VIP Reference contains exactly what the filters are meant to keep out: articles and essays about democratic and economic evolution in China. The name itself is a play on the Reference News, a publication with similar content but for top cadres' eyes only.
Editors say VIP Reference is for China's real VIPs - ordinary people.
Editors have found one easy way to get around the Internet roadblocks, which can stop access to specific Websites, but find it more difficult to screen private e-mail. The group distributes the magazine throughout China with shotgun blasts of e-mail to about 250,000 addresses compiled from commercial and public lists. The magazine has even found its way into the mailbox of the head of Shanghai's security division.
News updates go out daily, and the main edition is released about every 10 days. In most cases, recipients can get themselves off the subscription list with an e-mail. But the editors do not let people like government officials or the police off so easily.
"For instance," said Mr. Tong, "if an address belonging to the police department, requests unsubscription, we generally don't honor it."
The newsletters are sent from a different address every day, and random delivery is an essential part of the strategy, said Feng Donghai, an editor in New York. That way, recipients can deny that they deliberately subscribed.
It is a dangerous game of cat and mouse. Editors warn subscribers not to forward the e-mails to their friends because distribution of "subversive" or "divisive" material can mean a life sentence in China. The creators of a similar magazine called Public Opinion that was edited and disseminated inside China have gone into hiding since a government crackdown began a few months ago.
Since the Internet became publicly available in China in 1995, millions of accounts have boon created, many with multiple users at universities, companies, even Internet cafes in the smallest of towns.
While the Internet has provided access to academic and economic information, helping speed the country's development, it has also created a common ground for activists across China. A fledgling opposition group, the China Democracy Party, used e-mail to publicize its platform, and its founders credited the Internet with helping the party grow from 12 to 200 declared members in several cities in four months.
As a result, Beijing has created special squads of Internet police to patrol cyberspace. In a December 23 speech, President Jiang Zemin specifically threatened computer programmers, along with artists and writers, with stiff jail terms if they "endanger state security."
Earlier in the same week, the China Democracy Party's founder, Wang Youcai, was sentenced to 11 years in prison for subversion. Two of his crimes were e-mailing exiled Chinese dissidents in the United States and accepting overseas funds to buy a computer.
