Slashdot Mirror
The Great Firewall Of China
iKev writes: "Today's Globe and Mail has an
interesting story
on China's attempt to restrict Internet content available to its citizens. It seems that The New York Times is on the list of 'politically sensitive' sites, but all other U.S. papers are not. ... Porn, however, is free for all 1.3 billion people to view. Go figure. I wonder what kind of setup they have running this firewall."
"Firewall" is the wrong term for blocking political content, but the pun's too good to resist I guess. If anyone has details on the software, please post your comments below or
emailme.
As long as there's porn, everything else is secondary! YAY PRC!! TAI HAO
The people of China are still in chains, still being subjected to forced abortions, still shot in the head to preserve their organs for transplantion into Party officials . . . and all Slashdot has to say is that it's good that these people are getting porn rammed down their kids throats on top of it all.
Some days I really approach despair.
di-yi ge han yu post!
ni men duo shi huai dan!!
Um, China has been under communist rule for about 50 years now. I really doubt that they are headed towards collapse in a year.
You are so utterly ignorant and selfish that I am surprised I am even commenting. I feel obliged to at least inform you of your unbelievable ignorance and selfishness just in case your ignorance is so encompassing that it makes you unaware of that fact.
>
> his got scored a 1?
>
You are lame.
Lurk a little longer, or at least read the FAQ, but ffs try not to post anymore shite.
Communist Russia collapsed? Holy shit!
You are abviously the one uninformed, say that you can't trace pIII chips and word notes... prove it or tell me how to protrect from such violations of privacy.
OMFG! Please tell me that was sarcastic. You really need to stop watching TV and stop reading Slashdot. Both have been known to cause significant brain damage.
Please re-read my comment (original AC in this thread) and keep re-reading it till you understand what it means. You might have to re-read it a few times. Thats ok, I have to do that sometimes when I don't see something at first either. Keep re-reading until you 'get' it. Eventually it will just hit you, and you'll realize what was meant by the post.
What I find amusing is how /. community pretends that they really support the idea of 'freedom' when in reality they really support their ideals. What's even more amusing is that in their arguments they use the same weak reasoning methods that the targets of their attacks use, e.g. analgoies. Carry on hypocrites.
ARGH. God damn it, how many times do I have to tell you bastards, this is /.! There is no inteligence here. Any semblance of it is purely coincidental. Please don't expect the editors of /., the same who have trouble composing simple english setences, to worry about such minor 'details'. Now be prepared to censored to -1.
Marketing!
(I know it's a troll i'm replying too, but hell, I get to bash too sometimes. :-> )
...the idea of 'freedom' when in reality they really support their ideals.
What if their ideals are based on freedom.
What's even more amusing is that in their arguments they use the same weak reasoning methods that the targets of their attacks use, e.g. analgoies (sic).
Uh, and whats wrong with that... You can't expect people to accept you point of view just because it's Right(TM).
It might be because his post contained a political message. Who knows what deprived minds of moderators in repressed countries think of.
Haven't you heard that FTP and those web-based mail services you mentioned use UNENCRYPTED connections? If all traffic is being routed through the government, it would be easy for them to eavesdrop. Hushmail would be more secure, if they don't block services like this.
https://lm.lcs.mit.edu/px.html
Download the software and put it on your server. And there's no reason to limit this to the US, people can set up proxies in any country.
Much like the hyperinflation in the Weimar days convinced Germans to give the Bundesbank a stranglehold on their economy, the Chinese, at least traditionally, fear anarchy above all else.
You got that right. Don't forget that ever since the West forced themselves into China, the country's been shaky. Heck, even after the Nationalists took over in 1911 the country was a mess. It wasn't until Deng Xiaoping(sp?) took over as the party leader that China even saw some semblance of peace. So, that equates to ~250? years of anarchy. Considering this, I seriously doubt the population would even want to see change for some time, even if it was for the better.
Btw, I once read in some magazine (called Asiaweek, or something) that after the Tiennamen(sp?) Square Massacre that the PRC gov't gave a lot of the freedoms that the students demanded (possibly to quell more protests). I'm wondering, if that did occur, couldn't the pop. just demand whatever freedoms they wanted, as long as there was a sizeable pop. demanding them?
Your Orientalist assumptions are astonishing. More specifically your belief that there are stable cultural identities that can be safely call "the Chinese" as if there is, and has always been one uniform "Chinese" way of thinking/acting/being is laughable if not for the fact that you had made your comment in all seriousness, even with genuinely good intentions, as opposed to a sense of irony.
"In the early times of China, there was great turmoil and strife and - yes - anarchy. Much like the hyperinflation in the Weimar days convinced Germans to give the Bundesbank a stranglehold on their economy, the Chinese, at least traditionally, fear anarchy above all else. Hence the dynastic system, which led to long-lasting, powerful governments. And now, the "evil reds," who are not communist at all but simply totalitarian, are free to exert as much control as they desire."
Your extremely simplistic statement conveniently ignores proper historical context and assumes that the rise of imperial rule in China may be attributed to the same set of reasons that help give rise to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). According to you, ONLY "the Chinese" apparently fear anarchy. One needs only point to the "Western" political literature canon--with works by John Hobbes, Rousseau and John Stuart Mill-- to realize that anarchy is feared by very many leading European thinkers, both past and present. The disagreement among these men and women largely lie in the prescription of what ought to replace anarchy. This allows for instance, Mill to argue against censorship and thought control by appealing to the belief that all humans (actually only "civilized" and "educated" ones meaning in 19th century discourse, white people) are rational and can live in ordered societies without war IF they are allowed to debate freely among themselves and not be subject to propaganda either by the government or by other groups. Hobbes's classic, mid 17th century LEVIATHON, if nothing else is clearly driven by the fear of anarchy; there is for him nothing worse than the "short, brutish" lives of people in an anarchic environment. His solution to this, one notes, is in stark contrast to Mill's more liberal inclinations. The point is that both these men, and very many others, fear anarchy. Your attempt to be insightful thus, in claiming "It's a cultural thing. " is an exercise in cultural determinism; by essentializing China and "the Chinese," you ignore the universal, or at least widespread concerns they shared with other people and groups, outside China.
