When some of the world's top technology companies, including Yahoo!, Intel, Nokia and Ericsson, formed the Beijing Association of Online Media three years ago, the group seemed to be a typical trade association, sponsoring social activities and facilitating networking. Even when its activities widened last year to include "self-policing" the Internet, it seemed to be benign, targeting content that "contradicts social morality and Chinese traditional virtues," i.e. pornography. The message was that the companies were providing a public service in spaces used by Chinese teens, not helping the government maintain political control.

Yet today it is clear that BAOM has become an active agent of the Chinese government's initiatives to stifle discussion of political issues. The group's slide into censorship shows how easily Beijing can co-opt Western firms into this effort. And BAOM is becoming a model in a new push to tighten control over Internet speech.

Reports released by the organization over the last year show clearly that this ostensible industry association is now playing an active, hands-on role in censoring information through a 200-strong team of Internet monitors. Sources familiar with the organization say that these monitors maintain informal links with the Beijing Public Security Bureau and are on the government payroll.

The reports, published until recently on BAOM's official Web site, show that the organization's so-called "volunteers" have reported more than 20,000 instances of politically forbidden Internet content since work began on Aug. 1, 2006. Censored material outlined in the reports goes beyond BAOM's well-publicized campaigns against "pornographic" content, including content deemed harmful to national security and social stability, as well as violations of the official ideology of the "four cardinal principles"–upholding the socialist path, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the rule of the Communist Party, and Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought. Such violations, all too familiar to Chinese journalists and known collectively as "propaganda discipline," are typically enforced by China's Central Propaganda Department through ad hoc bans and punitive actions against media and journalists.

Once verified by BAOM, content violations are either referred directly to government censors or forwarded to content managers at major Internet portals. BAOM and its team of "volunteers" are a new form of after-the-fact censorship in China, complementing an already vast Internet censorship apparatus that includes keyword filtering, technical blocking of sites and content, and a range of government offices and law enforcement in addition to internal self-censorship mechanisms employed by Web sites.

"This is a kind of evolution of the control scheme in China," explains Zhao Jing, a Chinese journalist who blogs under the pseudonym Michael Anti and is currently a research fellow at Harvard University. "Before, the propaganda department was used to control the print media and other traditional media. As China entered the age of new media, with blogs, bulletin-board sites and other new tools, centralized control was still used. But this sort of control hasn't worked so well for the Internet. So they've started to look at the volunteer method as a kind of de-centralized control." He adds, "They've changed their approach, and it's very, very clever."

An insider at a major commercial Web site in Beijing, who asked that his identity be protected, says BAOM is a mere functionary of the Beijing government, allowing it greater "convenience" in getting companies in line with its censorship priorities. "There are no civic organizations in China. This is just an expression the government uses," says the source. "Membership is just for show. They can't offer their own opinions, and they don't have any real say."

But members do pay fees, the source says, although he could not reveal how much. And he also confirmed that BAOM's "volunteers" are paid by the government, or "eat the emperor's grain."

Porter Erisman, a spokesman from Alibaba Group, which owns Yahoo! China, says the company had "no specific comment" on Yahoo! China's membership in BAOM. He does admit, however, that "all the major portals and ICP [Internet Content Provider] license holders operating out of Beijing are either BAOM members directly or members via related entities depending on their corporate structures." Mr. Erisman's comment suggests membership in the association, far from being voluntary, is in fact mandatory for holders of ICP licenses, which are issued by China's Ministry of Information Industry and give companies the green light to offer online information services.

BAOM's active censorship role through its "volunteers" and the city propaganda officials who oversee the organization's daily operations places international tech firms, including Yahoo, MySpace, Intel, Nokia, and Ericsson, in the awkward position of having "membership" in Beijing's municipal press-control apparatus through their China-based subsidiaries, and possibly also funding Web censorship in the capital. As calls grow outside China for a global code of conduct on freedom of expression and privacy among Internet and telecoms companies, BAOM's role as a mechanism of Internet censorship is a further reminder of the ethical costs of access to China's media sector. While the association's policing actions are limited in principle to companies in the Beijing area, they effectively target Internet users across China who use a platform based in the capital, where many Internet companies are headquartered.

A report released last month by the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF), written by a Chinese insider, lists the Beijing Association of Online Media on its chart of government Internet control bodies and notes that Web sites "not registered in Beijing are not subject to as much pressure." But this is changing too. The recruitment in June this year of 118 volunteer monitors by the Shenzhen Association of Online Media signals that sites in a second major Internet hub are being pulled into a virtual national system of policing through a puppet civic organization. This would include the popular instant messaging system qq.com, which until now has been exempted from stricter controls centered on Beijing.

