Internet and Human Rights

By Wang Sixin

The author is Deputy Dean of the School of Politics and Law at the Communication University of China

When discussing the relationship between the Internet and human rights,we need to have a broad exploration of human rights issues across the current media environment, featuring rapidly growing technologies and increasingly extensive applications.

It is worth emphasizing that, since the Internet and its related applications are still under development, with Chinese society at a transitional stage, it is important for us to look at these issues with a dynamic view and handle human rights concerning the Internet in an open and updated manner.

Different origins, same goals

Human rights have a much longer history than the Internet. After World War II, human rights became the dominating discourse system of world politics as well as an important basis for resolving international disputes and major domestic issues.

The Internet was initially intended for military purposes as a solution to data storage and sharing among different computers during war time. Due to its great potential in data transmission and content sharing, the Internet entered colleges and research institutes in the 1990s,thus gradually becoming available for civil use.

Although starting late in comparison to the United States and other Western countries,China has caught up fast and is growing rapidly in terms of its Internet industry. In addition to the fast growth of netizens and domain names,China has its own Internet industry leaders such as Baidu, Tencent and Alibaba, which are among the top such companies in the world.

Chinese human rights have also progressed along with the flourishing Internet. In spite of their different properties and functions, the Internet has much to do with human rights.The Internet has had a huge impact on the theories and practice of human rights since it first debuted on the historical stage.

Interrelated relationship

The Internet’s interrelation with human rights is reflected in the fact that people can use it to exercise and enjoy a series of interrelated yet slightly different rights, such as free speech and press, or freedom of expression in scholarly terms, which are recognized and protected by Human Rights Conventions and constitutional laws.

With the progress of network technologies, the Internet has become a hit-area of crimes such as defamation and violation of individual privacy as sur fing online has become increasingly indispensable in modern daily life, which mainly accounts for why more and more state authorities enhance legislation and enforcement concerning the Internet to crack down on cyber crimes and protect individual rights for a more civilized and orderly cyberspace. Meanwhile, as the Internet plays a more significant part as in connecting various social resources, more and more economic, political and cultural activities take place online, and thus the Internet not only comprehensively changes the way people live, but also affects their conception of human rights and the ways of exercising and protecting the rights on the whole.

The Internet has almost all the features of other mass media prior to it. It exists as both print media and electronic media.Naturally, one can find in cyberspace the same human rights issues that once ap-peared in other forms of the mass media.

As a result, we should have a broader vision in discussing the relationship between the Internet and human rights. It is the appearance of print media in the 15th century that made people recognize what an important role individual expression, oral and written, has played in fulfilling oneself, promoting social stability, and even supervising the government and improving public politics, as well as how the publication license system damaged individual souls and national culture. It is also during the process of system criticism that a relatively systematic theory of modern free press was proposed, laying a solid foundation for modern theories of human rights.

In general, we can explore relations between the Internet and human rights by looking into how the Internet affects human rights in broad fields such as our lifestyles and the political organization form as well as in spec ific aspects including freedom of expression and the right to privacy.

The Internet has been comprehensively affecting our views on human rights and relevant practices and it will remain so. This conclusion is made based on the fact that the Internet bridges various social resources and is closely related to almost all life, having become a required skill. Under this circumstance, the Internet serves as an indispensable media form for states to respect,protect, and promote human rights and for individuals to claim their rights, especially through judicature.

By changing media ecology, the Internet changes the ways and attitudes of people in exercising political rights and freedom. The rise and flourishing of social networks such as the microblog make them irreplaceable in public discussion and policy publicizing. They have played an important role in comprehensively promoting open governance.

Situation in China

When the Internet launched in China, many Western scholars spoke highly of its potential role in promoting global democracy. Some even predicted that China, a country with a different political and economical system from theirs, would undergo revolutionary changes along with the popularization of the Internet.

Two decades later, China has not undergone the changes they predicted. Instead, it has seen remarkable economic achievements that have laid a foundation for the development of its own human rights.

However, this does not mean that the Internet hasn’t made an impact on our human rights ideas and practice. On the contrary, people’s understanding of human rights changes along with a changing society, perhaps due to emerging media represented by the Internet.

Meanwhile, other contributing factors concerning the change in human rights ideas are at work, such as traditional Chinese culture, as well as the unique political practices put in place after the founding of new China.

Many changes take place along with historical context,including the theories and judicial practice of human rights, the ways in which a government fulfills human rights responsibilities, as well as the approach to civil society and individuals’ claim to human rights. However, the one thing that remains constant is the basic content of human rights.

The issue of human rights is still relevant in resolving international disputes and domestic issues, as well as a key measure of the just ification of a government, which accounts for the active participation of Chinese Government in international affairs and its high regard for human rights.

China still differs greatly from Western countries in terms of opinions concerning certain human rights, such as political rights. There are many cases in which Western countries undermine China’s national image under the banner of protecting human rights, but actually harbor ulterior motives. In these cases, it is clear why Western countries often flock to human rights issues related to China.

Meanwhile, the promotion of human rights theories, and the public claim to fundamental rights, will all eventually be covered by the media. It is therefore of vital importance to understand the rules of the media and its use. ■