China's Golden Shield Project:

Myths, Realities and Context

Dave Lyons

School of Communications, Library and Information Science

Rutgers University

7th Annual Chinese Internet Research Conference 2009

University of Pennsylvania

Introduction

In the past decade, there has been a tendency to use the technical term “Golden Shield Project”

as a synonym for the colloquial expressions “Great Firewall” or “Net Nanny”, which refer to China's

active censorship and monitoring of Internet content. This mistake has not only been made by Western

observers, but Chinese ones as well. There has been a lack of material, however, describing what the

Golden Shield Project has involved since its inception in 1998 (Walton: 2001). While the GSP is fact

related to Internet monitoring, it plays a minor role in what has been an extraordinary nationwide

initiative in China to “informatize” every aspect of the Ministry of Public Security's workflow at local,

provincial and national levels. Golden Shield is better described as an effort to network the police,

rather than police the network. The first section of this paper seeks to examine the goals and

implementation of the Golden Shield Project as reported in online Chinese media and government

reports, as well as touch upon the cultural context of policing in China and its relevance to China's

digital police reforms. The conclusion will attempt to place some of these developments into a proper

global context, arguing that China is not a “testbed” for global surveillance and policing technology,

but rather is catching up to the industrialized West within its own cultural context.

Golden Shield: A History

The Golden Shield Project has often been mentioned in Western media reports in the same

breath as Internet censorship (Fallows: 2008, August: 2006, Klein: 2008, Walton: 2001, Zhang: 2005),

but this misrepresents the goals of the GSP. The GSP is better understood as a national initiative to

'informatize' (xinxihua) the public security apparatus. The Chinese leadership has seen 'informatization'

as a fundamental part of its drive towards modernization since the late 1980s, influenced by Alvin

Toffler's The Third Wave and then spurred after witnessing the Clinton administration's focus on

developing the Internet industry in the U.S.. The government began with an “Office Automation

Project” in the late 1980s to introduce computers to all levels of Chinese government (Zhang: 2005).

The Golden Shield is part and parcel of a larger array of Golden Projects, of which there are at

least twelve, covering the financial industry, social security, agriculture, tax collection, customs, water

management, manufacturing standards, government auditing, IC card technology and more (Guo: 2006.

A 2003 overview (China.com.cn: 2003) described the Project as encompassing the construction and

securing of PSB communications and networking, computer application development, the

establishment of ministry-wide IT standards and practices, as well as “public network security

monitoring”, or the Cyberpolice. The Project has overseen the development of eight nationwide

networked databases for police purposes:

Population management

Criminal records

PSB personnel

Fugitives

Stolen vehicles

Motor vehicles/drivers licenses

National security

Border control

Accompanying these databases are operational software platforms developed at the provincial level for

various tasks, which generally include:

population management

public security work

case management

crime analysis

foreign affairs management

central dispatch

traffic management

personnel management

national security

The Project was originally scheduled in three phases: a research and development phase from

1998 to 1999, followed by Phase I (1999-2002) which focused on laying the foundations for a three tier

network (local, provincial and national) and developing accompanying applications and standards, as

well as developing communications facilities including secure intranet, mobile/wireless, satellite,

telephone and video conferencing. The central government invested 816.5 million RMB, 200 million of

which was allocated to the Western regions and the rest given to the MPS to distribute at the provincial

and national levels. (China Market Intelligence Center: 2006). The second phase, devoted to

completing this work, was scheduled to run from 2002-2004. It appears, however, that the Project took

longer than anticipated, as completion of the project was not approved by various national agencies

until late 2006 (sdpc.gov.cn: 2006). Moreover, overlapping initiatives such as the 2nd generation ID

card have been underway through 2008, and while the Golden Shield Project may have been

completed, the systems it built continue to evolve. A 2008 review of the 12 Golden Projects estimated a

total of 6 billion RMB had been invested at the provincial and local levels in implementing the entire

project along with the initial central government investment (E-Gov.org.cn: 2008)

The National Population Information Management System: Golden Shield's “Dragon's Head”

The National Population Information Management System is China's first ever, and most likely

the world's most ambitious, national register of citizens. The development of this database did not

begin with Golden Shield. The MPS has been pursuing a national registration database since 1986, and

in the late 1990s began the “Hundred Cities Network Project” to create a population registration

network in China's largest cities in response to an increasingly mobile population (Central People's

Government website: January 23, 2006). By 2002, when Golden Shield had completed its first phase,

the “Hundred Cities Network Project” had in fact already connected 250 cities and 650 million

searchable individual hukou records (People's Daily: 2002; Keane: 2006), and presumably had thus laid

significant groundwork for the population management component of Golden Shield's second phase.

