Differences in role of law, architecture, public interests, economic and cyber-libertarian

After reviewing Internet regulations in four Chinese societies with content-based, access-based, and censorship authority, TABLE 3 shows that the four societies develop different kinds of Internet regulations, although Confucian ideals exist there. With

32 Interviewed with Dr. Stuart Koe (Ammon, 2002). Koe’s attractive and popular web site Fridae.com is pure Singapore class and style. It’s an interactive sight with news, a calendar of events, bulleting board, photos, chat rooms, dating services as well as thoughtful features about gay life in Asia. It sponsors and advertises dances, parties. special events and merchandise. Nearly as important as the content is the fact that it recently celebrated its second anniversary of being out and proud—while cleverly avoiding controversial labels such as ‘rainbow community’, ‘pride power’, or ‘gay and lesbian’.

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regard to history, much of the law and methods of government control of the media in the region were enacted by the colonial authorities and later refined by postcolonial regimes. For instance, it is interesting to see the sodomy laws enacted by Hong Kong³³ and Singapore governments, especially with regards to gay related activity.

In Lessig's view, architecture is the foremost regulator on the Internet. In his own words: “Cyberspace is an architecture first. It is a platform that gets designed. It is constituted by a set of code – by software and hardware that make cyberspace as it is.

This code imbeds certain values; it enables certain practices; it sets the terms on which life in cyberspace is lived, as crucially as the laws of nature set the terms on which life in real space are lived (Lessig, 2000)." But from Li’s (2002) experience in China and Singapore, it would appear that for the Internet, the Law is the most crucial regulator, and it directly influences the other regulators, including the Architecture.

Governments do try to control the Internet; pornography and hate speech are targets of web-based censorship and remain ongoing themes of concern in regulating gay websites. After reviewing the various Internet regulations, the differences among them also demonstrate that China and Singapore have taken a more instrumentalist approach to the role of law than Hong Kong and Taiwan (Rodriguez, 2000). As Lessig (1999) indicates, some governments, regardless of cost, are willing to adopt technologies to block contexts (such as China and Singapore). Some others would not go to such great

33In August 24, 2005, a 20-year-old gay man in Hong Kong won a legal challenge of laws against homosexuality including one that calls for a life sentence for sodomy when one or both men are younger than 21. Previously, sexual intimacy between two men below the age of 21 was a criminal offence even though sexual intimacy between heterosexuals and lesbians is allowed after the age of 16. Group sex between gay men, even though in private and conducted by consenting adults, was also criminal, while such activities between heterosexuals and lesbians above 16 was allowed. An act of sodomy, submitted as the natural sexual expression of gay men, below the age of 21 was a criminal offence with possible life imprisonment if it was conducted between two men (Wong, 2005).

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lengths to control access. If the costs were too high, they would simply leave the regulations aside and move on to other, more important economic activities (such as Hong Kong and Taiwan).

These differences also show that China and Singapore use law more to protect and serve government interests than to protect individual interests. In Singapore and China, the "rule by law" approach is deeply rooted in classical Chinese philosophy (Schwartz, 1957). In addition to a strong ideological basis, the lack of effective constitutional protections further contributes to creating an environment conducive to law being used in an instrumentalist fashion (Thorpe, 1994). Accordingly, a long history of the

government's use of various laws as a means of social control, such as subduing the political opposition and employing social engineering, exists in Singapore and China (Sikorski, 1996). Moreover, a long history of social control via censorship of all types of media exists. Therefore, the existence of a broad administrative law framework to censor the Internet is but another example of China and Singapore taking an

“instrumentalist” approach to the role of law.

According to Lessig (1999), law, as a means of control, depends on the threat of sanctions by the state. Subsequently, the stringent stipulations by China and Singapore governments could constitute proactive intimidation for the public. As Tsui (2001) points out, intimidation is a very strong weapon in the battle for Internet control, which the two governments use. In contrast, individualism and liberalism have heavily influenced Hong Kong and Taiwan, explaining the distinctive role of law in these two Chinese societies, they prefer the protection of individual interests.

