The Amateur

Computerist

Spring 2016 The Internet, Netizens and China 2005-2015 Volume 27 No. 1

Table of Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Page 1

Internet: Int'l Origins & Impact on Its Future. . . . . . Page 3

WGIG: China On Internet Governance . . . . . . . . . Page 8

China-CSNET E-mail Link History Corrected . . . . Page 9

Origins of Internet and Emergence of Netizens . . Page 15

Anti-CNN: Media Watchdog & Netizen Debate . . Page 21

Power of Chinese Netizens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 23

Netizens Challenge Media Distortions . . . . . . . . . Page 25

First Netizen Celebration Day . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 28

China in the Era of the Netizen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 29

My Thinking on Netizens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 31

Proposal for World Internet Conference . . . . . . . Page 32

Introduction

This issue of the Amateur Computerist docu-

ments an important achievement of Internet develop-

ment that took place in the period extending from

November 2004 through December 2015, a period of

a little over a decade. During those years Internet users

especially in China exercised a more active and broader

form of citizenship giving a preview of what netizen-

ship might in the future be able to do for a society.

The issue begins with “The International

Origins of the Internet and the Impact of this Frame-

work on Its Future,” a talk presented at Columbia

University to an audience of librarians in November

2004. The talk introduced the World Summit on the

Information Society of which Part 2 would be held in

Tunis Tunisia in November 2005. The talk put the

upcoming Summit in the broad context of the develop-

ment of the Internet.

The talk referred to some of the speakers at a

UN sponsored meeting held on September 20-21, 2004

in Geneva, Switzerland, preparing for the Working

Group on Internet Governance (WGIG). One of the

speakers quoted was Madam Hu Qiheng, who included

in her speech her appreciation of the Internet. She said:

“The Internet is a resplendent achievement of human

civilization in the 20

Century.” She explained why

“government has to play the essential role in Internet

governance… creating a favorable environment boost-

ing Internet growth while protecting the public inter-

ests.” Madam Hu was speaking as the head of the

delegation from the People’s Republic of China. The

text of her talk on Internet governance appears as the

second article in this issue.

The next article, “The 1987 Birth of the China-

CSNet Email Link and How Its History Got Cor-

rected,” describes how an international e-mail link

between China and the rest of the online world was

made possible by a Chinese-German research collabo-

ration in the 1980s. By the time of the Tunis Confer-

ence, however, this was not the history being told in

China.

A two-day side conference held just before the

Tunis WSIS Summit was called the Past, Present, and

Future of Research in the Information Society (PPF).

A panel at this conference held on November 14, 2005

was titled “The Origin and Early Development of the

Internet and of the Netizen: Their Impact on Science

and Society.” On this panel, a paper on the German-

Chinese Collaboration presented the evidence to correct

the inaccurate narrative circulating in China. In the

audience were some members of the Chinese delega-

tion to the WSIS conference, including Madam Hu.

After a brief discussion of the two views of how China

became connected to international e-mail, Madam Hu

said she would encourage that there be an investigation

into the disagreement and if the narrative that was

being told in China was not accurate, she would help

to get it corrected. The article in this issue describes

how between 2005 and 2007 this correction was made.

The fourth article in this issue is a talk presented

at the Tunis panel “International and Scientific Origins

and the Emergence of the Netizen.” It documents the

vision that set the foundation for the Internet. Also it

http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/

Page 1

describes a serious problem that computer pioneers

recognized in their efforts to develop computer and

Internet technology. As an example, JCR Licklider one

of the most influential people in the history of com-

puter science spread a vision from the early 1960s of

universal connectivity which helped guide the develop-

ment of the Internet. He believed that there would be

a need for the public to be involved in the consider-

ations and decisions regarding network development.

He recognized that there would be problems with

pressure being put on government from other sectors

of society and that active citizen participation would be

needed to counter these pressures. Licklider realized

there would need to be a public spirited online citizenry

which would actively take up to solve problems when

they developed.

Just such a public spirited online citizenry had

developed by the early 1990s. One researcher in 1992-

1993, Michael Hauben observed the emergence of this

public spirited online citizenry. He proposed the name

“Netizen” to describe these online citizens. Describing

netizens, Hauben wrote:

Netizens…are people who understand

it takes effort and action on each and

every one’s part to make the Net a

regenerative and vibrant community

and resource. Netizens are people who

decide to devote time and effort into

making the Net, this new part of our

world, a better place.

Subsequent articles in this issue include several

that document some of the netizen developments that

took place in China over the course of the 2005-2015

decade. For example, in 2008 netizens in China and

Chinese speaking netizens from around the world

created the Anti-CNN web site. Two of the articles in

this issue describe the Anti-CNN web site, set up to

counter false narratives spread in the western media in

response to violent riots that took place in Lhasa in

March 2008.

The article in this issue “China in the Era of the

Netizen” documents other examples of netizen

activities in China, from the July 2009 English

language edition of the Chinese magazine NewsChina.

The title of that issue is “The Netizens’ Republic of

China.” It includes an article on “Netizens, The New

Watchdogs.” That article describes the importance of

the practice of Chinese netizens engaging in online

supervision of public officials toward creating more

democratic governance in China.

Then on September 14, 2009, the Internet

Society of China held the first Netizens Cultural

Festival Day to honor netizens and present awards for

netizen achievements. Other articles in the issue

provide further examples of the role played by netizens

in Chinese society. One article describes how netizens

gave aid and support to those affected by the earth-

quake in Sichuan in 2008, as a few years earlier

netizens had helped with the handling of the SARS

epidemic. These are some of the examples of how

netizens in China and Chinese speaking netizens

around the world have demonstrated the important role

netizens can play in helping to make their society and

the world more responsive to citizens and to social

needs.

In the article in this issue, “My Thinking on

Netizens,” Xu Liang while a visiting scholar at

Columbia University, tells how he came online in 1999

and eventually saw the value of the Internet to society.

He writes, referring to the authors of the book Netizens,

“They imagine that the netizens would be the main-

stream in cyber society and it would give birth to a

good and equal society in reality which would break

away from the traditional minority-ruling-majority

model. Marx and many Communists once tried to

construct such a perfect society. They failed in practice.

The Internet and netizen probably provide a technologi-

cal tool and a different way to realize the dream. This

is our best wish.” But he warns it will take a long time

and if governments act “in the name of the netizens,

netizen society will just repeat the traditional model.”

This issue of the Amateur Computerist cele-

brates the Internet and netizenship especially as they

developed from 2004 to 2015 and especially in China.

The last article presents a proposal to the organizers of

annual World Internet Conference (WIC) in China. It

proposes that the WIC include an academic segment of

the conference to enhance the possibility that the WIC

will build on the lessons from the early development of

the Internet and the emergence of the netizens.

Page 2

The International Origins of

the Internet and the Impact

of This Framework on Its

Future.

by Ronda Hauben

[email protected]

[Editor’s note: The following is a talk given at

Columbia University on Nov. 4, 2004.]

The research I have been doing for the past 12

years is about the origin, development and social

impact of the Internet. I want to propose that knowing

something of the nature of the Internet, of its interna-

tional origins and early vision and development can

provide a useful perspective for looking at a process

that is currently ongoing at the initiative of the United

Nations.

I want to share some of my research about the

original vision and the international origins of the

Internet and the implications of this heritage on the

Internet’s future. Just now, over the past two or more

years, and continuing through November, 2005, there

is an ongoing United Nations initiative in which the

world’s governments are participating, along with

NGO’s and corporate entities. Yet this high level

activity, as Wired reports, “has been largely ignored by

those not participating in it.” (Wendy Grossman,

“Nations Plan for Net’s Future,” October 11, 2004)

This process is known as the World Summit on

the Information Society (WSIS). After preparatory

activities for almost two years, the first of two planned

summits was held in Geneva, Switzerland in December

2003. Since that summit, a continuing series of

meetings are scheduled to set the foundation for the

second Summit which is planned to take place in

Tunisia in November of 2005.

Heads of state of many nations, particularly

developing nations, came to the Geneva summit and

spoke about the importance of the Internet to the people

in their countries and to their present and future

economic and social development and well being. The

participants recognized that the Internet is an interna-

tional network of networks, and that it has been built

by a great deal of public and scientific effort and

funding. The disagreement arises over the nature of the

present and future management structure and processes

for the governance of the Internet.

In 1998 the U.S. government, which had pre-

viously overseen the Internet’s infrastructure managed

as a non commercial, scientific and educational me-

dium, made a decision to begin to transition it to a

private sector entity which is called the Internet Cor-

poration for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

In the WSIS process there has been a lot of

contention over the form and processes of ICANN. The

concern is that ICANN was constructed as a business

and technical creation and that this process marginaliz-

ed governments.

Another way of describing this disagreement is

that there a contest about whether the development and

management of the Internet and its infrastructure

should be left to the market to determine or set by the

policies of governments.

Concern is being raised about what are the

issues pertaining to Internet governance. Stimulating

the spread of the Internet and who has access is one

such issue. Others include safeguarding the Internet’s

integrity, oversight of the distribution of Internet

addresses and domain names, determining the nature

of the public interest and how to protect that interest,

etc.

At the core of this dispute is the question of

what kinds of policy decisions need to be made about

the Internet and determining the process by which they

will be made.

The WSIS meetings include those who it is

claimed have an interest in questions of Internet

governance. These are called the “Stakeholders” and

thus far include representatives from:

governments

civil society (NGO’s)

private sector

Others are sometimes mentioned, such as the scientific

community, or the academic community.

In looking back at the origins of the Internet, I

feel it is helpful to start with the vision of J. C. R.

Licklider, a psychologist, who was invited to begin a

research office within the U.S. Department of Defense

in Oct 1962. Licklider called the office the Information

Processing Techniques Office (IPTO).

Page 3

JCR Licklider

Licklider was an experi-

mental psychologist who had

studied the brain. For his PhD

thesis he did pioneering work

mapping where sound is per-

ceived in the brain of the cat.

Licklider was also excited about

the development of the computer

and of its potential to further

scientific research.

He was particularly inter-

ested in the potential of the computer as a

communication device. He saw it as a means of helping

to create a community of researchers and of making it

possible to strengthen the education available to the

whole society through access to the ever expanding

world of information. He envisioned that increased

social contact would become available via the computer

and computer networks.

Licklider created a community of researchers

that he called the Intergalactic Network. He had in

mind a network of networks. Though it was too early

to create such a network when he began at IPTO in

1962, he set a foundation that inspired the researchers

that followed him. He returned briefly to head the IPTO

from 1974-75 just at the time that the research on the

Internet was being developed.

In a paper Licklider wrote with another

researcher, Robert Taylor in 1968, Licklider outlined

a vision for a network of networks. Licklider’s vision

was of the creation and development of a human-

computer information utility. For this to develop and

be beneficial, everyone would have to have access. The

network of networks would be global. It wouldn’t be

just a collection of computers and of information that

people could passively utilize. Rather his vision was of

the creation of an on-line community of people, where

users would be active participants and contributors to

the evolving network and to its development. To

Licklider, it was critical that the evolving network be

built interactively.

Also Licklider believed that there would be a

need for the public to be involved in the considerations

and decisions regarding network development. He

recognized that there would be problems with pressure

being put on government from other sectors of society

and that active citizen participation would be needed to

counter these pressures. Licklider, writes:

…many public spirited individuals must

study, model, discuss, analyze, argue,

write, criticize, and work out each issue

and each problem until they reach

consensus or determine that none can

be reached – at which point there may

be occasion for voting.

Licklider believed that those interested in the

development of the global network he was proposing,

would have to be active in considering and determining

its future. He also advocated that the future of politics

would require that people have access to computers to

be involved in the process of government. Licklider

writes:

Computer power to the people is essen-

tial to the realization of a future in

which most citizens are informed about,

and interested and involved in the

process of government.

Licklider and other computer pioneers of the

1950s and 1960s were concerned with the public

interest and how the computer and networking develop-

ments of the future would be maintained in the public

interest. Licklider writes that it is important to not only

seek to consider the public interest, but also to make it

possible for the public to be involved in the decision

making process: “[Decisions] in the ‘public interest’

but also in the interest of giving the public itself the

means to enter into the decision-making process that

will shape their future.”

Through the 1960s and into the early 1970s the

IPTO pioneered new and important computer technol-

ogy like the time-sharing of computers and then the

creation of packet switching and the ARPAnet com-

puter network. The research was written up in profes-

sional publications and widely distributed.

By the late 1960s and early 1970s it was

recognized that there was widespread interest in

developing computer networking in countries around

the world. A conference was held in 1972 at the Hilton

Hotel, in Washington DC from October 24-26. More

than a thousand researchers from countries around the

world attended and participated in the demonstration

by U.S. researchers that packet switching technology

was functional. The demonstration excited many of the

researchers. Also, however, international participation

was recognized as critical to the development of

networking technology. “International participation is

no mere adornment to the Conference,” the organizers

wrote. “It is a primary means toward achieving a

diversity of interest and viewpoint.”

At the conference, a group was formed of those

Page 4

Diagram from a memo from Vint Cerf, not an actual plan.

working on networking developments in different

countries. It was called the International Network

Working Group (INWG).

The great interest worldwide in computer

networking was stimulating, but also it presented a

problem. To understand the nature of this problem, it

is helpful to consider the fact that there were packet

switching networks being developed in different

countries. These included Cyclades in France, NPL in

Great Britain, and ARPAnet in the U.S. These networks

were different technically and were under the owner-

ship and control of different political and administra-

tive entities. Yet networking researchers realized the

importance of making it possible for these networks to

be able to interconnect, to be able to communicate with

each other. This can be articulated as the Multiple

Network Problem.

There was the recognition that no one of these

different networks could become an international

network. There would need to be some means found to

make communication possible across the boundaries of

different networks.

Collaboration among the researchers continued,

with a number of meetings and exchanges about how

it would be possible to design and create a means to

support communication across the boundaries of these

diverse networks.

At a meeting in September 1973 at the Univer-

sity of Sussex, in Brighton, England, two U.S. research-

ers, Bob Kahn and Vinton Cerf presented a draft of a

paper proposing a philosophy and design to make it

possible to interconnect different networks. The basic

principle was that the changes to make communication

possible would not be required of the different

networks, but of the packets of information that were

traveling through the networks.

To have an idea of the concept they proposed

it is helpful to look at a diagram to show what the

design would make possible.

In the gateways, changes to the packets would

be made to make it possible for them to go through the

networks. Also the gateways would be used to route the

packets.

The philosophy and design for an Internet was

officially published in a paper in May 1974. The paper

is titled “A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommuni-

cation” by Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn with thanks

to others including several from the international

network research community for their contributions and

discussion.

Describing the process of creating the TCP/IP

protocol, Cerf explains that the effort at developing the

Internet protocols was international from its very

beginnings. Peter Kirstein, a British researcher at the

University College London (UCL) presented a paper in

Sept 1975 at a workshop in Laxenburg, Austria,

describing the international research process. This

workshop was attended by an international group of re-

searchers, including researchers from Eastern Europe.

Kirstein reports on research to create the TCP/IP

protocol being done by U.S. researchers, working with

British researchers and Norwegian researchers. Here is

the diagram that Kirstein presents showing the

participation of U.S. researchers via the ARPAnet,

along with British researchers working at the Univer-

sity College London (UCL) and Norwegian researchers

working at NORSAR.

