American NGO Freedom House has published its Freedom on the Net 2011 study, and it’s no surprise to see that China ranks near the bottom of the list, ahead of only Cuba, Burma, and Iran. The report looks at 37 countries, evaluating their digital freedom based on a number of criteria such as obstacles to access, limits on content, and violations of user rights.
Besides China and Burma, Vietnam and Thailand were also tagged with the ‘not free’ classification. Pakistan, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and even South Korea were labelled as ‘partly free’ as you can see below:
The report highlights that China has become worse since its 2009 report, citing now permanent blocks on Facebook and Twitter, the shutdown of the net in Xinjiang back in 2009, and the imprisonment of individuals for internet-related activities. China is also mentioned as a “key source of global cyber-attacks” as well. India also dropped a few points in the ranking since last time.
One of the more interesting issues raised in the study is the notion that China’s internet is not economically fair for all competitors:
Both Chinese officials and independent analysts have attributed the market dominance of locally-managed internet firms such as Baidu over international brands such as Google at least in part to government favoritism, noting the authorities’ interest in promoting Chinese companies that will comply more readily with government-imposed content restrictions than foreign firms.
The resultant ‘commercialization of censorship,’ says Freedom House, is something that every internet company who intends to operate in China needs to carefully consider.
Freedom House claims to be an independent organization, but it has been criticized in the past for receiving funding from the US government.
Lead photo: komplettblog.ie
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