Of course, Beijing is still leery of the Net's potential as a conduit for political dissent. What's important is developing more content in Chinese and for Chinese,'' says ministry official Zhao. With exports and foreign investment sluggish, the government hopes consumer spending will boost its economy. All the same, Beijing raises many obstacles to a truly freewheeling Net culture. The government limits what Chinese Net users can see by telling them to block portals run by dissident and human-rights groups.
Determined surfers can get what they want by going through offshore services.
But because Beijing bans imported encryption technology, state snoops can easily eavesdrop on traffic and arrest violators or seize their computers. That makes the Chinese Net unsafe for sensitive political topics and means that much commercial data isn't very secure either. China's entrepreneurs make their compromises with the government to stay in the game. Its mainland site is dominated by the same official news found in state media. Yip forged a partnership with official Beijing news agency Xinhua and used it to attract such big-name investors as America Online Inc. and New World Development Co., a Hong Kong property giant.