribution services (‘‘Video/entertainment distribution services’’). 

There follows below a brief discussion of some of the specific GATS claims that 

might be made against the Chinese measures in question and some of the factors 

that would need to be considered in prosecuting such claims. 

1. National Treatment 

China’s restrictions on U.S. Internet companies appear to violate the national 

treatment provision in Article XVII of the GATS, which provides that ‘‘each Member 

shall accord to services and service suppliers of any other Member, in respect of all 

measures affecting the supply of services, treatment no less favourable than that 

it accords to its own like services and service suppliers.’’ 

The Chinese measures at issue would seem to fall within one or more of at least 

four services subsectors for which China has inscribed a specific commitment, without limitation on national treatment, in its WTO Services Schedule. As such, China’s measures must comply with the obligations in Article XVII for these subsec-
66 

20 In the case of potential market access violations in relation to telecommunications services, 

the United States will need to address potential Chinese arguments that the measures are nondiscriminatory and are based on China’s right, under the footnote in its schedule, to require that 

such services be channeled through approved gateways. Moreover, in relation to national treatment for video/entertainment distribution services, China has not scheduled any limitation in 

relation to ‘‘content review’’ and thus discriminatory content review would not be justified by 

any reservation or limitation. 21 Appellate Body Report, European Communities—Regime for the Importation, Sale and Distribution of Bananas, WT/DS27/AB/R (adopted 25 September 1997), para. 220. 22See ‘‘Enabling Trade in the Era of Information Technologies: Breaking Down Barriers to 

the Free Flow of Information,’’ Google paper released November 15, 2010, available at http:// 

static.googleusercontent.com/external—content/untrusted—dlcp/www.google.com/en/us/ 

googleblogs/pdfs/trade—free—flow—of—information.pdf. 23See, e.g., Panel Report, Canada – Certain Measures Affecting the Automotive Industry, WT/ 

DS139/R, WT/DS142/R (adopted 19 June 2000), para. 10.80. 

tors.20 Current Chinese treatment of U.S. Internet companies, including filtering 

and blocking through the ‘‘Great Firewall’’ and mandated disabling of certain service 

functions, modifies the conditions of competition in favor of Chinese suppliers such 

as Baidu (considered the ‘‘Google’’ of China); as such, these measures are inconsistent with Article XVII of the GATS. 

If China’s measures were challenged in a WTO proceeding, a Panel would first 

determine whether China’s measures are indeed ‘‘affecting’’ the supply of these services. As noted by the Appellate Body in EC—Bananas III: 

[T]he term of ‘‘affecting’’ reflects the intent of the drafters to give a broad 

reach to the GATS. The ordinary meaning of the word ‘‘affecting’’ implies 

a measure that has ‘‘an effect on’’, which indicates a broad scope of application. This interpretation is further reinforced by the conclusions of previous 

panels that the term ‘‘affecting’’ in the context of Article III of the GATT 

is wider in scope than such terms as ‘‘regulating’’ or ‘‘governing.’’ 21

It is therefore not necessary for China’s measures to be directly regulating or governing the business of U.S. Internet service providers, but merely that the measures 

have an effect on these services, and their providers’ ability to do business in China. 

China’s measures clearly have ‘‘an effect on’’ these services—indeed, a very detrimental one.22

Second, the United States would need to demonstrate that China’s measures accord ‘‘less favorable’’ treatment to U.S. suppliers than to China’s domestic suppliers 

of ‘‘like’’ services. As set forth in GATS Article XVII:3, the test for less favorable 

treatment is whether the measure ‘‘modifies the conditions of competition in favor 

of services or service suppliers of’’ China compared to like services or services suppliers of the United States.23 Persuading a panel in this regard would require the 

production of extensive data and specific information demonstrating the competitive 

disadvantage suffered by U.S. companies due to China’s measures. A comparison of 

blockages of websites, upload times for content of websites, and other significant impediments to Internet service providers would likely reveal significant and swift loss 

of market share by U.S. providers. 