Collaboration between the Norwegian, British

and U.S. researchers continued, demonstrated by the

research to create a satellite network, called SATNET.

Later researchers from Italy and Germany became part

Page 5

In this map you can see the areas of the world where TCP/IP networking

was possible, the areas where there was access to BITNET but not the

Internet and the areas there was only e-mail access via different

networking possibilities like uucp, FIDONET or OSI (X.25), etc.

Netizens: On the

History and Impact of

Usenet and the

Internet, published by

the IEEE Computer

Society Press, 1997,

ISBN 0-8186-7706-6

of this work.

Describing this international collaboration, Bob

Kahn writes: SATNET…was a broadcast satellite

system. This is if you like an ETHERNET IN THE

SKY with drops in Norway (actually routed via

Sweden) and then the U.K., and later Germany and

Italy.

N e t w o r k i n g

continued to develop in

the 1980s. Among the

networking efforts

were those known as

Usenet (uucp), CSnet,

NSFnet, FIDONET,

BITNET, Internet

(TCP/IP), and others.

By the early

1990s TCP/IP became

the protocol adopted by networks around the world.

It is also in the

early 1990s that my

co-author of the book

Netizens, Michael

Hauben, did some pio-

n e e r i n g o n - l i n e

research as part of

class projects in his

studies at Columbia

University. He ex-

plored where the networks could reach and what those

who were on-line felt was the potential and the

problems of the developing Internet.

In the process he discovered that there were

people on-line who were excited by the fact that they

would participate in spreading the evolving network

and contributing so that it would be a helpful communi-

cation medium for others around the world. Michael

saw these users as citizens of the net or what at the time

was referred to as net.citizens.

Shortening the term to ‘netizen,’ he identified

and documented the emergence of a new form of

citizenship, a form of global citizenship that is called

netizenship.

Describing these on-line citizens, the netizens,

Michael writes:

They are people who understand that it

takes effort and action on each and

everyone’s part to make the Net a

regenerative and vibrant community

and resource. Netizens are people who

decide to devote time and effort into

making the Net, this new part of our

world, a better place.

What are the implications of this background to

the WSIS process? In October 1998, the U.S. govern-

ment decided to privatize the Internet’s infrastructure.

It created ICANN, the Internet Corporation for

Assigned Names and Numbers. ICANN provided only

minimal input for governments in an official way or for

Internet users. There have been many problems with

the structure and functioning of ICANN and lots of

criticism.

The WSIS process led to holding a Summit in

Geneva in December 2003. A number of heads of state

attended. Issues raised included:

•Affordable access available to all.

•What would be the role for Governments in Internet

governance?

•What would be the role for others in Internet gover-

nance?

In February 2004 a workshop was held to try to

determine the components of Internet governance. At

the workshop there was a proposal for netizens to be

involved in Internet governance, recommending that

netizen involvement would make it possible to counter

the self interest of corporations who were part of the

Internet governance process. The following diagram

was submitted by Izumi Aizo of Japan. It still shows

only a minimal role for governments but it introduces

a role for netizens which is in line with Licklider’s

vision of the crucial nature of citizen participation in

Page 6

the network’s development.

On-line, there

is a forum involved

with the WSIS pro-

cess. But few people

who are involved

with WSIS seem to

pay attention to it.

However, a comment

on the forum seemed

quite relevant to the

problems being raised. The contributor to the forum,

Safaa Moussa was from Egypt. Moussa, too, echoed

Licklider’s concerns, writing that the crucial issues of

Internet governance involve the issue of public access

and the issue of how to widen the scope of public

engagement in the decision making process.

In September 2004, a meeting was held in

Geneva. Many contributions to that meeting seemed in

line with the vision of Licklider expressed to guide

computer network development. But there was con-

tention, also. Summarizing the conflict that has

developed in the WSIS process, a representative of

Egypt, H. E. Dr. Tarek Kamal, explains that there are

two conflicting view points. One view is that Internet

governance involves primarily technical and operative

issues which can be best coordinated by technical

groups and business organizations (this is the view of

those in favor of ICANN). The other view pointed to

by Dr. Kamal is that technical resource management

and other policy matters concerning the Internet are

social and public questions needing international and

government participation.

At the September 2004 meeting, supporting this

second viewpoint, a member of the Brazil delegation,

Jose Marcos Nogueira Viana, proposed the need to

create an inter-governmental forum – a meeting place

for governments to discuss Internet related issues. Also

putting public interest into the debate, was Hans Falk

Hoffmann, a representative from the international

scientific institution CERN. He described how the

scientific community would continue to try to connect

universities and therefore major cities to the global

network with sufficient bandwidth at affordable prices.

A representative from the Chinese delegation Madam

Hu Qiheng, explained how: “The Internet is a resplen-

dent achievement of human civilization in the 20

century. And that government has to play the essential

role in Internet governance...creating a favorable

environment boosting Internet growth while protecting

the public interests.”

I want to propose that this activity as part of the

WSIS process demonstrates the importance of under-

standing the fact that the Internet is international and

that there is a demand for an international management

process and structure.

Similarly, and perhaps even more important is

the need to understand how to determine the public

interest. In connection with this goal, I want to propose

the need to seriously consider whether the goal of

netizen empowerment is one of the important policy

issues to be injected into the WSIS process. This would

imply the need to provide means for the on-line

community to be able to be active participants in the

WSIS process. In the on-line forum on September 9,

2004, Safaa Moussa wrote:

This on-line forum constitutes an

important part of mobilizing efforts for

the pursued effective outcome. But, in

view of the wide-ranging aspects that

Internet Governance covers, I believe it

is duly important to make it clearer the

inclusion of on-line contributions into

the decision-making process.

On-line interaction and feedback need to be

seen all along the decision-making and implementation

processes.

Another point I would like to underline is the

creation of on-line working groups to help integrate and

coordinate initiatives and efforts undertaken at national

regional and international levels.

The Tunis Summit will take place in November

2005. Will it be able to meet the challenges of the

continuing development and spread of the Internet?

There are promising signs that the public and interna-

tional essence of the Internet as envisioned by J. C. R.

Licklider which were so important in the origin and

development of the Internet are being taken up. But

will there be a means of welcoming the on-line

community, the community of netizens into the WSIS

process? Will there be a convergence of netizen

participation and defense of the public essence of the

Internet strong enough for the results of the Tunis

summit to be significant?

Page 7

WGIG: China Delegation On

Internet Governance*

by Madam Hu Qiheng**

[Editor’s Note: The following speech by the Head of

the China Delegation was given at the Consultation

Meeting on the Establishment of the UN Working

Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) held at the

United Nations Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland

on September 20 and 21, 2004.***]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman,

It is my great pleasure to have this opportunity

to discuss Internet governance with all of delegations

today. First of all, I would like to express my apprecia-

tion to Mr. Annan for his emphasis on this meeting, and

his accreditation of Mr. Desai to host the meeting. And

I would also like to thank the executive secretariat for

the work they have done. It is very important and

timely for all the stakeholders to further exchange ideas

on Internet governance before the formal startup of the

working group on Internet Governance.

Internet governance is the focus of WISIS first

phase. Wide discussions have been held during the first

phase, with quite a lot of agreement and understanding

reached. While on the other hand, we have to admit that

many problems on Internet governance still need to be

studied and discussed. Therefore the first phase of

WSIS authorized Mr. Annan to set up a special

working group to carry out studies and discussions on

this issue, which is one of the important achievements

of the first phase of WSIS and fully shows the empha-

sis given to Internet governance by the international

society. It is our hope that each party would follow the

basic principles of the “Declaration of Principle” and

“Plan of Action” adopted in the first phase of WSIS, to

further carry on cooperation and study on Internet

governance, to seek common points while reserving

differences, to consider Internet governance with a

perspective view, to reach consensus on Internet

governance and guide the Internet development to meet

its own trend and the common demand of the world

people. Here, I would like to put forward the following

viewpoints:

I. The change of the nature of Internet

demands the involvement of governments

into the Internet governance.

Internet is a resplendent achievement of human

civilization in the 20

century. With over 30 years’

development, it has evolved from a dedicated network

for science and military to an important global

information infrastructure, which has penetrated into

every area such as economy, trade, culture, media,

education and politics, etc. Internet has become an

indispensable part of the human society, so Internet

governance is vital to the state sovereignty and public

interests. Therefore each country must apply gover-

nance upon Internet regarding it as a crucial infrastruc-

ture. While it greatly brings advantage to people’s work

and life, Internet also causes many problems such as

cyber crime, copyright piracy, spam, spread of harmful

information, etc, which draws general attention of the

international society. Those problems threaten the safe

and stable operation of the Internet, infringe upon

public interests, and interfere with the normal economic

activities and social order. As the representative of the

state and the public interests, all the conscientious

governments should take the responsibility to

proactively take part in the Internet governance and

closely cooperate with the civil societies and private

sectors to jointly develop the Internet and promote the

safe and stable operation as well as a sustainable

development of Internet.

II. Internet development itself calls for the

transition of the governance mode.

The Internet has undergone different develop-

ment stages. The governance mode at the initial stage

featured bottom-up and self-discipline, which met the

demands resulting from Internet growth at that time and

played a significant role, thus facilitating the develop-

ment and prosperity of the Internet. As the Internet

keeps expanding at such an amazing speed and spreads

globally the simple self-governance mechanism is not

enough anymore. The international society has shared

the understanding that government has to play the

essential role in Internet governance. It can be well

proved by the fact that in the first phase of WSIS, all

the related parties have reached an accord that govern-

ments have to play their role in Internet governance and

the administration of the domestic Internet falls within

the sovereignty of each country. Considering conscien-

tious government represents the interest of the state and

its people, any private sector or civil society could not

do better in this regard, so we should emphasize that

Page 8

governments and inter-governmental organizations play

a leading role in Internet governance. In view of the

unique features and legacies of the Internet, we favor

the Internet governance mode, namely, jointly promot-

ing the secure, stable and sustainable development of

the Internet under the principle that governments lead

the way, all stakeholders have full participation. That

government leads the way, as we say above, does not

necessarily mean government control or being at the

position to control, but government creates a favorable

environment boosting the Internet growth while pro-

tecting public interests. Civil societies and private

sectors will play important roles as usual in Internet

governance, should respect religions, cultures and

customs and abide by laws and regulations of state. In

a word, there is a necessity to form a new framework

of Internet governance featuring the leadership of

government and sufficient participation of all stake-

holders.

III. Inclusion and openness shall dominate

the process of defining Internet gover-

nance and determining related public

policy issues.

The first phase of WSIS assigned WGIG four

tasks, one of which is to make a working definition of

Internet governance. Inclusion and openness represent

the essential features of the Internet and should be fully

reflected in the definition. As far as we are concerned,

it is a better approach to define Internet governance in

a broad comprehension, because only this kind of

understanding can make all stakeholders involved,

which accords with the principles agreed upon in the

first phase of WSIS.

The related public policy issues, as we think,

involve many aspects of Internet governance, including

at least:

•Internet resources management, such as managing IP

addresses, domain names and AS numbers

•Internet information and network security, such as

spam, harmful information (children pornography,

network virus and etc.), cyber crime (data interception,

unauthorized visit, hacker, information theft and finan-

cial fraudulence), information privacy and confi-

dentiality and other issues

•The international legal system and administrative

coordination mechanism on Internet

•Operational security of Internet infrastructure, such as

the security of domain name system

•IPR protection and knowledge sharing

•E-commerce

•Convergence between the Internet and the telecommu-

nication network, etc.

Internet governance solutions to the issues

above need the active participation and leadership of

governments and inter-governmental organizations, so

they will be and should be discussed under the frame-

work of the UN.

Finally, we think the current biggest problem

facing the Internet is the absence of a legitimate entity

for international Internet governance. Our opinion is

that the governance entity, generated through demo-

cratic procedure under the UN framework, implements

Internet governance according to the principle of

freedom, democracy and equality. The entity should be

authoritative, impartial and authorized to guarantee the

Internet a large platform for people with different

languages, cultures, religions, races and political

backgrounds to exchange views, thus ensuring

sustained development and prosperity itself.

That’s all. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

http://www.wgig.org/docs/qiheng.pdf

** Head of China Delegation to the WGIG; Adviser, Science and

Technology Commission, Ministry of Information Industry, China;

Academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering; Former Vice-

President, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

***

http://www.wgig.org/meeting-september.html

The 1987 Birth of the

China-CSNET E-mail Link

and How Its History

Got Corrected*

by Jay Hauben

[email protected]

In September 1987 an e-mail link was estab-

lished between the People’s Republic of China and the

Federal Republic of Germany. That link allowed China

to participate in the CSNET, an international e-mail

network. It was the first link of China into an interna-

tional e-mail system based on a mail server in China

and a major step toward China’s joining the Internet.

The following article tells some of the details

of how that link was developed and how the story of

Page 9

that development was corrected in China. It documents

some of the international collaboration that character-

izes the science and technology on which the Internet

is based.

I. Finding Werner Zorn

In the early 1990s, Ronda Hauben and Michael

Hauben sought to find and document where the Internet

came from, how it was developed and how it was

spreading. They found substantial evidence that the

Internet developed as an open, scientific and engineer-

ing collaboration. All the evidence was that the process

was international from the very beginning and was

guided by a vision of a major advance to human society

from a new universal inexpensive communication

system.

In 2004, Ronda Hauben and I were in Germany.

Ronda had heard that the first permanent e-mail link

between China and the rest of the world was connected

to the University of Karlsruhe,

a major institute for

education and research in western Germany. While in

Germany, we were told if you want to know about the

Germany-China link see Werner Zorn.

We located and interviewed Professor Werner

Zorn in Berlin. He shared his memories and some

documents from 1983 to 1987. During those four years,

a Chinese-German international collaboration prepared

the link so that China would be part of a worldwide e-

mail system called CSNET. Professor Zorn particularly

gave credit on the Chinese side to Professor Wang

Yunfeng who was the Senior Advisor of the Institute

for Computer Applications (ICA) in Beijing. The

Institute of Computer Applications was located at the

Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT). It was under the

Chinese Ministry of Machinery and Electronics

Industry. The ICA was created to provide data

processing and computer services to small and medium

organizations that were not large enough to have their

own computer installations. It became a foremost

computer networking center. From 1987 to 1994, ICA

was the mailserver and hub on the Chinese side for the

CSNET e-mail exchange between China and the rest of

the world.

II. A Chinese-German Collaboration Builds

China’s First International E-mail Link

Many factors contributed to make that link

possible. In the early 1980s, the World Bank supported

the import of computers for use in universities in

China. At that time, export of computers from the U.S.

to China was forbidden by the U.S. government. The

German government also subscribed to the COCOM

export rules but some computers made by the German

company Siemens met the criteria to be allowed export

to China. In 1982, the World Bank Chinese University

Development Project I was allotted $200 million. It

used some of that money for the import into China of

19 Siemens BS2000 mainframe computers manufac-

tured in Germany. One of these Siemens computers

was delivered to the ICA.

