Yang Jianli
A true David v. Goliath tale is unfolding in the world stage. In it, 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 now 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 government officials that the “stability of the Socialist state” is and 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 made more broadly available, the Dalai Lama will be able to interactively communicate with his followers, and the Pope and Evangelical ministers will be able to similarly conduct unmonitored, secure, real time worship services with their fellow believers. China will lose its capacity to cover up SARS epidemics and the Burmese dictatorship will no longer be able to engage in massive, bloody crackdowns without the world knowing and watching. Cuban bloggers will be free of the threat of capture and literal death for communicating within and without their tortured country. The President of the United States will have at-will capacity to communicate with one the world’s most pro-American, pro-freedom cohorts–the young people of Iran.Expansion of the Internet freedom technology lacks only the support and will of free societies to protect freedom from 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 can be scaled up to achieve a critical mass, “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, will be in the hands of so many closed society residents as to make futile any attempt by their governments to block free expression. Once this happens, the Chinese Government and other dictatorships will gradually and inexorably lose their ability to control the flow of information. Their propaganda will be rendered useless and their rule by fear will be overwhelmed by a newly empowered citizenry. The impressive but still limited circulation of Charter 08, a homegrown document calling for political reform by leading Chinese citizens, will become widely available throughout my country. Closed society regimes will find it senseless to censor local versions of Google, Wikipedia, or Yahoo because millions within their borders will be able to access the same Internet open to me in my Cambridge, Massachusetts apartment.
China’s growing assertiveness and its huge effort to control cyberspace should leave little doubt that the democratization of China will be the single most important 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 your Senator Arlen Specter to lead the effort to achieve this goal. Joined by such other Congressional leaders as Senators Jon Kyl, Pat Leahy, Mitch McConnell, Joseph Lieberman and Sam Brownback, by Congressman Frank Wolf, and perhaps by a long-time supporter of human rights in China, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, I believe that Senator Specter and his colleagues are poised to make history.
When it occurs, credit will go less to the CIA, the State Department or the Defense Department than to those Congressional leaders and to such patriots as my friends Michael Horowitz of Hudson Institute and the man who played a central role in the peaceful collapse of the Berlin Wall, former U.S. Ambassador to Hungary Mark Palmer. With a determination to fight for the great opportunity now before the world’s democracies, those leaders will soon pave the way for people now living in tyranny to go on the road I believe they will soon travel: the fast lane to democracy.