Contributed by Ma Xiu on Before its News:
The first person who revealed to the world the inglorious cooperation between the Chinese government and American high-tech companies was Greg Walton, a U.S. writer who focuses on the globalization of technology and its impact on human rights and democracy. As far back as 2001 Walton had published a piece called “China’s Golden Shield: Corporations and the Development of Surveillance Technology in the People’s Republic of China,” which, based on a arsenal of facts, exposed many high-tech multinationals competing for business in China, how they helped the Chinese government set up the Golden Shield, and how it was used to monitor network communications. Part of the Golden Shield project was a database, part a monitoring network. It took care of: “Access Control, Anti-Hacker Intrusion, Communication Security, Computer Accessories & Software, Decryption & Encryption, E-commerce Security, Extranet & Intranet Security, Firewalls, Networking Communications, Network Security & Management, Operation Safety, Smartcard Security, System Security, Virus Detection, IT-related Services and Others.” Actually (It should be translated as “At that time”), across the world there are few people who know why the Chinese government has invested such enormous sums into setting up this system, and what it’s used for. In China, many high-tech companies even advertise their participation in the Golden Shield project to show how advanced they are.
Not long after the report was published I happened to find it on the Internet, and made an abridged translation of its important points. Through writing articles and giving speeches, I hoped to make the Chinese and English speaking worlds understand that the Golden Shield was a criminal engineering project that seriously intruded on Chinese citizens’ rights. I once posted the essay to the online bulletin board of a university in Beijing; it was deleted within an hour. After that I could only use email to forward it and let more people know the truth about the criminal project. In August 2001 and June 2002 I went to testify at U.S. Congress. Though the topic was unrelated to freedom of the press, I asked for an extra three minutes to speak about the Golden Shield to the representatives and experts gathered, inviting them to read Greg Walton’s report. I hoped that legislation could prevent U.S. companies from collaborating in this criminal fashion. In 2001, congressional representatives and others at the hearing said they had never heard of the Golden Shield; in 2002 they said they were paying attention to the matter, but pointed out that the U.S. has no laws to prevent companies from carrying out these actions overseas.