"You cannot apply your own values and experiences to others and expect them to work. The Chinese people have never been governed by anything even resembling democracy. Never."
If you have read any of the anthropological, historical and political works published in recent decades, you will see that the claim that China is somehow, has somewhat always been, anti-democratic is fallacious. In "ancient China" as you put it (a nice, catch-all phrase that allows one to escape specificities and historical sensitivities that would otherwise cast doubt on on your neatly and conveniently, not to mention grossly overgeneralizations), imperial rule did not mean that there were no democratic practices at the grassroots level. The central government certainly was aware that it could NOT govern in a strictly top-down fashion; it NEEDED the help of local leaders who had won the support of most individuals in the village. Numerous examples can be given here. Your beliefs that China has traditionally been anti-democratic, that there are fixed cultural norms that dictate hundreds of millions of people's behavior are incredibly ill-informed and shallow. Not only do you reduce more than one billion people to a cultural stereotype, also unwittingly (I hope) help perpetrate and support the same self-serving arguments given by certain Asian/African authoritarian leaders on why they cannot have democracy-- "Oh, it is not inherent in our culture to have democracy; we have for centuries never practised or believed in freedom and basic human rights therefore, you, the Westerner/Westernized Asian or African cannot tell us to democratized because we just can't do it." Cultural relativism makes for some fantastic arguments that allow the powerful to stay in power in Asia and Africa.
I want to reiterate two points. First no one government/political party/group can speak for hundreds of millions of people. "The Chinese"/"Russians" etc are NOT a homogeneous group where supposedly fixed cultural norms and traditions have ensured that there is such a thing as a "Chinese"/"Russian" etc ways of thinking that are inherently different from "American" ways of thinking which apparently stand for freedom and democracy. Sorry folks, but
"Americans" do not have the monopoly over such essentials as freedom and basic human dignity; others like them too, thank you very much.
The second point I want to stress is that it NEVER is useful to reduce a people/group to mere cultural perceptions. People are more complex than that. Realpolitik and national security concerns play a part, as does plain individual self-interest. Assuming that a set, imagined culture ("Ooh, the Chinese like dim sum and don't like democracy!") can be THE ONLY reason for why some Chinese leaders act they way they do is, plainly stupid.
Slashdot moderators who have given your message a score of 5 clearly agree with your views, as I am afraid, too many others.
"But it completely refutes the claim of cultural affinity for totalitarian rule. "
People's "cultutal affinity" for a certain type of government is determined by their history.
Certainly, the overwhelming majority of Chinese have no history of living in a democratic nation state whatsoever. Taiwain has an extremely short history of such government, and Taiwan is, let's face it, hardly a mouse to the elephant that is Mainland China.
But, even more significantly, the overwhelming majority of all the people who have ever lived had no experience of living in a democracy. Democracy is, in fact, _not_ the human norm. We can thus harly expect that it will be familiar, or desired by most people, and anyone who thinks that democracy is some sort of inevitable future for all the world's people is smoking dope.
A little reality check is called for here. Try reading some real polictial science rather than simplistic wishful thinking from the mainstream media.
If I was a Chinese official, I would ban the NYT for its poor journalistic integrity, above all.
You lost all respect with your 14yr old script kiddie M$ statement. Grow the fuck up
I agree, I don't think there is a cultural infinity. However, I bet Beijing really hates the fact of how succesful Taiwan and Hong Kong have been in comparison to the mainland.
Why do you think there are 1.3 billion ppl in the 1st place?
Well, duh, doesn't the fact that they're largely an agrarian society (well, considering that Mao forced pop. of city dwellers to experience life as farmers by relocating them during the Cultural Rev.), should you be surprised? And if they were to become Mormon...
If you don't know what is wrong with reasoning by analogy, I have nothing to say.
even his simple statment that relations with China would be on a "state to state" basis outraged China.
Er, I don't think that was what ticked them off, but rather that Lee seemed to have the support of certain right-wing figures in the U.S. and was flaunting it. He said the "state-to-state" thing after the 1996 incident where we sent our carriers there, and considering that some in Israel seemed to also flaunt our support in the faces of their neighbors...
If every member in a community decides to freely believe the promiscous sex is immoral, then, they are still 'free'. Your post would imply that this is not the case. At least to me it does, although you might not mean that. Either way, this is a way of imposing your ideals and masking it under the guise of freedom. Just like others mask their agendas under various guises.
I am a Chinese and I know that it is illegal to view porn on the paper. But trust me, the government only cares about their power, they will use 99% of their strength to strangle the policitally sensitive information and only 1% for the porn site. Does anyone know that Chinese prostitutes are more than USA's, and a large part of their service targets are government officials?? Shame on those bastards in the power. P.S., I am also from Rutgers.:)
That was the worst haiku ever.
Remember the "feelies"? Let the porn flow, suppress the individuality. Keep the sheep happy and they'll stay controllable.
I suspect that we'll probably find the words "Made in the USA" stamped on the side of their super-massive firewall...
Did it occur to you that it might be "Made in Israel", "Made in Finland", "Made in Germany" or maybe "Made in UK"?
Dumb prick...
Are Chinese gov. so scared of NYT? Come on, get real. How many Chinese who can read NYT while still live in China? I have no doubt that Chinese gov. is blocking certain sites (might including NYT), but this article has nothing to do with criticics China. It invented all kinds of sensitional words such as Great Firewall for only one purpose - promoting NYT. Hi, we are blocked by Chinese so we must be good!
