China sees lessons in India’s panic over SMS
In China, where social networking sites Facebook and Twitter are banned, the authorities have long viewed the mobilising capabilities of the Internet with deep suspicion. The events across the Himalayas in recent days, where rumours that proliferated through cyberspace and SMS fuelled mass panic in several Indian cities, have reaffirmed those fears in this country, prompting calls in the state media outlets for the authorities to keep a watchful eye on the Internet. The scene is familiar to Chinese. In 2009, the authorities blocked access to Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. The major reason was ethnic riots in Urumqi, capital of the Muslim-majority Xinjiang region, that left 197 people dead and more than a thousand injured on July 5, 2009. Armed mobs went on the rampage. Images of the corpses of Uighurs who died in the brawl had circulated widely in Urumqi through websites and SMS. Ironically, the factory violence was itself triggered after websites circulated rumours, later denied by officials that the Uighurs had raped a Han Chinese factory worker. The violence led the authorities to ban both Twitter and Facebook and the popular first-ever Chinese Twitter equivalent, Fanfou. The government subsequently gave the green light to other Twitter equivalents, or “weibos,” but only after putting in place a range of regulatory measures. The most popular service today, Sina Weibo, is used by 300 million Chinese. Despite censorship restrictions