According to Gov.cn, the official website of the government of the People's Republic of China, this

process shifted the focus of registration away from the isolated local police station, to a vertically

integrated network ranging from the local station to the ministerial level, with records for 1.26 billion

individuals across over 150 centralized prefecture level databases, which are designed to be the hubs

for the network. The report also said the population information management system is the “dragon's

head” (longtou) of Golden Shield, highlighting its central importance to the initiative, and provided

“one stop shopping” for various services and vital information for various government departments,

including family planning, education, health, taxation and telecommunications.

The Second Generation ID Card: Replacing the Hukou?

The second generation ID card is the necessary corollary to the population management

database. For over 50 years, the primary form of identification for Chinese citizens has been the

household registration certificate (hukou), which gives citizens access to employment, education,

health care, and other vital services. Permanent and temporary residents in any administrative area must

register with the local police station. This system, however, was clearly ill suited for the reform and

opening up process that began in the 1980s under Deng Xiaoping, as restrictions on mobility relaxed

and millions of rural residents migrated to the cities in search of work. The Chinese government

created the first generation national ID card in 1985 to supplement the hukou, but did not begin

implementing a network solution until the 100 City Network Project in the 1990s. It is also worth

noting that the household registration system has been the focal point of China's national census efforts

(Wang: 2001). Prior to census canvassing, the hukou registers are “rectified”, and used as the basis for

census work (Lavely: 2001). While the hukou system is meant to track everyone, limited resources

generally leads police to only focus on “targeted persons”, either previously convicted or suspected of

criminal activity. The national population management system and ID card give police a nationwide,

integrated system for tracking and monitoring these individuals (Keane: 2006; Wang: 2004).

Despite this, however, by the mid-1990s rural migrants accounted for a disproportionate amount

of criminal cases in the courts of major cities, indicating that existing policing methods were unable to

cope with the massive social and demographic changes brought about by economic reform (Chen:

2002). Community policing in China's recent past typically was centered around a stable, local

community, which in turn has deep roots in the traditional baojia system of collective justice in earlier

dynasties (Dutton: 1988). Local residents helped the police with hukou registration through security

defense committees (SDCs), and engaged in mutual surveillance. Economic reform and its attending

increase in mobility has not only made this system ineffective, but driven the police to become more

professional, bureaucratic, and distant (Wong: 2001). At the same time, the national ID card system

means a move away from a collective-based “resident” identity within the local hukou district, to an

individual, mobile “citizen” identity.

Another consequence of these changes has been a flourishing black market for forged

documents. It is not uncommon in Chinese cities today to see forgers (banzheng) phone number graffiti

on the sides of buildings, stairwells or even on occasion mischievously scrawled on police cars. In an

interview in 2007, then Minister of Civil Affairs Li Xueju discussed plans for a national marriage

registration network, saying that local marriage registers had become “information islands” and that the

use of fake documents was “rampant”(IT168.com: 2007). All provinces are now expected to complete a

national marriage registration network by 2010, one reason ostensibly being to eliminate bigamy

(Sichuan News: 2009). While the marriage network has yet to be constructed, the second generation ID

card is undoubtedly meant to tackle many of the same problems of forgery and identity fraud. The ID

Card Law written in 2003 lays out penalties not only for forgery or identity theft, but also makes the

police liable for any corrupt practices involving ID cards (Keane: 2006). This has not prevented forgers

from producing fake 2nd generation ID cards, however, which began to be reported not long after its

introduction (Sina.com: 2006, Shantou Daily: 2007). These forgeries, however, do not appear to have

not surmounted the technical challenges of counterfeiting RFID chips or personal data. The Chinese

government has also established services for anyone to verify an individuals identity through the

National Citizen Identity Information Center via the Internet (http://www.nciic.com.cn/) or mobile

phone to guard against fraud (Keane: 2006).

