The Confucian Solution.(internet self-censorship)(Brief Article)(Column)

Like many Arab countries, China does not disguise its schizophrenia about the Internet. On the one hand, the state's cyber commissars nail citizens for posting comments like "Down with the Communist Party!" (Two weeks ago, a high-school teacher was sentenced to two years in jail for making that remark online.) Yet at the same time, China has rushed to embrace the IT revolution, certain that the nation's development and place in the world depend upon wiring the Middle Kingdom. That has led to two distinct pictures of China's e-future. One envisions an online Big Brother that zaps free speech with frightening high-tech efficiency, even if it means keeping the world's most populous nation on the wrong side of the digital divide. The other predicts that the regime will ultimately have to throw up its hands and allow mainland Net users to access and disseminate whatever information they want--just like their American counterparts. What analysts are now beginning to acknowledge, though, is that Beijing will most likely follow a third way--one mapped out by another paternalistic, very Confucian society.

Singapore enjoys far greater economic freedoms than China, but shares its obsession with political stability. The country has also moved from an initially ham-fisted attitude regarding the Internet toward more refined, selective controls. Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew now talks about how Singaporeans, in order to compete in the digital world, must embrace the "messiness" of the entrepreneurial mind-set. Government officials are thought to log on to argue the official line in chat rooms, using pseudonyms. The Internet, says Lee, "is something we can't control now."

The island republic, which knows its future lies in technology, has no qualms about getting its citizens connected: 99 percent of the nation's homes have access to a broadband infrastructure. Lee admits that Singapore authorities still block access to a small number of Web sites--fewer than 100, mostly for their pornographic or violent CONTENT--in order to "register our disapproval." But, as in society at large, the government mutes criticism mainly through "self-censorship and other methods such as regulatory tools or licensing mechanisms," says Shin Leong of the Think Center, a group of Singaporean ...