2. Market Access 

Article XVI:2 of the GATS prohibits Members from maintaining or adopting quantitative limitations on service operations or service output. China’s restrictions on 

certain U.S. Internet companies’ services constitutes a de facto quantitative limitation on such services, therefore violating this provision. 

3. Domestic Regulation 

Under Article VI of the GATS, for services sectors in which specific commitments 

have been undertaken, China must administer its measures in a ‘‘reasonable, objective and impartial manner’’ and, for all services sectors, must ensure that tribunals 

or procedures are available for the prompt review and remedy of administrative decisions. China’s restrictions on U.S. Internet companies are subjective and nontransparent, and there are no tribunals or procedures for the review of these administrative decisions. The restrictions therefore violate China’s obligations under Articles VI:1 and VI:2(a) of the GATS. 

China’s ‘‘Great Firewall’’ filtering and blocking practices would also seem to violate the GATS Annex on Telecommunications, which states in paragraphs 4 and 5 

that ‘‘each Member shall ensure that relevant information on conditions affecting access to and use of public telecommunications transport networks and services is 

publicly available’’ and that ‘‘{e}ach Member shall ensure that any service supplier 

of any other Member is accorded access to and use of public telecommunications 

transport networks and services on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms and 
67 

1 James Manyika and Charles Roxburgh, ‘‘The great transformer: the impact of the Internet 

on economic growth and prosperty,’’ MCKINSEY GLOBAL INSTITUTE, October 2011, http:// 

www.mckinsey.com/mgi/publications/great—transformer/pdfs/McKinsey—the—great—transformer.pdf 

conditions.’’ In addition, paragraph 5(c) imposes an obligation on China to ensure 

that U.S. services suppliers may use the public telecommunications transport networks and services ‘‘for the movement of information within and across borders’’ and 

‘‘for access to information contained in data bases or otherwise stored in machinereadable form’’ in the United States or in the territory of another WTO Member. 

China’s filtering and blocking on Internet content clearly restricts the availability 

of these telecommunications networks in a discriminatory fashion. 

CONCLUSION

We appreciate the Commission holding this hearing and inviting me to testify. We 

also appreciate the efforts of USTR in submitting the GATS III:4 questions. We urge 

the Commission to take into account our views in its ongoing work on this issue. 

We also urge the Commission to monitor China’s responses to these questions as 

well as USTR’s continuing efforts on this very important issue. An open and accessible internet in China is a prerequisite to U.S. success in the Chinese market, and 

a goal that we must continue to fight for until it is achieved. 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF ED BLACK

NOVEMBER 17, 2011

Chairman Smith and Chairman Brown, I appreciate the opportunity to again testify before the Commission to discuss China’s censorship of the Internet. I am President and CEO of the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA), an 

organization that has promoted openness, competition, and free trade for over 35 

years. 

I commend the Commission for examining the prescient issue of how restrictions 

on the free flow of information online pose not only significant human rights concerns, but economic concerns as well. CCIA has long been an advocate of openness 

online, as we ardently believe that freedom and openness are not only at the heart 

of our industry’s rapid growth, but are also the core values underpinning our success as a democracy. 

I know that traditionally freedom of expression has rightly been viewed through 

the lens of human rights, and I strongly support working through the United Nations and NGOs to put pressure on recalcitrant members of the international community who defy their commitments in this arena. We deeply admire the courage 

and sacrifice of activists such as Mr. Li’s father and Pastor Zhang who seek freedom 

for their people. As their prior testimony makes clear, the human toll of such measures is enormous. A commitment to freedom, particularly the freedom of expression, 

is the keystone of our nation and has premeditated our foreign policy since America’s incipiency. It is also what has driven so many Tunisians, Egyptians and Syrians to sacrifice their lives in recent months. I firmly believe that the United States 

must continue its full-throated support of freedom of expression worldwide—both 

online and offline. In fact, some of our biggest domestic and foreign policy mistakes 

occurred when we have overlooked these principles in the name of diplomatic or political expediency. In this vein, I support our State Department’s efforts to aggressively promote Internet freedom online and I caution our government against taking 

any actions, such as the misguided Intellectual Property enforcement bills before 

Congress as we speak, that might hamstring these efforts abroad. 

