China's leaders have a new watchdog: the Internet.

• Author: Kristof, Nicholas D.
• Position: Brief Article

The Chinese Communist Party may finally have met its match--the Internet. The Internet is beginning to play the watchdog role in China that the press plays in the West. It is also eroding the leadership's monopoly on information, and is complicating the traditional policy of "nei jin wai song"--cracking down at home while pretending to foreigners to be wide open. Some 100 million Chinese now surf the Web; e-mail and Web chat rooms are ubiquitous. The authorities have arrested a growing number of Web dissidents, but there just aren't enough police to control the Internet. So where is...