As part of the project, Professors Zorn and

Wang collaborated to organize the first Chinese

Siemens Computer Users Conference (CASCO –

Symposium ‘83)

which took place in September 1983

in Beijing. At the conference, Professor Zorn led a

seminar on the German Research Network project. One

of the Chinese interpreters challenged Professor Zorn,

remarking that lecturing was not enough. Would

Professor Zorn do something more for China? That

planted the seed that grew into the Chinese-German

computer networking collaboration which developed

the e-mail link based on the Siemens BS2000 comput-

ers installed at the ICA in China and in the Karlsruhe

University in West Germany.

In 1983-4, Professor Zorn was part of the effort

that connected Germany to the CSNET

, a network

begun in the U.S. in 1980 to provide e-mail connections

among university computer science departments. To

connect to CSNET, a computer would need particular

communication functionality as part of its operating

system. The specifications or protocols providing that

functionality for CSNET had not yet been implemented

in the Siemens BS2000 operating system. In late 1984,

Professor Zorn decided to undertake this task together

with his students but only as a background job. It took

two years to complete. The work was financially

supported in part by the government of the West

German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg. Its Prime

Minister Lothar Späth was friendly to China.

The CSNET international e-mail network was

based on ordinary telephone lines and switches using

a communication protocol with the name X.25

. In

1985, both China and West Germany were developing

internal X.25 e-mail traffic systems. But there was no

physical path to carry such e-mail traffic between them.

With the help of the PKTELCOM data network

administered by the Beijing Telecommunications

Administration, the Karlsruhe team made contact with

the Italian cable company Italcable. Italcable had some

Page 10

The First E-mail Message for CSNET to Leave China

leased lines via satellite between China and Italy. The

Italian company agreed to open its switches to route

X.25 e-mail traffic between China and Germany.

Italcable was able to open its switches on Aug. 26

1986. From that day on, reliable remote computer-to-

computer dialogue was available between Karlsruhe

University and ICA through PKTELCOM. But a

CSNET e-mail link was not yet possible because the

Siemens computers at the ICA and in Karlsruhe did not

have the necessary functionality to handle CSNET e-

mail messages.

In late summer 1987, Professor Zorn was in

Beijing for the third CASCO conference but also to

work with the staff of the ICA to set up the e-mail link

between China and Germany. His team at Karlsruhe

University had succeeded in getting the CSNET

protocols to work on their Siemens BS2000 computer.

In a little over two weeks, September 4 to 20,

1987 the Chinese and the German teams implemented

within the operating system of the ICA Siemens

computer the necessary protocols, installed the

necessary communications equipment and overcame

the many technical problems to make possible e-mail

connectivity with Karlsruhe.

III. The First E-mail Message from China to

the CSNET

On September 14, 1987, the joint German and

Chinese team composed an e-mail message with the

subject line, “First Electronic Mail from China to

Germany.” The message began in German and English

“Across the Great Wall we can reach every corner in

the world.” Not only was the message addressed to

Karlsruhe in Germany, it was also addressed to CSNET

computer scientists Lawrence Landweber and David

Farber in the U.S. and Dennis Jennings in Ireland. It

was signed by Professor Werner Zorn for the Univer-

sity of Karlsruhe Computer Science Department and

Professor Wang Yunfeng for the ICA. Eleven cowork-

ers are also listed as signatories, Michael Finken,

Stefan Paulisch, Michael Rotert, Gerhard Wacker and

Hans Lackner on the Karlsruhe side and Dr. Li Cheng

Chiung, Qiu Lei Nan, Ruan Ren Cheng, Wei Bao Xian,

Zhu Jiang and Zhao Li Hua on the ICA side, suggesting

the complexity of the task. But they could not send the

message they composed. To their great disappointment,

the message failed to leave China.

There was a last

technical problem to solve. Successful connectivity was

achieved in a few more days. On September 20, 1987,

the first CSNET e-mail message, the one composed on

September 14, could actually be sent to Karlsruhe.

The transmission of this first e-mail message

went over an X.25 connection. At ICA, the sender

dialed using a 300 baud modem to one of the X.25

ports of the PKTELCOM Beijing. PKTELCOM

Beijing was connected over a satellite link to ITAPAC,

which was the X.25 packet network of Italy. From there

the message was sent via a gateway to the German

X.25 network DATEX-P, to be delivered to the

Karlsruhe Siemens host. This route was very expensive

because it included international telephone charges for

each separate link.

The Siemens host in Karlsruhe was connected

via the Karlsruhe local area network with a VAX

11/750. That computer acted as the central CSNET

node for Germany. It polled the CSNET relay in Boston

several times a day. Thus the CSNET node in Beijing

was, with that first e-mail message, fully integrated into

CSNET and via CSNET to the rest of the e-mail world.

With this first e-mail node in China, a step was taken

for the people of China to begin online communication

with people around the world. But this was not an

Internet connection but only a very expensive e-mail

link.

IV. China Welcomed into the International

E-mail Community

E-mail connectivity between China and

Page 11

Letter from Stephen Wolff, Nov. 8, 1987

Germany was only the necessary technical precondition

for an e-mail service. What was missing was the

official approval of the U.S. authorities that funded

CSNET. The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF)

was the umbrella institution for all CSNET networking

within the U.S. and also abroad at that time. Immedi-

ately after the technical connectivity was achieved,

Professor Zorn worked with Professor Wang to win

acceptance from the NSF for worldwide e-mail traffic

to and from China. With the help of Lawrence

Landweber, the Chairman of the CSNET project, and

other U.S. computer scientists, acceptance by the NSF

was achieved less than two months later. On November

8, 1987, in a letter to the executive committees of

CSNET and BITNET, Stephen Wolff, Director of the

NSF Division of Networking and Communications

Research and Infrastructure welcomed the CSNET e-

mail connectivity with China.

This letter was the official political approval of

what technically was already implemented. As far as

I can tell there was no government to government

activity, no treaty or signed agreement. The story is told

that Stephen Wolff did get a command from the U.S.

White House to rescind permission after he had already

given it, but as he says, “you don’t ask permission in

advance. You ask forgiveness afterwards.”

Without Wolff’s letter, the China-Germany e-

mail connection would have been vulnerable to a

cutoff. The NSF could decide to deny forwarding of e-

mail messages to and from ICA in Beijing. Professor

Zorn considers November 8, 1987 as the time China

became officially connected with the rest of the world

via the CSNET e-mail system. E-mail received from

China at Karlsruhe would be relayed from there to

whichever CSNET host worldwide it was addressed.

And the reverse, any CSNET host worldwide could

send e-mail to ICA in Beijing and it would be relayed

from there to users of the China Academic Net

(CANET) throughout China as well as to users in other

Chinese institutions outside CANET. The international

computer science community and Chinese students

abroad who learned of this connectivity answered with

their warm congratulations.

Still these were small steps. Even with the

support of the Chinese State Science and Technology

Commission, hardly any Chinese institution and no

individual scientist could afford to send or receive e-

mail messages to or from abroad. That was because

X.25 for international traffic increased in cost as the

size of the e-mail message increased. The cost on the

Chinese side included charges for every message

received as well as sent. Longer e-mail messages could

cost 150 RMB**, for a professor the equivalent of a

whole month’s salary. The monthly charges for the

link, between $2000 and $5000 paid by each side, were

more of a burden for the Chinese side than the German

side.

E-mail usage was thus severely restricted.

But for the five years during which expensive

e-mail connectivity was the only network connectivity

that could reach the rest of the world, China prepared

itself to truly join the Internet.

With encouragement from the Chinese govern-

ment, knowledge and understanding of international

computer networking was spreading in China, espe-

cially in the scientific and computer communities. The

Institute for High Energy Physics (IHEP) belonging to

the Chinese Academy of Sciences opened an e-mail

connection in 1989 with its partner in the U.S., the

Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) in

California. Message Handling Systems (MHS) were set

up in 1990 between the German Research Network

(DFN) and the Chinese Research Network (CRN) and

between the Beijing Tsinghua University Network

(TUNET) and its partner in Canada at the University

of British Columbia (UBC).

The e-mail and remote logon only phase of

connectivity between China and the rest of the world

came to an end in 1994. That is when IHEP worked

Page 12

together with SLAC to take the next big step in

connectivity between the people of China and the

people of the world. On May 17, 1994, IHEP and

SLAC established a full TCP/IP connection between

China and the U.S.

The use of the TCP/IP protocols

allows data packets to take independent paths which

meant the cost for e-mail could come down and file

transfer (FTP) and remote logon (Telnet) would now

be available. That connectivity opened the Internet to

China and China to the Internet.

V. Getting the Accurate Story

After Ronda and I interviewed Professor Zorn

in 2004, I took up to write an article about this history

for the Amateur Computerist, an online news journal.

My online journalism research for the article took me

mostly to web sites in China. The story told there gave

most credit for the China-CSNET connection to a

Chinese engineer, Qian Tianbai whom Professor Zorn

had hardly mentioned. Missing from the history on the

websites in China that I found was any credit to

Professor Wang or to the international component

which Professor Zorn had stressed.

I sent e-mail to Professor Zorn asking him about

the discrepancy. I also sent e-mail to Liu Zhijiang at the

China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC)

asking if there was any evidence for citing on the

CNNIC website that Qian Tianbai was responsible for

the first e-mail message. Professor Zorn sent me via e-

mail more documents and the e-mail addresses for two

Chinese scientists, Dr. Li Cheng Chiung and Ruan Ren

Cheng, who had signed the first e-mail message. Dr. Li

Cheng Chiung was the Director of the ICA from 1980

to 1990. A copy of the first e-mail message was online.

I saw that Qian Tianbai’s name was not among the 13

signatures.

The two Chinese scientists answered with more

information about the September 1987 e-mail message

and about Qian Tianbai. Particularly they both

answered that Qian Tianbai was not in China at the

time of the opening of the link in 1987 and that Qian

Tianbai had not participated in this project. I found no

evidence otherwise.

Through further digging and via e-mail

correspondence with Dr. Li Cheng Chiung and Ruan

Ren Cheng, I was able to confirm to my satisfaction

Professor Zorn’s story of the events.

VI. Spreading the Accurate Story

I wrote my article

and it was published in the

Amateur Computerist giving justified credit to

Professors Wang and Zorn and their teams and to

Lawrence Landweber of the CSNET and Stephen

Wolff. My article appeared online and I sent copies to

CNNIC and other contacts I had made in China.

Encouraged by my journalism, Professor Zorn

intensified his efforts to get the story corrected in

China.

A bit later Professor Zorn was invited by Ronda

to tell the story at a panel planned in conjunction with

the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)

for Nov 2005 in Tunis in North Africa. In Tunis,

Professor Zorn presented his story of the international

effort and collaboration especially between himself and

his team in Germany and Professor Wang and Dr. Li

and the team in Beijing. Professor Zorn put up many

slides showing the Chinese and German teams during

the period and he put up one slide which said:

The official time lines contain some

seriously mistaken information and are

also omitting important facts. They

cause hereby fatal misinformation

meanwhile spread all over the world.

In the audience in Tunis was Madam Hu

Qiheng, Vice President, China Association for Science

& Technology, and Chair of Internet Society of China.

Mdm Hu rose and spoke of her friendship with Qian

Tianbai but said she would investigate why the story

told in China differed from the one Professor Zorn told.

I gave her a copy of my article and Professor Zorn gave

her copies of some of the documents he had given me.

VII. The CNNIC Internet Time Line Gets

Corrected

Just before the Tunis event, Professor Zorn had

sent documents to CNNIC supporting the roles of

Professor Wang and the ICA team and of the Karlsruhe

team. Also, Nanjun Li one of Professor Zorn’s PhD

students made contact with Wang Enhai Director of the

Information Service Department at CNNIC to help it

investigate the discrepancy between the CNNIC

Internet Time Line and Professor Zorn’s documents.

When Mdm Hu returned to China from Tunis she asked

CNNIC to investigate the 1987 e-mail message. As the

editor of the CNNIC Internet Time Line, Wang Enhai

took the task. He was assisted by Chen Jiangong.

During the investigation different experts and partici-

pants in the events gave different stories. Min Dahong

Page 13

of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences helped

explain publicly the controversies that CNNIC had to

investigate.

The Internet Time Line Committee of CNNIC

met in March 2007 and decided, based on all the

evidence, that entries on the official CNNIC website

Internet Time Line should be changed to give proper

credit to the work of Professors Zorn and Wang, their

teams and the international effort that made the first e-

mail link between China and the world via CSNET

possible. It had taken 18 months. The first entry of the

CNNIC Internet Time Line was changed in May 2007

to read:

In September 1987, with the support

from a scientific research group led by

Professor Werner Zorn of Karlsruhe

University in Germany, a working

group led by Professor Wang Yunfeng

and Doctor Li Chengjiong built up an

email node in ICA, and successfully

sent out an email to Germany on Sep

. The email title was “Across the

Great Wall we can reach every corner

in the world.”

VIII. Celebrating the International

Collaboration

In spring 2007, Professor Zorn was organizing

a celebration of the 20

anniversary of the success of

the opening of the China-CSNET link for September

2007 in Potsdam Germany. He was overjoyed by the

news he was receiving that Professor Wang and Dr Li

and himself and the ICA and Karlsruhe teams were

being recognized in China for their hard work in setting

up the China-Germany CSNET link. He invited to

Potsdam many of the international pioneers who helped

spread the Internet. And he invited Mdm Hu because

the accurate story about that link was now spreading in

China. For me, the celebration was for both the success

of the e-mail link and the success of helping correct

how the history was being told. At the celebration,

Mdm Hu representing the Internet community in China

presented a souvenir from China to Werner Zorn,

Lawrence Landweber and Stephen Wolff as representa-

tives of the international Internet pioneers. In her

presentation she emphasized what Professor Zorn had

always stressed:

The international collaboration in

science and technology is the driving

force for computer networking across

the country borders and facilitating the

early Internet development in China.

But this is not the end of the story.

In late 2008, the Internet Society of China asked

online users in China what date would they chose for

a National Net Citizens (Netizens) Cultural Festival?

It is reported that about 500,000 users voted. The

largest number of those voting chose September 14.

That is the day in 1987 when the first message to be

sent on the China-CSNET link was composed. When

the Internet Society of China organized the first-in-the-

world Net Citizens (Netizens) Cultural Festival Day, it

invited Professor Zorn. It also invited Ronda Hauben

and me for our work about netizenship and about the

international collaboration that made the Internet

possible.

The first Netizens Cultural Festival Day was

held September 14, 2009 in Beijing at the CCTV

Tower. It was a lively event with speeches and awards

for some bloggers. An oral history panel was held

discussing some of the problems of opening an Internet

link to China in 1994 so the Chinese people could have

full Internet connectivity. This first net citizens’ day

was not yet well known among the public or even

among the then 350,000,000 net users. It was like a

baby being born, small but of a big potential.

Instead of seeing that potential, a Wall Street

Journal blog post framed the event as an “official day”

that “didn’t seem to muster much enthusiasm.”

But

the Wall Street Journal was not the only media

covering the events. About 40 online media journalists

attended and reported on the celebration. They did live

online blogging of the event and put up text, photo and

video reports so that online users could see and judge

the event for themselves.

On the oral history panel at the CCTV Tower,

Qian Hualin, Chief Scientist and Vice President of the

Internet Society of China informed the audience that:

Just as Germany was helpful with

China establishing an e-mail link with

the CSNET in 1987, today China is

offering its experience to Vietnam in

network construction and to the DPRK

in setting up and managing the domain

name system of dot KP.