In addition to doing great injury to human rights, actions to restrict the free flow 

of information online also have serious economic repercussions. The Internet increasingly represents the shipping lane of the 21st century. Others have likened it 

to a digital Silk Road, ferrying electrons around the world and enabling trade in 

service sectors that were not too long ago considered by economists to be 

nontradable. It erases distance, eliminates delivery costs, and connects the smallest 

businesses in the most remote places with a worldwide market. Now a U.S. engineer, a German lawyer, a British banker or an Indian accountant can ply their 

trade anywhere in the world that has an Internet connection—and all without ever 

having to get on a plane and pass through a customs checkpoint. In fact, a recent 

McKinsey study found that the Internet accounted for 21 percent of GDP growth 

of mature economies over the last five years.1
68 

2Financial Times ‘‘FT Global 500 2011’’, http://www.ft.com/intl/reports/ft-500–2011; Ari Levy, 

‘‘Facebook Valuation tops Amazon.com, trailing only Google on the Web’’, BLOOMBERG, http:// 

www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-28/facebook-s-82-9-billion-valuation-tops-amazon-comupdate1-.html 3 In 2010, China was reported to have 420 million Internet Users. See Gao Qihui, ‘‘China’s 

Internet Population hits 420m’’, CHINA DAILY, July 15, 2010, http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/ 

china/2010–07/15/content—10112957.htm 4 Human Rights Watch, Race to the Bottom, August 2006, page 86. 

5Tim Wu, ‘‘The World Trade Law of Censorship and Filtering.’’ CHICAGO JOURNAL OF 

INT’L LAW (2006–07). 6 Claudine Beaumont, ‘‘Foursquare Blocked in China’’, THE TELEGRAPH, June 4, 2010. 

7Simon Elegant, ‘‘Chinese Government Attacks Google Over Internet Porn’’, TIME, June 22, 

2009. 

I. THE BENEFITS OF A TRADE APPROACH

The Internet industry is one sector where the United States enjoys a comparative 

advantage over the rest of the world. Despite the best efforts of other nations, no 

other country has been able to duplicate Silicon Valley. Besides the Internet being 

a major input of nearly all traditional businesses, American companies whose main 

purpose is to facilitate communication and make information more easily accessible 

are some of our biggest and fastest growing companies. Google, currently the 28th 

most valuable company in the world with a market valuation of $174 billion, and 

Facebook, whose estimated market value is $83 billion, are both more highly valued 

than Goldman Sachs.2 This is big business for America, and these businesses also 

happen to be the tools that empower people to communicate, assemble, and organize. 

Since China gets full access to United States markets in sectors where it has a 

competitive advantage, such as low-cost manufacturing, it is disconcerting that the 

United States Government has not done more to ensure that America’s Internet 

companies get the same liberalized access to the Chinese market, a market which 

now has more Internet users than the entire population of the United States—and 

the number of Chinese Internet users is growing briskly.3 This is an important market for our domestic Internet industry. 

However, we are encouraged by the USTR’s recent formal inquiry into the specifics of Chinese censorship practices. By using mechanisms available to it under the 

WTO, the USTR has put China in a position where it must divulge specific details 

about its notoriously vague censorship policies or face retaliation. As the first step 

of dealing with Chinese restrictions is to bring them into the light of day, this move 

is crucial. Although it is unlikely that enforcing trade commitments can ‘‘solve’’ the 

China censorship problem as much as freedom of expression advocates, myself included, would like, the route certainly has its advantages and provides U.S. negotiators tangible sticks and carrots that are not available in the human rights arena. 

