Chinese Evade Censors To Discuss Police Assault

Among the results were several smaller bulletin boards openly hosting discussions of the shooting, including Zhongguancun Online, a popular site targeting the Chinese high-tech industry; Bai-xing, a site established by an obscure magazine owned by the Agriculture Ministry, and Yijian Rugu, a forum set up after the government closed a popular student-run site at Beijing University.

One thread on the high-tech industry site, for example, began with an abbreviated version of Wang's open letter. It was followed by a series of messages in which users first expressed shock and disbelief -- "It can't be!" -- then pleaded for more information -- "If you have photos, please post them!" -- and then expressed anger, both about the shooting and the efforts to censor the news.

"I've posted on several Web sites that have been shut down," one user said. "Will this Web site be shut down now, too!?"

Industry officials say the government focuses its resources on monitoring China's largest Web sites and often ignores these smaller sites, which have multiplied rapidly because they are relatively inexpensive to open and maintain. But if the authorities notice a lot of traffic going to a site with sensitive content, they will often close it down.

By Thursday night, for example, hundreds had posted comments about the shooting on Yunhu, a small discussion board leased from an online gaming firm in Hubei province. On Friday night, the site was no longer accessible.

The main source of information for all these Web sites are overseas news services that publish in Chinese, including media in Hong Kong and Taiwan, government-funded services such as Radio Free Asia and the BBC, and a variety of sites run by exiled dissidents or the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement.

The authorities try to block these sites, and mainland users who attempt to visit them usually get an error message. But free software becoming widely available helps tens of thousands of Chinese Web surfers get around the blocking every day, according to the firms that run these "proxy" services.

The government is directing ever more financial, technical and human resources toward controlling the Internet, including hiring agents to post messages defending the party and undermining its critics, according to Xiao Qiang, director of the China Internet Project at the University of California at Berkeley.

"But the cost of control is getting higher and higher, and the pressure is building on the other side, as more and more people get online," he said. "The question is, when does the pressure become too great and the cost become too high?"

"I don't think they can keep this up indefinitely," he added. "Things are not looking good for the censors."