By: Yang Jianli
A true David vs. Goliath tale is unfolding on the world stage. The courage and intelligence of a handful of dedicated men and women are undermining the world’s dictatorships and opening a fast lane to democracy.
This development is making possible a 21st century equivalent of the Berlin Wall’s collapse. It is the work of a few modern-day “Davids” who are shattering the Internet walls by which the massive police bureaucracies of closed societies keep their people isolated, controlled and oppressed.
The Chinese government has noted that control of the Internet is critical for its political survival. China’s president, Hu Jintao, recently told his officials that the “stability of the socialist state” will remain at risk unless China’s multibillion-dollar cyber-police initiative can effectively “purify” the Internet. He has backed this objective with a 50,000 person “Golden Shield” bureaucracy and the most advanced technology that money can buy in order to control Internet use and information.
Other dictatorships throughout the world are doing the same as they monitor, censor, arrest, torture, and occasionally murder the bloggers and other dissidents who see the Internet as Iranian dissident Ahmed Batabi does — as their potential “lifeline.”
Technology that can serve tyranny can even more greatly serve the cause of freedom. A group of remarkable Falun Gong practitioners living in the United States — all with day jobs — have on a volunteer, late-at-night basis created “firewall busting” protocols that now safely and securely serve more than one million unique users per day.
If such technology can be made more broadly available, the Dalai Lama would be able to interactively communicate with his followers, and the pope and evangelical ministers would be able to similarly conduct unmonitored, secure, real-time worship services with their fellow believers.
China would lose its capacity to cover up SARS epidemics, and the Burmese dictatorship would no longer be able to engage in massive, bloody crackdowns without the world knowing and watching.
Cuban bloggers would be free of the threat of capture or death for communicating within and without their tortured country.
The president of the United States would be able to communicate directly with one of the world’s most pro-American, pro-freedom groups of young people — those who live in Iran.
Expansion of Internet freedom technology lacks only the support and will of free societies to protect freedom against those who would deny it. With an extremely modest investment, the global Internet protocols created by such “Davids” as Shiyu Zhou, Peter Li and Bill Xia could be scaled up to achieve a “tipping point” capacity able to serve 100 million unique users per day. Such firewall-smashing protocols as Freegate, DynaWeb and UltraSurf, which are now available to a few million, would be in the hands of so many residents of closed societies as to make futile any attempt by their governments to block free expression.
If this happens, the Chinese government and other dictatorships would gradually and inexorably lose their ability to control the flow of information. Their propaganda would be rendered useless and their rule by fear would be overwhelmed by a newly empowered citizenry.
The impressive but limited circulation of Charter 08, a homegrown Chinese document calling for political reform, would become widely available throughout my country. Closed-society regimes would find it useless to censor local versions of Google, Wikipedia or Yahoo because millions within their borders would be able to access the same Internet I can from my apartment in Cambridge, Mass.
China’s growing assertiveness and its huge effort to control cyberspace should leave little doubt that the democratization of China would be an enormous contribution to U.S. security and world stability in the 21st century. Providing for a free and open Internet is the surest, quickest and most cost-effective strategy for enabling a peaceful transition to democracy in China and other dictatorships around the world.
It’s time for the world’s democracies to commit themselves to supporting the achievable objective of giving 100 million residents of the world’s dictatorships daily access to the Internet on a safe and unmonitored basis — and to do so within the next year or two.
I and others seeking worldwide Internet freedom are greatly pleased at the announced commitment of Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter to lead the effort to achieve this goal. Joined by other congressional leaders, including perhaps House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a long-time supporter of human rights in China, Mr. Specter and his colleagues are poised to make history.