Prominent human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch have also recognized the potential benefits of pursuing a trade approach.4

Even though the WTO allows exceptions to its rules for matters of public morals 

and national security, it also requires that all regulations and restrictions be transparent, provide due process to affected parties, be the least restrictive as possible 

and apply equally to foreign and domestic players. As of today, China complies with 

none of these requirements. Furthermore, the WTO has interpreted the public morals and national security exemptions reasonably narrowly in the past, so there is 

even some question as to the legitimacy of much of Chinese filtering at its very core 

under international trade law. Even if some filtering is found permissible under 

trade law, forcing China ‘‘to justify each and every blockage or filtering’’ may 

dampen its enthusiasm to impose such measures.5 At the very least, it is likely that 

China would have to scale back, and better document, its censorship practices. 

II. CHINESE CENSORSHIP

The Chinese government censors, blocks, and discriminates against foreign-based 

web services and content, practices which directly or indirectly advantage domestic 

firms. It has repeatedly blocked sites and services, including Facebook, Flickr, Foursquare, Google and Twitter. China blocked Foursquare, a social networking service, 

ahead of June 4, 2010, in response to a number of users who had set their location 

to Tiananmen Square as a way to honor the 1989 protests.6 Additionally, China has 

singled out U.S. companies for censorship even when Chinese-owned services carry 

the same, banned content.7

Even a seemingly harmless site, like photo-sharing website Flickr, has been 

blocked in China, while its identical clone Bababian has grown steadily 
69 

8 Jordan Calinoff, ‘‘Beijing’s Foreign Internet Purge’’, FOREIGN POLICY, January 15, 2010, 

available online at <http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/14/chinas—foreign—internet— 

purge>. 9 John Boudreau, ‘‘Google Struggles to Succeed in China Market’’, SAN JOSE MERCURY 

NEWS, April 24, 2011. 10Maggie Shiels, ‘‘China Criticised Over YouTube’’, BBC, March 25, 2009, available online at 

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7962718.stm>. 11 Congressional-Executive Commission on China Annual Report 2011, page 58. 

with foreign technology and no foreign competition. Likewise, blog-hosting 

sites Blogger and WordPress have long been blocked in China. Instead, Chinese netizens use Tianya, the 13th-most popular site in China. Far from 

being a sanitized land of boring blogs about daily activities, Tianya also 

hosts China’s largest Internet forum, a vitriolic, sensationalized, and hatefilled arena that makes Western gossip sites seem like the Economist.8

This double standard strongly suggests that the motivation here is protectionism 

rather than morals. 

In addition, ‘‘Google’s decision to stop self-censoring its search results in mainland 

China and reroute traffic through its site in Hong Kong, where mainland China’s 

censorship rules do not apply, has come at a high cost. Its share of the Chinese 

search market revenue plunged to 19.6 percent in the last quarter of 2010 from 35.9 

percent the year before, according to Analysys International. Chief competitor Baidu 

has benefited greatly from Google’s fading position, increasing its share of search 

market revenue to 75.5 percent from 58.8 percent during the same period.’’ 9

China has also taken action against U.S.-based services in response to specific activities of American firms or the U.S. Government itself. For instance, in response 

to Congress awarding the Dalai Lama with the Congressional Gold Medal in October 2007 and the opening of a YouTube Taiwan domain, China manipulated its 

‘‘Great Firewall’’ to redirect users entering the URL for U.S. search engines to 

Baidu, the Chinese search engine.10 This is the digital equivalent of diverting business to a competitor in direct contradiction to the customer’s intentions. 

In addition to such direct censorship, CCIA Members report that content filtering 

harms the quality of service that foreign firms are able to deliver, indirectly 

advantaging domestic Chinese services. 

For instance, China filters content and services at the international gateway as 

transmissions enter the country and become available to users. In filtering the services and content that enter their networks, China ensures that the foreign services 

available to users are degraded iterations of the service available to users in other 

markets. As a result, foreign service and content providers must compete with degraded products against non-filtered domestic products, and as such are disadvantaged in comparison to the domestically based competitors in those countries. 

Internet censorship is part of a continuing pattern of the Chinese government 

using trade and regulatory policies that seek to either restrict access to Chinese 

markets or force foreign companies to acquiesce to Chinese government demands as 

the price of access. China’s behavior signifies its belief that access to its markets 

is a coin that enables them to buy their way out of playing by the global trading 

system rules. From its ‘‘Indigenous Innovation’’ policies to its export quotas for rare 

earth elements, China has consistently shown a willingness to flaunt international 

trade rules until confronted by multiple trading partners. 