The second generation ID card appears to contain the same basic data as the household

registration under a unique identifier. The ID number consists of 18 digits, the first 6 containing the

holders permanent hukou district code, followed by their birthdate (digits 7-14, year-month-day) and

the 'sequence number' (differentiating people with the same birthdate, even for males and odd for

females). Brown reports this number was four digits on the first generation ID card, while Keane

claims it is three digits on the 2nd generation card followed by a single digit verification number. In

2001, it was reported that the 2nd Generation ID Card would contain biometric data such as fingerprints

(Sohu.com: 2001), but this was determined to be infeasible and scrapped (Brown: 2008). The “PRC

Resident ID Card Act” went into effect on January 1, 2004 and the second generation ID card project

went into effect, scheduled to be completed by the end of 2008. An embedded RFID chip allows

contactless scanning. According to one posting on the Ministry of Commerce website, the card would

accomplish two important goals: first, it would be vital for the verification of identity regarding

residency, marriage, military service, adoption, travel abroad, vehicle registration and licensing, hotel

occupancy, bank accounts and legal matters. The second generation ID card would, in effect, be a

universal identifier. Second, the card would create a domestic IT industry chain, from RFID chip design

to database and card reader production. Interestingly, the posting also says that card readers must have

an effective range of 10 cm in order to protect users privacy as well as allay health concerns about

radiation (Ministry of Commerce website: 2006). While the first generation ID card had to be replaced

whenever a resident moved their hukou, this information is simply altered on the internal chip of the

new 2nd generation card, simplifying the bureaucratic process. The registration form for the new ID

card also requests less information than the previous model, as questions about blood type, religious

beliefs, level of education, military service, occupation and marital status are omitted (Keane: 2006).

This information, however, may still be recorded within the local hukou record.

By December 2008, more than 900 million 2nd generation ID cards had been issued nationwide

(Central People's Government: 2009).

What's in a Name?

One of the issues surrounding the 2nd generation ID card and the national population

information management system involves personal names. The recent case of “Zhao C” brought to

national and even global attention restrictions on using the latin alphabet in names (Martinsen: 2009),

and a prior case involved parents who wanted to name their child using the symbol “@” (Brown:

2008). While rare characters were sometimes handwritten on first generation ID cards, there is no such

flexibility with the second generation card due to the limitations of the networked database. A draft law

put forward in 2007 by the Ministry of Public Security barred the use of the following in names:

already simplified traditional characters

eliminated variant characters

self-designed characters

foreign letters or characters

pinyin

Arabic numerals

symbols

other non-standard Chinese characters and minority scripts beyond the scope of the system.

The New York Times reported that PSB systems accommodate 32,252 of the roughly 55,000

Chinese characters in existence (LaFraniere: 2009). In some cases temporary ID cards are continually

reissued for citizens whose names are outside the scope of the system, but this is an incomplete solution

since their names still cannot be inputted on computer systems at, say, hotels or banks (Brown: 2008).

A related issue is the failed attempt at creating a real name registration system for Internet use in

2005, which met not only with dissatisfaction from Chinese netizens but the emergence of

circumvention tools that generated fake ID numbers not only for China but Korea as well, which had

implemented a similar, voluntary program earlier. Online gaming companies were targeted for

mandatory use, but in one article a customer service representative at one game company admitted that

“if you don't enter your real number, it's not a big deal.” The company had never verified players ID

numbers with the PSB, and “it doesn't matter if you enter a random string of numbers”

(Chinabyte.com: 2006). While the population management information system and the 2nd generation

ID card create a system for authenticating identity, China has so far failed to implement an effective

method for users to submit genuine identification.

Reports from Testbed Cities: Guangzhou, Weihai & Qingdao

The official website of the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) (mps.gov.cn: March 29; April 10;

April 13, 2006) published several reports from testbed cities on their progress implementing Golden

Shield, under the rubric of “strengthening urban policing through science and technology”. Each report

gives some idea of how each city places emphasis on different Golden Shield objectives. Guangzhou,

for example, claims its CCTV surveillance network covering 2,519 streets aided in 67% of 21, 000

arrests during its 2005 “Sword Lily” anti-street crime campaign, and its partnering with China

Construction Bank to expedite the payment of traffic tickets and curb the use of false receipts. There is

also a focus on convenience and service: informatization dropped the wait time for residents to receive

exit permits (for going abroad) from 25 days to a mere two, and is compared to “supermarket

shopping”, thanks to image comparison software allowing application photos to be compared to those

in the city's population management database.

