Esteemed engineers and software programmers:

I have the impudence to ask: as web ¨¦lite hired by the Chinese government, have you ever thought how our children and grandchildren will judge what you are doing now ¨C blocking web information flowing into China ?

Let me be blunt: the first thing I called to mind was the sentries guarding the East German sector of the Berlin Wall whose duty was to block exchanges between people on either side of the wall, particularly to prevent East German citizens from fleeing to West Germany, and to kill on the spot those who dared do so.

You know very well what happened after the Berlin Wall collapsed: court martialed were not only those culprits who gave the order to kill, but those East German soldiers who indulged in killing. You could imagine they all resorted to the same argument: ¡°We were only executing the order from the top of the command chain; as soldiers, we had no choice.¡± But that argument could not stand. As a matter of fact they were not robots, but thinking human beings. Even if they could not resist the order to shoot civilians, they could choose to shoot off the mark or do other things, couldn't they? As you know, at the post Cold War court martial this point was exhaustively contended by the prosecutors and the defendants' lawyers. The verdict: the sentries who killed the civilians on the Berlin Wall were guilty.

What you are doing today, sealing off China with your expertise is no different from what the Berlin Wall guards did. In 1961 East Germany and the Soviet Union still dared bring their lame arguments out into the open. Today, on the issue of human rights and state system the Beijing regime is still trying to shield off criticism with its theory of ¡°giving priority to existence,¡± ¡°Chinese specific features¡± and ¡°Asian values.¡± But, on the issue of information blockade its arguments are so wrong (even left-wing postmodernists who indulge in exaggerations find no excuse to be partial to Beijing ). Thus, in its effort to blindfold and muffle the people the regime just stealthily blocks information flow. With its constitution claiming ¡°freedom of speech,¡± the regime is tailoring New Clothes for the Emperor in sharp contrast to the constitution, allowing no civil media and blocking inflow of overseas information. I dare ask: if you communists are confident in your ways, why don't you lift information blockade and thus make it possible for people to judge what is right and what is wrong in competitive debates, and why should you squander so much money and manpower just to control public opinion and tighten your judicial system and state machinery? Mao Zedong loved to say: ¡°To pay back in his own coin.¡± But, on the issue of freedom of information he never dared operate symmetrically. With Beijing-funded and pro-Beijing media ¨C television, radio, newspapers and periodicals echoing all over the world, Beijing is erecting a sanitation cordon to fend off information from all parts of the world, even publications and television from Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, part and parcel of PR China. This fully testifies that such ¡°information phobia¡± has gone down deep into the communist party's marrow.

While you, web ¨¦lite, are programming ¡°key words¡± for filtering incoming web information and thus acting as sentries at China 's main web juncture, you are actually blindfolding your brothers and sisters, muffling your parents, pulling the wool over fellow Chinese citizens' eyes. If you pride yourselves displaying your high expertise in blocking incoming information, I can only say you are helping villains instead of using your wisdom in constructive ways.

I am sure you are all highly educated and can judge things on your own. You certainly know that blocking information flow and trampling on freedom of speech is infringement of basic human rights. If those Berlin Wall sentries who did not have your education background could not evade being brought to justice, I wonder how much space you will have to defend yourselves when the day of judgment does come ¨C desperately finding excuses for exerting your expertise in an anti-civilized barbarous action. You will appear even more ridiculous than those East German sentries. And you will find no hole to crawl into.

Do not trust to luck. The mills of God grind slow but small. Everybody remembers who does what: who goes all out blocking incoming information, who dawdles along, who exposes such actions to sunlight. Everyone is writing his own biography. History records all minutest details, however craftily concealed they are. Don't you remember? When the Berlin Wall collapsed at long last and East Germans were embracing West Germans, when the dust-laden classified documents were exposed to daylight, how many guilty souls were trembling before the cruel reality!

But, as the proverb goes, ¡°It's never too late to mend the hold after a sheep is lost.¡± You still have time to mend your ways. Your future is in your own hands. As for those of you spurred on by the situation, why don't you do it ¡°a little bit slow,¡± ¡°off the mark¡± and ¡°leave one side of the web open?¡± It all depends on you. As long as you don't say, nobody can affix your responsibility. I believe every Chinese surfer knows by instinct what each of you does. If you do act this way, you'll save your soul, and your conscience will be clear. History will remember your deed. One day when you recall this episode, you will proudly tell your children and grandchildren: ¡°I was there too.¡±

When you lie in bed late at night, please listen to your conscience.