China and Egypt are two of the oldest civilizations in the world.

And both face challenges in a modern world due to the Internet.

Egypt is currently ruled by President Hosni Mubarak, described by his opponents as a modern Pharaoh.

China has a communist party leadership which holds sway over its people that only an Emperor could dream of.

The power of the Internet to influence events was understood quickly by the Egyptian authorities as the protests there escalated.

They immediately pulled the plug on the Internet to try to limit people organizing and disseminating information.

China has always understood the dangers of the Internet and has tried kept a tight reign on its use since Internet cafes began to spring up across China and its citizens began to chat on line.

There is no anonymous internet chat in China.

Every Internet cafe user has to register with their real name.

According to free speech supporters who monitor China its government is currently trying to control news and information available to internet users in China about the unrest in Egypt.

Its censors, they say, have been blocking any chatting on line about the situation in Egypt by limiting the ability of keyword searches to show reader discussions about it.

Oiwan Lam, a Chinese free speech supporter based in Hong Kong told me  ”It is difficult to tell why the term “Egypt” is censored as the propaganda department is like a black box and they never explain. However, by default, political sensitive talks about anti-government protest, human rights, democracy are banned in the Chinese Internet. Since people cannot discuss the Egyptian situation without using all these terms – the propaganda machine decides to ban it altogether. It is like a mechanical practice for them.”

The censors aren’t though able to totally control the information flow.

“News and information about Egypt is still spreading in micro-blogging sites, as long as the writers do not “over-interpret” or extend the protest to the situation back in China,” said Oiwan Lam.

And that is the real issue for China. If bloggers try to link the situation in Egypt to China then it will draw the attention of the Chinese authorities.

Its not difficult for someone in China to see the similarities between the crowds in Egypt challenging the security forces with the Tiananmen massacre in 1989 when the Chinese military’s tanks swept pro-democracy supporters from the center of Beijing.

The Chinese government is also trying to set the news agenda.

Its state controlled media has been concentrating on the lawlessness in Cairo and the need for order while largely ignoring the reasons behind the Egyptian protests, namely the call for democracy in Egypt.

Instead China’s media has concentrated on the government’s attempts to help its own people caught up in the violence by sending two chartered passenger jets to bring them home.

The Chinese authorities’ attempts to censor the internet and control the news has escalated since there was unrest in Tibet and Xinjiang province in the past few years.

It would be easy to say that they have control of the internet in China.

But there has been a noticeable change recently with Chinese citizens being able to use it to put pressure on the authorities.

The most dramatic example of this involved a deadly hit-and-run incident.

The driver of a car which struck two students on a university campus last October, killing one of them and injuring the other, was Li Qiming, the son of a senior police official in northern China.

Chinese media reports said when a crowd tried to stop the 23-year-old student trying to flee the scene he shouted, “Go ahead, sue me. My father is Li Gang!”

The comment spread like wildfire through the Internet in China, becoming the favorite catch phrase for many and highlighting the anger at China’s elite over abuses of power.

Li Qiming this week was sentenced to six years in prison and was shown on television crying and apologizing for his behavior.

On line discussion groups hailed the decision as a victory for the Chinese people.