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Beijing Olympics 2008: Winning Press Freedom 110 which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible” and that “in the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.” 35 In democratic societies, conflicts between the individual's freedom of expression and the governmental right to protect public order are settled by independent courts or neutral third parties on a case-by-case basis, generally giving individual rights and freedoms highest priority. In China, priority is given to the State's collective rights of “public order” and “national security.” How to balance such conflicting values in concrete cases involving publications on the Internet in China has also been frequently discussed at international academic conferences. During a July 2007 meeting in Paris of the International Association of Media and Communication Research, a Chinese scholar recognized, on one hand, that there has been substantial progress on individual rights of freedom of expression, including the Internet, during the last 20 years. What would have been impossible in 1987 is now common practice, he said. On the other hand, there are still taboos which, when ignored by individuals, are not tolerated by the government and lead to heavy punishment. The “Chinese taboos” he mentioned in particular were the three Ts (Tianamen, Tibet and Taiwan) as well as references to Falun Gong. 36 Another scholar, Andrew Lih, a Chinese-American professor at the University of Hong Kong, said that many in China take a long-term perspective. “Chinese people have a 5,000-year view of history,” he said. “You ban a web site, and they're like: 'Oh, give it time. It'll come back.'” 37 Violation of human rights as a trade barrier ? There are two schools of thought among Western academics and non-government organizations in this field: One group argues that with more economic progress, a higher living standard and a new self-confident, well-educated generation, the spaces for individual freedom will gradually grow. The other group does not believe in such an evolutionary concept. Under discussion is, among other things, a proposal to classify the violation of human rights, particularly censorship measures against freedom of information, as forming trade barriers. Under World Trade Organization arrangements, violations of international treaties to protect intellectual property rights are already defined as trade barriers. As recent experience has shown, the Chinese government, after pressure from WTO member states, has undertaken concrete actions against online piracy, to guarantee the protection of intellectual property rights under its international obligations, thus avoiding negative consequences for its economic interests. In contrast, violation of international obligations under global legal human rights agreements has had almost no economic consequences for countries like China. Cold War experiences in the 1970s and 1980s, notably the effects of the Helsinki Agreements on Cooperation and Security in Europe, might provide interesting leads for action, but it remains to be seen whether such mechanisms would also work in the rather different political, economic and cultural context of China. Internet governance at the UN World Summit on the Information Society During the first UN World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva, the Chinese Delegation played an active role, particularly in discussions of human rights and of Internet governance.
Beijing Olympics 2008: Winning Press Freedom 111 The Chinese government challenged in particular the evolution of governance mechanisms for the management of critical Internet resources such as domain names, root server and IP addresses, which are led by the private sector and executed by Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, which operates under a contract with the US government that is scheduled to expire in October 2009. China argued that the principle of private sector leadership was good for the early days of the Internet, with about a million users. With about a billion users worldwide, critical Internet resources should now be governed by governments, China contended. A proposal to shift responsibility for root servers, domain names and IP addresses from ICANN to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) or to create a new intergovernmental Internet body in the UN system was rejected by the US government, the European Union, private sector and civil society but was supported by a number of developing countries like Brazil, India, Pakistan, South Africa and some Arab states. With lack of an accepted definition of Internet governance, another conflict was over what “Internet governance” actually means. Some governments advocated a narrow definition, others a broad one. The controversy - private sector leadership versus governmental leadership - was not settled in Geneva. The compromise was to ask UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to create a Working Group on Internet Governance with a mandate to define governance, to identify the public policy aspects of Internet governance and to specify the roles of the various stakeholders. The group was established as a multi-stakeholder body with the full and equal involvement of governments, private sector and civil society representatives from developed and developing countries. The Chinese representative was Qiheng Hu, advisor to the Science & Technology Commission of the Ministry of Information Industry and former Vice President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. 38 The group's report, presented in July 2005, paved the way for a grand compromise during the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis. Based on a “broad definition” of Internet governance, it concluded that the Internet should not be governed by one single unit but by a global mechanism, that included various stakeholders - governmental as well as non-governmental - in their respective roles. The working group proposed neither governmental nor private sector leadership for the broad range of Internet issues but recommended a “multi-stakeholder approach.” It encouraged the various players in such a “multilayer-mutilayer mechanism” to enhance their communication, coordination and cooperation. After the presentation of the group's report, China no longer insisted on the transfer of responsibilities from ICANN to the intergovernmental sector ITU, but agreed finally to create a multi-stakeholder Internet Governance Forum as a discussion body, rather than create a new intergovernmental body with decision-making powers. China supported starting “enhanced cooperation” amongst concerned international organizations, including ICANN and ITU in the “Tunis Agenda for the Information Society.” 39 The first priority for China at Tunis was recognition of the principle of sovereignty over its national domain name space. The Tunis Agenda’s Paragraph 63 stipulated that “countries should not be involved in decisions regarding another country's country-code top-level domain” and that “their legitimate interests, as expressed and defined by each country, in diverse ways, regarding
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