..people will start using proxy sites.
does it have a cup holder? I think it really needs a cup holder. please make it have cup holder.
Or how about "Made in Canada"?
What about:
1. put a firewall. default policy: deny all. specific entries to allow the proxy server to access the internet
2. set up proxy software to disallow all the sites listed in some file. Allow the rest. I know Squid can do that.
Assuming you have enough proxies, a proxy doesn't have to be that powerful to do the filtering.
My Anonymous 2-cents..
Actually, they are simply using an access list at the gateway routers. Because there are only 4 approved organizations that can operate international connections, it is fairly easy to ge them all to use the access list. However, the educational networks, CERNET and CASNET, sometimes are a little slow in updating the access list, which can change depending on the political climate, relations with the US. etc. Of course, this type of blocking is fairly easily circumvented with proxy servers, and many, many young Chinese are quite adept at using them. However, many Chinese are also already used to self censoring and the fear that accessing forbidden sites will be discovered is enough sometimes to deter them from trying. However, as the Internet expands, more users, greater bandwidth (the primary ISP, ChinaNet, recently expanded its international bandwidth capacity), it will be hard for the access list at the gateway router approach to not degrade performance. Also, with WTO entry, foreign companies are supposed to eventually be able to own part of international gateways, meaning loss of control over the gateway routers. Already, there is a lot of illegal internet traffic that goes through Hong Kong and other places over private lines. However, dont confuse loss of control of information from loss of control over people's use of the Net and the the government's ability to finger an individual user. All they are doing is extending good old fashioned coercive methods to a new medium. Public security officials will focus on this aspect of control, as the crackdown on Falungong demonstrated. China's love hate relationship with the Net will evolve a China Internet that will have Chinese characteristics.....
Better then late night clerks at 7-11.. POLYESTER.NET/POSTOFFICE is your cyber Head-Shop e-Card humor center!@
Do you want fries with that?
Maybe I'm reading your comment out of context, but it makes absolutely no sense.
That is probly becuse you are an anti-US bigot!
When analyzing things that affect and are affected by large groups of people, such as government, it is important to look at what is common to the people in question. Yes there are individual variations and exceptions galore. But those don't explain anything useful. We know people are all a little different. What we don't know is what similarities among large groups of people cause them to act in certain ways.
The point is that a distinction must be made between the Chinese government and the rest of the population. The claim that "the Chinese" opt for the status quo instead of democracy for fear of anarchy conflates the two when among the Chinese populace, views differ greatly over whether the status quo should be kept, for whatever reasons. Apart from this, it is also important to keep in mind that there is no necessary binary at work here-- abolishing the status quo does not mean anarchy; it does not even mean anarchy is likely. Certainly there are fears that if the CCP loses power, the entire country will be in chaos but if you examine how China is run today you'll realize quickly that there is remarkable autonomy in many regions, particularly the coastal where most of the country's booming trade is generated. Arguments that democracy is impossible or will have to be postponed for fears of anarchy are exceedingly self-serving in this sense for in essence, the group that fears the end of the status quo more than anyone else is the CCP, surprise surprise. Rather than parrot these fears of anarchy, it is helpful to contexualize them and ask exactly whose fears these are. Regional secessionism is a more legimate fear although even then, nationalism is so widely and deeply felt that this itself is probably not a serious threat.
From your first post: Certainly as recent events have shown this does not apply to everyone in China, but the popular support for "anything but anarchy" is still very strong.
I am not sure which events you have in mind. Judging from the increasingly decentralized state of political rule that has occured over the 1980s and 1990s (particularly with regards the coastal regions), the abolition of the CCP may not make all that much of a difference when it comes to law and order. If anything, it is the CCP which is largely responsible for lawlessness (rampant corruption for one; the main reason why the government has not been very diligent in stamping this out is that corruption scandals often go all the way up to the upper echelons of power). The status quo does not help the vast majority of the Chinse populace without any useful contacts with government officials; it is very much in their favor that things change. Anarchy in present-day China, in short, is not likely.
Your point that democracy is not inevitable in China is well taken. But I do take offense to your claim that "It is a cultural thing." This statement clearly implies that there is a overwhelmingly shared culture that predisposes the majority of the Chinese, if not all of them, towards certain political beliefs. As I have said before, this is a simplistic judgement. Your conclusion-- that democracy may or may not develop in China depending on the majority's views-- is sound but your means of reaching that seems to me highly flawed, or at least problematic. Your emphasis on culture (leaving aside the question of which culture-- popular, mass, elite etc), even if you do not care to admit, is precisely what very many Asian authoritarian leaders used to justify their political methods and views. Yes, democracy cannot be imposed by "outsiders" without also enjoying the consent of the local people but that is extremely different from the claim that it is solely for cultural reasons that this imposition cannot work. One should not overestimate the relevance of culture when it is clear that the issue is not simply "West" versus China, but also different groups of Chinese versus other groups of Chinese. Within this "Chinese culture" then, groups are fighting over different forms of government.
I appreciate your convictions that self-determination is important, and that peoples must make decisions and choices about their own lives by themselves since "outsiders" should not impose their own beliefs (although sometimes they can, and I believe should) on the local groups. However, your clearly well-intentioned posts also reveal the same assumptions that have made it very difficult for some of these local groups to fight for their beliefs in their countries. Under the guise of cultural exceptionalism or uniqueness propagated by the government/official media is often plain political (and economic) rapacity. As you say, the fight belongs to the local people but it is not for cultural reasons that this so.
