Beijing enforces the party line

The new rules also require those logging on to do so using a verifiable identity. This is considered anathema. Most students now log on with one or more pseudonyms. This allows them to speak to the other sex and express private thoughts without embarrassment. A Beijing University student points out that most boards using real names have failed.

"When we use our real names we are lying; when we use false names, we speak the truth," he says.

Ironically, when ytht.net closed in September, the more patriotic Tsinghua message board administrators voluntarily filtered out all references to the Beijing University shutdown. Now the Tsinghua board is a shadow of its former self as well.

Last year Tsinghua students felt alarm at an Internet "pornography crackdown" - which many interpreted as a stalking horse for a broader closure. But nothing happened, at least not right away.

"The Tsinghua group thought of themselves as 'good boys' willing to go along with the authorities," says one Beijing University student. "But now they are closed too."

"I don't know why they are doing this," says one Tsinghua graduate. "But they are pushing students, even those of us who are patriotic, to be in opposition. They are taking away our private space."

A main instrument in the message board crackdown are on-campus party agencies. At Beijing University, it was an agency known as the Youth Research Institute. The institute is informed by the education ministry, propaganda department, and public-security bureau. It seeks to be studiously invisible on campus, even telling students who know of its existence not to speak of it.

A year ago the institute began closing in on ytht.net. The university message board had been proudly independent, student-run, and hired its own staff. Little by little, the institute began to intervene - hiring censors that watched the board 24 hours a day.

Last year, for example, during a famous China-wide Internet protest about a poor farmer killed by a petulant BMW driver in the northeast, the institute clamped down hard. It forbid discussion of the case on "triangle," the most popular current-affairs board.

Finally, the ax came without warning in September, shortly after students began to fight for the identity of ytht.net to remain intact.

"Yes, it was way too popular," says a Beijing University student. "But it was closed because students thought they could bargain to keep it open. They wanted to protect the message board, and thought they could negotiate."

Overseas graduates of Nanjing University, who relished logging onto "Little lily," the college message board, were indignant about being cast out last month. In recent weeks they hired a private server, and titled it "Wild lily."

In a message to netizens on their new board, the students said that "the wild lily will have a spring, as well."

Page: 1 | 2 | 3