A comparative study of Internet regulatory policies in the Greater China Region: Emerging regulatory models and issues in China, Hong-Kong SAR, and Taiwan☆
Introduction
In the past few decades, the Greater China Region has demonstrated exponential economic growth. Because communication technology (such as the Internet) has often been viewed as an important component of economic developments by governments in this region, Internet penetration rates have increased rapidly in the past 10 years (Berra, 2003, Fan, 2005, Martinsons et al., 2005). For example, the number of Internet users in China (est. population 1.3 billion) has reached 100 million, according to market analysts at Panlogic (cited in Communications of the ACM, 2005, p. 9). Chinese government also has taken proactive measures to promote Internet users to reach 0.12 billion by 2005 (Wu, 3/7/2005). China presently ranks No. 3 in the number of broadband users (Chuang, 2005) in the world. In Taiwan, there are about 12.2 million Internet users (est. population 23 million) (FIND, 2005, Internet World Statistics, 2005). Broadband penetration in Taiwan is 16.87% and ranks No. 5 in the world (Chuang, 2005). Similarly, in Hong-Kong (est. population 6.9 million), personal computer penetration rate is 71.1%, while household Internet penetration rate is 64.9% (Hong-Kong Bureau of Statistics, cited in Hsu, 2004). The number of information service providers (ISPs) has grown from zero to 201 in 2003 (Office of the Telecommunications Authority, 2004). About 21% of the total population in Hong-Kong (1.46 million) is using broadband services (Information Services Department, 2005). Broadband service also penetrates 60% of the residential households (Information Services Department, 2005). While China has a relatively low Internet penetration rate of 7.3%, Taiwan (53.5%) and Hong-Kong (69.9%) have a high Internet penetration rate (Internet World Statistics, 2005).
Because of the rapid diffusion of the Internet in these societies, policy discussions about its effects have notably centered on the techno-economic area. Nevertheless, the emerging information society in the Greater China Region has challenged public policy regimes to regulate the Internet in their society. Given that the making of Internet regulations will be influenced by a diversity of stakeholders taking diverse social visions and values (Venturelli, 2002), these local regulatory models will be inevitably influenced by political and cultural factors embedded in their individual society.
However, most studies about international Internet policy literature has been devoted to the discussion regarding copyright protection and piracy (Burk, 1998, Gellman, 1995), encryption (Barth and Smith, 1997), transborder data flow among multinational corporations (Branscomb, 1986), freedom of speech and censorship (Corn-Revere, 2003, Fogelman, 1994, Mayer-Schönberger and Foster, 1997), and impacts on national sovereignty as well as regulatory bodies (Cerf, 2003, Froomkin, 1997, Perritt, 1998). In this study, I explore one aspect of comparative Internet policy and to investigate the influence of the national cultural characteristics on the stipulation and implementation of regulatory models in the Greater China Region, which includes three Chinese ethnic majority political entities, China, Hong-Kong SAR, and Taiwan. These three societies were all influenced by Chinese culture historically. Furthermore, in spite of great similarities in their ethnic composition, the political systems in these two societies have been influenced by different historical paths in modern times. While China’s democracy was overturned by the Communist Party in 1949 after the defeat of the Nationalist Party, Taiwan becomes a full democracy after several presidential elections. While Hong-Kong was ruled as a British colony, it was handed over to China in 1997 and becomes a special administrative region. As a result, these three regions present fascinating cases to study how politics has interacted with cultural characteristics in the making of Internet regulatory policies in the Greater China Region.
Although a comparative perspective is common to the communication policy field (Dutton et al., 1987, Edelstein et al., 1978, Homet, 1979, McQuail and Sinue, 1986, Rogers and Balle, 1985), most of the previous studies about Internet policy area solely focused on a single-nation study of Internet regulations (Branscomb, 1986, Bryre, 1998, Bryre, 2003, Chang et al., 1999, Choy, 2003, Fogelman, 1994, Krebs, 2001, Venturelli, 2002). However, Crews and Thierer (2003) argued that the Internet has challenged concept of governance and jurisdiction. Recently, there have been increasing interests in cross-national and comparative analyses of regulatory reactions to Internet-related regulatory issues (Aoki, 2000, de Kloer, 2002, Johnson and Post, 1997, Perritt, 1998). In this study, I extended from Dutton et al.’s (1987) model to examine the impact of national cultural factors on Internet regulations in the Greater China Region.
Section snippets
Literature review
The rapid diffusion of the Internet in the Greater China Region has created many interests among scholars to examine the impact of new communication technology on government’s control of the society (Editorial, 2003). The global nature of the Internet has further challenged government’s abilities to effectively control Internet contents. The emerging global computer network is highly problematic from the regulatory point of view (Cox, 2003, Johnson and Post, 1996). Especially at the early stage
The effect of collectivism–individualism
The telecommunications and information technology sector in the Greater China Region has experienced rapid development in the past years as a result of government deregulations (Venturelli, 2002). Nevertheless, the deregulatory trend in this region has complicated the policymaking process of Internet contents regulations. Although the telephony sector has been heavily regulated by governments in this region, the Internet, as well as the information service industry, has been relatively less
Conclusion
In the Greater China Region, regulatory challenges for local governments are created not only from technological, but also from cultural points of views. Because the Internet can contribute to the improvements of economic, political, and social benefits of people in this region, governments have taken pro-active measures to promote the diffusion of the Internet (Fan, 2005, Lau, 1999, Yan and Pitt, 1999). Nevertheless, as Paltridge concluded (1996, cited in Fan, 2005, p. 192), countries and
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The paper is partially based on a research grant (RP-124-000-002-112) from the National University of Singapore. The author would like to thank Mr. Chia Song Yuan for his kind assistance in this project. An earlier version of the manuscript has been presented at the 2005 Annual Conference of International Association for International Communication Studies (IAICS) in Taipei, Taiwan. The author is grateful to insights from two anonymous reviewers about the earlier draft of this manuscript.