The Great Chinese Internet Crash

[Commentary] The Internet suffered perhaps its largest crash of all time on Jan. 21, when most of China's 500 million Web users were unable to get online for up to eight hours. Nine days later New York Times reporter Austin Ramzy was forced to leave China, the latest in a string of foreign journalists denied work visas by the Beijing government. The link in these two stories is the Communist Party's obsessive control over information. Ramzy's case is all too familiar, since China has long squeezed foreign journalists to punish and deter reporting on sensitive matters such as the family fortunes of China's top leaders. The case of the Internet crash is more unusual. Beijing has devoted enormous resources to Internet censorship but it still struggles to control the flow of information. A modest Western investment could poke holes in the Great Firewall or even bring it tumbling down.