China has become the world's biggest active censor. It is trying to keep Chinese from the diversity of facts and opinion that fosters democracy in the world. It is also trying to prevent the world from the facts about China. These allied activities are partly enforced by a combination of violence, intimidation and the complicity of spineless and unprincipled foreign business interests. Chinese information policy has a single, unified goal. The Communist Party holds it can harness the Internet to allow the good information to flow while preventing the bad information entirely. For the moment, it is largely effective, but the holes are obvious. While Chinese officials continue to stick their fingers in the holes, the dykes continue to leak. Information is getting through to China, and spreading. Information is getting out of China, and spreading. A recent report on Chinese Internet policy by the Rand Corporation of America, You've Got Dissent, concluded that the Beijing censorship could succeed only in the short term. The most recent, high-profile clash of Communism and conversation involved the Internet search engine Google.com, generally regarded as the leader in the world at ferreting out information. Chinese surfers love Google because they can work it in the Chinese language, and because the search engine keeps copies of web pages itself. If Chinese censors block access to a web site turned up by Google, users can still see a full copy of the site by clicking on a ``cache'' button on the search engine's page.
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