On a somewhat separate note, it seems to me that one reason why the U.S. government has been so insistent (in the view of the CCP) that China democratizes is the belief among many Americans that democracy and freedom are basic, human rights. No one should have condone Hitler's discrimination and massacres of the Jews in the 1930s and 1940s but most of the world did anyway because of a belief in national sovereignty (Hitler came to power legally; the majority of the non-Jewish German people supported him or at least did not vigorously oppose him). Similarly one can argue that the CCP's authoritarian ways should not be tolerated because basic human--rights that ALL human beings have a right to-- must be upheld. While messianic views like these can certainly be problematic (who decides what's basic human rights?), it is also, dare I say it, beautifully idealistic and comforting.
China doesn't know jack. Its leaders are old and obtrusive dinosaurs who need a good shoe-in-the-pants. There idealistic ways are backward and totally irreverant. I wish I could show all the leaders how stupid they all are, prove them all wrong in their ideals and get them all confused and chinky-eyed and make them realize what they are doing to people in China. We should take all the leaders to a firing squad and see how they like it. f.uck china ! i'm gonna register a hate.domain called fckchina-u.com they can sue me and i'll sue them back and be stuck in litigation for years and then i'll win and be the great oppressor of free-will and thought in china.
Did it occur to you that it might be "Made in Israel", "Made in Finland", "Made in Germany" or maybe "Made in UK"?
Oh, all right. The firewall is a tool of oppresion and censorship. In general, it's evil. So it probably was made in Israel, Finland, Germany, or the UK.
Before you post another knee-jerk reply, let me remind you: you're the one who got upset about the US getting credit...
Re: The Chinese (we are going to have to kick their ass sooner or later....sooner the better) Have a buddy in Tiawan, try and get him on the freedom.net. 5 nyms for the year for 50 bucks is a great deal, then chain 3 encrypted proxies, supports cookies, email,telnet, ssl, web, anf irc. 128 bit blowfish, or 3XDES on the email thru chained servers, that should be good enough for the mainland peasant army....
Frankly, I don't see how we can convince other nations to embrace liberty until we drop our masks of pretension and hypocrisy and embrace it ourselves.
= ==
===============================================
Amen!
For all of the cracking down on "human rights abuses" that the US is doing, we are still the only country to execute people convicted of commiting a crime as a minor in the last 5 years.
Did you Americans ever notice, that you actually live in a communistic country? China has one party. You have two, but still no real choice, because both are quite the same ones. You call yourself a Democracy, but the GDR (DDR originally) also called itself democratic. In Virginia you are not allowed to have oral sex with you wife! I dont think that there is currently any officialy communistic country where the governements law controls the way people have sex.
adsfadsf
The USA is a Democratic Republic. Citizens of the US elect representatives to Congress and vote in a public election where delegates for the electoral college are chosen. The electoral college then votes for the President. Amkerican citizens have as much a choice in their situation as anyone else in the world. Some choose not to participate in the elections, some elect stupid soundbite throwers.
At least I know the 'Post Anonymously' checkbox exists, you utter fool.
It has to be said: "Nudes you can use."
- the Communists were most succesful at organizing the people and repelling the Japanese invaders during the war, and they naturally assumed leadership after the war. PLEASE YOUR IGNORANCE OF HISTORY IS APPALLING !!! The US government turned there backs on and betrayed the Chinese Rebulican Government, that was led by Chang Kay Check, which also by the way fought in the war. They did NOT assume leadership after the war. They stole it with guns blood and bullets. The Chinese did have a democratically ellected republican government. And that government still exists in exile in Taiwan. My Father in Law was in the chinese air force, which was trained by the US. My father in-law knew chang kay check personally. My wife tells me the us betrayed the chinese people. This info comes personally from the people who lived it. Your perception of history is seriouslly FLAWED !!!!!
I must strongly disagree. Looking back on all the harm Communism has brought the 20th century, I can never sleep sound at night. How does it concern me? Very simple. I was born at Russia.
I understand that the Western society teaches us to be calm, to accept the others' attitudes etc. I am a part of that society myself. Well, enough acceptance has been made for the General Management of Camps (GULAG) in Russia. I don't know how is it called in Chinese, but I know it exists. Can you deal with a man whose hands are red with blood? So why are you dealing with such a country? Wake up before it's too late!!!
Don't you mean Made in Taiwan?
You will soon enough.
I think that their is. Isn't it called "Naked News"?
So porn is free for the 1.3 billion ppl. Well, duh. Why do you think there are 1.3 billion ppl in the 1st place?
I assume you mean encrypted email, say using PGP. No, the Chinese government does not block encrypted email. Lots of people in China are using PGP, mostly foreigners. Chinese believe that using PGP would draw attention to themselves. It is true that detecting PGP encypted email is fairly trivial, and could easily be done by China's public security service. This is because they have coopted all ISPs in China (the main government ISP, ChinaNet, and the host of other small, privaste ISPs, which must all connect to the Internet through ChinaNet or another smaller government backed service, Jitong). So for the time being, anyone's email sent from China will be sitting on a server somewhere, and will be easy pickings for someone who wants to see what's in it or if it is encrypted. Of course, they cant break the PGP encryption. When enough Chinese realize this, look out.....
>>Go figure It doesn't make sense for the Chinese government to try to ban porno sites, since they aren't any obvious threat to the party. Furthermore, these sites may not be that well known in China. I suspect that they only ban The New York Times because there were a lot of Chinese users trying to access the site. Obviously they can't hope to block all the sites they don't like, so they just block the important ones. OF course eventually they'll notice they can't keep up with the Internet, so the whole thing isn`t any real threat to anyone. -Barney
Maybe the NYT annoyed them with their required registration.
I'm not chinese, I'm an American, but my major in college was in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, with a concentration in Chinese, so I believe I tend to follow news about China fairly closely.
China is not honest. period. If you ask a mainland chinese citizen about Tianneman (s?) Square, they will stare blankly at you and say it is a lovely square. The government doesn't deny anything, because nothing happened there. Period.
