Internet censors and dissenters play a tangled game of cat and mouse. Web users can bypass the firewall by going through servers outside China, but at their own risk. Internet account holders are supposed to register with police. Cybercafes are supposed to provide lists of their customers to the authorities, who are struggling to police a growing cyber community. The number of Internet accounts doubled in just six months to reach 4 million by the end of July.

On June 4, 1997, the eighth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, Tunnel became the mainland's first electronic underground journal. VIP Reference, which burst on the scene shortly after Tunnel's premiere, is run by pro-democracy advocates who specialize in unvarnished news reports about everything from official corruption to infighting among Chinese leaders. They teach clients how to dodge censors using proxy servers and free Yahoo! or Hotmail accounts. Sent free and unsolicited to Chinese accounts, sometimes via encrypted attachments, the e-zine even finds its way into the mailboxes of mainland commissars in charge of Internet security.

Beijing has failed to devise a high-tech defense against this pinpoint e-mail bombing, so it has chosen to fight back in other ways. In China's first trial of an alleged e-dissident, a Shanghai court sentenced the owner of an Internet job-search and marketing firm to two years in prison last December. Netrepreneur Lin Hai was found guilty of inciting subversion by selling 30,000 Chinese e-mail addresses to VIP Reference, which the court described as a "hostile foreign organization." Lin's wife says he provided the addresses to VIP "as part of his business" without knowing what they'd be used for. In an appeal to United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, Lin's wife argued that the Internet is just a tool, neither good nor bad: "If someone is killed with a knife, should you arrest the knifemaker or the murderer?"

Beijing's answer: both. Authorities have also attacked the nascent China Democracy Party, which aspires to become a legal opposition, for apparently routine use of computers and the Internet. CDP leader Wang Youcai and several colleagues were recently sentenced to more than 10 years in jail each for allegedly conspiring with foreign forces to overthrow the Chinese state. How? The specific charges against Wang include using e-mail to send pro-democracy literature abroad, and accepting $800 from foreigners to buy a computer.

On the mainland, hackers are known as hei ke, or "black guests," and they are increasingly active on both sides of the cyberwars. Beijing is expanding its security apparatus to defend official information systems, and issues alerts against computer intruders. Amid rumors that Taiwan hackers were planning to disrupt last week's 50th-anniversary celebration of communist rule in Beijing, security officials circulated a memo warning government units to beef up computer security. "There was some pretty intense hacking in August" affecting official Web sites, says Prof. Xu Rongsheng, an anti-hacking specialist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences who advises government officials on computer security. "About a month ago a financial Web site was attacked by Taiwan hackers."

It wasn't the first such invasion. Early this year two Chinese who electronically pilfered money from a bank were executed by the authorities. In protest, hackers calling themselves "Legions of the Underground" attacked official Chinese Web sites, including that of the Finance Bureau, for a full week. The group replaced the home page of the government-run China Human Rights Web site, and taunted official Webmasters by likening their technical ability to "that of a 12-year-old kid." The same site had been invaded earlier by "Bronc Buster," a hacker who defaced the home page with the words "bulls — t propaganda."

Now, the authorities seem to be deploying their own black guests. Last April Hong Kong-based activist Lau San Ching helped establish a Web site commemorating victims of the Tiananmen bloodshed (www .june4.org), and Beijing quickly blocked local access to the site. Then NATO's accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade triggered a patriotic backlash. Chinese hackers superimposed a likeness of Bill Clinton wearing a Hitler mustache on the U.S. naval information-center home page. Angry nationalists bashed Lau's Web site for "traitorous" criticism of China. Saboteurs attacked, planting obscenities and crashing the site's public forum, which functioned as a "virtual democracy" wall. Someone was "systematically and regularly hacking our Web site," Lau says. "We don't have proof but we think the government had a hand in it."

There was stronger evidence of a government role in the cyber counterattack on Falun Gong. By early this year, the spiritual movement was claiming 70 million supporters, 9 million more than the Communist Party. When authorities refused to grant their demands for official recognition, Beijing lieutenants of Falun Gong guru Li Hongzhi decided to protest. "It was spontaneous," said Li, who now lives in New York. "It was organized through the Internet." Authorities believe a few "cell" leaders of the movement who have access to the Internet used e-mail to plot strategy, and then relayed instructions via phone and word of mouth to their members. On April 25, 10,000 Falun Gong followers — mostly old women and retirees — converged on downtown Beijing in the largest demonstration China has seen since 1989.

The crackdown was just as sweeping. Stunned party bosses ordered the arrest and prosecution of Falun Gong leaders and members, and blocked access to the Falun Gong Web sites. They dispatched censors to screen all Chinese Web forums and bulletin boards and erase any favorable remarks about guru Li, whom they denounced as a charlatan and doomsayer. They even ordered one Internet service provider to suspend e-mail service for two days, after dramatic accounts of the clampdown began circulating in cyberspace.

Falun Gong Web site managers in the West were under siege. By early August hackers were overrunning their sites, paralyzing one with a flood of continuous electronic messages. Then someone masqueraded as a legitimate Webmaster to gain access to the server, and inadvertently left behind an Internet address in Beijing. When an Associated Press reporter found a phone number for that address and called, the receptionist identified it as the public security ministry's Internet monitoring bureau.

Beijing had failed to hide its secret offensive, or to guard its flanks. "A lot of mainland Web sites are vulnerable because their organizers aren't aware of the need to protect against hackers," says Xu, the computer adviser. That became clear in August after Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui's latest tilt toward independence provoked China's leaders, who insist Taiwan is still a province of the mainland. On Aug. 7, a pro-Beijing hacker broke into official Taiwan Web sites, replacing entire pages with the slogan, "Only one China exists in the world and only one is needed."

Taiwan hackers fired back the next day. They invaded mainland government Web sites, leaving behind images of Taiwan's flag and an audio file of its national anthem. For weeks the cyberbattles raged. Pro-Beijing hackers crashed Taiwan's National Assembly Web sites. Taiwanese e-insurgents responded with a defiant message on the Web page of a provincial government tax authority: "If you dare attack, we will dare to declare independence."

Things were getting serious. Taiwan's chief of the general staff said such hacker assaults should be regarded "as the beginning of a potential electronic warfare." On the mainland, the People's Liberation Army has long foreseen and feared the prospect of future battles by computer and modem. In July the Liberation Army Daily said China needs "to go all out to develop high-quality 'Internet warriors'."

Others want a truce. Netrepreneurs say Beijing cannot sustain its policy of both suppressing and promoting the Internet, and one day will have to choose. Democracy advocates say they never wanted to become "hacktivists," because hacking is inimical to freedom of speech and the press. "I don't believe in making computers crash or leaving obscene messages on Web pages," says Lau, who has not hacked back in response to attacks on his june4.org site. Alas, passivity won't necessarily bring peace. China's secret societies have long histories, and the black guests are likely to be no different.

With Leslie Pappas in Beijing and Jane Rickards in Taipei

Newsweek International, October 11, 1999