The Financial Times last week published an absolutely brilliant and lengthy article on just how censorship of the internet works in China. Interestingly, much of the interviewer’s content for the article came from a government official in Yunnan province who works for the propaganda department. He invited the FT reporter to Yunnan to talk more about the government’s internet surveillance and control structure. Must have taken a helluva lot of permissions from the powers-that-be for the techno-chik Mr. Wu to be able to give an interview to a foreign newspaper, on-the-record.

The Hydra has many heads:

But day-to-day surveillance and control of the population are carried out by a far greater number of departments: the double structure of censorship institutions is duplicated at the provincial, county and city level; in addition, every government department operates its own internet surveillance. “Every ministry has special departments for collecting and surveying information from the internet,” said Wu, “including the police, the telecom departments, the departments for foreign affairs and the development and research commission [the top economic policy planning body].” Together, the authorities keep a 24-hour watch on what is said online.

What I found enlightening, though, was that the government enrolls netizens it pays to spy on each other and to tilt public opinion in the direction that suits the governments’ agenda of the day:

Now, however, “50-cent bloggers” – named after the price paid per posting when these freelancers first appeared – sign up to chatrooms or bulletin boards and speak up for the government, or against its critics.

“Maybe you imagine things as a battle between good and evil, between the good netizens and the evil censors. It’s not that simple,” says the editor of a Chinese magazine focusing on culture and society. “As a Chinese, you are always automatically part of ‘them’.”

Everything in moderation, goes the saying, and moderating public emotions is the whole point of the Censorship 2.0 movement:

An executive working at one of China’s leading internet portals tells me: “The task [for the Communist party] has been to allow enough noise in the system for people to let off steam and make them feel that they are living kind of a free life, but at the same time to maintain a sense of fear and respect that keeps them from demanding big change.”

But there is another disruption afoot that will severely test the Chinese techno-chiks:

…Already, by the end of 2008, 117 million people, or more than one-third of the country’s web users, could access the internet on their mobile phones. A rapidly growing number use QQ, China’s largest online messaging tool, on their handsets wherever they go. That means that the vast rural hinterland, where about 70 per cent of the population still live, is getting a fast-track link-up to a network via which they can voice their dissatisfaction: about corrupt and despotic officials, unsolved problems of pollution and social security, land grabs and income disparity.

Expect 3G in China to be loaded with “features” not found in other countries.