China is *not* a happy place for those who care about liberty. I think that even most mainstream Americans know the troubles that Taiwan goes through to maintain the amount of sovereignty which it still possesses, despite Chinese threats against it.
The only reason a foreigner could think that China is honest about its brutal and repressive political nature is because we have information accessible to us, something which is not true in almost all of mainland china.
----------------------------
I've ALWAYS thought this idea would sell well, worldwide. Actual high-quality news content, delivered by sexy supermodels, interspliced with varying degrees/types of steamy/porn content to keep the viewers' attention. Porn News Network -- I can see the station break now:
"PNN -- with more hot girl-on-girl action than any other major news network...."
--
Somebody moderate this up please. It's an excellent contribution to an important discussion.
You misinterpret. I do not claim that all Chinese individuals think and act in the same way. To do so would be foolish. When analyzing things that affect and are affected by large groups of people, such as government, it is important to look at what is common to the people in question. Yes there are individual variations and exceptions galore. But those don't explain anything useful. We know people are all a little different. What we don't know is what similarities among large groups of people cause them to act in certain ways. That is the interesting issue here. Stop thinking about this thread as "stupid bigoted American thinks all Chinese are carbon copies of one another" and you might have something to contribute.
According to you, ONLY "the Chinese" apparently fear anarchy.
No. I never made any such claim. It's just a question of how much anarchy is feared relative to other evils.
Your attempt to be insightful thus, in claiming "It's a cultural thing. " is an exercise in cultural determinism; by essentializing China and "the Chinese," you ignore the universal, or at least widespread concerns they shared with other people and groups, outside China.
I am not overlooking this. Note that the examples I offered were not nations in a state of anarchy. But the process of changing governments from the type that the PRC has today and most of today's republics had in the past to a "free" society is lengthy and bloody. A people must decide whether it's worth it.
Your beliefs that China has traditionally been anti-democratic
I hold no such beliefs. Contrast "anti-democratic" with "pro-status-quo."
Not only do you reduce more than one billion people to a cultural stereotype, also unwittingly (I hope) help perpetrate and support the same self-serving arguments given by certain Asian/African authoritarian leaders on why they cannot have democracy-- "Oh, it is not inherent in our culture to have democracy; we have for centuries never practised or believed in freedom and basic human rights therefore, you, the Westerner/Westernized Asian or African cannot tell us to democratized because we just can't do it." Cultural relativism makes for some fantastic arguments that allow the powerful to stay in power in Asia and Africa.
I harbor no illusions about the brutality and evilness of these dictators. The excuses and rationalizations they use to remain in power are their problem, not mine. I am not claiming that democracy in the PRC or elsewhere is impossible, for cultural or any other reasons. I am claiming that it is neither inevitable nor our decision to make.
First no one government/political party/group can speak for hundreds of millions of people.
Of course they can. Whether they should is another matter.
The Chinese"/"Russians" etc are NOT a homogeneous group where supposedly fixed cultural norms and traditions have ensured that there is such a thing as a "Chinese"/"Russian" etc ways of thinking that are inherently different from "American" ways of thinking which apparently stand for freedom and democracy.
No claim of homogeneity is made. Homogeneity is not required for tradition. A trivial example: many Americans are not Christian, in name or in practice. So why is Christmas a federal holiday?
Sorry folks, but "Americans" do not have the monopoly over such essentials as freedom and basic human dignity; others like them too, thank you very much.
Including the right to self-determination. Unlike most Americans, I make no effort to interfere with that right. Anyone here remember the Vietnam War? Tell me, which side stood for these rights: Nguyen "Tyrant" van Thieu, the "commies," or the "imperialist" US? I argue that none of them did. In light of your post, ISTM that you would have supported the actions of the US. Ironically, similar actions in support of Chinese "freedom fighters" in the early 20th century were in retrospect hugely flawed and probably contributed to the current government there. If people want these freedoms and basic rights they must be willing to fight for them, just as every nation which currently enjoys them had to at some point. The severity and length of the fight certainly varied, from short, bloodless political battles to years of anarchy and death. These costs must be considered when discussing "freedom."
Ooh, the Chinese like dim sum and don't like democracy!
You trivialize (not to mention completely distort) my argument and attempt to further protect your belief that I am simply a narrow-minded bigot. It just ain't so.
THE ONLY reason for why some Chinese leaders act they way they do is, plainly stupid.
A discussion of every reason would fill volumes and is quite beyond the capabilites of this forum. I offered one reason in rejection of what has become a bromide. Nothing more.
Slashdot moderators who have given your message a score of 5 clearly agree with your views, as I am afraid, too many others.
I have no control over the moderators, or whether their actions reflect agreement or disagreement versus a genuine belief that my post is worth reading. You are, naturally, entitled to your own opinion independent of the moderators'.
What part of "off-and-on" didn't you understand?
Greek democracy was anything but egalitarian.
No claim to the contrary is made.
Face it, most westerners are descended from powerless peasants who were lorded over for centuries by absolute monarchs and an all-powerful church that would burn you alive if you spoke your mind.
No claim to the contrary is made.
Westerners made the transition to democracy, painfully, with very little in the way of democratic tradition except for in the farthest, remotest past.
Indeed. And during these transitions, what were the philosophers of the day basing their discourse on? That's right, the remotest past. History is replete with examples of the distant past being used to justify or condemn actions of the present. That's why we study it. Every now and then someone dredges up a good idea, works it over a bit, and puts it into action. That happened a lot in the European renaissance, and in many other places at other times as well. The point is that the history is there, and while not entirely continuous, is not at all a new idea.