With this statement, Qian Hualin showed that the

international collaboration that characterizes the

Internet continues.

Page 14

IX. Summary

From 1983-1987, despite the Cold War,

computer scientists in China and West Germany were

able to collaborate to build up a link between China and

the international CSNET e-mail network. They had

support from the international computer networking

community to transcend national borders, ideological

differences, and political restrictions. After a false start,

the history of this international collaboration is known

and respected in China. With such collaborations and

efforts to spread accurate stories, the Internet will

continue to develop and bring the people of the world

closer together.

Notes

1. See for example, “Part II The Past: Where it has Come From”

in Michael Hauben and Ronda Hauben, Netizens: On the History

and Impact of Usenet and the Internet, IEEE Computer Society

Press, Los Alamitos, CA., 1997. There is an online version of the

book at

http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/

2. See Cindy Zheng, “Current Computing/Networking Status in

China,” China News Digest, Special Issue on Networking in China,

July 11, 1993,

http://www.sdsc.edu/~zhengc/93trip.html.

3. COCOM, the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export

Controls, was established during the Cold War to put an embargo

on Western exports to East Bloc countries. It established multi-

lateral export controls for strategic and military goods/materiel and

technologies to proscribed destinations.

4.CASCO- Chinesische Anwender von Siemens Computern.

5.The CSNET was the result of a proposal in 1979 submitted to the

U.S. NSF by Lawrence Landweber to make computer network

connections among U.S. and other university computer science

departments. It started as a simple telephone-based e-mail relay

network which became known as PhoneNet. By 1984, computer

science departments outside of the U.S. began to connect. Canada,

Israel, Germany and France had early connections, soon followed

by South Korea, Australia and Japan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.25

7. Wang Enhai tells this story at http://tech.sina.com.cn/i/2008-11-

06/09452560594.shtml (in Chinese)

8. See, “Panel Discussion: The Road to the First E-mail,” The

Amateur Computerist, Vol. 16 No. 2, Summer 2008, p. 5.

Available on line at:

http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/ACn16-2.pdf.

9. For computer networking activity, ICA was financially better

off than were the Chinese universities. ICA was funded by the

Ministry of Machinery and Electronics Industry. The universities

were funded by the Ministry of Education which could not

distribute as much money to each university as ICA received.

10.

http://www.nsrc.org/db/lookup/operation=lookup-

report/ID=890202373777:497422478/fromPage=CN.

11. “‘Across the Great Wall’: The China-Germany Email Con-

nection 1987-1994.” See:

http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/china-e-mail.doc.

12. E-mail message from Wang Enhai to the author, August 27,

2008. Wang Enhai gave an interview in 2008 to SINA which

details the method and results of this investigation. It is online at:

http://tech.sina.com.cn/i/2008-11-06/09452560594.shtml and

http://tech.sina.com.cn/i/2008-11-06/09452560595.shtml (both in

Chinese).

13. See for example, Min Dahong, “China's first e-mail exactly

who and when issued,” Xinhuanet, Nov 22, 2006. Available online

at:

http://news.xinhuanet.com/newmedia/2006-11/22/content_5358191.htm (in

Chinese).

14. The Committee had been established in 2002. Its members

were experts from governments, research institutes, newspaper

agencies, Internet companies, universities, and retired Internet

contributors. In 2007 Min Dahong was on the Committee.

15. See “Cordial Thanks to Our Friends,” The Amateur

Computerist, Vol. 16 No. 2, Summer 2008, pages 13-14. On-line

at: http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/ACn16-2.pdf.

16. “China’s Netizens Day Gets Scant Attention” by Juliet Ye. See

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/09/15/chinas-netizens-day-gets-

scant-attention/tab/article/

17. See for example the video at: http://my.tv.sohu.com/u/vw/21977107

or http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTE5MTY3OTUy.html

* This article is a slightly revised version of a presentation made

at the Institute for the History of Natural Sciences, Chinese

Academy of Sciences, in Beijing, July 10, 2012. The presentation

was accompanied by a slideshow which is online at:

http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/beijing2012/j-china2012-email-

link-slides.ppt. Part of this presentation was given at the

International Conference on Media Education and Global Agendas,

Southwest University of Political Science and Law, Chongqing,

China, January 12-13, 2010. There is a version of this article in

Chinese in Science & Culture Review, Vol. 10 No. 1, February

2013, pages 81-89, published by the Institute for the History of

Natural Sciences, CAS.

**The RMB (renmibi) is the official currency of China.

International and Scientific

Origins of the Internet

and the Emergence of the

Netizens*

by Ronda Hauben

ronda.netizen@gmail.com

[Editor’s Note: The following is a talk given on Nov.

14, 2005 in Tunis at a side event at the World Summit

for the Information Society (WSIS 2005).]

Netizens are Net Citizens who utilize

the Net from their home, workplace,

school, library, etc. These people are

among those who populate the Net, and

make it a resource of human beings.

Page 15

These netizens participate to help make

the Net both an intellectual and a social

resource.

Michael Hauben

“Further Thoughts about Netizens”

I am happy to be here today and to be present-

ing the opening paper in this session of the Past,

Present, and Future of Research in the Information

Society (PPF) conference. This session is titled

“Computer Networks, the Internet and Netizens: Their

Impact on Science and Society.”

It is an honor to have this session as a side event

connected to the 2

phase of the UN’s World Summit

on the Information Society (WSIS), where the impor-

tance of access to the Internet becoming available to all

the world’s peoples is being affirmed.

Secondarily, even as this conference session is

taking place, there is a struggle ongoing involving a

number of countries around the world to try to

determine the management model that is needed for the

international administration of the Internet’s infrastruc-

ture. But to solve this problem it is useful to have some

idea of how the Internet was developed and what are

the salient aspects of that development.

In my talk today, I want to explore these aspects

and in turn try to unravel some of the myths about the

Internet and its origins that hide its actual character. I

have a draft paper I have prepared where I explore the

issues in greater detail that I will speak about today.

First, a common view of the Internet is that it

was created within the U.S. by the U.S. Department of

Defense as a way to have a communication system that

would survive a nuclear war.

This is a fallacious view of the origin of the

Internet. It is inaccurate in many aspects.

Notably:

1. The Internet is a result of scientific and technical

collaboration that was international from its earliest

stages.

2. There was a vision guiding and inspiring its

international collaborative development.

3. The Internet is a solution to the Multiple Network

Problem – to connect dissimilar networks.

More specifically, the goal of Internet research

was to make communication possible across the

boundaries of different networks. During the period of

the birth of the Internet (1973-1983), countries like

Great Britain, France, Canada and others were either

actually creating their own national or specific

computer networks, or were developing plans to do so.

These networks would all be different technically and

would be owned and operated by different political and

administrative entities. How to provide for communica-

tion across the boundaries of these diverse networks

was the problem to be solved.

The research that solved this problem was the

work to create the protocol called TCP/IP. The protocol

TCP/IP makes it possible to communicate across the

boundaries of dissimilar networks. TCP/IP was

developed particularly by a research collaboration

including Norwegian researchers connected with

NORSAR, which was a network site in Norway, British

researchers, connected by a site at the University

College London, and American researchers working as

part of the Information Processing Techniques Office

(IPTO) on the ARPAnet.

In my talk today I want to focus on what I

propose are some of the scientific origins of the

research that have made the Internet possible. And I

want to argue that though these scientific origins are

poorly understood and not often recognized, they are

critical to an understanding of the nature of the Internet

and supporting of its future development.

To understand these scientific origins of the

Internet’s development, we need to look back to the

early post World War II period. During this period

there was scientific ferment to understand the science

of communication. A community of scientists, math-

ematicians, engineers and social scientists were

interested in exploring the processes of communication.

One means some of the researchers adopted was to

participate in an interdisciplinary community of

researchers who met bi-yearly or yearly. Essentially

these researchers pursued different disciplines and

spoke different scientific languages.

Their effort was to try to bridge the boundaries

that separated their disciplines. The meetings of the

group were known by different names, but during one

period they were called the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation

Conferences on Cybernetics. The phenomenon was also

known as “feedback” or “self organizing systems.” The

meeting not only studied communication but also

endeavored to develop a practice more conducive to

communication. A conference session was held on a

weekend. Only two or three papers were presented at

each conference and people were encouraged to ask

questions during the paper presentation if they did not

understand the points being raised or if they wanted

clarification. After the papers were read, there would

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be a more general conversation and discussion of issues

raised. The conference sessions were transcribed and

the transcription sent to the participants after the

conference. They could make corrections or clarifica-

tions. The publication of the conference proceedings

would include the publication of the discussion, along

with the publication of the paper presentations. There

were ten such Macy Foundation conferences from 1942

until 1953. Five volumes of the conferences proceed-

ings were published.

J.C.R. Licklider (or Lick as he asked people to

call him) was a research scientist who had made certain

scientific advances in communication research. His

PhD thesis broke new ground by mapping where in the

brain of the cat, different pitches of sound were

received and how this led to the perception of different

frequencies of sound.

Also Licklider had made an engineering

breakthrough which is referred to as “clipped speech.”

He was able to identify what small part of a sound

wave was critical for the sound to be perceived. (This

was helpful to the U.S. military during WWII in iden-

tifying how pilots could get help hearing vital sounds

despite intense background noise.)

Licklider was deeply interested in the study of

communication. He only attended one of the ten Macy

Foundation conferences on Cybernetics. However he,

along with other scientists, received support from the

National Science Foundation (NSF) in the U.S. to have

a conference in 1954 at the Massachusetts Institute of

Technology (MIT) similar to the Macy Foundation

conferences on Cybernetics that had ended in 1953.

The title of the NSF conference was “Problems in

Human Communication and Control.” The notes of the

meetings were then transcribed. Licklider edited the

notes. The proceedings were published, much in the

same way the Macy conference proceedings were

published.

During this period, computer scientists and

engineers were interested in understanding the

workings of the brain (and nervous system) and

scientists like Licklider who were studying the brain

were interested in the workings of the computer. There

was an intuition that insight into the mechanisms of the

brain could be gained from research in computers.

Similarly, computer science researchers believed that

learning about how the brain functioned would make

possible scientific breakthroughs in computer science.

An important interest of Licklider’s was in the

workings of the brain and how more advanced

computer development could help the research

collaboration of scientists and engineers. Of particular

interest was a form of modeling. In a paper written with

Robert Taylor in 1968, Licklider and Taylor wrote:

By far the most numerous, most sophis-

ticated and most important models are

those that reside in men’s minds.

An example of how the computer could help

represent models for Licklider was the program

‘Sketchpad’ created by Ivan Sutherland. Describing a

demonstration he had seen of Sutherland’s modeling

program, Warren Teitelman, then a graduate student at

MIT, writes:

Dr. Sutherland sketched the girder of a

bridge, and indicated the points at

which members were connected to-

gether by rivets. He then drew a support

at each end of the girder and a load at

its center. The sketch of the girder then

sagged under the load, and a number

appeared on each member indicating

the amount of tension or compression to

which each member was subjected.

Sutherland was able to add the support needed

using the modeling program. Then the bridge was,

according to the computer simulation program, able to

maintain the weight. This is an example of the

encouraging potential that Licklider envisioned if the

scientific research community could acquire the

technology they needed for their modeling.

Licklider not only felt that modeling was critical

for scientific research, but for society as well. Describ-

ing the modeling that Licklider believed characterized

the functioning of the brain, he and Taylor write: “In

richness, plasticity, facility and economy, the mental

model has no peer, but in other respects it has shortcom-

ings.”

The primary shortcoming of such a model is

that it is stored in the brain of only a single individual.

Hence, “It can be observed and manipulated only by

one person.”

In order for such models to serve a social

function, there is a need, for the models in the heads of

individuals to become part of a collaborative process.

This is because, as Licklider and Taylor write. “Society

rightly distrusts the modeling done by a single mind.”

More specifically:

Society demands (...) [what] amounts to

the requirement that individual models

be compared and brought into some

Page 17

degree of accord. The requirement for

communicating which we now define

concisely [as] ‘cooperative’ modeling

– [is] cooperation in the construction,

maintenance and use of a model.

Licklider and Taylor then explain that like the process

they believe is ongoing in the brain, what is needed for

such cooperative modeling is: “a plastic or moldable

medium that can be modeled, a dynamic medium in

which processes will flow into consequences.”

Most important for such a medium is that it

supports collaborative contributions and processes –

that it be: “a common medium that can be contributed

to and experimented with by all.”

Licklider and Taylor envisioned that the

developing online community would find the capability

for such collaborative modeling as the Internet

developed and that having access to this plastic

collaborative environment would be a boon to the

advancement of society and of science. As the Internet

has developed, it has made possible new forms of

scientific collaboration and modeling much as Licklider

and Taylor proposed would become possible.

Along with the need for such a moldable

medium for scientific collaborative development,

Licklider also maintained that there would be a need for

a collaborative community with this capability to

support continuing network development and to

intervene to help with the problems that would develop

if government officials who do not understand the

nature of computer technology, are charged with

making the decisions needed for its development.

Licklider was part of a community of scientists

who had seen the consequences of poor technical and

political decisions made by governments. (For example

the bombing of civilians during WWII by the Allies).

In the spring of 1961, a series of eight lectures

were held to honor MIT on the occasion of its 100

birthday. The British scientist and writer, C.P. Snow,

was invited to give a talk discussing this problem. The

title of the talk was “Scientists and Decision making.”

During his talk, Snow described the gap that

would exist between understanding the nature of the

new computer technology and the understanding of

government officials who would have the responsibility

for decisions about how to support the development of

this new technology. Snow explained how such a

problem required a situation similar to a phenomenon

that in physics is called Brownian Motion. Referring to

what happened in Great Britain after World War II

when the whole society began discussing the need for

national health care, Snow outlines the phenomenon:

I believe that the healthiest decisions of

society occur by something more like

Brownian movement. All kinds of

people all over the place suddenly get

smitten with the same sort of desire,

with the same sort of interest at the

same time. This forms a concentration

of pressure and of direction. These

concentrations of pressure gradually

filter their way through to the people

whose nominal responsibility it is to put

the legislation into a written form.

Shortly after Snow’s talk at MIT, Licklider was

invited to join the Advanced Research Projects Agency

(ARPA). He was to set up an office for research in

computer science and an office for research in behav-

ioral science. He called the office for research in

computer science the Information Processing Tech-

niques Office (IPTO), (1962-1986). Licklider was its

first director and he was followed by Ivan Sutherland.

There were several subsequent directors, and then in

1974, Licklider was invited to return as director.

In his writing and talks after he left the IPTO in

1975, Licklider describes the problems he encountered

to get support for basic research in computer science

within the U.S. Department of Defense and the need for

citizens who will actively take up the problems when

they develop.

Licklider is not asking for citizens to vote on

every issue. Instead he outlines how voting is insuffi-

cient as a way to work to promote the public interest.

He writes:

(V)oting in the absence of understand-

ing defines only the public attitude, not

the public interest. It means that many

public spirited individuals must study,

model, analyze, argue, write, criticize,

and work out each issue and each

problem until they reach consensus or

determine that none can be reached – at

which point there may be occasion for

voting.

