A greater proportion (than in the West) of Chinese
users get online via Internet cafes
or from work. China's Internet
environment is much different than the American one. The Chinese Internet is
heavily policed, with over 30,000 cyber cops blocking content that is
considered hostile to the communist dictatorship that has run the country for
the last 60 years. Chinese who say the wrong thing on message boards, chat
rooms or email, are subject to detection and punishment. Not so much for cyber
criminals. Some 52 percent of the Internet based criminality can be traced to
China (versus 21 percent to the United States). It is believed that the Chinese
government tolerates the cyber criminals, as long as these black hat geeks do
espionage, and Cyber War tasks for the government.
The International Olympic Committee failed to press China to allow fully unfettered access to the Internet for the thousands of journalists arriving here to cover the Olympics, despite promising repeatedly that the foreign news media could "report freely" during the Games, Olympic officials acknowledged Wednesday.
