China's communist rulers spend vast amounts of money and deploy thousands of people to silence dissent on the internet, but small cracks are appearing in the "Great Firewall".

Crafty internet users employing new technologies that are relatively simple to master have been recently cited by Chinese security officials as a threat to their censorship capabilities.

China's President Hu Jintao considered internet security so important last year that he insisted tighter controls were a vital matter for the future of the country's socialist system.

The importance the communist leadership places on controlling the so-called "Great Firewall of China" was highlighted on Wednesday when authorities said they were not prepared to leave a chink in that wall for more than 20 000 reporters coming to Beijing for the 8-24 August Olympics.

Organising committee officials said the journalists would be given "sufficient" access to the internet but unspecified sites would be blocked.

Not surprising

"It is no surprise to most people anymore that China operates a Great Firewall," said Xiao Qiang, a former Chinese dissident who now directs the China Internet Project at the University of California at Berkeley.

"But some people might have expected that China's government would treat journalists differently during the Olympics simply because it is such a showcase."

"China has done so many things that are simply cosmetic in an effort to improve its image. But not for the internet."

Experts say more than 40 000 internet police are employed to implement the country's extensive web censorship system.

However, clever netizens can outwit those efforts by using software, mostly produced in the United States and Canada, that allows them to dodge around the firewall.

"For the people who are tech-savvy, getting round the Great Firewall is not a big problem," Xiao said.

"These things are just like any technical hurdle — if you are in the know it is easy. But for those who are not, it is tough. So overall, there are not that many people who are using this."

Getting around it

Experts said there are a number of technical ways of getting around the firewall, most of them based on the principle of using so-called proxy servers in third countries that give unfettered access to sites forbidden in China.

But so far only a fraction of China's internet users are aware of the proxy software systems, meaning millions are still unable to freely surf the web.

At the main press centre for the Games in Beijing, journalists unfamiliar with China's internet censorship could not access a wide range of sites on Wednesday.

These included sites for Amnesty International, the Tibet government-in-exile, dissidents, and ones giving information about the 1989 Tiananmen massacre in which the Chinese military crushed democracy protests.

Reporters Without Borders, the Paris-based press freedom group that last year described China as an "enemy of the internet," said it was surprised the International Olympic Committee had kowtowed so easily to China's leadership over web access.

"When China applied to host the Games they promised total press freedom and that must include internet access," said Vincent Brossel, the group's Asia Director.

"What a total humiliation this is for the (IOC President) Jacques Rogge. How can the IOC be so weak and feeble?"

He said that with nine days to go before the opening ceremony of the Games, at least 50 people were being held in Chinese jails for online activities deemed inappropriate by authorities.

AFP