“The overall situation for Chinese writers is getting worse,” she said, “but why? Why hasn’t open trade and foreign investment ushered in social freedoms that globalists persuaded themselves were concomitant with profits?” The question was part of a more than three hour debate Thursday evening in support of writers in prison, under the rubric “Shining a Light on Human Rights in China”. The event took place at the Musée Voltaire in Geneva.

The keynote speakers were two dissident Chinese writers in exile: Yu Zhang and Yang Lian. Both painted an image of an ever tightening knot around the necks of all writers, journalists or poets who step outside what is officially approved.

Yu Zhang, a member of an independent Chinese PEN, has become an expert on China’s internet laws and the institutions that enforce them. In 2005, he said, there were 110 million Internet users in China, 50 million PCs and 200,000 cyber cafes.

China’s increased surveillance

Zhang has also compiled statistics on all Chinese writers in prison as well as those taken to court. PEN is currently campaigning for the release of 33 jailed writers.

The Chinese Communist Party has stepped up surveillance of the internet, cracking down on writers who tackle problems such as exposing the widening gap between rich and poor.

According to PEN Secretary General for french speaking Switzerland, Zeki Ergas, at the end of last year “China had more than 250,000 millionaires while on the other hand, poverty, especially rural poverty, persists for hundreds of millions of Chinese.”

According to Zhang it is not only cyber dissidents who get into trouble for allegedly “revealing state secrets”, the standard charge. He mentioned the case of the unsuspecting journalist arrested for writing about a local outbreak of dengue fever. The reason? The article appeared before the official news agency version was published.

Both Zhang and Kung were equally critical of the role played in China by the two US Internet giants Yahoo and Google, who in the interest of conquering China’s vast future market, have allowed their sites in China to be censored.

“China’s hand of official censorship is reaching beyond the mainland’s borders to influence indirectly what we (Westerners) write,” said Kung.

Censorship & self-censorship

She said Beijing is seeking to censor foreign information not only through loyalty pledges from companies like Yahoo and Google “but also by making it illegal in China to report sudden disasters or unforeseen events without permission.

What this means Kung explained is that all foreign news agencies must channel their services sold to mainland customers through a Party pipeline. “Could this result in self-censorship?” she again asked rhetorically.

It’s already happening according to fellow Pen member, Claude Levenson, an author and specialist on Tibet, who told the gathering that Chinese President, Hu Jintao, got the agreement of the Indian government to ban anti-China protests by Tibetans in India during his state visit next week.

China, the sleeping giant, is now awake and much of the world may already be trembling. But according to Levenson what the West should fear more is its own complacency and complicity.