Google was gagged. The Chinese government recently blocked access to the popular Internet search engine for several days -- before suddenly reversing course for reasons still unclear -- in an attempt to promote a "healthy atmosphere" in the runup to the November meeting of the Chinese leadership. While Beijing has long tried to control its citizens' access to information, the Internet has complicated that task immeasurably. Moreover, the Chinese government -- or any government for that matter -- cannot hope to seal off parts of the Internet without threatening to derail its economy.

It is estimated that there are about 45 million Internet users in China. This is an explosive expansion, considering that only about 100,000 people were online in China in 1997. According to official statistics, there were 3,700 Chinese Web sites in July 1998. Two years later, that figure had reached more than 27,000. With the number of Internet users expected to double every six months, a recent study concludes that China could have the world's biggest online population in three years.

That poses real problems for a government that demands its citizens view the world through a very narrow prism. Since China first went online in 1995, access has been allowed only through official servers, whose administrators block access to material the government deems "harmful." That is a flexible and expansive concept, notoriously capricious. In the past, it has been used to screen out foreign news providers and others that the government considers subversive, such as prodemocracy and other dissident and human rights groups, and Taiwanese newspapers.