Weihai and Qingdao, on the other hand, mention harbor security, a topic absent from

Guangzhou's report though it is one of China's busiest ports. Weihai also mentions the presence of

8,000 foreign residents as well as a migrant population of 8 million, a detail not considered important

in Guangzhou's report. One example from Weihai involves the investigation three connected fraud

cases in Weihai's Economic and Technology Zone. A suspect from another province was located at his

hotel, not by directly checking the population management database but instead by using the network to

issue a bulletin citywide. Other improvements considered part of Golden Shield include the 110

emergency hotline system, mobile command and communications, firefighting capabilities, radio

dispatch, crime scene investigation scientific equipment such as microscopes and DNA sequencers,

and, in the case of Guangzhou, joint research and development with Beijing and Tsinghua universities

as well as the Hong Kong police force.

In 2004 trial Qingdao launched its PSB Network Security Monitoring and Alert Center, or

Cyberpolice. Over nearly 2 years it received over 12,000 reports from netizens, uncovered 367 cases

“of every sort”, and arrested 316 suspects. The Qingdao cyberpolice were involved in the first national

crackdown on international pornography rings, participating in two cases involving overseas

pornographic distributors. Qingdao also implemented an internet cafe IC card system to monitor over

2,000 cafes citywide to combat “pornography and other harmful information”, leading to arrest of more

than 30 suspects. Weihai reported its network monitoring team investigated 137 cases and arrested 198

suspects, 27 of which were online-identified fugitives for every kind of crime in 2005. The team

arrested 19 “criminal elements” with the aid of the city's Internet cafe IC card management system, and

investigated 53 cases of “broken regulations”. The Guangdong report doesn't mention Internet

monitoring, though Guangdong has one of the oldest cyberpolice programs in China, as discussed

below.

Data Quality and Integrity

In 2007, an estimated 90% of “grassroots” or the lowest level of PSB stations had been

incorporated into the network, with 800,000 computers nationwide or 47 for every 100 staff (China

Economic Net: 2007). Having the technology, however, does not immediately translate into fluent and

accurate usage. Hebei province reported that many rural areas “lacked technical skills”, leading to

inaccurate data entry (Handan Municipal Government website: 2005). Guangzhou, in its MPS report,

emphasized four principles for hiring personnel: the ability to use office automation systems, basic

applications, search systems, and at least one Chinese character input method – in other words, basic

computer office skills. In an interview in 2007, Xie Yiping, director of the MPS Information Center and

vice-director of the Golden Shield Office said that there were problems with data quality that still

needed to be addressed (Sina.com: 2007).

The Cyberpolice

One public security function related to Internet censorship and monitoring that is associated

with Golden Shield is the mention of “public network security monitoring”, or the Cyberpolice. As

mentioned above, the cyberpolice have been mentioned in reports about Golden Shield, albeit as a

small component among many other technology-based changes in public security administration, and

often the “network monitoring teams” are not mentioned at all. A 2008 article on the Guangdong

cyberpolice describes the development of Internet crime investigation in the province (Yangcheng

Evening News: 2008). It was the Guangdong cyberpolice in Shenzhen who developed the Jingjing and

Chacha cyberpolice cartoon characters as a deterrent. In 1994, Guangdong's Provincial Information and

Communication (PIC) department had two staff members. In 1998, the MPS changed the name of its

ministry level Computer Management and Supervision division to the Public Information Network

Security Supervision Bureau. In 2000, Guangdong's PIC changed its name to the Public Information

Network Security Supervision department and had 22 personnel. By 2008 the province had a network

of more than 1,000 cybercops. The cybercops responsibilities not only involve monitoring the public

Internet, but working on computer crime cases such as viruses, malware, hackers, and online fraud, as

well as using the Internet to receive reports of possible crimes, much like the 110 emergency phone

number. The reporting aspect in some ways reflects the interaction between police and citizens in

traditional Chinese community policing. The emphasis on netizen reporting on online crime through

cyberpolice web portals is not dissimilar to the “mass line” approach to policing of earlier decades, in

which citizens are seen as the front line against crime with police assistance, rather than vice versa

(Wong: 2001). Mutual surveillance as form of social control and crime prevention is not simply a

Communist innovation, either; as mentioned above, earlier systems such as the baojia also empowered

families within the community to monitor one another for inappropriate behavior (Dutton: 1988).

