A fascinating article in The New Republic, one of the must-read magazines.

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040405&s=kurlantzick040504&c=2&pt=oGG%2BvQEIjJRNjHGlOJiX4X%3D%3D

An extract:

ut the Internet's inherent flaws as a political medium are only part of the reason for its failure to spread liberty. More significant has been the ease with which authoritarian regimes have controlled and, in some cases, subverted it. The most straightforward way governments have responded to opposition websites has been simply to shut them down.

In Singapore, for example, an online political forum called Sintercom became popular in the mid-'90s as one of the only places where citizens could express political opinions relatively openly. But, following government pressure, Sintercom was shut down in 2001. Since then, according to Shanthi Kalathil and Taylor C. Boas, authors of the recent comprehensive book Open Networks, Closed Regimes: The Impact of the Internet on Authoritarian Rule, the scope of online political discussion in Singapore has shrunk. In Malaysia, too, many of the anti-government websites that formed in the mid-'90s have been shuttered, enabling the regime to beat back a liberal reform movement that sprang up five years ago.

But nowhere has a regime's ability to corral the Internet been more apparent than in China, the world's largest authoritarian state. Despite President Clinton's prediction, Beijing has proved that it can, in fact, nail Jell-O to the wall. A 2003 study by Jonathan Zittrain and Benjamin Edelman, two Harvard researchers, found that China has created the most extensive system of Internet censorship in the world and has almost completely controlled the impact of the Web on dissent.

It has done this, they note, by mandating that all Web traffic go through government-controlled servers and by constructing an elaborate system of firewalls--which prevent access to certain websites--and online monitoring by state security agents. Censored sites include much of the Western media and sites related to Taiwan, democratization, and other sensitive topics. (The New York Times won a reprieve only when its former editor appealed personally to former President Jiang Zemin.)

In their book, Kalathil and Boas note that Saudi Arabia has constructed similarly comprehensive systems to limit online dissent, expanding their "censorship mechanism to keep pace with the burgeoning sources of objectionable content." What's more, various authoritarian regimes have collaborated with one another to improve their ability to control the Web. As Kalathil and Boas note, China is formally advising Cuba on its Internet policies, while several Middle Eastern states have looked to Singapore as an example in controlling their citizens' Web usage.