Twitter and YouTube were becoming handy and powerful subversion tools for hostile Western forces, a newspaper owned by the Chinese military warned yesterday.
In an editorial headlined 'Internet subversion not to be underestimated', the China National Defence listed failed uprisings against election results in Moldova and Iran this year as prime examples of such foreign intervention through internet tools. It warned that controlling the internet was key to protecting national security in the future.
'Several countries that experienced political turmoil in recent years unanimously pinned the blame on the internet threat posed by foreign hostile forces, and believe this is the main cause for political instability,' the editorial said. 'And the truth is exactly this.'
The protests against the victory claimed by the Communist Party in Moldova in April was coined 'The Twitter revolution' by Western media as protesters organised themselves through the US-based internet instant-messaging tool.
Protests and riots against alleged vote-rigging in the Iranian presidential election in June, which returned incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to office, were also blamed on the interference of Western forces through Twitter.
The editorial said the Iranian crisis had proved that Twitter had become a powerful political tool to spur internal chaos. It highlighted the United States as the keenest Western power to add the internet to its diplomatic arsenal, and added that the nearly monopolistic control of computer hardware and software also gave the US firm control over the internet, which China must guard against.
It also said Xinjiang separatists used the internet to incite people to protest during rioting early last month. 'This incident once again demonstrates that it is becoming urgent to strengthen internet control ... This is to avoid the internet becoming a new poisoned arrow for hostile forces,' it said.