Similarly, “50 Cent Parties”, state-organized groups of netizens directed to seek out controversial

online discussions and make pro-government arguments (Bandurski: 2008), are forms of citizen

surveillance working in cooperation with public security officials not unlike the security defense

committees or neighborhood committees found in a hukou district. The policing of the virtual

community, then, bears a striking resemblance to long-standing structures in real life.

While some authors have suggested that Golden Shield is involved in censoring certain IP

addresses and keywords, these aspects of Chinese censorship are conducted by the Ministry of Industry

and Information Technology (MIIT), provincial ISPs, and Internet content providers themselves

(Human Rights Watch: 2006; MacKinnon: 2009). Public security bureaus, however, are part of the

process. Anti-pornography campaigns aimed at “purifying the Internet”, for example, have been

coordinated efforts between the MPS and MIIT (Nanfang Weekend: 2005). Golden Shield, however,

appears to be more accurately described as the national government's effort to bring computer networks

to policing, of which only a small part is monitoring activity on the public Internet.

Conclusion: Golden Shield in an International Context

The various forms of “informatization” that Golden Shield encompasses are not novel, despite

claims that China is pioneering new forms of centralized surveillance that have no precedent in the

West (Klein: 2008). National ID cards, or similar universal identifiers such as social security numbers,

have existed in some form in most Western nations longer than they have in China, which did not have

any such comprehensive system until the 1980s. Likewise, the use of computers in census data has a

long history in countries such as the United States, where Hollerith punch cards were used for data

processing in the 1890 national census (Agar: 2003), and the first UNIVAC computer was delivered to

the U.S. Census Bureau in 1951 and the use of optical readers in 1960(U.S. Census Bureau). During the

same period, the U.S. social security number took on many of the same functions as the new PRC ID

card number as the computer revolution across government and industry made use of it as a de facto

universal identifier, and the Social Security Administration itself computerized (Social Security

Administration: 1997). In 1965, American visitors to China observed that the country probably did not

have any functioning computers in 1958, and was just beginning to develop its own computer expertise

after the Sino-Soviet split. The computers available were few and far between, and mostly limited to

scientific research projects, most notably nuclear weapons development (Audette: 1966). By 1985,

China had developed its first mainframe similar to the previous decade's Cray I but with less computing

power (Gao: 1986). Punch card technology was later used for administrative purposes in the United

States and Europe throughout the twentieth century, a form of technology that saw little or no large

scale implementation in China. Besides the various difficulties China faced during the twentieth

century that hampered IT development, another obstacle that prevented the mechanization of Chinese

bureaucracy was the problem of character input, which was not solved practically until after the advent

of the personal computer. For the national census, computers were first used by the State Planning

Commission in 1982, and then personal computers in 1990 (Wang: 2001). As mentioned before, local

police stations have long been a key component of census tabulation in China. Similarly, the National

Crime Information Center, the F.B.I.'s centralized information system for law enforcement agencies

nationwide was established in 1967 and contains records on property as well as individuals, including

convicted sex offenders, foreign fugitives, identity theft, immigration violators, missing persons,

protection orders, supervised release, unidentified persons, U.S. Secret Service protection, violent

gangs and terrorist organizations and wanted persons (Federal Bureau Investigation website). The

Chinese version, as part of Golden Shield, as only recently gone online.

The United Kingdom sits in the middle of the spectrum of centralized population registers in

Western nations. The UK first established a national population register early in 1939 at the beginning

of World War II under Registrar-General Sylvanus Percival Vivian and continued to operate until 1952,

when Clarence Willcock refused to hand over his identification to the police. The register was

duplicated, however, for the National Health Service before being dismantled. Vivian echoed one of his

heroes Jeremy Bentham, the 18th century British philosopher who is most famous for designing the

Panopticon Prison, when he wrote that national registration ought to be a discrete “invisible net”, so as

not to upset British citizens. Similar to the NCIC, Britain launched the Police National Computer

system in 1974, which has grown from a stolen vehicles database to include many of the features

included in the NCIC. At the same time Great Britain also launched the Driver and Vehicle Licensing

Center (now the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency), which contains records for all drivers and

vehicles in Great Britain and is linked to the PNC (Agar: 2003). Agar points out that the Metropolitan

Police attempted to compile nationwide registers of “habitual criminals” as early as 1869. In the early

20th century, Scotland Yard not only had a central Criminal Records Office linked to 200 stations across

the country by telegraph and wireless, but also cooperated with the Secret Service Bureau MI5, whose

own Central Registry contained 250,000 names of aliens and “suspicious persons” by 1917 and was

used in border control. Britain now has numerous national databases containing information on

individuals, posing varying threats to privacy and civil rights (Anderson: 2009), despite a long-standing

belief that gathering such information is traditionally “un-British” (Agar: 2003).

