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Posted by: kwflatbed

By Mure Dickie
Published: February 17 2006 19:19 | Last updated: February 17 2006 19:19

With their big blue blinking eyes and their quirky personal websites, there is no denying the cuteness of the cartoon cops at the front line of China’s battle for control of the internet.


But the role played by Jingjing and Chacha, the animated online icons recently introduced by police in the southern Chinese boomtown of Shenzhen, is entirely serious.
The cartoon couple patrol the city’s news and discussion websites to scare off anyone who might be tempted to use online anonymity to break China’s laws, says Chen Minli, director of the Shenzhen City Public Security Bureau’s Internet Surveillance Centre.

“Now internet users know the police are watching them,” Ms Chen says in an interview at the Bureau’s gleaming new 28-storey building in central Shenzhen.

Such official online oversight is highly controversial elsewhere. Human rights activists fiercely condemn the efforts of China’s ruling Communist party to stifle online political debate.

In recent weeks, moves by Yahoo, Microsoft and Google to bow to varying degrees to Beijing’s party censors have exposed them to fierce criticism from both customers and members of the US Congress.

But the no-nonsense Ms Chen and her comrades in the Surveillance Centre are proud of the online enforcement role played by Jingjing and Chacha (whose names are made up of the Chinese characters for “police”).

“All around the world there are internet police, but they always operate backstage... No other internet police have stepped to the front of the stage,” she says. “We really feel that this is a historic breakthrough.”

Jingjing and Chacha operate by appearing as clickable adverts on local websites and as virtual users of the hugely popular QQ instant messaging system operated by Nasdaq-listed Tencent.

In a demonstration at the Surveillance Centre, part of an internet division that has seen its staff more than double to 100 in less than a year, officer Xu Qian shows how the Jingjing icon keeps pace whenever a user of a local discussion website scrolls down a page.

“He is just like a policeman, interactively moving along with you. Wherever you go, he is watching you,” Mr Xu says.

By clicking on the icons, users can report crimes or learn about the rules on online conduct. Jingjing and Chacha also have their own websites with a selection of music including the “Song of the People’s Police”.

Ms Chen, a police technology veteran, says inspiration for the personal sites came from her 15-year-old daughter who keeps her up to date on new internet possibilities.

But deterrence remains the main goal for Jingjing and Chacha, who are just part of a huge system of government internet control that includes blocks on thousands of websites and sophisticated content filters.

Ms Chen says the mere appearance of the icons makes users think twice before posting sensitive messages. When Jingjing and Chacha arrived on local websites, the number of postings that had to be filtered out because of suspect content fell more than 60 per cent. I

When the pair send warning messages to websites under investigation for alleged fraud, the sites’ operators often immediately shut them down, she says.

China’s internet laws do not stop at such crimes. Users are also barred from a range of offences including the posting or even consultation of content judged to challenge the political order, incite secession, promote “feudal superstition” or harm the “honour of national institutions”.

Such laws have been used to jail people who peacefully question the Communist party, and they lie at the heart of debate overseas over the role international internet companies should play in China.

Ms Chen says since their official online launch in January, Jingjing and Chacha have not played any role in such cases. She has little time for suggestions that China controls the internet too tightly.

Only one in 50 internet users wants to break the law, and they are the only ones to complain about a lack of liberty, she insists, the web is “completely free” for those who stay within the “legal framework”.

Indeed, Ms Chen suggests US officials might want to consider adopting their own Jingjings or Chachas to police Google services following the US company’s refusal to share information about its searches with the government.

In any case, she says, overseas critics should not judge China by their standards.

“In my family, if my child does not lay her chopsticks down properly, then I will smack her, but maybe in your family you are too relaxed about such things,” Ms Chen says. “Each family has its own rules and countries are the same.”

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