China allows full access to Wikipedia

Chinese Internet surfers once again have unfettered access to Wikipedia, the popular free online encyclopedia. The Chinese government has quietly dismantled its digital barriers against the service, according to Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.

"The community in mainland China is basically telling us that they're able to access" the site, said Wales.

The news appears to vindicate Wales's tough stand against Internet censorship. He has said that Wikipedia will not remove articles about subjects regarded as controversial by the Chinese government, such as the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

But major American Internet companies like Yahoo Inc., Google Inc., and Microsoft Corp. have voluntarily censored the Internet content they offer in China, in exchange for the right to do business there. The censorship has been denounced by politicians and human rights groups. The companies reply that it's better to provide some Internet services to China's 1.3 billion people than to be frozen out of China altogether.

A Google spokeswoman who declined to be identified by name said in an e-mail that "helping users around the world, including those in China, have more access to information is of course something Google fully supports." She said that Google continues to offer an uncensored Chinese service as well as the censored version. But the uncensored Google index is blocked in China.

Officials of Yahoo and Microsoft did not respond to requests for comment.

Democratic US Representative Tom Lantos of California said the unblocking of Wikipedia proves that US companies don't have to comply with Chinese demands for censorship. "If Beijing no longer blocks access to this website, why can't others arrange for the same treatment?" said Lantos. "There is all the more reason now to hold U S Internet companies accountable for acquiescing to China's repressive policies."

But experts on Internet censorship point out that Wikipedia, run by a non profit foundation, has little to lose by defying China. Businesses like Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo could lose millions of dollars if an anti censorship stand led China to ban the companies from doing business there.

"The stakes are much too high," said John Palfrey, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. "No individual company will be able to resist. "

Besides, said former CNN Beijing bureau chief and Berkman Center research fellow Rebecca MacKinnon, it's hard to draw clear lessons from the Wikipedia case.

"Nobody knows what the Wikipedia unblocking means and how long it's going to last," MacKinnon said.

Indeed, the Chinese government denies censoring the Internet at all, despite widespread complaints that many Western news and information services are inaccessible. Because of these official denials, said MacKinnon, "it makes it difficult to figure out why anything happens."

Chinese authorities began blocking English and Chinese versions of Wikipedia last October, without explanation. The removal of the blocks began last month with the English version, and Chinese Wikipedia was fully reopened late last week.

MacKinnon and Palfrey both theorized that because anyone can write articles for Wikipedia, Chinese officials may see it as a way to present the Chinese point of view. The government may try to control Wikipedia, not by blocking it, but by encouraging Chinese users to submit articles. Palfrey suggested that Chinese government workers may be tasked with writing articles that reflect the official line on sensitive subjects. "You can put propagandists alongside censors to tell the version of the story you want to tell," Palfrey said.

Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com.