Licklider describes the need for citizen

involvement in government decisions to help determine

how to support the continuing development of com-

puter technology. More significantly, Licklider

proposes that people will not be interested in govern-

ment processes until they have a means to participate

Page 18

in those processes. He foresees how computer develop-

ments will provide that means. He writes:

Computer power to the people is essen-

tial to the realization of a future in

which most citizens are informed about,

and interested in, the process of govern-

ment.

The process for citizen involvement in the

development of computer technology that Licklider

outlines is a process that characterizes the kind of

discussion that I found on some of the earliest mailing

lists and Usenet newsgroups that developed in the early

1980s. This process functioned for needed technical

discussion, such as with the ARPAnet TCP/IP Digest

when the cutover to TCP/IP was carried out.

Such discussion also helped to develop and

spread the vision for ubiquitous computer networking

that was discussed on the Human Nets mailing list and

other mailing lists and Usenet newsgroups during the

early 1980s.

But more fundamentally, the emergence of such

a public spirited online citizenry that Licklider believed

so important to the continued support and development

of computer and networking technology was identified

through the research done by a college student in the

early 1990s.

In 1992-3, as part of research done for a college

assignment, the student, Michael Hauben, posted a

series of questions and some preliminary research about

the developing network on Usenet newsgroups. (Usenet

is a worldwide discussion forum.) He also posted his

questions on a few Internet mailing lists. Michael was

surprised as replies to his questions began to arrive in

his mailbox. Through subsequent posts, and analyzing

the replies, he cognized that a new form of conscious-

ness, a new identity was being acquired by many of

those online who wrote him. A number of the replies

he received indicated how people online were not only

interested in how the developing Net was contributing

to their own lives, but also many were seeking to

spread access to the Internet to others.

Michael had seen the word ‘net.citizen’ referred

to online. Thinking about the social concern and

consciousness he had found among those who wrote

him, and about the non-geographical character of a net

based form of citizenship, he contracted ‘net.citizen’

into the word ‘netizen.’ Netizen has come to reflect the

online social identity he discovered doing his research.

He wrote a paper titled, “The Net and Netizens:

The Impact the Net has on People’s Lives” describing

the research he had done and the contribution he

received from many parts of the world. This research

was done in1992-1993 just at the time that the Internet

was spreading to countries and networks around the

world which were connecting to the Internet. Michael

posted his paper on Usenet and several Internet mailing

lists on July 6, 1993 in four parts under the title

“Common Sense: The Net and Netizens: the Impact the

Net is Having on People’s Lives.” People around the

world wrote that they found his paper of interest and

the term netizen quickly spread, not only in the online

world, but soon it was appearing in newspapers and

other publications offline.

I collaborated with Michael, also doing research

and writing that was posted online. One of the people

who found our writing of interest suggested we gather

them into a book. We collected our papers into an

online book titled “Netizens and the Wonderful World

of the Net” which was put online in January 1994. In

1997 a second version of the book was published in a

print edition titled Netizens: On the History and Impact

of Usenet and the Internet. The book was also trans-

lated into Japanese and distributed in Japan.

Netizens, as Michael wrote, are those who

embodied the social conscious and public purpose

similar to that which Licklider had considered impor-

tant for the continued development of computer

technology and of the public policy to support that

development.

Michael was invited to speak at a conference in

Beppu Bay in Japan in November 1995. In his speech

he explained why he felt it was important to distinguish

between the more general usage the media has

promoted, that anyone online is a netizen, and the usage

that he had introduced, reserving the title ‘netizen’ for

the online user who actively participates to make the

net and the world it is part of a better place. He

explained:

Netizens...are people who understand it

takes effort and action on each and

everyone’s part to make the Net a

regenerative and vibrant community

and resource. Netizens are people who

decide to devote time and effort into

making the Net, this new part of our

world, a better place.

Individuals from around the world adopted and

helped to spread the consciousness and identity of the

netizen. An especially interesting development are the

netizens of South Korea. When asking a number of

Page 19

people I met during a visit to South Korea if they are

netizens, all responded yes, or “I hope so.”

South Korea is one of the most wired nations in

the world. Over 80% of the population has access to

high speed Internet. Along with the spread of high

speed Internet access in Korea is the development of

netizenship among the Korean population.

In a way that is similar to how Michael

described the interactive, collaborative online processes

that he and those who wrote him in the early 1990s,

researchers in South Korea are documenting similar

processes and the impact of netizens on Korean society.

One particularly interesting aspect of these develop-

ments is that online processes are being adopted by

formerly offline institutions and that online clubs have

developed offline organizational forms as well.

Implications and Research Questions

Raised by Work

The online plastic collaboration which makes

possible interactive modeling that Licklider and Taylor

describe in their 1968 paper is a helpful analogy

through which to view the online world that has

evolved as the Internet has developed and spread

around the world. It is similarly important to recognize

the social consciousness of users as online citizens, as

netizens that has evolved and spread.

In this conference today we will hear other talks

which will explore the rich scientific and technical

history that has contributed to the birth and develop-

ment of the Internet.

I want to argue for the need for specific studies,

whether historical or contemporaneous, of how the

interactive, collaborative modeling that Licklider

proposed as essential to further social and scientific

development of technology is being explored via the

Internet.

Also I want to argue for the need to bring this

area of study into the public policy activities of those

who are trying to contribute to the continued develop-

ment of the Internet and the management of its

infrastructure. For example, the WSIS meetings being

held here in Tunis demonstrate the need for an

appropriate model for the management of the Internet’s

infrastructure. I want to propose that there is a need for

the kind of plastic, collaborative, interactive and

international online public process to form the basis for

the model needed to administer the Internet’s infra-

structure. Instead outdated models developed prior to

the Internet have been dominating the discourse among

those involved in the WSIS process.

There are a number of research questions that

arise from my paper and study. I hope those interested

in these issues will find a way to continue the discus-

sion begun in this conference and after it as well.

In conclusion, not only has the Internet

developed and spread around the world with an

amazing speed and impact, but the netizens, the online

citizens who have emerged from the environment

fostered by the Internet have also developed and spread

around the world. Along with the benefits of the online,

plastic, collaborative, interactive environment that has

developed as the Internet has developed and spread, so

too the benefits of the new form of consciousness and

identity, of netizens, have developed. I want to argue

that it is critical to the continuing development and

spread of the Internet, that the contributions and

participation of the netizens be recognized, and

encouraged.

As Michael observed

Netizens are Net Citizens who utilize

the Net from their home, workplace,

school, library, etc. These people are

among those who populate the Net, and

make it a resource of human beings.

These netizens participate to help make

the Net both an intellectual and a social

resource.

Notes:

1. The myth is that the Internet was created by the U.S. Depart-

ment of Defense as an effort to create a military communication

system that could survive a nuclear war. It appears to have its

origins in both a misconception about what the Internet is and how

it differs from the ARPAnet, and in a misunderstanding of the

origins of the packet switching technology pioneered by the

researchers who created the ARPAnet.

The myth grows from the false attribution of research that

Paul Baran did at the RAND Institute, as research that created

packet switching. This is inaccurate. Baran’s research was not

related to the early work to create either the ARPAnet or the

Internet. Larry Roberts, who headed the research to create the

ARPAnet as the head of the Information Processing Techniques

Office (IPTO) in 1967-1972, describing this confusion, writes:

(I)n 1965, a...meeting took place at MIT.

Donald Davies, from the National Physical

Laboratory in the U.K. was at MIT to give a

seminar on timesharing. Licklider, Davies and

I discussed networking and the inadequacy of

data communication facilities for both time

sharing and networking. Davies reports that

shortly after this meeting he was struck with the

Page 20

concept that a store and forward system for very

short messages (now called packet switching)

was the ideal communication system for

interactive systems.

Roberts continues. Davies “wrote about his ideas in a

document entitled ‘Proposal for Development of a National

Communication Service for On-Line Data processing’ which

envisioned a communications network using trunk lines from 100K

bits/sec in speed to 1.5 megabits/sec (T1), message sizes of 128

bytes and a switch which could handle up to 10,000 messages/sec

(Historical note: this took 20 years to accomplish). Then in June

1966, Davies wrote a second internal paper, ‘Proposal for a Digital

Communication Network’ in which he coined the word packet, –

a small sub part of the message the user wants to send, and also

introduced the concept of an ‘interface computer’ to sit between

the user equipment and the packet network. His design also

included the concept of a Packet Assembler and Disassembler

(PAD) to interface character terminals, today a common element

of most packet networks.”

Roberts explains that “As a result of distributing his 1965

paper, Donald Davies was given a copy of an internal Rand report

On Distributed Communications, by Paul Baran of the Rand

Corporation, which had been written in August 1964. Baran’s

historical paper also described a short message switching network

using T1 trunks and a 128 byte message size...” But Baran’s report

was about a voice network. Roberts states the influence of Baran’s

work was “mainly supportive, not sparking its development.”

(“The ARPAnet & Computer Networks” May 1995,

http://www.packet.cc/files/arpanet-computernet.html)

Davies contributions to the creation of packet switching

has not seemed to get the credit they deserve. But in any case, the

myth about the development of packet switching refers to the

creation of the ARPAnet, not to the creation of the Internet. The

Internet is a network of networks created via an international re-

search process to create the TCP/IP protocol.

2. J.C.R. Licklider and Robert Taylor, “The Computer As a

Communication Device,” 1968, in In Memoriam: J.C.R. Licklider,

1915-1990, p. 21,

http://memex.org/licklider.pdf

3. In Martin Greenberger, ed., Computers and the World of the

Future, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1962, pages 2-13.

4. You may notice, perhaps, that this description by C.P. Snow of

a form of Brownian Motion for society sounds similar in some

ways to the concept of the ‘public sphere’ that the German

philosopher Jurgen Habermas explores in his writing.

5. J.C.R. Licklider, “Computers in Government,” in Michael

Dertouzos and Joel Moses, The Computer Age: A Twenty-Year

View, Cambridge, MIT Press, 1979, p. 126.

6. Ibid.

7. See for example, Ronda Hauben, “A Study of the ARPAnet

TCP/IP Digest and of the Role of Online Communication in the

Transition from the ARPAnet to the Internet.”

http://umcc.ais.org/~ronda/new.papers/tcpdraft.txt

8. Michael Hauben, talk given on November 24, 1995 at the

Hypernetwork ‘95, Beppu Bay Conference in Beppu, Japan. The

theme of the conference was “The Netizen Revolution and the

Regional Information Infrastructure.”

9. “Further Thoughts about Netizens,”

http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/CS/netizen_thoughts.html . See

also Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the

Internet,

http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/.

*This talk is based on an article with the same title which was

prepared for the PPF side event to the 2005 Tunis WSIS. The

article can be accessed at:

http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/acn15-

2.articles/rhauben.pdf.

The 2008 Anti-CNN Website

Media Watchdog and Netizen

To Netizen Communication

and Debate*

by Jay Hauben

[email protected]

[Editor’s Note: The following case study is one of three

in a paper written in 2014 and presented at a conference

at the United Nations on May 2, 2014.]

On March 14, 2008, Tibetan demonstrators in

Lhasa the capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region in

China turned violent. A Canadian tourist and the few

foreign journalists who witnessed the situation put

online photos, videos and descriptions documenting the

deadly violence of the rioters against citizens and

property (Al Jezeera, 2008; cali2882, 2008; Kadfly,

2008). That was even before the official Chinese media

started to report it. The mainstream media in China

framed the story as violence against Han and Muslim

Chinese fomented by the Tibetan government in exile.

Much of the mainstream international media like BBC,

VOA, and CNN framed the violence as the result of

discriminatory Chinese rule and Chinese police

brutality.

Wide anger was expressed by many Chinese

aboard when they discovered that some of the media in

the U.S., Germany, and the U.K., were using photos

and videos from clashes between police and pro-

Tibetan independence protestors in Nepal and India to

support that media’s claim of violence by Chinese

police. A digital slide show appeared online

containing

an annotated presentation of 11 photos from CNN, Der

Spiegel, the Washington Post, N24 German TV, BBC,

Fox News, Bild, etc. The photos were mislabeled and

in other ways inappropriate for the articles with which

they appeared. The photos included screen shots from

German TV stations that consistently labels Nepalese

police as Chinese. A BBC photo showed an ambulance

Page 21

using it to illustrate a “heavy military presence.” A

photo used by CNN to show Chinese military violence

was carefully cropped to hide rioters throwing rocks at

a Chinese military vehicle. The slide show ended with

a slide which read, “These western media should be

shamed for the reporting they’ve made purposely and

whoever in the world, intending to slander Chinese

people to promote territorial integrity of China will be

doomed to failure.” The slide show spread widely in

cyberspace in and outside China.

Within a few days of the appearance of the

inaccurate and misleading reporting, Rau Jin a recent

university graduate launched the Anti-cnn website

(http://www.anti-cnn.com). He explained that after

netizen anger and discussion he wanted to “speak out

our thoughts and let the westerners learn about the

truth.”

The top page of Anti-cnn featured articles,

videos and photos documenting some of the alleged

distortions in the coverage of the Tibet events. The

website also had forum sections first in Chinese then

also in English. The organizers set as the goal of Anti-

cnn to overcome media bias in the West by fostering

communication between Chinese netizens and netizens

outside of China so that the people of the world and of

China could have accurate knowledge about each other.

They wrote on their website, “We are not against the

western media, but against the lies and fabricated

stories in the media.” Anti-cnn was chosen as the site

name, one of the organizers said, “because CNN is the

media superpower. It can do great damage so it must

be watched and challenged when it is wrong.”

But the

site was not limited to countering errors in the reporting

of CNN. It invited submissions that documented bias

or countered misrepresentations of China in the global

media.

Rau received hundreds of offers of help finding

examples of media distortions. He gathered a team of

40 volunteers to monitor the submissions for factual-

ness and to limit emotional threads. Posts that were

name calling or attacks on individuals or groups were

to be deleted. Emotional posts were not to be allowed

follow-up comments. Forum discussions were started

on “Western Media Bias,” “The Facts of Tibet” and

“Modern China.” In the first five days the site attracted

200,000 visits many from outside of China. Over time

serious threads contained debates between Han Chinese

and both Westerners and Tibetan and Uyghur Chinese

trying to show each other who they were and where

they differ or where they agree.

On Anti-cnn in answer to the exposure of the

Western media practice, many visitors from outside

China posted their criticism of Chinese government

media censorship. In their responses to such criticism,

some Chinese acknowledged such censorship but

argued it was easy to circumnavigate, that all societies

have their systems of bias or censorship and that

netizens everywhere must dare to think for themselves

and get information from many sources. One netizen

with the alias kylin wrote, “I can say free media works

the same way as less-free media. So what’s most

important? The people I’d say – …. If people dare to

doubt, dare to think own (sic) their own, do not take

whatever comes to them, then we’ll have a clear mind,

not easily be fooled. I can say, if such people exist, then

should be Chinese…the least likely to be brainwashed,

when have suffered from all those incidents, cultural

revolution, plus a whole long history with all kinds of

tricks.”

