An independent source

The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences "Blue Book 2010" just reiterated a widely accepted fact - the World Wide Web has become an independent source of news and information in this country.

Owing largely to its democratic, if not anarchic, nature, the Internet has not been subordinate to any specific regime since its inception. We have seen consistent endeavors to influence it, but to date those efforts have turned out to be unsuccessful.

Whenever something believed to be detrimental to public opinion has occurred, usually there were attempts to supervise the online flow of information. But as we have seen in the past year, such measures have often backfired, resulting in even further-reaching ripples. From the ultimate not-guilty verdict for Deng Yujiao, the Hubei woman who stabbed to death a local official who was allegedly attempting to sexually harass her, to the scandal of human "bait" used by local authorities in Shanghai, the Web proved to be a powerful weapon against ruthless acts in the hands of otherwise voiceless men on the street.