FYR_wal

[John Young <jya@pipeline.com>]

   1-31-96. WSJ:

   "Chinese Firewall: Beijing Seeks to Build Version of the
   Internet That Can Be Censored."

      "We've eliminated what is undesirable and kept what is
      good." Which is, succinctly, China's riposte to the
      information age, from satellite television and real-time
      news to the Internet. Beijing eagerly seeks the fanciest
      information hardware, but it fears much of the software.

      China, in short, is determined to do what conventional
      wisdom suggests is impossible: Join the information age
      while restricting access to information. The reason: If
      the Internet has proved its utility, it has also become
      a fluid medium for the two things China's authoritarian
      government most dreads, political dissent and
      pornography.

      Industry insiders say China -- which has already bought
      some of the most powerful equipment available, from
      U.S.-based Cisco Systems Inc. and Sprint International,
      a unit of Sprint Corp. -- ultimately aims to create a
      monolithic Internet backbone, centrally administered,
      that minimizes the threat posed by the Internet's
      amoeba-like structure.

   FYR_wal