Some analysis of Anti-cnn in the Western media

criticized it as a form of nationalism

or of being

somehow connected with the Chinese government. The

Chinese government and Anti-cnn organizers deny any

connection with each other and no verifiable evidence

of such a connection has been produced. There are

often expressions of nationalist emotions in Chinese

cyberspace, for example calls for boycotting Japanese

and French products. After the riot in Lhasa, the

Chinese government and media blamed the Dalai Lama

and “splitists.” There was an upsurge of nationalist

defense of China including on Anti-cnn. The modera-

tors on Anti-cnn and netizens in general however are

opponents of nationalism arguing that it is a form of

emotionalism and needs to be countered by rational

discourse and the presentation of facts and an airing of

all opinions. The moderators often answered Chinese

nationalists with admonitions to “calm down and

present facts.” While nationalist sentiment and love of

country and anger appeared often on the Anti-cnn

forums, the opportunity for a dialogue across national

and ethnic barriers is an expression of the international-

ism characteristic of netizens.

Chinese citizens in general know that the

mainstream Chinese media have a long history as a

controlled and propaganda press. Since the 1990s, there

has been a commercialization of that media and more

openness but still much of the national media has

strong remnants from its past. On the other hand the

mainstream international media had been widely

assumed in China as a more reliable source of informa-

tion about some events such as SARS and for alterna-

Page 22

tive viewpoints. The widespread distribution by

netizens like Rau Jin of exposure of distortions and bias

in major examples of the international mainstream

media called into question for many Chinese people

their positive expectation about that media. It also

attracted the attention of others who questioned

whether the so called Western mainstream media is any

less a propaganda or political media than the Chinese

mainstream media. After western media framing of the

war in the country of Georgia in August 2008 as the

fault of Russia, a Russian netizen started a thread on

Anti-cnn suggesting a Russian-Chinese alliance. He

wrote, “Russian problems with the Western media are

identical to Chinese problems…. What we need to do

so that their publications about countries like China and

Russia will be written in a fair tone rather than being

politically motivated? I would be most happy to hear

your opinion on these matters.”

Over its first year, the Anti-cnn website had

become a significant news portal. After a year, there

was a debate to determine its future. Some of the

founders left. The site continued with separate forum

sections in Chinese and English but became less

focused than it was before on exposing media bias. As

a continuation of Anti-cnn, the April Media Group was

founded by Rau Jin. April Media sponsors Chinese and

English language websites both known as M4

(http://www.m4.cn/; http://www.4thmedia.org/). The

two sites carry news reports and comments not usually

found elsewhere in Chinese media and they still carry

exposures of the ongoing media fabrications for

example about alleged crimes of the government of

Syria.

The special significance of Anti-cnn was that

netizens took up the important task of media watchdog,

but especially a watchdog over the most powerful

media like CNN and BBC. Some scholars are calling

such media practice the “Fifth Estate” because the

watch dog is over the media itself. In an article, “The

Computer as a Democratizer,” Michael Hauben argued

for the crucial role in a society of a watchdog press.

every society, major sectors of the media echo and

support the current holders of power either internally

or in the world. Now, with the netizens, there is an

emerging media and journalism which tries to serve

society by watching and criticizing the abuses of those

with power and the media which serves them. Anti-cnn

provided for the whole world an alternative to the

media which was distorting the truth about the Lhasa

riot. The net users who launched Anti-cnn took for

themselves a public and international mission, using the

net to watch critically the main international media.

They took up to address journalism via exposures and

discussion and debate. In the process they expanded the

practice of journalism.

Notes

1. “Riot in Tibet: True face of western media” posted by

dionysos615 on YouTube on March 19, 2008

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSQnK5FcKas&feature=re

lated

2. Quoted in China Daily, April 2, 2008.

3. Interview with Anti-cnn webmaster Qi Hanting, April 19, 2008,

translated from Chinese. See Ronda Hauben “Netizens Defy

Western Media Fictions of China.” OhmyNews International, May

9, 2008.

http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?no=

382523&rel_no=1

4. See e.g., “Web Site Rips West’s Reports on China-Tibet

Conflict,” by Anthony Kuhn at,

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89831099

5. http://thelinetwo.blog127.fc2blog.us/blog-entry-1.html

6.Michael Hauben and Ronda Hauben, Netizens: On the History

and Impact of Usenet and the Internet, Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE

Computer Society Press1997, pp. 315-320.

* Taken from “Netizen Reporting and Media Criticism Pressure

for a New Journalism: The South China Tiger, Anti-CNN and the

Wenchuan Earthquake” by Jay Hauben. Available at:

http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/2014/j-paper-May-2014.doc

The Power of Chinese

Netizens After the Earthquake

Using the Internet: Informa-

tion and Help Flowed Freely*

by Xu Liang

[Editor’s Note: The following report was written in

June 2008.]

May 12, 2008, was a sad day for Chinese

people. The 8.0-magnitude earthquake in Wenchuan

County of Sichuan Province led to the deaths of at least

69,100 people. Additionally, 373,577 people were

counted as injured and 18,230 still listed as missing,

while 45.7 million people were affected by the disaster.

From that day on, more than 1.3 billion Chinese

people tightly solidified and everyone paid attention to

Page 23

one thing every day, the salvation [rescue and relief

efforts] after the earthquake. Chinese were conscious

that motherland was deeply in crisis and brethren were

deeply in trouble, so we should do some help. Internet

was the shortcut to participate in the salvation for many

Chinese people. It is estimated that there are about 225

million network users, the largest number in the world.

Internet is an open media and everyone can participate

in it. A great number of network users joined the

netizens caring for Wenchuan earthquake.

Using the Internet, netizens covered the

earthquake and the salvation, called on people to donate

money and materials, offered information and sugges-

tions for salvation, supervised the work of government,

and so on. This catastrophic disaster aroused the civil

conscience and responsibility of Chinese, and showed

the power of Chinese netizens.

Chinese netizens were the first reporting on the

Wenchuan earthquake.

This earthquake took place

suddenly and the earthquake zone is located in

mountains. Before some news agencies getting the

news, Chinese netizens feeling the quake in these areas

had transmitted the information. After the earthquake,

many netizens questioned and criticized the work of

official earthquake forecast agencies.

A netizen on tianya.com

left one remark,

“Before May 12

, some strange nature phenomena

predicting earthquakes appeared in earthquake zone

and some local persons worried about earthquake’s

coming, but local officials and forecast agencies

declared that the rumor of earthquake was baseless and

people need not worry.”

The netizen even intercepted the page from a

local government website as proof. Another netizen

pointed out that the website of the earthquake forecast

agency of the U.S. published the information of

Wenchuan earthquake 960 seconds earlier than the

counterpart of China. Then more netizens criticized the

official forecast breach of duty. Under pressure some

officials had to clarify some things and defend

themselves.

Chinese netizens offered a great amount of

useful information and advice for salvation. CCTV

reported one thing showing the role of netizens. After

the earthquake, Wenchuan County was isolated from

outside, and all roads to Wenchuan were blocked by

collapsed mountains. PLA sent several helicopters to

this area, but they did not find the right places to land

due to the poor weather and mountain areas. One

netizen from Wenchuan published information on the

Internet that she knew one place right for helicopters

to land. The information was transported [cross posted]

by more than 2000 netizens quickly. At last, the PLA

got the information and contacted the netizen and

helicopters successfully landed in Wenchuan with

salvation materials.

After the earthquake, all main websites set up

special editions immediately and netizens left remarks

encouraging and supporting people in disaster areas,

calling on people to donate money and materials to

victims. What is more important, netizens tightly

supervised the salvation work of the government.

One piece of information published by netizens

attracted attention of all people on May 21. One

salvation tent for victims appeared in a neighborhood

of Chengdu which did not belong to the earthquake

zone. More and more netizens suspected that some

officials embezzled the salvation materials. The anger

of people ascended immediately. In a press conference

on May 23, the governor of Sechuan province, under

huge pressure, said that the provincial government

would look into the issue and severely punish the

embezzlers. Then the Central government and Premier

Wen Jiabao demanded governments forbid embezzle-

ment of salvation materials and keep the distribution of

salvation materials open and transparent. Several

officials breaching their duty were dismissed.

Netizens created an overwhelming condition of

public voices, which highly praised celebrities and

companies giving large donations and condemned those

with giving small donations or speaking improper

words. Some netizens made donator lists of rich

persons and companies. Movie star Jackie Chan

donated 10 million RMB [1.6 million U.S.$] soon after

the earthquake, so he was presented as a model by

netizens. One Taiwan corporation, donating 100

million RMB, was highly praised by netizens.

Some netizens reported that the Japanese public

showed great sympathy to China’s earthquake and even

one member of the Japanese salvation team working in

the earthquake area quit due to self-accusation that he

did not save one life. The coverage improved Japan’s

image in Chinese eyes, while most Chinese people

before 2007 hated Japan because of Yasukuni Shrine.

On the contrary, one rich boss became the object

criticized by netizens because of his parsimony and

disputing words, and some netizens even called for

boycotting his company. Later on, the boss had to add

more donations and make an apology. Recently movie

star Sharon Stone quickly became the object of Chinese

Page 24

netizens condemnation because she said Wenchuan

earthquake was due to China’s bad “karma.”

After the Wenchuan earthquake, the power of

Chinese netizens is rising. The power will promote the

formation of civil community and democratization in

China. However, the power is not bound to bring

positive results. Some Chinese netizens are not mature

and rational enough now. First, a few netizens spread

rumors and some unconfirmed information, which can

scare or vilify others.

Second, many Chinese netizens are emotional

youth, called “Feng Qing” in Chinese, and they tend to

lose rationality and say some extreme words. These

words may instigate furies, violate personal rights, and

promote nationalism. For an example, some netizens

accused McDonald’s of too little a donation, compared

with its huge profit from China, and called for boycott-

ing McDonald’s. In fact McDonald’s Company donated

more than 10 million RMB and the accusation was

unfair. Therefore, Chinese netizens need more

objectivity and rationality, and less prejudice and

emotion.

Notes

1. On May 12, 2008 at 14:28 in the afternoon a massive earthquake

struck in south-central China. The epicenter of the earthquake was

in rural Wenchuan County, Sichuan Province and measured 8.0 on

the Richter Scale. The world outside of the quake zone began to

learn of the earthquake one minute later, at 14:29, when a post on

the “Tianya Mixed Talk” forum read, “Very Urgent!!!! Where has

a massive earthquake occurred???” By 14:30 a video was posted

on YouKu and by 14:35 a headline on the Baidu bulletin board

reported, “Earthquake happens in Sichuan region.” From then on

posts escalated. Tianya was then the most popular forum website

and had at any moment on average over 200,000 simultaneous

visitors. Likewise YouKu the most popular video website at the

time and Baidu the most popular search engine had tens of

thousands of users when the Wenchuan disaster first hit.

Professional news reports began to appear at 14:46 with a dispatch

by the official online site Xinhuanet.

2. Tianya is one of the most popular forum websites in China. See

note 1.

* This article was published online by OhmyNews International

on June 7, 2008. Xu Liang was at that time a PhD candidate

majoring in international politics at Fudan University in Shanghai.

Netizens Create Anti-cnn

Forum to Challenge

Media Distortions of China*

by Ronda Hauben

[email protected]

[Editor’s Note: The following article was written after

the author visited China and South Korea in Spring

2008.]

Who will win the contest to be the new global

media, CNN or netizen media like the anti-CNN online

forum and web site? This is a question that students in

the global media literacy seminar at Tsinghua Univer-

sity in Beijing were given to grapple with as their final

project.

The creation of the anti-cnn online forum and

web site by netizens in China has been a significant

development. The global media literacy seminar at

Tsinghua University is taught by Professor Li Xiguang.

Professor Li’s background is as a journalist, covering

science and technology, and as a journalism professor

who is the author of significant papers about the role of

the Internet in the development of the changing media

environment in China. Professor Li had invited me to

speak to his students in the global media literacy

seminar about the spread of netizens and the impact of

the Internet on society for his April 16

class.

Shortly before my 2008 trip to China was to

begin, however, something quite unexpected occurred.

When the western mainstream media, like CNN and

BBC, pictured the events that occurred in Lhasa, Tibet,

as a peaceful demonstration, Chinese netizens immedi-

ately documented that their coverage was often

inaccurate or misleading. Within a few days of the

inaccurate reports, an online forum appeared on the

Internet called anti-cnn. It was online at the time at

http://www.anti-cnn.com. The forum included articles

and videos documenting some of the many distortions

in the coverage of the Tibet events. The forum also had

areas in English and in Chinese for discussion and

debate.

I had discovered the online forum while still in

New York and was intrigued by the fact that it not only

provided an important source of clarification about the

misrepresentations in the media, but also it made

available a space for discussion in both English and

Chinese about the importance of identifying and

Page 25

countering the false narrative that the mainstream

western media had been creating of the events in Tibet.

While the online forum was named anti-cnn it was not

limited to countering errors in reporting in CNN.

Rather the founder had chosen anti-cnn for the name as

CNN has a global spread and the purpose of the anti-

cnn forum was to counter the misrepresentations of

China and events in China in the global media.

I was particularly excited to be going to China

at a time when a netizen media forum had been created

to critique the narratives being circulated by main-

stream western media organizations.

We arrived in Beijing early in the morning on

April 16, the day I was to give my talk to Professor Li’s

seminar. We had arrangements to see Professor Li’s

assistant in order to get ready to go to the class for my

talk. It was 3 p.m., a little while before I was to get

ready to go to the class, when Professor Li’s assistant

called up to our room and asked if she could come up.

It was good to see her. I was in the process of putting

some finishing touches on my slides for my talk. She

came into our room out of breath, explaining that she

had tried to send an e-mail, which I hadn’t seen. She

said that several journalists had come to debate with

Tsinghua University students about the frustrations

netizens in China had with the reporting by several of

the western media organizations. She urged us to come

immediately with her to hear the debate.

I saved the version I had of my slides and we

left to follow her across the Tsinghua University cam-

pus to the meeting between the students and the

journalists. The meeting was in a large room in the

journalism building. Four journalists from the Interna-

tional Federation of Journalists (IFJ) were seated at a

large table, along with Professor Li and a number of

students. Other students filled the rest of the room. The

conversation was being held in English and Chinese

with Professor Li doing translation from one language

to the other depending on the speaker. There were

perhaps as many as 80 people filling the room.

I later learned that the journalists were probably

part of a nine person delegation from the IFJ who had

come to speak with the Chinese government about

working conditions for the 30,000 journalists who were

expected to come to Beijing to cover the Olympics.

While the purpose of the IFJ delegation appeared to be

as advocates for the journalists who were to be

covering the Olympics, the situation in the debate they

were having with Tsinghua students was quite differ-

ent.

At this meeting the students were presenting

their frustrations and complaints about the kind of

erroneous reporting that had been documented on the

anti-cnn forum and asking for an explanation of how

such misrepresentations could have happened. One of

the students asked why the Western media did not

report about the victims who had died in the fires set by

those who took part in the riots. Another student asked

why the western media reported that religious effigies

had been burned but didn’t report about the people who

had died as a result of the fires and other violence in the

riot. The student wondered why journalists would give

more weight to the destruction of property rather than

of human life.

Still another student asked how journalists

could cover the story of Tibet if they didn’t first take

the time to learn the history of what had happened in

Tibet in the past. “Does a free press mean the freedom

of the journalist to present his or her own personal

views or does it mean the freedom for the public to

know the information,” asked one of the students.

Many students had hands up when there was the call

for questions. The head of the delegation, Aidan Patrick

White, who is the General Secretary of the IFJ,

headquartered in Brussels, gave most of the responses,

though others in the delegation also answered some of

the questions raised by the students. White explained

that when he went into journalism he thought it would

be something connected with public service. He had

since learned that there is political pressure on

journalists no matter what country they are from.

