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摘要

Appil 23rd 2002 was a turning-point in American internet companies' relations with China, though few knew so at the time. On that day Beijing's state-security bureau requested information from Yahoo!, an American internet company, about the creator of an online forum, as well as email registrations and messages, in a case of what the bureau called "inciting subversion". Yahoo! complied with this notice and another one that year, and soon the authorities had detained Wang Xiaoning, a democracy activist who had anonymously been using the forum and e-mail accounts to press for free elections. He was sentenced to ten years in prison.