The role of the state in approving personal names has an extraordinarily long history in Western

nations. Indeed, they were essentially invented and required by the state. As James C. Scott writes in

his book, Seeing Like a State:

The development of the personal surname (literally, a name added to another name, and not to be

confused with a permanent patronym) went hand in hand with the development of written, official

documents such as tithe records, manorial dues rolls, marriage registers, censuses, tax records, and

land records. They were necessary to the successful conduct of any administrative exercise involving

large numbers of people who had to be individually identified and were not personally known to the

authorities. Imagine the dilemma of a tithe or capitation-tax collector faced with a male population, 90

percent of whom bore just six Christian names (John, William, Thomas, Robert, Richard and Henry).

Some second designation was essential for the records, and, if the subject suggested none, it was

invented for him by the recording clerk (Scott: 1999).

In some Western countries, such as New Zealand and Denmark, baby names have been either

rejected or are circumscribed by a government list (Associated Press: 2007, Alvarez: 2004).

Most aspects of the Golden Shield Project replicate systems and services found in Western

developed nations to varying degrees, with the exception of the cyberpolice. The cyberpolice however,

are only a small part of the overall Project, as well as being only one component of the Chinese

government's apparatus to monitor and censor Internet content. Rather than being described as

'Orwellian', it is more accurate to describe Golden Shield as part of a larger process of upgrading the

office machinery of the Chinese government, and cope with problems of migration and crime that have

emerged due to economic reform. At the same time, the introduction of a national universal identifier

number simultaneously changes the relationship of the government and the people from one of a fixed

“resident” belonging to a collective community, to a mobile, individualized “citizen”. While this

reduces the amount of bureaucratic paperwork and visible control over the average citizen, it also gives

more concentrated power to the public security organs to monitor and track targeted individuals.

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Zhang, Jinhua, 2005 “Good Governance Through E-Governance? Assessing China's E-Government Strategy”, Journal of E-Government, 2(4), 39-72.

Chinese Websites

Central People's Government of the PRC, January 23, 2006, [社会稳定 ]全国人口信息管理系统建设成效显著 ([Social Stability] National Population Information Management System Produces Outstanding Results). Retrieved from http://www.gov.cn/ztzl/2006-01/23/content_168430.htm on April 20, 2009

Central People's Government of the PRC, January 9, 2009, 公安部 :服务大局攻坚克难 08年治安管理工作回顾 (MPS: Providing Services, Overcoming Challenges 2008 Review of Public Security Supervision Work). Retrieved from http://www.gov.cn/gzdt/2009-01/09/content_1200336.htm on April 20, 2009

China.com.cn, February 27, 2003, 金盾工程 (Golden Shield). Retrieved from http://www.china.com.cn/chinese/zhuanti/283732.htm on April 20, 2009. Chinabyte.com, December 25, 2006 , 身份证生成器现身网络 实名制形同虚设 (ID Number Generator Appears Online, Real Name Registration Appears Set Up in Vain). Retrieved from

http://net.chinabyte.com/320/3019820.shtml on April 20, 2009

China Economic Net, October 16, 2007, 今日关注 :看信息网络如何成为180万民警的好帮手 (Daily Focus: How Information Networks Aid 1.8 Million Cops), October 16, 2007. Retrieved from http://finance.ce.cn/law/home/sh/200710/16/t20071016_12663884.shtml on April 20, 2009

China Market Intelligence Center, August 29, 2006, 十二金 推动电子政务辉煌 (Twelve Goldens: Promoting Glorious E-Government Services). Retrieved from http://media.ccidnet.com/art/2983/20060829/883157_1.html on April 20, 2009.