III. DOMESTIC PRECEDENT

In this Commission’s most recent annual report it correctly identified a troubling 

aspect of China’s censorship regime. 

Chinese Internet regulations contain vague and broad prohibitions on content that, for example, ‘‘harms the honor or interests of the nation,’’ 

‘‘spreads rumors,’’ or ‘‘disrupts national policies on religion.’’ In China, the 

government places the burden on Internet service and content providers to 

monitor and remove content based on these vague standards and to maintain records of such activity and report it to the government.11

Pending IP enforcement legislation before the House and Senate (S. 968 and H.R. 

3261) share some disturbing similarities with China’s approach to centralized Internet control as pointed out by the Commission. The bills create vague standards for 

liability and ask private companies and Internet intermediaries to police and censor 

their users. When coupled with blanket immunity provisions for actions taken while 

attempting to comply with the legislation, this bill would encourage overbroad filtering that will remove both legal and illegal content. 
70 

12 ‘‘Professors’ Letter in Opposition to ‘‘Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity 

and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011,’’ July 5, 2011. http://blogs.law.stanford.edu/ 

newsfeed/files/2011/07/PROTECT-IP-letter-final.pdf 13 Amanda Min Chung Han, ‘‘Will Investing in Chinese Information Technology Companies be 

Another Tulip Speculation?’’, ASIA–PACIFIC BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY REPORT, August 8, 2011, available online at <http://www.biztechreport.com/story/1492-will-investing-chinese-information-technology-companies-be-another-tulip-speculation>. 14 Clare Baldwin & Jennifer Saba, ‘‘Renren’s Big Day, a Prelude to Facebook IPO’’, Reuters, 

May 4, 2011, available online at <http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/04/us-renren-ipoidUSTRE7433HI20110504>. 

Although the purported goal of fighting intellectual property infringement is completely different from Chinese authoritarianism, legitimizing censorship and prior 

restraints on speech and enforcing it through a draconian system of DNS filtering 

allows China to point to our own actions to justify theirs and makes the job of our 

diplomats much harder. Even when attempting to achieve laudable ends, like preventing intellectual property infringement, we should not require our Internet service providers to monitor their customers’ communications and maintain Internet 

blacklists. As a letter from over 100 law professors recently pointed out, the proposed legislation goes even further than China on some fronts. 

The Act represents a retreat from the United States’ strong support of freedom of expression and the free exchange of information and ideas on the 

Internet. At a time when many foreign governments have dramatically 

stepped up their efforts to censor Internet communications, the Act would 

incorporate—for the first time—a principle more closely associated with 

those repressive regimes: a right to insist on the removal of content from 

the global Internet, regardless of where it may have originated or be located, in service of the exigencies of domestic law. China, for example, has 

(justly) been criticized for blocking free access to the Internet with its Great 

Firewall. But even China doesn’t demand that search engines outside 

China refuse to index or link to other Web sites outside China. The Act 

does just that.12

We must take care not to undermine our own foreign policy and trade goals by 

setting bad precedent in our domestic laws. 

IV. MULTILATERAL APPROACH

We highly appreciate the Commission’s interest in the issue of Chinese Internet 

censorship and its resolve to address it. CCIA has long stated that this issue is beyond the scope of any one company or industry to deal with and that it is imperative 

for U.S. companies to have the support of the U.S. Government if they are to effectively compete in foreign markets where their operations are being obstructed. 

These companies’ problems are exacerbated by the highly competitive nature of 

Internet-based industries. The low barriers to entry and extreme economies of scale 

characteristic to the Internet services industry mean that companies must constantly fight off follow-on competitors seeking to replicate their success. It is possible to rapidly create (and China has indeed created) a domestic search engine, social networking site or blogging platform. Because they can be easily replaced by 

a domestic alternative, U.S. companies have little bargaining power vis-&-vis countries such as China. 