Proof that all statements can and likely will be misinterpreted. The point I was trying to make wasn't that anyone necessarily enjoys or wants a totalitarian state, but that some may find it a lesser evil than anarchy. I don't. If you don't, great. But many people do, and there are strong reasons to believe that one's opinion on this matter, like any other, is heavily influenced by culture and heritage. Get over the idea that I'm a bigot. I'm not. Quite frankly, I'm indifferent on this matter. People get the government they deserve. The "West" is rife with corruption and thinly disguised socialism. The Chinese government is totalitarian. Russia is essentially an anarchy, as is most of Africa. Which of these options appeals to you most or least is not my business or my problem. It's a personal decision, and one that happens to be heavily influenced by the time, place, and circumstances in which you were raised.
But there is no basis for any claim, which is somehow implicit in every argument of this sort, that the subjects or citizens of a nation have no say in the type of government they have. No government can exist without the governed. This is not a principle of democracy, it's an economic fact: bureaucrats and generals aren't productive in any way that helps. Thus if 1.3 billion people, or even a sizable minority of them (see "Taiwan") became genuinely convinced that their current government was more evil than some other, and the associated process necessary to change it, then a revolution would occur and some presumably more desired form of government would be instituted. The existing government simply cannot possibly kill everyone trying to overthrow it, and would be foolish to try. Thus the power to make a change always exists. The question - the important question at the heart of all this - is whether the pain, bloodshed, and anarchy necessary to make that change is worthwhile. It is quite clear historically that most Chinese do not feel that it is. It's not a value judgment; it's a simple observation.
I disagree with the traditional American idea that it's somehow our business what type of governments other nations have. I don't much care what type of government the Chinese choose for themselves, or even their reasons for choosing it. My original post was in rebellion against this idea that we are by definition right about governments. Our successes and failures speak for themselves. If other nations choose to emulate us, we should be honored. If they do not, we should perhaps examine why instead of either going to war in an effort to change that, or blithely asserting that sooner or later, democracy is inevitable. Neither approach properly respects national or individual soverignty and both are flat out wrong.
You are free (living in the US at least) to make whatever statements you like about why the PRC has a totalitarian government. Given your apparent closeness to this matter, you probably have significantly more insight than I do. But that does not imply that my observations are the result of bigotry. It's too complex an issue for such a simple refutation of an important argument.
You don't seem to know your history very well. In the early times of China, there was great turmoil and strife and - yes - anarchy. Much like the hyperinflation in the Weimar days convinced Germans to give the Bundesbank a stranglehold on their economy, the Chinese, at least traditionally, fear anarchy above all else. Hence the dynastic system, which led to long-lasting, powerful governments. And now, the "evil reds," who are not communist at all but simply totalitarian, are free to exert as much control as they desire. It's a cultural thing. Certainly as recent events have shown this does not apply to everyone in China, but the popular support for "anything but anarchy" is still very strong. Whether this is changing and how fast requires telling by someone a bit closer to Chinese culture than I.
You cannot apply your own values and experiences to others and expect them to work. The Chinese people have never been governed by anything even resembling democracy. Never. For that matter, neither had the Russians, and look what difficulties they're having with it. You (assuming you live in Western Europe, the US, Oz, etc.) have something like 2500 years of off-and-on democratic heritage of some kind or other. The Greek republican governments, the aristocrat-democracies of Europe, and the post-revolutionary American and French governments have provided plenty of fodder for your inclinations. But these are culturally insignificant to many people, including the Chinese. There is no certain inevitable victory for the forces of democracy in China. Maybe it'll happen, maybe not. Predicting the future is hard. But everyone needs to get this "inevitable triumph of the forces of democracy" out of their heads, because it just ain't so.
Could also to be technical feasibility of blocking all the porn sites - there are many more of these than 'policitically wrong' sites.
Interestindly from a previous post they aren;t blocking the BBC which ain't exacly pro-China.
Perhaps the blocking the will occur on a more varying nature, depending on the 'wind' of thought agianst/for China's policies and actions.
Also whilst doing admim for various site I've noticed that other countries have a similar policy of central censorship of the 'net; Iran and Vietnam spring to mind.
While I'm sure China's government is willing to put lots more money and effort into this censorship scheme in order to preserve their all-precious media control, they have set themself a remarkably difficult task. Not only do they have to outmuscle all their net users, they have to continually outsmart them, too. As the number of 'net users grows this will be increasingly difficult. They simply can't keep it up forever: eventually the sheer weight of numbers will overwhelm the censors, and the whole thing will become a joke.
They probably feel they've pulled a smart one: by refusing to acknowledge the censorship publicly, when it fails, they can withdraw it without acknowledging that they ever had it running. Unfortunately this too will come back to haunt them, since anyone who cares will probably notice the change whether they publicize it or not.
-Mars
Read my coment again. They are They all part of the same are bad bunch.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
Lets face it. The Chinese government is many things. Repressive and Brutal come to mind. However they are not hypocritical. They insist on blocking "politically dangerous" information from coming into the country or being distributed widely.
All they have done is move that policy online. Why should they even think about blocking porn ? It has precisely 0 effect on politics if you leave it alone. It's just people looking at pictures and reading pointless stories. If they tried to block porn *that* would become a political issue and one more battle to fight against their own people.
Contrast that which the US where you have legislators trying to impose unworkable censorship on adults in public libraries. Forcing a library to install a piece of software that will essentially block a random list of sites is stupid. When that list includes the whole "geocities.com" domain you are way over into the "you little citizens shouldn't talk to each other" territory.
At least in my country the politicians don't even bother to try. They only keep the onenforced and unenforceable laws against porn, buggy and prostitution as one more way to prosecute rapists and child molesters.
I.e. It's a lot easier to prove he was taking pictures of the little girls privates than that he touched her.
Which of the three is worse is a tough call to make. However China killing it's citizens for trivial things paints them as the worst of this bad lot.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
I also believe that posessing cryptographic software is a criminal offense in some countries. Is China one of them?