Why has the Internet has been controlled with efficiency? From the above discussion, we can notice that the essential cause involves the distinctive character of Chinese societies. Dworkin (2002) pointed out that Asia focused its attention on meeting the economic and social needs of its citizens, while western countries devoted

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considerably more attention to meeting its citizens' rights to freedom, including the right to free speech, freedom of association, and other related rights³⁴. Dworkin also stated that it was widely believed in the West that Chinese traditions and popular opinion endorsed a more collectivist, less individualistic view of citizens' rights and responsibilities than the post-Enlightenment view that was more popular in the West, and that the so-called "Asian" values the Chinese embraced were less supportive of individual human rights than the so-called "Western" values³⁵. The point has been accepted that freedom of speech can be secondary to substance wealth. Consequently, China and Singapore take for granted the concept that free speech is less important than economic development.

This study has also shown the ongoing process in which China and Singapore are having its own way to the Information age through governmental planning and control.

It is difficult for western liberal critics to neutrally review this approach for it against the common belief in the liberal media system. But if we take the political, cultural, and social context into account, this approach is another application of authoritarian media.

Many countries are working on the utilization of the Internet to advance their com petitiveness in the global economy. By facilitating the information infrastructure to get connected and involved with the international community, the motivation is "outward."

However, this motivation can not be observed in China and Singapore. Internet development in China and Singapore is different not only because of its different ideology and social systems which prevent them from being “too connected” to the world, but also because of their identical cultures and social issues which will not allow

34 Dworki’s speech given at Fudan University, Shanghai, on May 24, 2002, available at http://www.cc.org.cn/

zhoukan/xueshuxunxi/0204/02062211014.htm

35 See Taking rights seriously in Beijing, Dworkin’s speech given at http://www.nybooks.com /articles/article- preview?article_id=15692

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them to be inferior to others. Based on those policies and applications, the drive for Internet development is rather an “inward” one, which focuses on improvement of its inner communication ability.

Ⅴ. Conclusion

This study examines different gay website regulations in four Chinese societies.

Singapore and China use the law more to protect and serve government needs or protect the public interests than to provide services for individual interests. Hong Kong and Taiwan take an opposite approach. Moreover, Hong Kong and Taiwan allow commercial service providers to flourish, letting market forces decide the level and quality of Internet services, instead of implementing censorship on the Internet.

Conversely, China and Singapore have made no secret of trying to control the Internet and filter what their citizens can see.

It is interesting for us to see that the four Chinese societies may well be considered a litmus test of traditional Confucian values, confronting a new age of individualistic self-expression. The under-thirty generation of men and women—whether in Singapore, Hong Kong, Taipei, Beijing, or Shanghai--are for the first time questioning the absoluteness of traditions that subtract from personal will and personal identity. It is probably the first time in Chinese history that anyone has been willing to challenge this long-standing “cultural imperialism”³⁶. With the coming of the information technology age, certain forces from new generations, nonexistent in previous generations, have started to infuse these old traditions. There is now a

36 For countless generations, at least four powerful forces have unquestionably controlled the lives of Chinese people. (1) Heterosexual monogamous marriage; (2) bearing of descendants, (3) personal subjection to family cohesion, social habits and religious rituals; and (4) closed role-assignments within the multigenerational family system (child, worker, elder). Personal choice and individual self-determination have been diminished without serious challenge for as long as history has been written here (Ammon, 2001).

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groundswell of significant change in this imbalance between unquestioned conformity and individual assertion.

With the increase of the Chinese speaking population on the Internet³⁷, intentions are very practical. During this process of adjustment in Internet regulation, it eventually becomes a necessary step to execute its more ambitious intentions. It won’t be completed if examining the gay website regulations without looking at the implications of this Chinese Tongzhi way to the information age. Hopefully, the approach of this paper will be a valuable finding for non-western Internet policy.

We also found that the growing commercialization of the gay space in Chinese-speaking cyberspace marks a paradoxical development of the internet, where state control, a degree of freedom of expression, and self-censorship coexist. Even China and Singapore are traditionally conservative countries when facing gay issues, and are known for their stringent laws. But they are also among the top economical and technological countries of twenty-first century. The clash of these two forces, old and new, is slowly but surely bringing better change for gay people here. Even under the control of the Internet, the gay users of China and Singapore have tried to use the Internet as a mode of alternative expression with some success and some failure in the face of government hostility. Significantly, the four societies also generate social capital and facilitate cultural shifts toward materialist values among virtual community members. From this point of view, this study may provide a different aspect of Internet technology applications and the future development of gay websites, which needs to be noticed.

37 Chinese is the second place in the top language used in the web (the second largest number of users of the Internet by the language, see TABLE 2).

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TABLE 1

Internet Users in Asia-Pacific Nations and Regions