Beijing: iTunes is off the menu

When Beijing won the right to hold the 2008 Olympic games it announced that the event would herald a time increased openness for China. Press freedoms would be increased, censorship would be decreased, and the Chinese people would have more rights than ever to get their stories out and to learn of the stories of others.

Naturally, veteran China watchers greeted this pronouncement with hope, but also with a fair amount of pragmatism. With the overall opinion being something along the lines of 'While there would certainly be a lot of tokenism, and maybe even a few surprising gestures of openness, Beijing would still stand firm over core issues'.

That was several years ago now. The games have come, and they have just about gone, and it would appear that the China watchers were right. While there has been more debate and there is more access to information (at least for now), the core issues remain off limits. Indicating what China watchers have always known: That Beijing is more interested in the appearance of change than actual change

Nowhere is this better illustrated than on the latest battleground between Beijing and the West: iTunes, now appears to be on th wrong side of the Great Firewall of China.

iTunes V Beijing?

For the most part iTunes and has operated under the radar of the government, with officials in Beijing being more concerned about its capacity to muscle domestic firms out of the download market than by anything else.

However, all of this changed on 5 August 2008, when iTunes began allowing users to download "Songs for Tibet", a compilation of Western songs released by the US based Art of Peace Foundation to highlight the plight of the Tibetan people. shortly after the album was made available iTunes became unavailable on the Chinese Mainland.

Apple quickly acknowledged that an issue existed but refused to provide further information. Beijing's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology; the body which carries out much of China's internet censorship, refused to be drawn on the issue and would neither confirmed that the was a problem accessing iTunes on the mainland, nor clarify whether they were involved.


China watchers speculate the Beijing became concerned after the Art of Peace Foundation announced that it had offered free downloads of the album to international athletes attending the games, and then panicked once it realized that some of the athletes had downloaded the album from overseas iTunes servers while inside China. It was shortly after the announcement was made that iTunes became unavailable.

Some China Watchers have also speculated that Beijing's reaction may have been spurred on by the reviews section of the iTunes website, which allows iTunes users to place comments and recommendations. The section for Songs for Tibet quickly attracted the attention of both Chinese and foreigners who are sympathetic to Tibet, as well as many Fenqing: Young Chinese who use nationalism as an outlet for their wider social anger, who traded claim and counter claim. Officially, Beijing does not acknowledge that there is an on going debate over Tibet and its status. As such the existence of such a debate on a popular website is likely to be troubling for Beijing, especially since it much of the pro-China debate revolves around issues that Beijing also wishes to cover up.

Business as Usual?

While most Western nations experience only minimal state censorship, it remains common on the Mainland for the government to place certain topics "off limits" to the media.

In such situations the topic will either disappear entirely: with both the discussion of topic and discussion on the restrictions placed on the topic being banned, or to will be restricted to the state line, meaning that the government is the only source of information that may be used and that discussions must be limited to certain key areas and ideals.

Usually, topics are placed off limits if they embarrass the government or otherwise show that it has made a mistake, or if an open discussion of the topic risks the revealing of facts that contradict the official state line. Debate on topics is also commonly restricted in situations where the existence of differing opinions about the topic contradicts the state assertion that the Chinese people are all of one mind and that no debate exists.

Thus, it is common for Beijing to block websites, or to ban publications, which it deems a threat to its state line or to its authority.

As a result, China typically places the discussion of most Tibetan issues off limits, including the fact that Tibetan culture and the Tibetan people have distinct and different routes from the cultures and peoples found on the Mainland, and the fact that a significant portion of Tibetans wish to maintain a seperate identity from the Mainland.

iTunes in China?

Although iTunes is popular in China, and Apple recently opened a trading store in Beijing iTunes has no official online Mainland presence, and is thus not subject to Chinese law. Chinese who use iTunes typically use overseas servers and purchase content using credit cards issued by foreign banks in order to get round regionalized download restrictions.

Songs for Tibet?

Songs for Tibet is a compilation album released by the US based Art of Peace Foundation. It was released on iTunes on 5 August. It contains tracks from 20 A and B list Western artists, most of which are remixes of existing tracks.

The album also includes a 15 minutes presentation made by the Dalai Lama. It is Beijing's official state line that the Dalai Lama is a separatist and a sponsor of terrorism, this comes in the face of the Lama's calls for Tibetan autonomy rather than independent, and despite the fact that Beijing has consistently failed to provide any evidence that the Lama condones, encourages or facilitates acts of terrorism.

Songs for Tibet has also been released through on Amazon. However, while the entire iTunes site was blocked by authorities in Beijing, only the Amazon page regarding Songs for Tibet has been effected.

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