China recently enacted a law requiring users of cryptography to register with a government office. The office itself was a small one in a back alley in Beijing, and it is doubtful whether they'd be able to handle millions of registrations (especially over the few days amnesty they gave).
It's more likely that this law is to give the police something else to arrest people for: unregistered use of cryptography. The Chinese government loves such open-ended, selectively enforceable laws. (Take for example the crime of revealing "state secrets", which could be anything, including the weather in Beijing or what's on TV.)
So, if they view porn all the time, but can't get any "sensitive" political views, why not mix a porn site up "Monica" style. Imagine steamy pictures narrating the political events in office. Imagine porn being the messenger of freedom!
>It seems that The New York TImes is on the
>list of `political sensitive' sites, but all
>other U.S. papers are not.
>is free for all 1.3 billion people to view.
>Go figure.
I always has some suspicions that slashdot has been invaded by puritans, and now to my horror, slashdot has not only been invaded, slashdot even promoted the puritans to the point letting puritans having their own soapbox here.
I am not here to argue that what China did was right. Censorship is censorship, but I still want to know what Jamie [email: jamie@mccarthy.org ] was thinking when he said "Porn, however, is free for all 1.3 bilion people to view. Go figure."
WHAT IS WRONG WITH PORN?
I mean, what is wrong with sex?
Is Jamie the kind of person who don't enjoy sex, huh?!
Oh wait, is Jamie related to that _other_ infamous McCathy of the '50s era?
I wonder.
And I also want to know what's the exact relationship between Jamie and slashdot. Is he in control now?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
> Don't you understand the concept of irony?
> Read some of his previous posts and you'll get
> what he means...
I _do_ understand the concept of irony, but not this.
Again, I must say that I do not support China's censorship move, _any_ censorship is bad. But this McCathy guy
Why?
WHAT IS RONG WITH PORN?
I mean, your view is different from my view. Your morality is different from mine. And there are things that you may find unacceptable, but to me if perfectly fine.
So, if you say that Jamie McCathy person is for "civil liberty", exactly _WHAT_ type of "civil liberty" is he for?
FOR CENSORSHIP ?
I mean, if he is against PORN - I don't mean the kiddie porn stuffs, but just plain-old garden-variety types of pron - he is FOR restricting people from accessing the PORN on the Net, and to me, my dear friend, is an act of CENSORSHIP.
So, Jamie McCathy is FOR censorship. Then, what's the use of criticize China for their censorship move while Jamie is him/herself a PRO-CENSORSHIP fella?
Isn't that kinda of irony?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I'm almost done with a new release, which will support streaming media, HTTP Basic authentication (hopefully!), and much better anonymity (the current 1.2 release has many JavaScript holes). I'll also have an HTTPS-supporting version, but you'll need OpenSSL on your server. If you get a copy of 1.2 now, check back in a couple of weeks.
Looking for testers! In fact, I'm testing it right now by posting this.
They just forgot their password :)
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Collary: The real kicker is that most of our computers say "Made in China".
I suspect that we'll probably find the words "Made in the USA" stamped on the side of their super-massive firewall...
Having had to deal with chinese beureaucracy (I'm not sure I can spell that) recently to try and get a couple of modems installed in some kit we sold to them, I give up trying to figure out the way chinese IT management think. We have had minor problems with some bits of kit, and most customers would happily perform minor tweaking given some simple instructions. Not over in China!.
We are currently trying to resolve their 'Major Complaint' that the size of the digital xclock display is too small, and their windows based X server, which is using the wrong fonts, is chopping off the last digit of the year. This is apparently more confusing and important than any of the showstoppers we are trying to resolve.
Aaargh..
The great wall of China was built to keep out the northern invaders. However, it was a monumental failure. You simply can't wall off your entire country, and the invaders rode around the wall and attacked the country all the same.
This whole firewall scheme is much the same. It's a monumental effort doomed to failure. No matter how complete a wall is built, the information can simply find some way to go around it.
-josh
Hahaha ... actually, they're more so. Girls get arrested for prostitution for having sex with foreigners. That's a permanent criminal record and a kiss good-bye to any future you may have had. People get thrown out of university for having sex. Producing pornography incurs the death sentence. You think the US is neurotic ??? Well I'm not saying that it's not bad, but you could certainly do worse.
And now it's being built to keep the Western invaders out. Only this time, the invasion is cultural/political and not military.
I went to China 2 years ago for business and I had some meetings with ISPs in Beijing. I was surprised when a techician from one of the major ISPs in China mentioned that the Chinese Government actualy filtered content. But he also mentioned that another tactic used it to keep access links to the outside(namely the internet) to a minimum therefore encouraging the consumption of internal Chinese content instead of trying to access out of china coutent that came in at a crawling pace.
Surely they understand that defeating filtering is not a hard task for technicaly able users. I also think this is pretty much a useless effort they will eventualy have to stop. Instead they should concentrate their efforts into bringing China into the new millenium and open themselves to the world.
- Limit connectivity with the rest of the world. Sounds like something an opressive government would do.
- Not filter anything.
- Packet filtering, which can be done on a larger scale, though you miss a lot of things that way.
From what it sounds like thus far with the comments posted here, I have to think it's packet filtering.-- PhoneBoy
The views expressed herein are not necessarily those of anyone, including the poster.
I had ping times of over 1 second. It may have improved since.
Yeah, it's 300-600ms now.... But sometimes BTA screws up and drops all of its customers (Tier 2 ISP's) off the Internet for a little while.
Of course, this story was posted at 5AM China time. :)
I live in Beijing, and the Firewall blocks:
1. Many western news sites (not just the NYT!) - this includes (from my experience) the New York Times, the Boston Globe, The San Jose Mercury, The Washington Post, and the Australian newspaper that reported on the French suspicions about Windows a while back. Exceptions: The Seattle Times, USA Today, MSNBC, the Globe and Mail, and the BBC.
