China’s online dam breaks

At least something’s going right on the international scene.

China last week backed away from its controversial plan to require personal computers sold in that country to contain Internet-filtering software.

Chinese authorities try to block Internet use that the government considers obscene or “subversive.”

Companies such as Yahoo, Google and Microsoft have cooperated with this oppressive policy.

The new “Green Dam” software would have been China’s next step in monitoring its people and controlling their access to information.

It drew loud protests internationally and even from brave souls inside China.

Last week Beijing said it was postponing the requirement.

It said the decision was made partly because some PC manufacturers were having difficulty meeting its deadline for software installation.

If that’s the chief reason, it means the software policy could be revived at a later date.

China also could be using the manufacturing delay as an excuse to lull world opinion into forgetting about the policy for a time, after which the regime could reinstitute it.

There’s always the hope, though, that China is using the delay as an excuse to kill the policy. Manufacturer problems could be a way for China to quietly bury the requirement without directly having to admit it made a mistake.

Beijing is caught between a desire for technological supremacy and the tyrant’s need to control information, and thereby the thoughts and aspirations of the people.

China cannot excel in the 21st century without technology, especially the Internet. But Internet technology is based on information sharing. That’s a dilemma for the oppressors in Beijing.

Meanwhile, China is going through an economic downturn, partly the result of the worldwide slowdown. The need to keep the economy going may have tipped Beijing’s decision in favor of delaying its Internet restrictions: Compu-ter technology and the sharing of information drive the economy to a large degree, there as well as here.

When the U.S. was in the throes of debate over whether to open doors into China and allow American tech companies to locate there, one of the arguments for such a shift was the prediction that the degree of economic competition and sharing of information that the arrangement would require would perforce set the stage for greater political openness as well. China could not function in the modern, high-tech world without relaxing its authoritarian control, so the argument went.

In some ways there has been an explosion of openness in China. Officially, the country has accepted a limited version of market-based economics. And information has spread, including information about freedom, via the Internet.

But that has occurred largely underground and has not been sanctioned by the re-gime. Indeed, China has sought to inhibit the free expression and dissemination of ideas.

Any delay in a plan to further control information is welcome. Even a few more days of relative freedom is better than Beijing’s alternative. And if the regime forgets about the Green Dam altogether, so much the better.