Asia Wary of Being Wired

On the Internet, laser pulses packed with information cut through international borders at light speed, driving holes in the dikes of traditional authority everywhere and promoting political freedom and free markets.

That's the theory, anyway.

In reality, the worldwide computer network is exposing the ambivalent attitudes that many governments and societies harbor about the free flow of information--and is being molded to take them into account.

Nowhere is this more striking than in Asia. Lured by the potential economic benefits of Internet connections, the East is rapidly embracing the Net's revolutionary technology while rejecting its underlying ideology of free information, equality and unbridled competition.

In puritanical Singapore, political leaders worry that the Internet will undermine morality. They have taken to reading private e-mail as part of an all-out effort to beat back the menace of online pornography.

China is afraid that the Internet will foment political rebellion. So officials are limiting access and making sure that the Chinese portion can easily be severed from the world in the event of a political uprising such as 1989's Tiananmen Square protests.

Hong Kong, a powerful outpost of the global electronics industry, is worried about gangsters and the threat that hackers pose to business. Law enforcement officials have carried out raids on Internet service providers to root out any criminals.

And in Japan, traditional cultural insularity means that even as government agencies, academic institutions and corporations rush to the Internet and scour it for information, they are doing little to put on information of their own.

Asia isn't the only region concerned about content on the Internet. In Germany, authorities have launched an aggressive campaign against online pornography and neo-Nazi literature. In one case, they forced U.S.-based online provider Compuserve to suspend customer access to 200 sexually explicit discussion groups. In the United States, Congress this week passed legislation that would ban "indecent" material online unless steps were taken to block access by children.

But fear of what the Internet makes possible runs much deeper in Asia, where traditional cultures place a high value on a strict moral and economic order. Governments stand ready to enforce those values, even when it requires the kind of heavy-handed regulation and monitoring that would, at the very least, cause an uproar in many Western countries.