• Reuters, Friday, February 17, 2006 10:15 AM

It may be impossible to censor the Web after all. Reuters has a story about a Chinese man able to slip past Beijing's censors to spread news of widespread government corruption. Lu Xinde is a one-man show who publishes entries on any one of 49 blogs he uses to stay ahead of Chinese censors. "They shut down one, so I move to the other," he said. Investigative journalists like Li are creating a sizable demand among the Chinese public--particularly rural farmers--for more freedom. The Internet, Li said, is "Like the Yellow River. You can guide its course, but you can't block it and you can't turn it back." Despite the threat of jail time, Li moves forward, publishing posts from different Internet cafés in rural China. He understands international companies like Yahoo and Google when they comply with China's censors, "but morally it's wrong to sell people's freedom," he said. Li's Web sites are often shut down for several months by nervous or intimidated operators, but by moving to the next blog "I can still spread news across the whole country in 10 minutes, while the propaganda officials are still wondering what to do."

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