Hong Bo, a Chinese blogger who writes under the alias Keso, says Internet growth is outpacing traditional forms of censorship and leaders are looking for other ways to keep the medium under control. "The issue now is that the amount of information available on the Web is growing, so that it can't be controlled relying solely on government supervision," Hong says.

BAOM was formed "willingly and jointly," according to its charter of association, by industry leaders in China's capital in October 2004. Its credibility was boosted by the presence of multinational brands and five Nasdaq-listed Internet firms. As the industry grew, other big fish were snared, like MySpace China, which joined up earlier this year. Prominent Chinese academics signed on to advisory roles.

BAOM's initial stated goal was to "promote the healthy and orderly development of online information services," but it was also pitched as a place to network. A spokesperson for Ericsson China, a member from the outset, says the professional association is "a bridge between us and other members, because online media plays an important role in our daily communications." Consistent with that intent, all through 2005 news releases coming out of the association were about friendly soccer matches and badminton tournaments.

But things are never so simple in China. The association underwent a quiet transformation in March and April 2006 that brought its potential as a control mechanism to the forefront. Chinese leaders intensified their focus on Internet censorship, as signaled by Party Secretary Hu Jintao's campaign for a "civilized Web" and top propaganda official Li Changchun's tour of Beijing's leading Web sites.

On April 9, 2006, just days after Mr. Li's inspection tour, 14 BAOM members, including Yahoo! China, issued a "Proposal for a Civilized Web"–a pledge to censor their content in line with Communist Party demands. The proposal was followed on April 12 by a "pact of self-discipline" signed initially by close to 40 association members. Official media characterized this as a push to eradicate "pornographic and violent" content. In the following weeks, more than 200 discussion forums were shut down and 1.5 million Web postings expunged.

These acts of "self-censorship" drew some fire outside China. But a more worrisome, perhaps unprecedented, trend went unnoticed. BAOM, an ostensible professional association, was invested with policing powers and transformed into a more direct organ of state media censorship.

On April 13, 2006, the Beijing Internet News and Information Council was formed within BAOM to enforce the terms of the self-discipline pact. It had the power to issue notices exacting public apologies from offending association members, make formal referrals to government authorities and force "immediate corrections." The same day a notice went out to the public: "We are seeking volunteers to take part in the work of monitoring the Internet. Monitors will be charged with providing leads on undesirable information to the Beijing Association of Online Media."

According to Min Dahong, a retired academic and Web expert who now serves as director of the Beijing Internet News and Information Council, the "volunteer" reports are not the council's responsibility. Nevertheless, a press release from BINIC's most recent session on Sept. 12, which ordered Web sites to strictly control user-generated online spoofs poking fun at the 2008 Olympic Games, said BAOM's team of online monitors should "add this type of undesirable information to the scope of their work over the next year."

It is clear, however, that BAOM is run directly by propaganda officials at the Beijing Internet Information Administrative Bureau, an office under the city's primary agent of Web censorship, the Information Office of the Beijing Municipal Government. The recent RSF report on Internet censorship in China detailed bans issued by Chen Hua, deputy director of the Beijing Internet Information Administrative Bureau and a key figure at BAOM.

Gao Gang, a Chinese journalism professor listed on BAOM's official Web site as a "standing director," referred a request for more information on the group to "Chen Hua of the organization." Mr. Chen never granted an interview, but a cordial e-mail response on September 20, 2007, made his dual roles clear:

Regards,

Chen Hua

Beijing Municipal Internet
Information Administrative Bureau

Beijing Association of Online Media

The use of "volunteers" to control China's Internet can be traced back to 2005, when a number of local governments mobilized online commentators, or wang ping yuan, to monitor online content. Recognizing the need to more actively guide online public opinion, authorities in Jiangsu province began paying "volunteers" on a free-lance basis for postings favorable to the leadership.

For each posting expressing party guidance in response to unfavorable information on the Web, authorities paid five mao, or roughly seven cents. The strongly ideological postings were easily recognizable to ordinary Web users, who coined the term "five mao posting."

According to a Hong Kong-based mainland Internet expert who asked to remain anonymous, BAOM's use of "volunteers" is a further innovation of these local Web control schemes. The expert called the use of industry associations for Web policing a "fourth tier" of Internet censorship, on top of user self-censorship, corporate complicity and government legal and propaganda controls–all of which are backed by the comprehensive filtering system known as China's "Great Firewall."

"We can say this fourth layer is a flexible form of control carried out by an organization with government backing and a civic identity pushing industry self-discipline. The government gives them money and authorizes them to handle cases actively, but it looks on the surface like a civic organization, a professional association," the expert says.

Zhan Jiang, a journalism professor at the China Youth University for Political Sciences, said the use of industry associations to police Web content allows party leaders to "take a step back" from censorship actions. "It seems not to be official, but actually it is. This allows them to keep up appearances internationally," Mr. Zhan said.