The most populated country on the world has never been known for its liberal media coverage. Even though there are currently some 8000 magazines published, 300 radio stations on air, and 360 television stations broadcasting in China. Yet international human rights groups publish disturbing reports about harsh censorship in the People’s Republic again and again.

Of course the internet is a thorn in the government’s side especially. The ever-growing web of cross-linked information is a nightmare to any serious censorship strategy or opinion-control mechanism. That is why the omnipotent Communist Party has successfully banned internet-usage from its people all the way until 1994. And in 1995 it put forward another attempt to keep away the evil platform of free voices by closing a good 50,000 internet cafes. But still a global movement as powerful as the Web could not be stopped. Today close to 100 million (out of 1.4 billion) Chinese are believed to have access to the WWW.

And despite the fact that between 30,000 to 40,000 government employees are estimated to deal with nothing but filtering the web for “unwanted” content, the urge for international news and exchange remains stronger. Even Google and Yahoo assisted the ruling party of China by limiting search results to show only “politically correct” sites. Without much success.

With VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) telephony, another digital mass hysteria is taking on China. This could mean that people without their own telephone extensions or without the means to pay for an international call could soon chat with others abroad via internet cafes or other public web-access points. And not only that. The government-run and phoning monopolist China Telecom fears heavy competition through these cheap alternatives.

So far licenses were rejected for providers such as Skype to bring VoIP business to the People’s Republic. Until 2008 no commercial usage of internet-telephony has been granted. But then again, the web has always found a way around government restrictions so far.