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Bloggers Who Pursue Change Confront Fear And Mistrust
Occasionally, though, Zhao said he felt he had to speak out, no matter how sensitive the subject. He attended and described the funeral of the ousted party leader who opposed the Tiananmen Square massacre. He defended a teacher fired for discussing the Communist Party's violent past with her students. He wrote about the death of an exiled Chinese journalist.
'Huge Obstacle'
Soon Zhao's blog was receiving an average of 15,000 visitors every day, and he was becoming a controversial figure on the Web.
  Zhao Jing, Known as Anti in the blogging world. (Photo Of Zhao Jing, Known As Anti, By Philip P. Pan -- The Washington Post) |
In December, a college senior in the eastern city of Yanghzou posted a tirade calling Zhao a "huge obstacle to the development of Chinese blogging culture" and attacking him for moving his blog to MSN Spaces instead of a Chinese site.
The student, Zhang Ming, also called on the government to protect the country's own Internet firms, to be more vigilant about monitoring and censoring Microsoft's site and to investigate the "illegal services" it offered.
"Anti has become an ad for the fake freedom offered by foreign blog service providers, as if the existence of Anti implies that freedom of speech is preserved," he wrote.
The essay was featured on Bokee, and Zhao responded by demanding the firm clarify whether it shared the student's views. Bokee then deleted Zhang's essay.
But Fang, the Bokee chairman, also expressed concern about Zhao. "I understand his views, but I don't agree with his methods," he said. "If you use blogging as a political tool, you could destroy the development of blogging in China. When people like Anti come out, there's a lot of pressure on us. They're pursuing freedom, but it results in less freedom."
One popular Shanghai blogger, who declined to be identified, compared Zhao to an airline passenger who stands up and curses hijackers. "He makes the other passengers uncomfortable and nervous," the blogger said. "What he is saying might be right, but it makes the situation unpredictable, and perhaps more dangerous for everyone."
The situation came to a head in late December after the party replaced the top editors of the Beijing News, a scrappy tabloid that Zhao admired for its aggressive reporting. Zhao said he knew it was risky to write about, but decided he could not stay silent.
He expressed disgust on his blog and urged readers to cancel their subscriptions to the newspaper in protest.
One day later, on Dec. 30, the Shanghai Municipal Information Office, an arm of the party's propaganda department, called Microsoft's joint venture.
Zhang Xiaoyu, a senior official in the agency, said the government told Microsoft to remove Zhao's blog because it contained comments on the news, and only Chinese Web sites with licenses could publish such material. He said bloggers were barred from writing about "political, economic, military or diplomatic news."
Microsoft, which by then was hosting 3.3 million blogs in China, deleted Zhao's blog the next day. A company official said the Internet laws are vague and selectively enforced, and managers were caught off-guard by the request. He said Microsoft decided to comply because it came from an agency with regulatory authority.
Many bloggers rallied to support Zhao, and several used their Microsoft blogs to post copies of his next essay blasting the computer engineers who help censor the Internet. "These political forces are approaching day by day, nibbling at our space, our ideals," wrote one, a Beijing journalist. Isaac Mao, co-founder of one of China's first blogging firms, suggested a boycott of Microsoft.
Others defended Microsoft, saying the Chinese people should blame the censors, or themselves, for doing nothing to fight them.
Microsoft launched a policy review, then announced it would take down blogs only when it received notice from the government. By contrast, Chinese Internet firms often censor themselves without waiting for the authorities to call.
Microsoft also said it would disclose the government order when it removed a blog. The company has taken down at least four blogs since then, including one in which the offending material appeared to be a discussion of its new policy.
Meanwhile, a Microsoft executive called Zhao and offered to send a CD with a backup of his deleted blog. Zhao, who now writes on an overseas site the government tries to block, said he was happy to receive the call, but surprised to learn it involved another compromise: Microsoft said it could only send the disc to an address outside China.
Researcher Greg Distelhorst contributed to this report.
