There has been a lot of talk about a dam bursting in China this week and it is being seen as a good thing. Only hours before the July 1 deadline that the Chinese Government had set for the mandatory installation of the “Green Dam Youth Escort” software on every new computer sold in China, there was a rare and hasty retraction from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announcing that the initiative would be delayed.

This desktop software designed to block “harmful content” from the web was to be a new tool that would take China’s effort to censor the internet, already the most heavily controlled in the world, to a new level. That it has not succeeded is a fascinating insight into China today.

There are a whole host of reasons for the “delay”. Green Dam had many technical shortcomings. It was rushed and under-tested. It was claimed that it could make computers vulnerable to virus attacks and hacking. For consumers there was also the problem of who would be responsible for aftersale service costs.

Foreign governments had strongly criticised the project as another attempt by China to further control information flow on the internet and were concerned with its implication for internet security and protectionism. But the strongest protests came from internet users in China. In an unprecedented move, millions of Chinese web users surged online and mounted furious protests against Green Dam, calling for the safeguarding of freedom of expression, rejecting censorship and control of the internet.

In this context it is very hard not to see the Government’s eleventh-hour retreat as a victory for Chinese web users; it is the first time that the Government has conceded to public dissent.

Of course, control of information and expression has always been at the centre of Chinese life, during feudal rule and under the communist regime. In ancient China the only channel available for ordinary people to complain was to petition court officials and the Emperor. The same system effectively persisted in communist China.

Twenty years ago, when I was one of the university students who marched to Tiananmen Square for the first time, our aim was to deliver a petition requesting dialogue with the Government. The petition was ignored and that ignited a democracy movement that ended in bloodshed seven weeks later.

I was a student at Beijing University at the time. My generation and the generation before us had grown up with censorship; there were severe punishments for voicing dissent. My parents were sent to a labour camp during the Cultural Revolution for being intellectuals. When I was 14 years old, I decided that I wanted to become a writer. My mother, who was a professor of Chinese literature, forbade it because writing was one of the most dangerous professions.

The history of modern China has been punctuated by bursts of rebellion followed by bloody crackdown. Throughout the history of the Chinese Communist Party not only has it been dangerous for the protesters, but also the protests have never produced any real impact.

The internet has changed this. The web gave the Chinese people a platform to express their opinions and to have their cases heard, and it is making a difference. The attention given to the case of a young woman working in a public bathhouse in a remote area of China is a good illustration of this.

Deng Yujiao killed a local official and left another wounded after they demanded sexual favours. Her story had generated so much support and sympathy online that the authorities spared her punishment, bowing to public sentiment. Without this pressure of public opinion revealed on the internet she would have certainly been executed.

The economic development in the past 20 years has given young Chinese men and women prosperity and a degree of personal freedom that previous generations have not enjoyed. Now the internet, with the information it provides and the way it connects individuals, empowering their collective voices, has given a whole generation confidence and made them appreciate the value of freedom of expression.

This economic development comes with a new political landscape. The Government is becoming more willing to listen to the public. The internet is facilitating that. Hu Jintao, the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, recently paid visits to key news websites including Xinhua, the official news agency, and the China People’s Daily.

Party officials at local and provincial levels are increasingly using the internet and blogs to gather public opinion and communicate policies. It is said that Wen Jiabao, the Chinese Premier, reads net blogs regularly. He’s not alone. China now has an estimated 300 million web users and they form a strong, effective voice in a country where other forms of media are tightly controlled by the State. For many, the Government’s retraction on Green Dam is being heralded as a real sign of progress.

But China has still a long way to go on censorship. As a writer living in the West I am keenly aware that I enjoy the kind of freedoms that my fellow writers in China do not. Articles in newspapers and magazines on a variety of topics are strictly censored. Much of the “opening up” in print media and on the internet has been limited to social issues. There are many politically sensitive issues such as Tiananmen, Tibet and human rights that are not debated.

The movements of dissident writers are still being monitored by the police. Because I was at the Tiananmen protests in 1989, my books are not sold in mainland China.

I was in Beijing last summer for the Olympic Games and met some of my friends from university. We had all taken part in the Tiananmen protest. We were talking freely about our experiences then and the problems that they still encountered at work. When I asked whether I could tape our conversation, everyone went quiet. People are still afraid to criticise the Government on record. There is still a lot of fear. The ghosts of the past linger.

Last night, after the victory over Green Dam, internet users across China were jubilant. Some gathered at a café in Beijing to celebrate, calling July 1 “The Freedom Day”.

I called my sister, who works for a technology firm in China. She was very pleased that the project had been shelved for now and believed that it would probably be abandoned eventually. But she said that web pornography is a serious issue in China and even mainstream websites sometimes display inappropriate photographs of young women. She reminded me that there are legitimate reasons for the Government to regulate the internet.

Green Dam may have been an administrative failure, but officials will not abandon their efforts to control the internet. It will be interesting to watch what they do next.

The increase in the flow of information has changed the way we live our lives. Phenomena such as YouTube, Twitter and private blogs have helped people around the world to see what has been happening in places where traditional news sources cannot reach.

Mao Zedong famously said that people are the force behind history. Perhaps we have just seen that power at work. A quiet revolution is happening in China and the internet is at the centre of it.

Diane Wei Liang’s latest novel, Paper Butterfly, is published by Picador

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