Web Site Blocks Taiwan, Tibet Chat

AP Online
04-29-2000
Web Site Blocks Taiwan, Tibet Chat

HONG KONG (AP) -- An affiliate of Nasdaq-listed Chinadotcom blocked its chat-room users from discussing Taiwan independence shortly after a top mainland Chinese official warned media to avoid the sensitive subject, newspapers reported Saturday.

Phrases like ``Taiwan independence'' and ``Tibet independence'' were scrambled when they were typed in chat rooms at the Hongkong.com portal, the Ming Pao Daily said.

English letters were replaced by asterisks, Ming Pao said, and Chinese characters were also scrambled, the Apple Daily reported. Messages including those terms posted by Ming Pao reporters on the site's bulletin boards were quickly deleted, the paper said.

The Internet company is a spinoff of Hong Kong-based Chinadotcom, the pan-Asian Internet service provider that is partly owned by Beijing's official Xinhua News Agency. Hongkong.com, part of Chinadotcom's network of portal sites, is listed locally and has 1 million registered users.

Raymond Ch'ien, Hongkong.com's chairman, told Ming Pao that ``there are certain areas that are considered sensitive in every market. Even if there is freedom of speech, it is not absolute.''

Ch'ien is a member of Hong Kong's Executive Council, a top-level body that vets all government policies.

A spokesman for the company told the mass-circulation Apple Daily that ``Taiwanese independence is a very sensitive topic.''

The spokesman, who was not identified, said the company wants users to ``exercise self-discipline.''

Telephone calls to the company from The Associated Press were not answered Saturday afternoon.

Freedom of speech is a sensitive issue in Hong Kong, which has largely retained its free and vibrant media since coming under Chinese rule in 1997.

Taiwan and China have been governed separately since they split amid civil war in 1949, but Beijing still claims Taiwan as a renegade province to someday be reunited with the mainland.

Wang Fengchao, deputy director of China's liaison office in Hong Kong set off a furor earlier this month when he told media to avoid mentioning Taiwanese independence or reporting views that diverge from Beijing's official line.

The Hong Kong government echoes Beijing's views that Taiwan belongs to it -- and it insists that Hong Kong's press freedoms and individual rights are intact.

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