Document Type
Article
Abstract
China is often perceived as a land of contradiction replete with economic opportunities and political authoritarianism. With many overlapping strategic interests, China has been described as a competitor and inevitable foe, not a strategic partner, to the United States. China perceives the United States as butting into Asian affairs. The U.S. perception is that China’s socio-economic, political, and legal infrastructures fail to protect the individual rights of Chinese citizens. Accordingly, the criticism is that China’s governmental violations of individual rights are copiously depicted in its controls over the Internet. Purportedly, the logic follows, that China’s governmental controls over the Internet undermine the human and civil rights of Chinese citizens in violation of international law. This Article will examine that hypothesis within the construct of the World Summits on the Information Society assembled 2003 in Geneva and 2005 in Tunis. Both Summits will serve to qualify the permissible scope and nature of the Chinese government’s Internet activities. This limited discourse concedes that there are vast reaches of online activities which encompass website design, business, consumer affairs, technical issues, copyrights, trademarks, patents, constitutional and privacy rights, contracts, and employment. Any attempt, however, at discussing the China’s governmental online practices in totality would prove beyond the scope of this Article.
Recommended Citation
Omar Saleem,
China's Internet Policies Within the Global Community,
17 J. Tech. L. & Pol'y
(2012).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/jtlp/vol17/iss2/3