Fully-monitored Internet usage is further complicated by a lot of account sharing in China. Legal pressure is directed more to ISPs, which are responsible to report to the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications, according to Yun Tao.
And so enthusiastic surfers in China tend to overlook the Internet regulation.
"Individuals don't even feel the existence of regulation," Yun Tao described. "Nobody from the government really comes to check regularly." (5)
Hong Kong continues to be ruled by elites who will keep the territory's economy ticking and its popular - and often anti-china politics - under control. But a simple reassignment of colonial power was not, on the surface, the intent, of the agreements that governed the territory's transformation into a Special Administrative Region of China.
"Hong Kong's relationship to China was not supposed to be the same as its relationship with Britain," says Yash Ghai, a law professor at the University of Hong Kong and occasional legal adviser to the government. China promised Hong Kong a "high degree of autonomy" after 1997; Beijing would handle only foreign affairs and defense under the "once country, two systems" formula. "But the SAR government has ignored that fact and taken a very mechanical view that sovereignty has changed but that nothing else has changed," says Ghai.
Indeed, the Chinese state has assumed privileges in Hong Kong previously reserved for the British crown - with significant implications for Hong Kong's constitutional relationship with China.
Under British rule, all British government agencies in Hong Kong were immune from local laws. But after 1997, most observers expected that only China's foreign - affairs office and army garrison would enjoy such immunity. Instead, the Hong Kong government went further, granting the local office of the Xinhua News Agency immunity.
The move was significant: Xinhua is widely believed to be the headquarters of the Hong Kong Work Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, whose existence was acknowledged by the party newspaper, the People's Daily, only as recently as October. This exemption of the party branch in Hong Kong has been a stark symbol of the seeming return to colonial status, since it suggests Beijing expects to be involved in administering all aspects of Hong Kong.
Other events are equally worrying: In May, two youths were convicted of desecrating two small Chinese and Hong Kong flags under new flag laws. Their action, at a January protest, was judged to be a prelude to "riots." If the logic of the magistrate were to carry," commented defending lawyer Albert Ho, since re-elected to the legislature for the Democratic Party, "many dissenting voices in Hong Kong should be silenced because it may lead to riots."