Of course, the situation in China bears little resemblance to a competitive market 

in which companies legitimately compete on the merits of their product. Indeed, 

Chinese censorship seems to have the added objective of clearing the competitive 

deck of foreign competition as the Chinese government actively promotes and protects its domestic Internet companies at their expense. 

Chinese search engine Baidu enjoys its dominant player position while competitor Google struggles with Chinese government regulatory bodies. 

Renren and Youku were able to grow fast while the original Facebook and 

Youtube had been banned in China. Thus, Chinese users didn’t have options but simply chose the Chinese versions of social network and video 

sharing service when the world’s largest services were blocked in their 

country.13

Renren ultimately availed itself upon U.S. capitals markets, conducting a ‘‘spectacular’’ IPO on the New York Stock Exchange where it benefited handsomely from 

its access to the Chinese market, while its U.S. competitor was excluded.14 In such 

an environment, any ceding of market share by U.S. companies plays right into Chi-
71 

nese hands, leaving China with a much more malleable and compliant Internet sector. 

We would also submit that the issue is beyond the scope of any unilateral action 

by the United States. Instead it requires the cooperation of other like-minded countries in multilateral fora. The potential of combating Internet censorship as a trade 

barrier lies in the fact that the rules-based international trade system is crucial to 

continued Chinese growth. Characterizing censorship in the context of a system 

whose rules China cannot afford to blatantly ignore is likely to achieve a political 

response in a way that traditional human rights approaches have not. Thus, CCIA 

strongly supports USTR’s action last month seeking detailed information regarding 

China’s Internet restrictions and their impact on U.S. trade. What success we have 

had in attaining Chinese concessions on issues such as Green Dam or Indigenous 

Innovation have come after coordinated efforts with other trading partners such as 

the European Union and Japan. This underscores the importance of utilizing an official multilateral forum like the WTO, and the need to incorporate new 21st century 

issues such as the free flow of information into the international trade system. 

V. CONCLUSION

China’s Internet censorship is first and foremost a deplorable practice that perverts what should be the greatest tool for communication and freedom into a tool 

for an authoritarian regime’s control of information and of its citizens. However, the 

major economic distortions of this practice also demand action under the international trade system, one that China must at least be seen as respecting due to 

its own dependence on trade. While from a human rights perspective, it may seem 

akin to going after Al Capone for tax evasion, addressing Chinese censorship as a 

trade barrier is a legitimate, multilateral and potentially effective approach that 

needs to be pursued by our government at the highest levels. As the nation that 

invented the Internet, and as the global standard bearer in both economic and political freedom, we must continue to lead in holding the Chinese government accountable, and we must lead by example. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. CHRIS SMITH, A U.S. REPRESENTATIVE FROM NEW

JERSEY; CHAIRMAN, CONGRESSIONAL–EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA

NOVEMBER 17, 2011

The Commission will come to order. I want to welcome all of our distinguished 

witnesses to this very important hearing. We really appreciate the attendance of all 

of our panelists and guests. It’s a pleasure to welcome everyone to this important 

hearing on ‘‘China’s Censorship of the Internet and Social Media: The Human Toll 

and Trade Impacts.’’ As recent events have shown, the issue of Internet censorship 

has only grown in terms of importance and magnitude, and I thank the Congressional-Executive Commission on China staff for organizing a hearing on this pressing issue, and for the tremendous scholarly work they have done not only in presenting our annual report, which is filled with facts and information that is actionable, but for the ongoing work that they do to monitor the gross abuses of human 

rights in China. 

As the Congressional-Executive Commission on China’s 2011 annual human 

rights report demonstrates, China’s leadership has grown more assertive in its violation of rights, disregarding the very laws and international standards that they 

claim to uphold, while tightening their grip on Chinese society. As Chinese citizens 

have increasingly called for freedoms and reforms, China has only strengthened its 

controls over many areas of society—particularly over the Internet. 