The manager of the anti-cnn web site, Qi

Hanting, is a Tsinghua University student. He was at

the meeting and his presentation to the journalists was

eagerly greeted by the students. He explained why the

students were upset with the distorted coverage they

had documented as prevalent in the reports of western

media organizations. Qi explained that there was a

difference between a mistake in a story and a distortion.

He offered as an analogy the core of an atom and the

electrons surrounding it. The electrons can appear any

place around the atom, but if an electron goes too far

away it can break away. Though reporters might write

about different aspects of a story, he explained, their

stories still can be accurate. But if the report is too far

from the reality, it could be explosive. The journalists

from the IFJ responded that they weren’t trying to

justify bad reporting. There wasn’t a conspiracy in the

western media against China. Qi proposed that there

was a need to have reporters who emphasize different

Page 26

aspects of a story in order to help there to be the proper

understanding of a story, but that was different from

presenting a distorted or inaccurate presentation of the

story as had happened with a number of the reports of

the Tibet riot in the western media.

With less than 100 days remaining until the

opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, the issues

and questions presented by Qi and the other Tsinghua

University students to the IFJ journalists take on a

broader significance. How will the 30,000 journalists

who are expected to come to China to report on the

Olympics, portray the story of China?

China has recently gone through a significant

transformation. One indication of the changes is the

many new buildings, the huge majestic structures that

fill the Beijing skyline. These new structures, along

with the people who live and work in them, are a sign

that Beijing is a world class city. Can the journalists

who will come to Beijing in August recognize that

there is an important story about what is developing in

China? Can they become a force to investigate this

story and present it, so that that there is an accurate

portrayal in the media for people around the world?

This question is being considered by netizens

in China and abroad.

Formerly, it may have seemed to netizens in

China that the western media could be a reliable source

of information about events and viewpoints that were

not available in the Chinese media. Now the view that

the western media could be relied on to present

accurate news has been transformed in just a few short

weeks in March and April 2008.

Instead netizens working together online are

telling the story, not only of what they see is happening

in Tibet, but even more importantly, they are doc-

umenting the failure of the western media to be a

reliable source of information about China.

In place of the western media has sprung up a

netizen media, contributed to by some of the 210

million Internet users in China, and some of the many

overseas netizens. There are many online sites where

discussion among Chinese netizens takes place.

The story of these netizens in China and abroad

is an important story as they have demonstrated a

resolve not to surrender the framing of the story of the

Beijing Olympics to the distortions of a powerful

Western media. Through their own active participation

and collaboration, they are working to provide an

alternative narrative.

Qi explained that the anti-cnn forum and web

site has a staff of over 40 volunteers. These netizens do

the technical work, and the fact checking of the posts

and the responses to the posts. If a submission to the

web site is emotional, he explained, it will appear, but

the moderators will not allow any responses to it in

order to prevent the discussion from becoming too

heated.

A post in the anti-cnn forum raised the question

of whether it would be possible to create an East-West

cultural exchange platform to facilitate communication

across the cultural differences between the Chinese

people and those from other cultures who will come to

China for the Olympics.

Even if people can’t agree, they can communi-

cate, he proposed. He was hopeful that discussion

would go in more communicative directions rather than

netizens in China just feeling that they wanted an

apology from western journalists who distort the news

about China. His hope was that the anti-cnn forum on

the Internet would make it possible to have comments

on issues from a wide range of differing perspectives,

rather than such differences leading to polarization and

hostility.

His long term goal was that the forum become

a site to support many different points of view but also

where deviations from the truth would be critiqued.

Talking with Qi I found it important that he was seek-

ing to open lines of communication with western

journalists despite the fact it seemed so difficult to do

so. He was actually proposing a conceptual framework

to make such a communication process possible.

Listening to his views made me remember a

struggle netizens had with the U.S. media in the early

1990s. There was a plan for the privatization of the

U.S. section of the Internet which had been built with

public funds. The U.S. press was misrepresenting the

struggle of netizens who were challenging the illegiti-

mate privatization process and who were upset with the

spate of commercial ads that had begun to flood the

Internet.

One reporter for the Wall Street Journal had

written an article that misunderstood what the struggle

was about. Netizens contacted him and asked if he

would be willing to learn some of the history and

background of the struggle. He welcomed the input.

The next article he wrote was very different from the

previous one. It talked about how netizens were strug-

gling over the “soul of the Internet.” This was indeed

a helpful description of the struggle and it was good to

see that this reporter had changed in his perspective.

Page 27

It is not to dismiss the possibility of journalists who are

part of the western media who are interested in learning

about what is happening in China and in providing an

accurate portrayal. It is a worthy effort to seek out a

means to make such communication possible.

The goal of the netizens who are contributing

to the anti-cnn forum and web site is a goal that is an

important one for China and for the many people

around the world who want the 2008 Beijing Olympics

to contribute to friendship and further understanding

among the people of the world. This is also a worthy

goal for those of the western media and for other

netizens around the world who want to be part of the

creation of a 21

century media that spreads under-

standing rather than the political propaganda of one’s

own government. The Internet and netizens have begun

to create such a truly global media.

Note:

1. Steve Stecklow, “Cyberspace Clash: Computer Users Battle

High-Tech Marketers Over Soul of Internet,” Wall Street Journal,

September 16, 1993, p. 1.

*An earlier version of this article appears in OhmyNews

International “Netizens Defy Western Media Fictions of China”

http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?men

u=c10400&no=382523&rel_no=1

First Netizen Celebration Day

Held in Beijing, China

Honoring the Netizen

by Ronda Hauben

[email protected]

[Editor’s Note: The following talk was presented in

Beijing on September 14, 2009 as part of the first

national Netizens Celebration Day sponsored by the

Internet Society of China.*]

I would like to thank the Internet Society of

China for inviting me to offer brief remarks today. I

want also to congratulate the honored guests for their

role in helping to make possible the development of the

Internet and the emergence of the Netizens.

It is wonderful that China is holding this netizen

day, the first ever to be held anywhere in the world.

Often there have been events celebrating the origin and

development of the Internet but only rarely has there

been recognition offered for the netizen, for those

online users who have taken on to contribute to the

development and spread of the Net and to making

possible the better world that more communication

among people will make possible.

The concept of netizen comes from the research

and writing of Michael Hauben while he was a college

student in the early 1990s. Michael was interested not

only in how the Internet would develop and spread, but

also in the impact it would have on society.

In 1992 he sent out a set of questions across the

computer networks asking users about their experiences

online. He was surprised to find that not only were

many of those who responded to his questions inter-

ested in what the Net made possible for them, but also

they were interested in spreading the Net and in

exploring how it would make a better world possible.

Network users with this social perspective, or this

public interest focus Michael called Netizens. Thus the

Netizen was not all users, but users with a public

purpose.

Another aspect is that the Net is international,

so that netizenship isn’t a geographically limited con-

cept. To be a netizen is to be not only a citizen of one

country but also a citizen of the Net. These users are

citizens who were empowered by the Net, or netizens.

Based on his research, Michael wrote the article “The

Net and Netizens: The Impact the Net has on People’s

Lives.” The article and the concept of the Netizen

spread around the world via the Internet.

Michael and I included his influential article as

part of a book titled Netizens which we put online on

January 12, 1994. Today’s celebration of Netizen Day

in China is for me also a fitting celebration of the 15

anniversary of putting the first edition of the book

“Netizens” online.

Though today is the first national netizen day,

I have recently seen on the Internet a call for a World

Netizen Day. So the importance of establishing a

netizen day begun by the Internet Society of China is

a proud beginning of what I hope will become a new

tradition, recognizing the importance of the contribu-

tions made by Netizens to the continuing spread and

development of the Internet.

Congratulations not only to those who have

been honored here today, but to all netizens in China

and to netizens around the world. May the tradition of

the netizen, along with the development of the Internet,

Page 28

grow and flourish.

* For a Youku video of part of the talk with the translation into

Chinese see

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTE5MTY3OTUy.html

There were a number of online accounts in Chinese of the

September 14 event. Here is one url:

http://tech.qq.com/zt/2009/wangminjie09/#top/

China in the Era of the

Netizen*

by Ronda Hauben

[email protected]

[Editor’s Note: This article was written in February

2010.]

I recently returned home from a trip to China.

Back in New York City, I was left with the feeling that

there is something significant happening in China.

Some have referred to Beijing as the equivalent in the

century of the interesting environment that Prague

symbolized for the 1990s. In the air in Beijing one

senses that something new is emerging, something that

must build on the old but will emerge with its new

characteristics.

In Beijing, I had many interesting conversations

trying to understand the significance of what is

happening there. One was with a friend who is from

China but who has lived outside of China for over 20

years. She was back visiting China for a special event

and also planned to visit her parents who live in China,

as she does every year.

Comparing current day Beijing with the Beijing

she knew as a university student, she observed that

Beijing has grown and developed in the Era of the

Internet. Her observation helped me to realize that not

only was Beijing being developed with the benefit of

the Internet’s contribution, but also that Beijing is a

world class city developing in the Era of the Netizen.

Some notes I wrote as I left Beijing observed,

“The insight of the trip was that Beijing is a city being

developed in the Netizen Era. It is perhaps one of the

first world class cities substantially developed in the

Netizen Era. So perhaps a special characteristic of

Beijing has to do with the emergence of the Netizen.”

It was not clear to me what the significance was of this

observation at the time.

When I returned home from my trip, I came

across a publication about the importance of the

Netizens in China. The publication was the July 5, 2009

edition of the magazine NewsChina. This is the English

language version published each month of the Chinese

weekly magazine China Newsweek. The subject of this

particular issue was “The Netizens’ Republic of

China.”

The magazine contains several articles and an

editorial about the impact of netizens on the political

sphere in China.

The editorial was titled “The Netizens

Public Square.” One of the articles, “Netizens, the New

Watchdogs,” had an equally alluring subtitle which

asked the question, “Has the era of ‘Internet supervi-

sion’ pitted Chinese netizens against the government

in the promotion of democracy and political reform?”

The particular form of ‘Internet supervision’ the

article was discussing was whether netizens empow-

ered by the Internet could effectively monitor the

actions of their government officials. Can the “era of

‘Internet supervision,’” be “one in which netizens can

compel visible transformation in the behavior of

government bureaucrats,” the article asks.

The question of whether or not netizens can

affect the actions of their government officials is a

question raised by netizens around the world from the

early days of Internet development. How this question

is being explored by netizens in China is an important

development. Yet few around the world, especially

those who do not read Mandarin, are aware that this

question is being actively explored by netizens in

China.

The issue of NewsChina devoted to netizens

presents several examples of netizens speaking out

online in Chinese discussion groups and forums. Their

actions are having an impact on government decision-

making processes and on uncovering fraud or corrup-

tion. The particular case described in the magazine was

the case of Deng Yujiao, a 21-year old waitress who

was sexually assaulted by a government official. She

tried to defend herself using a knife and in self defense

killed her assailant. The magazine describes how her

plight became a cause célèbre among netizens in China,

who helped her to get a lawyer and to have the charge

against her reduced so she did not have to serve any

time in jail.

The magazine gives several other examples of

cases of injustice that Chinese netizens championed so

as to have justice prevail. Among these is the case of

Page 29

a young college graduate who moved to a different city

to take a job, but who did not have the appropriate

temporary residence permit. Picked up for his permit

violation, he was placed in a detention center. He

became a victim of foul play by residents of the center

and security guards and was murdered, but the story

was covered up by the police. Netizens began to

discuss what had happened to him and the real story of

his death began to be unraveled. His assailants were

arrested and tried. Eventually the measures the young

college graduate was detained under were abolished by

the State Council.

Similarly, Chinese netizens have challenged

some of the many inaccurate reports about China in the

mainstream western media. In 2008 some netizens

started a web site that they called www.anti-cnn.com.

On the web site they documented many distortions or

misrepresentations that appear in the western media.

These are just a few of the many examples of

netizen action online that have had an important impact

on what the government does. Discussing such netizen

actions, Zhan Jiang, a Professor at the China Youth

College for Political Science, maintains that “the public

supervision (of government-ed) via the Internet serves

to promote public participation in political life.”

My visit to Beijing in September 2009 was my

third trip to China. The first had been in November

2005 when I was participating in a panel at an interna-

tional history of science conference held in Beijing.

The title of my talk for the conference was, “The

International and Scientific Origins of the Internet and

the Emergence of the Netizens.” The second trip was

in April 2008 when I gave a talk at the Internet Society

of China raising the question whether this is a new Age,

the Age of the Netizen? One of the reasons for my trip

one year latter in September 2009 was to participate in

a ‘Netizens Day’ the first such day anywhere in the

world, which was to be observed on September 14,

2009. The importance of this date is that it marks the

date listed on the first e-mail message (Sept. 14, 1987)

that was to be sent from China onto the international e-

mail network known as CSNET. The e-mail message

and link were the result of collaborative research be-

tween German and Chinese computer science re-

searchers.

The netizens celebration on September 14, 2009

was held at the CCTV Tower in Beijing. There was a

stage set up in front of the tower for the ceremony. I

was invited to give one of the presentations for the

program.

My talk, which was presented in English and

then translated into Chinese, I explained the origin of

the concept of the netizen through the research in 1992-

3 of Michael Hauben who was a university student

doing pioneering online studies about the social impact

of the development of the Internet.

I described how in the early 1990s, Hauben sent

out a set of questions across the networks asking users

about their experiences online. He was surprised to find

that not only were many of those who responded to his

questions interested in what the Net made possible for

them, but also they were interested in spreading the Net

and in exploring how it could make a better world

possible. Based on his research Hauben wrote his

article “The Net and the Netizens.”

The netizen, Hauben recognized, was the emer-

gence of a new form of citizen, who was using the

power made possible by the Net for a public purpose,

and who was not limited by geographical boundaries.

The Net for Hauben was a new social institution and

the discovery of the emergence of the netizen was the

special contribution that he made to the field of

network study.

The celebration on September 14, 2009 in

Beijing thus was an event not only to celebrate the

research and technological advance making possible

the connection of China to the international network

CSNET. But it was similarly, and perhaps even more

significantly, an event recognizing the emergence of

the netizens in China and hence, of a new social iden-

tity.

The September 14 event was covered in the

online media and other media.

Being the first such

Netizens Day, knowledge of the day was not yet wide-

spread. Some net users commented that they weren’t

aware that there had been a Netizen Day. For me,

however, the event on September 14, 2009 in Beijing

was remarkable. In 1994, 15 years earlier, the first

edition of the Netizens netbook with Hauben’s article

about netizens had been put online.

At the time there

was much less access to the Internet and many fewer

Netizens. Nevertheless, the phenomenon first identified

more than 15 years ago has continued to develop and

spread around the world. And in Beijing, in a city

where much is new, and grand, and hopeful toward the

future, there was a ceremony out in front of the tallest

of structures in Beijing, the CCTV tower, recognizing

the importance of the Internet and of the Netizen.

This event in Beijing was the first Netizen Day,

the first official recognition of the netizen anywhere in

the world. It was a celebration to honor the fact that the

Page 30

phenomenon of the netizen continues to develop and

spread and to be recognized as a new and important

achievement of our times.

