BOB GARFIELD: During China's ascendancy as an economic juggernaut, the internet has been central to the nation's strategy, because without it, there is no access to the global information economy. But in an authoritarian state, information is a double-edged sword. Thus has the government paradoxically cultivated the internet and stifled it, using electronic filters and an immense security apparatus to squelch dissent. And some of its worst fears were realized last month, when anti-Japan activists used email, on line chat rooms and text messaging to organize demonstrations that rapidly turned violent. China's leaders had let anti-Japanese nationalism be the exception to the suppression of political speech on line, but according to Xiao Qiang, director of the Berkeley China Internet Project at the UC-Berkeley School of Journalism, even that proved to be a force beyond the government's control. The demonstrations seemed to be at once organized by many and by none. There were hardly any identifiable ringleaders.

XIAO QIANG: That really put the government on guard. What they are afraid is - now what they are demanding - is the way they organize. So right now, what you see in China is this ongoing crackdown.

BOB GARFIELD: Review for us, please, all of the many ways in which China does control the flow of information. I, I guess it begins with the fact that the internet in China isn't really part of the global internet, is it?

XIAO QIANG: That's right. There's only six main networks in China, and all their gateways are tightly controlled by the national security forces, so they can filter anything that goes between the internet inside of China to the global internet. Very often this has been called the Great Firewall.

BOB GARFIELD: But as we watch hackers around the world defeating almost every barrier in order to send out viruses and worms and create other mischief, is even the Great Firewall of China impenetrable by those who would wish to subvert it?

XIAO QIANG: Well, the Great Firewall is a good metaphor, but it's really not about absolute control of the information. It's about effective control of the information. In other words, yes, hackers or the tech-savvy users inside of China or outside China can get through it. But the general blocking mechanism there is not only just to block information, but also to send a strong signal to intimidate the Chinese internet users, to tell them their presence inside of the Great Firewall in almost every city there is a, what we call key words filtering system, which, whether you're in a chat room, whether you are a blogger writing blogs or whether even you are those on line instant messaging services, all these companies are required to block out certain key words as a means to intimidate the users, and we're talking about over a thousand key words, and they're constantly updating and changing.

BOB GARFIELD: Well, let me ask you about that. When Google and Microsoft go to do business in China, what kind of deal with the devil do they have to strike, and what implications does that have for the global information economy?

XIAO QIANG: China has established over 37 laws and legal regulations since 1994 to sort of establish the boundary of what can be said and what can be used on line. Every internet company, whether your Chinese domestic ones or the international ones, such as Yahoo or Microsoft, once you go into China, you have to operate under those internet regulations. Otherwise you will not have a license.

BOB GARFIELD: Are companies like Google and Microsoft, then, like missionaries who put on the local costumes in order to fit in with the local culture or are they collaborators, mercenaries doing repugnant things for the sake of making a buck?

XIAO QIANG: Well, I think they are there making a buck. I don't think those major companies such as Yahoo or Google or Microsoft can commercially afford not to go to China. The question here is – how the Chinese internet users are using those commercial companies’ information technologies and to what degree the police forces can actually control those informations.

BOB GARFIELD: As internet and cell phone penetration increases, and these devices are in the hands of hundreds of millions of people, how can even this authoritarian regime, with all its resources, continue to keep a lid on this baby?

XIAO QIANG: Well, in the long term, I think you are asking a right question. Right now, China has many sort of urgent issues from corruption to the uneven divide of the wealth and the increasing gap between the coastal regions and the inner lands. There's many potentially explosive issues. The Chinese government, they think they simply by economic growth that they can maintain the stability of the society. But the communication technology’s certainly challenging that way of thinking, because more and more people know a lot of things, more and more people can communicate about themselves and organize about themselves, the official way to centralize everything, to control what people know and to shape what people say is not as effective as it used to be.

BOB GARFIELD: All right. Well Xiao, thank you very much.

XIAO QIANG: Thank you.

BOB GARFIELD: Xiao Qiang is director of the Berkeley China Internet Project at the University of California – Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. [MUSIC UP AND UNDER]

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Google may knuckle under to the Chinese, but it stands up to the French, up next – old and new takes on cultural imperialism.

BOB GARFIELD: This is On the Media, from NPR.