While China has witnessed a boom in the popularity of social media and Internet 

sites, Chinese citizens that access online sites today remain under the watchful eye 

of the state. By some accounts, China has imprisoned more Internet activists than 

any other country in the world, and its Internet environment ranks among the most 

restrictive globally. Chinese citizens are unable to voice a range of criticism that 

Americans undoubtedly take for granted each day: Chinese citizens that tweet about 

local corruption may face the threat of abuse or harassment. Citizens that express 

dissatisfaction over tainted food supplies that injure children—the most vulnerable 

population of our society—may come to hear a knock at the door. And, citizens that 

voice the human desire for democracy and rights protections we value so dearly may 

disappear into the official custody of the state, where they face torture and incarceration. 

For Chinese citizens, the line that can’t be crossed is unclear. While mentions of 

the 1989 Tiananmen protests are surely prohibited, China’s censorship remains at 
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the whimsy of governmental agencies that seek to limit what they perceive to be 

any destabilizing commentary. In China, the Internet provides no transparency— 

and citizens must weigh their choices each time they click to send an email or press 

a button or post personal views online. Who can forget Shi Tao, who for merely posting information about what he is not allowed to do, with regard to Tiananmen 

Square, garnered a 10-year prison sentence when Yahoo! opened up their personally 

identifiable information and gave it to the Chinese secret police that led to his conviction. There are no lists of banned words. There are no registers of prohibited topics. In China, there is no transparency. There are only consequences, and dire ones 

at that. 

Today, we welcome two panels that will address China’s Internet censorship from 

two perspectives. The witnesses will not only provide personal accounts of how China’s censorship affects individuals and families, but also detail how China’s actions 

hinder the rights of U.S. businesses that seek to compete fairly in China. These panels will expose China’s bold disregard for its own laws and its international obligations, specifically in terms of its controls on Internet activity and expression. 

In the first panel today, we will hear personal accounts of the consequences Chinese citizens face in seeking to express their fundamental rights of expression. We 

will hear from a son and a pastor that have seen firsthand the anxious and unforgiving hand of China’s Internet police. We will hear how the simplest calls for freedom and reforms can lead to the separation of loved ones and partition of families. 

In the second panel, we will hear how China’s Internet restrictions and controls 

not only hurt its citizens, but also hurt countries seeking to better China through 

international trade and cooperation. On a commercial level, China similarly lacks 

the kind of transparency and fairness that we expect in global trading partners. 

China has not only failed to comply with its WTO commitments, it has exploited 

our expectations to create an unlevel playing field, hurting the competitiveness of 

U.S. businesses and workers alike. 

We recognize that the Internet and social media can and should be used to provide people with greater access to honest information and to open up commercial 

opportunities for businesses operating in global markets. We know that the promise 

of information technology can not be achieved when it is used by repressive governments to find, capture, convict, and so often torture ordinary citizens for voicing concerns publicly. Information technology can not be advanced when it involves the systemic exclusion of commercial competitors and rampant disregard for transparency 

and intellectual property. 

China is one of the most repressive and restrictive countries when it comes to the 

control of the Internet and the impact goes far beyond the commercial losses for 

U.S. companies that want to participate in that market. There are serious human 

rights implications and we have seen the damage inflicted countless times through 

the arrest of bloggers and pro-democracy activists who have used the Internet to 

communicate with colleagues or disseminate views and then have been arrested. 

What makes this situation even worse is that sometimes it is U.S. companies, and 

my colleagues will recall I held the first of a series of hearings where we had Microsoft, Yahoo!, Cisco, and Google before our committee—it was my subcommittee on 

human rights—held up their hands and promised to tell the whole truth and nothing but, and then said they couldn’t tell us what they were censoring and would 

not tell us how they were being complicit. Harry Wu, who is here, and has been 

a leader on this issue, pointed out that Cisco has so enabled the secret police to 

track down people using police net, and that the use of cyber police, ubiquitous 

throughout all of China, in order to capture the best, bravest, and smartest in 

China, who will bring that country to democracy if only allowed to do so. 

This hearing will focus on these very important issues. We are joined by our Cochairman Sherrod Brown from Ohio who will speak and then Mr. Walz who is a 

ranking member, and then we will go to our witnesses. 

