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Today is the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, when Chinese pro-democracy protests met a brutal end. And, with crushing inevitability, the Chinese government has marked the anniversary by suppressing free speech once again.
By blocking access to a number of social networking websites, including the wildly popular Twitter, the Chinese authorities hope to quieten anti-government sentiment. But this time round, it's not going to be so easy.
There was a time when totalitarian regimes could rely on technology to keep citizens in check with covert surveillance and propaganda broadcasts. But the internet is a democratic medium: it was built to withstand enemy attacks by having no central “brain”, so it does a good job of withstanding overbearing censorship, too. Though that hasn't stopped the Chinese government from trying.
In 2006, Google turned its back on its “we are not evil” motto and agreed to censor its search results in return for better access to the lucrative Chinese market. Suddenly, web pages that talked about controversial topics such as Taiwanese independence — and the Tiananmen uprising — disappeared from Google China's search returns.
A year earlier, Yahoo! faced similar disdain when it gave information about an email that led to the imprisonment, for 10 years, of a Chinese journalist. His crime? To reveal information on how social stability should be safeguarded on the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen protests.
But the reason these giants of search were willing to prostitute themselves was simple: China is witnessing unparalleled economic growth, with a massive expansion of its web-literate middle class. It's estimated that since 2006, the number of web users in China has doubled to 200 million. More than 60 million have their own blogs. However sophisticated your censorship, it's hard to control such numbers. And they're still growing.
There's no way of turning back this tide: Chinese authorities couldn't implement a Burmese-style blackout even if they wanted to. This is, after all, the country where most of the world's mobile phones and computers are manufactured.
Within minutes of Twitter access being blocked, China's web forums were buzzing with the news. And the world immediately knew what was happening.
Twitter's microblogging service, which allows anyone with a will and a web connection to broadcast 140-letter updates to the world, is often dismissed as the medium of choice for vacuous celebrity updates. But China's decision to block Twitter is proof that the three-year-old service already has enough power to destabilise a nation.
Thankfully, the Twitter community rose the challenge: as soon as news of the blackout leaked out, one of the most popular topics was on Twitter was #gfw - short for Great Firewall of China'. And plenty of users on the mainland were taking part in the debate, using standalone Twitter applications that circumvented the block on the website.
By temporarily shutting down Twitter — and YouTube, Flickr and other networking sites — the Chinese government has only succeeded in reminding the world of the terrible events of 20 years ago. And wherever the world looks, the web-savvy Chinese will be looking, too. Which goes to show how at odds China's government is with its country's new high-tech entrepreneurial spirit.
There's little doubt that China's society has progressed in the past two decades. With luck, there will be no blood spilt in Tiananmen Square this year.
But the ghosts of 1989 will not be laid to rest until the Great Firewall is lifted, and free speech is allowed to flourish in China.
Tom Dunmore is editor-in-chief of Stuff magazine.