Notes

1. Yu Xiaodong, “Netizens, the New Watchdogs,” in NewsChina,

Vol 12, July 5, 2009. p. 17. The magazine website is:

http://www.newschinamag.com/ See also,

https://www.facebook.com/NewsChinaMag/ (requires Facebook

log on)

2. Ibid.

3. This is the case of Sun Zhigang. See “Selected Cases Exposed

on the Internet,” NewsChina, p. 20. This and other examples are

described in a paper by Jay Hauben, “China: Netizen Impact on

Government Policy and Media Practice.”

http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/j-paper.doc

4. Ronda Hauben, “Netizens Defy Western Media Fictions of

China: Ronda Hauben on the ‘anti-CNN’ forum and Web site,”

OhmyNews International, May 8, 2008.

http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?no=

382523&rel_no=1, also this issue page 21.

5. Quoted in Yu Xiaodong, “Netizens, the New Watchdogs,”

NewsChina, July 5, 2009, p. 17.

6. Jay Hauben, “The Story of China’s First Email Link and How

It Got Corrected.”

https://www.informatik.kit.edu/downloads/HaubenJay-

ChongqingSpeech-12Jan2010.pdf, also in this issue page 9.

7. See “Honoring the Netizen,” talk presented on September 14,

2009. The url is:

http://blogs.taz.de/netizenblog/2009/10/02/first_netizen_celebra

tion_day_held_in_beijing_china_/, also in this issue page 28.

8. See for example: Michael Hauben, “Preface: What is a Netizen”

in Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet,

online version

http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/ch106.xpr

9. Michael Hauben, “The Net and the Netizens” in Netizens: On

the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet, online version

http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/ch106.x01

10. On September 15, 2009 there was a program on the China

Radio International (CRI) English language show “Beijing and

Beyond” discussing the development of the Netizen in China. In

the audio at

http://english.cri.cn/7146/2009/09/15/481s515765.htm

the program about netizens is hour one.

11. The book put online in 1994 is also now published in a print

edition titled Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and

the Internet. The co-authors are Michael Hauben and Ronda

Hauben. Originally published by the IEEE Computer Society, the

book is now distributed by John Wiley. The print edition was

published in 1997. The url for the online edition is

http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120

*This article appeared on the netizenblog on Feb 14, 2010 at:

http://blogs.taz.de/netizenblog/2010/02/14/china_in_the_era_of

_the_netizen/

[Editor’s Note: The following is a speech given in NYC

on May 1, 2012 at a meeting celebrating the 15

Anniversary of the publication of Netizens: On the

History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet.]

My Thinking on Netizens

by Xu Liang*

In 1999, when I went to college, it was the first

time for me to touch the Internet. I still remember

clearly the experience that day. I carefully got access

into a website and browsed some news. Later I

registered an email address and sent my first email.

Afterwards I learned to chat online. The first time is

always very fresh and exciting. But after the excitement

diminished, I thought that the Internet did not change

our lives as much as what was described by others. I

still remember I told my roommate of my disappoint-

ment. He was an amateur with the computer thinking

that the Internet could not do any more than email and

browsing news. I admitted that the Internet did make

our lives much more convenient and more fast than

before, but it was just a substitute for the role of

newspapers, radios, and televisions. These inventions

did not change the historical trail, neither did the

Internet. This was my opinion at that time.

In recent years, with the popularization of the

Internet, the Internet was more and more necessary in

our lives. I roughly spend a quarter of a day on the

Internet. What is more important, we witness the power

of the Internet and social media in some big things, like

the 2011 high-speed train crash in China, the Arab

Spring, the Occupy Wall Street movement and so on.

I gradually realize that I underestimated the impact of

the Internet before. I am not sure if the Internet will

change the trail of human history, but I am sure that the

Internet does change the structure and management of

human society. Why? First, the Internet gives us

another spacious space. In the cyber space, the

demarcation of nations, classes, parties, groups and

professions becomes vague. Identities and status of

people are not set by the society. Second, the Internet

gives us another source of power. This power is not less

than the invention of the atomic bomb. But the Internet

is different from the atomic bomb. The latter can be

monopolized by a few people. The former should be

shared by everyone. Actually, the bigger the power is,

the fewer people have atomic weapons, while the

bigger the power is, the more people share the Internet.

Page 31

Each Internet user is both a source and a holder of the

power. With great power comes great responsibility.

Traditionally a few elites manage society and make

decisions. Now everyone can participate in the

management and influence the decision-making

process.

Let me go back to Michael and Ronda Hauben’s

book, Netizens. I have to admit the book is very

visionary. It was not just because it foresaw the drastic

social changes brought by the Internet in early 1990s

before I touched the Internet, but what is more

important is that the book offers us a blueprint or a way

forward for our future society based on the Internet,

that is the netizen.

What is the netizen? According to the Hauben’s

introduction, to me the netizen does not equate to the

Internet user. Only those Internet users who abide by

a set of moral norms and do good things are netizens.

They imagine that the netizens would be the main-

stream in cyber society and it would give birth to a

good and equal society in reality which would break

away from the traditional minority-ruling-majority

model. Marx and many Communists once tried to

construct such a perfect society. They failed in practice.

The Internet and netizen probably provide a technologi-

cal tool and a different way to realize the dream. This

is our best wish.

However, we also should know it is a long way

for the theory to be applied in practice. The formation

of civil society in the real world tells us we can not

expect a netizen society would form very soon. As civil

society is based on the rule of law, the netizen society

also should be based on a set of norms. But the

formation of norms must be a free, open and voluntary

process. Any government and organization should not

make out such norms in the name of netizens, or the

netizen society would repeat the tradition model.

* In 2011-2012 the author was a research follow at Columbia

University in NYC.

Proposal for the World

Internet Conference

by Ronda Hauben

[email protected]

In 2015, I was invited to attend the Second

World Internet Conference (WIC) sponsored by the

Chinese government and held in Wuzhen in Southeast

China on December 16-18, 2015. This conference may

in the long run represent an important contribution to

the global efforts to encourage international coopera-

tion among nations to determine the infrastructure and

regulations needed to encourage the growth and spread

of the Internet.

Putting the World Internet Conference in a

broader context, ten years earlier I attended the United

Nations sponsored 2005 World Summit for the

Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis. That Summit

was a significant event. Participants there from around

the world wanted to be part of and contribute to the

development of the Internet and its future well being.

The participants represented the desire of people

everywhere to be on the Internet. Also I chaired and

was a presenter on a panel that was part of an academic

side conference held two days before the beginning of

WSIS. Being at the side conference and at the Summit

led me to contacts related to China and South Korea

which I continued in the years following the WSIS

Summit meeting.*

That academic side conference connected to the

Tunis Summit was titled the Past, Present, and Future

of Research in the Information Society (PPF). This

academic conference made possible a focus on a more

general perspective about the Internet and its develop-

ment than did other events at the Tunis Summit itself.

After the Tunis Summit, I became accredited as

a journalist at the UN Headquarters in NYC, first for

a South Korean publication and later for a German and

then also a Chinese publication. Each year at the UN

I saw that the issue of Internet development would be

brought up in the Second Committee of the General

Assembly. And each year it was transferred to Geneva

for discussion. The Tunis WSIS mandated the UN

General Assembly to do a Ten Year Review in 2015 of

what had happened in the 10 years that followed the

2005 Summit. Several times this obligation was raised

at meetings of the Second Committee. The G77 +

China called for a summit to be held at the highest

levels possible of governments represented at the UN

in September 2015 along with the Sustainable Develop-

ment Goal summit.

This proposal for another summit-level event,

however was blocked and transferred to Geneva, where

it was also blocked. There was significant criticism

Page 32

about how it was never adequately carried out. The

G77 + China statement to the WSIS Review meeting

on July 1, 2015 outlines this problem. The statement

explains, “It is unfortunate that the mandate of the

Tunis Agenda has been implemented selectively to suit

the narrow interests of a few influential players in the

multi stakeholder community…. The Tunis Agenda

called for Governments to, on an equal footing with

each other, carry out their roles and responsibilities on

international public policy issues pertaining to the

Internet. However, ten years later, tangible progress on

this specific mandate … has been blocked. It is

imperative that this important issue be resolved, so that

all nations have an equal say in the public policy

affecting the Internet.”

Since the 2005 Tunis Summit, not only at the

UN Headquarters in NYC, but also at other venues, a

number of obstacles have been placed in the path of

those making an effort to fulfill the inclusive vision

expressed in Tunis.

In this context China’s plan to hold a yearly

meeting could be a welcome development. But a

question is raised about the World Internet Conference

held in Wuzhen. What is its purpose? Does it represent

a continuation of efforts to help spread Internet access

and cooperative discussion and participation? Is it

toward setting a global policy that will take up to

support the continuing spread and development of the

Internet? This is not a commercial question. It is a

public policy question.

Perhaps some observations about the 2015

World Internet Conference will help suggest answers

to this question.

Some Observations about the Second

World Internet Conference

For the past two years, 2014 and 2015, China

has sponsored and organized a high level meeting about

Internet development and policy that is to be held on a

yearly basis.

I want to share some observations about the

experience I had at the Second Wuzhen World Internet

Conference.

1) A substantial number of people involved with

Internet development from around the world attended.

I met and spent some time with people I had met

previously at different occasions over the past 28 years

that I have been part of the Internet community.

2) The opening session of the conference with speeches

by Xi Jinping and other high officials of the member

nations of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization

(SCO) raised important issues and demonstrated that

China and several other countries were treating the

World Internet Conference as an important meeting.

3) One very interesting session at the World Internet

Conference was the Cyberspace Administration of

China (CAC) Cybersecurity session held on December

17. This event was by invitation only and limited the

number of those who could attend. Also, it was off the

record. The form and process it provided however,

were greatly appreciated by those I heard from who

attended. The form of the session was that there were

no panelists. All who were part of the session could

raise their hands and get called on for a short response

to the questions raised by the moderator. This event

provided for a range of views and issues which

broadened the spectrum of the topic of the session. The

Cybersecurity session allowed a broad set of ideas to

be presented and a wide variety of voices to be heard.

Contributions were encouraged from all participants at

the session.

4) The student guides who were provided to help

participants at the Conference were capable, serious,

and took on to solve the problems experienced by those

attending. Bilingual student guides were available to

act as a needed interface at the hotels, the EXPO, and

the conference for English speaking participants and

those who spoke only Chinese.

5) The program of the World Internet Conference in

2015 was somewhat varied but there were sessions

which had too many presentations to allow time for

questions and comments from the audience. A greater

effort to welcome presentations or panels from a

broader spectrum of presenters with more panels, but

each panel with fewer presenters and allowing more

time for discussion, would be a better format.

6) There was discussion about ICANN, but the

discussion did not adequately represent those who have

a critique of ICANN’s contradictory nature.

7) One major criticism from my perspective is that the

focus seemed too geared toward corporate presenters.

Some aspects of the conference were more like a trade

show than a high level Internet conference that will

support and contribute to the still needed development

and spread of the Internet, especially to developing

countries. There are those in developing and developed

countries who need a significant role played by

government and by netizens to help spread the Net.

Experience throughout the development of the Internet

Page 33

has shown the corporate model for Internet develop-

ment is in general too narrow and focused on short term

profit. A recent example is the effort by Facebook to

determine what part of the Internet poor people should

have as opposed to the whole Internet. (See the critique

of this model as applied to India published in the U.K.

Guardian.

)

8) In the realm of security, there seemed more concern

at the World Internet Conference with security for

commerce and less focus on understanding what the

particular nature of security related to the Internet

would mean.

9) But given the significant endeavor that organizing

and planning an annual high level conference related

to the Internet and its development represents, the

Second World Internet Conference organized by China

accomplished something important.

In my experience at the Second World Internet

Conference I found that research I have done about the

more general nature of Internet development proved

helpful in my discussions with government officials,

academics, students and others with whom I spoke

during the World Internet Conference.

In line with my experience, in a speech

on May

30, 2016, Chinese President Xi Jinping reviewed the

historic importance of the technological revolution to

bring advances to human society. He pointed to science

as helping to uncover the laws of nature toward being

able to meet the challenges of economic development.

Along with recognizing the need to support basic

research, he pointed to the need to strengthen the

science and technology decision making advisory

system.

One of the ways I found that can make a

significant contribution to the objectives that President

Xi outlined, is to study and learn from the process by

which the Internet was created and from the govern-

ment support structures that helped or hindered the

Internet researchers’ work. Fortunately there is a rich

set of research materials toward such study. Some of

this study is documented in a draft manuscript I have

been working on titled “On the International Origins of

the Internet: A Conceptual History.” This manuscript

explores the work of computer scientists doing Internet

research and development. It also documents the

research support system that was created, known as the

Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). The

manuscript documents how ARPA functioned to

support Internet research. It also explores the problems

that were created when this research agency was

changed into a different agency which was not in a

position to provide the same needed support for the

independence of the Internet researchers.

Following I am offering a proposal for an

addition to the format of the World Internet Conference

to build on observations about the 2005 WSIS and the

2015 World Internet Conference and on the importance

of scientific research.

A Proposed Addition for the World Internet

Conference

I am proposing that at the next World Internet

Conference there be a section reserved for academic

panels related to the history and culture of Internet

development.

The panel I chaired at the PPF in 2005 can be

taken as an example of the kind of general nature

academic panel I am proposing. The title of that panel

was “The Origin and Early Development of the Internet

and of the Netizen: Their Impact on Science and

Society.” The papers that were presented at that panel

were:

•The International and Scientific Origins of the Internet

and the Emergence of the Netizen

•The vision of JCR Licklider and the Libraries of the

Future

•German-Chinese Collaboration in the First Stage of

Open Networking in China

•Brief History of the Internet in Korea and Asia

•Netizens and Protecting the Public Interest in the

Development and Management of the Internet: An

Economists Perspective

I have consulted with several colleagues who

have offered to submit papers for panels for the 2016

World Internet Conference if this proposal is accepted.

Also, panels could be organized around issues

related to Internet and development.

I welcome comments on this proposal and if

requested I can elaborate on it.

Notes

1. See “Observations on the 2

Preparatory Meeting of the UN

WSIS 10 Year Review,”

(

http://blogs.taz.de/netizenblog/2015/11/01/2nd-prep-mtg-wsis-10-

year-review/)

2. Rahul Bhatia, “The Inside Story of Facebook’s Biggest

Setback,”

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/12/faceboo

kfree-basics-india-zuckerberg

3. http://politics.people.com.cn/n1/2016/0601/c1024-

Page 34

28400027.html (in Chinese)

4. The papers from the panel I chaired in Tunis are gathered in the

Amateur Computerist Vol. 15 No 2 Spring 2007,

http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/ACn15-2.pdf.

* The Amateur Computerist Vol. 26 No 1 Fall 2015,

http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/ACn26-1.pdf gathers some of these

experiences and serves as a broader introduction.

EDITORIAL STAFF

Ronda Hauben

William Rohler

Norman O. Thompson

Michael Hauben (1973-2001)

Jay Hauben

The Amateur Computerist invites submissions.

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Permission is given to reprint articles from this issue in a

non profit publication provided credit is given, with name

of author and source of article cited.

The opinions expressed in articles are those of their

authors and not necessarily the opinions of the Amateur

Computerist newsletter. We welcome submissions from

a spectrum of viewpoints.

ELECTRONIC EDITION

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