E-Gov.org.cn, March 10, 2008 , 十二金工程 (The 12 Golden Projects). Retrieved from http://www.e-gov.org.cn/news/news007/2008-03-10/85519.html on April 20, 2009

Handan Municipal Government, April 22, 2005, 河北省人口信息管理系统建设实施方案 (Hebei Provi nce Population Management System Construction and Implementation Program). Retrieved from http://qlgk.hd.gov.cn/zcfg/P020050422324914662948.doc April 20, 2009

IT168.com, March 27, 2007, 全国婚姻联网登记能保证一夫一妻？ (Can a National Marriage Network Eliminate Bigamy?) Retrieved from http://cio.it168.com/t/2007-03-27/200703270928152.shtml April 20, 2009

Ministry of Commerce, July 15, 2006, 第二代身份证阅读器公安部门指定生产厂商全国招募合作伙伴 (MPS Designates Card Reader Manufacturers as Partners for 2nd Gen ID Card). Retrieved from http://blog.mofcom.gov.cn/column/print.shtml?/hgjj/200607/20060700009443 by Diigo at http://www.diigo.com/cached?url=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.mofcom.gov.cn%2Fcolumn%2Fprint.shtml%3F%2Fhgjj%2F200607%2F20060700009443 on May 13, 2007

Ministry of Public Security, March 29, 2006, 科技强警示范城市建设经验交流：青岛——向奥帆赛交出一份合格答卷 (Testbed Cities Experiences Using Technology to Strengthen Policing: Qingdao – Qualified to Hold Olympic Sailing Events). Retrieved from http://www.mps.gov.cn/n16/n1252/n1912/n3052/126130.html on April 20, 2009

Ministry of Public Security, April 10, 2006, 科技强警示范城市建设经验交流：威海——辽阔海域架起科技网 (Testbed cities share experiences on using science and technology to strengthen urban policing: Weihai – A vast sea raises up a high tech network). Retrieved from http://www.mps.gov.cn/n16/n1252/n1912/n3052/126437.html on April 20, 2009

Ministry of Public Security, April 13, 2006, 科技强警示范城市建设经验交流：广州——实现警务装备现代化 (Testbed Cities share experiences on using science and technology to strengthen urban policing: Guangzhou – Successfully Modernizing Police Services). Retrieved from http://www.mps.gov.cn/n16/n1237/n1402/126538.html April 20, 2009

Nanfang Weekend, August 18, 2005, “”. Retrieved from http://www.nanfangdaily.com.cn/zm/20050818/xw/szxw1/200508180019.asp via the Internet Archive at http://web.archive.org/web/20050924195629/http://www.nanfangdaily.com.cn/zm/20050818/xw/szxw1

/200508180019.asp on April 20, 2009. English translation available at http://zonaeuropa.com/20050821_1.htm.

National Development and Reform Commission, November 27, 2006, “金盾工程 ”通过国家验收 (Golden Shield Passes National Inspection). Retrieved from http://www.sdpc.gov.cn/zdxm/t20061127_95509.htm on April 20, 2009

People's Daily, January 4, 2002 , 百城联网工程 ”联结250个地市6.5亿人口信息网上查 (100 City Network Project links 250 cities and 650 million searchable individual records). Retrieved from http://past.people.com.cn/GB/shehui/47/20020104/641589.html on April 20, 2009

Shantou Daily, May 11, 2007, 汕头机场首次查获假 “二代证” (Shantou Airport Captures Its First Fake “Second Gen ID Card”). Retrieved from http://www.dahuawang.com/localnews/showlocal.asp?no=88264 April 20, 2009

Sichuan News, April 9, 2009, 婚姻登记联网 重婚就要现形 (Marriage Registration Network Allows Detection of Bigamy). Retrieved from http://sichuan.scol.com.cn/lsxw/20090409/200949103637.htm April 20, 2009

Sina.com, April 8, 2006, 机场首次查获第二代假身份证 (Airport Catches First Fake 2nd Gen ID). Retrieved

from http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2006-04-08/04068649034s.shtml on April 20, 2009

Sina.com, February 7, 2007, 中国信息化杂志：金色盾牌 信息铸就 (China Informatization Magazine: Golden Shield, An Informational Foundation). Retrieved from

http://tech.sina.com.cn/it/2007-02-07/10321373856.shtml on April 20, 2009

Sohu.com, March 14, 2001, 一卡多用全国联网，第二代身份证绝对智能 (A Single Multipurpose Networked Card, The Second Generation ID Card is Truly Intelligent(. Retrieved from http://news.sohu.com/10/31/news144333110.shtml April 20, 2009

Yangcheng Evening News, December 15, 2008, 网络警察：守护虚拟世界的卫士 (Cyberpolice: Guardians of the Virtual World). Retrieved from http://www.ycwb.com/ePaper/ycwb/html/2008-12/15/content_382746.htm on April 20, 2009.