STATEMENT OF HON. SHERROD BROWN, A U.S. SENATOR FROM OHIO; COCHAIRMAN, 

CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA

NOVEMBER 17, 2011

The business of the Internet and social media is changing the way the world 

works. Just take a look at all the smartphones in this room. It has changed the way 

we live, the way we do business, and the way we act as a society. It has changed 

the world. It has made people closer to their governments and made those governments more accountable and interactive, and in the case of the ‘‘Arab Spring,’’ it 

has helped topple dictators. 
73 

The purpose of today’s hearing is to shed light on the darkness of China’s repressive Internet and social media censorship. It is a policy that takes a very human 

toll, undermining human rights reforms and freedoms of expression and speech. And 

it is a policy that is unfair to U.S. trade interests, especially for U.S. tech companies. 

It’s well-documented that Chinese officials block access to many Web sites, including this Commission’s. Some sites are blocked because they are considered politically sensitive, and others for reasons that we can only guess. 

China’s Internet control forces private companies—including U.S. companies—to 

censor the Internet based on vague and arbitrary standards. Many companies are 

forced to operate in an opaque world that we know surprisingly little about. 

This policy benefits Chinese domestic companies at the expense of companies like 

Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube who are completely blocked in China. Companies 

whose business models rely on openness and transparency—are forced to be an arm 

of the Chinese government or turn their backs on 1.3 billion customers. 

But it isn’t just Silicon Valley companies that are blocked in China. It’s also Ohio 

companies like Graftech and Edgetech that risk having their Web sites blocked or 

disrupted as they try to sell their products and services to reach Chinese consumers. 

When U.S. companies go public with complaints about these restrictions, as Google 

did last year, they risk retaliation by the Chinese government for doing so. Google 

is a company that made the unfortunate decision to work with the Chinese government. In the end it did not work out well for them. 

In the absence of meaningful competition, copycat versions of Twitter and 

Facebook flourish in China and raise hundreds of millions of dollars, ironically, on 

our capital markets. For instance, in May of this year, Renren, China’s version of 

‘‘Facebook,’’ raised $743 million in an IPO listed on the New York Stock Exchange. 

These Chinese companies are beholden to the Chinese government and Communist 

Party and censorship has increased—yet they want access to our free and open society. As arms of the Chinese government, these moves should be closely scrutinized. 

China now has over half a billion Internet users, more than any country in the 

world. Most of these Internet users are young, and far more aware of Chinese and 

world developments than their parents. Knowledge and openness are big threats to 

totalitarian regimes—we know that and the Chinese government knows that. In our 

country knowledge and openness are pillars of our form of government. 

Take the case of outspoken dissident artist Ai Weiwei. His savvy social networking skills and unabashed criticism of the government landed him an 81-day detention at a secret location earlier this year. Now the government wants him to pay 

$2.4 million in alleged unpaid taxes and penalties—by Tuesday. Thousands of supporters in China have sent him money over the Internet. And Ai continues to defy 

government orders by using Twitter to publicize his case. 

In recent years the Commission has documented a growing number of cases of political imprisonment involving the Internet. Behind each case is a story and a family. 

One of those cases is Mr. Li Yuanlong. Li is a journalist who was imprisoned for 

two years for criticizing the Communist Party online. That’s why we’re so grateful 

that Li’s son, Alex, a fellow Ohioan and a student at Bowling Green State University, is here to tell Li’s story. 

Last month the U.S. Trade Representative filed a request for information with the 

World Trade Organization on China’s Internet censorship. I applaud this move as 

a positive first step and look forward to learning what we can do to address this 

pressing issue. Too much is at stake—the human toll becomes insufferable, the economic threat undermines American innovation. 

China plays by its own rules because we regrettably, in this institution and in 

our government, let them. We cannot simply wait out the inevitable power of the 

Internet to move the hearts and minds of the Chinese people. We must do all we 

can to shine the light where free expression, thought, and commerce are too often 

kept in the dark. 

Thank you. 

Æ