2. Probably the entire *.gov and *.mil domains - I've never been successful in getting to anything inside those domains. On the other hand, this isn't really surprising.
3. Xoom, Geocities, Fortunecity, Mindspring, AOL user pages - anyplace that has a large number of user pages gets blocked.
4. NOT proxies or anonymizer services (as mentioned in the article). However, even major ones like Anonymizer and Proxymate aren't blocked, so they probably won't start blocking these unless they become a major problem.
On the other hand, I'm not sure that most people here really care enough to go around the Great Firewall and read the NYT (making money is much more important to most of them). But if proxies started becoming popular and getting blocked, I'd appreciate it if someone could point me towards a few backup proxies.
I'm a little surprised by them not blocking porn, since they do try (well, make token efforts) to keep foreign hardcopy pornography from being brought in (I believe).
Was this the world's most obscure flame, or were you agreeing with me? :P
i browse at -1 because they're funnier than you are.
Hi Folks,
Crazy day for stories - I can't believe this got posted right after the censorware article. I think the last thing I posted in a thread on that article makes enough sense to cross post it here.
The whole thread is here.
And the last thing I wrote to it was:
Zico said:
something that every child should be tought in school, as opposed to the self-important dreck that comes out of the anti-"censorware" movement
Interesting point - sort of. If I ever have children, I will make damn sure that they understand the concept of censorship. I will make damned sure that they understand the concept of revolution, and that they understand their reponsibility to humanity to stand up for freedom and everyone's right to be left the fuck alone and live their life as they wish.
All in all, it isn't one group or another that I feel we have to worry about - It's not 'us' against the communists, or the religious right, it's the simple concept of freedom, the fight against the ability of one person or group controlling your access to information, of any kind.
Yes, I understand that information can be used to harm others, but I genuinely believe that if that's the way we go out, then so be it. If humanity is really so weak a force as to be destroyed by its own freedom, if some freak gets blueptrints to a nuke, builds a couple thousand, and gives the earth over to the cockroaches, then so be it - at least we lived free while we lived.
--
blue
i browse at -1 because they're funnier than you are.
Anyone here will know that a) is simply impossible. Sites can change URL's in a matter of minutes, multiple mirrors etc etc. (We need only look at how poor some of the existing "censorship" products are in the West to realise that what China's government want to do is extremely difficult.)
It would be so much easier for the Chinese government to simply make a list of approved sites and only allow access to those ones. No more having to deal with pesky mirrors and brand new URLs or anything. They could simply go "Okay... ESPN.com is okay. Disney.com is okay, eff.org is not okay, house.gov is not okay, slashdot is not okay, ebay.com is okay." That's it. It'd end up being pretty hard to circumvent unless you wanted to start posting pro democracy rants in the item listings of ebay, or in the sports chat on ESPN.
Completely wrong analogy. Commie Russia didn't collapse, and they'll keep electing communists for a while yet. As far as the Soviet Union is concerned, I think that once Poland gained Solidarity and (later) the Russians elected Gorbachev (who was very much a communist, by the way), one could plainly see that it was only a matter of time until the Soviet Union fell apart.
It's far more likely that China is blobking "everything" and allowing some things through. I work for a company that has several boxes in China. I have access to them only through a few sights that are specifically allowed through. If we add a management box, we have to phone up a guy in China and ask for it to be allowed through.
Your carefully laid out, exceptionally civilized points have convinced me of the Holy Truth of the American Way and that the Commies who Rule China (and most of Europe and Australia, too!) must be nuked, along with the Stinking Democrats who want to ban our Guns!!!!!!!!111!!!
Congratulations.
There exist strong Chinese democracies - i.e. Taiwan.
I hate to burst your buble, but Taiwan has only been a democracy for four years 2000 will only be there second presidential election. There isn't a lot of precedent there.
Also, a lot of the major candidates in that race are talking about a 'reunification' china of some sort.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
But it completely refutes the claim of cultural affinity for totalitarian rule.
True, but no one was saying that, only that chinese people liked 'anything but anarchy'. Democracy is certanly that.
You've being naive. Talk of reunification is intended to placate China
Well, I hope so, but then, I'm not chinese. The thing is, most of the non-PRC people I know don't really care at all. I've talked with people from both HK and taiwant, and none of them seem to care at all.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
This is the kind of stupid talk that people
who have *NO* idea what anarchy really is spout off, nor any clues of the true state of the Chinese gov't and its people.
First:
> What I don't understand is exactly how many
> people in China have internet access, and if
> there are
> that many people I'm sure there are ways to get > around the firewalls using anonymizing programs
> etc...
No. you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what a router does. YOu can't anonimize yourself
past a router that is blocking packets to and from
a list of IP addresses.
> Smart programmers exist in China as well
> as in the US.
Of that, there is no doubt, but unless these smart programmers are willing to put their life on the line and put in new underground routers and the miles and miles of cabling required to connect it,
the gov't nased Ip filtering is an effective tool.
Second, and more important:
Anarchy would NOT be better for 99.99% of ANY country, unless its population is a minusicule fraction of what it is now.
How do you think the billion Chinese get their food? Do you think each family grows it all?
No, its much like in the US, where large (read: antithetical to anarchy) groups of people
cooperate to get some food to the people's table.
Do you really think mass starvation on a scale of
hundreds of millions is a good thing?
Sheesh. Rapid democratization can be almost as bad
as constant dictatorship.
case and point: Russia tried the rapid way, and it failed miserably.
Each country needs an approach that is tuned
for its unique geography, resources and political and social climate. That is the only way we wiill ALL enjoy basic freedoms without the chaos. Some places will just take a little bit longer, thats all.
In my previous job, we'd regularly (once every few weeks) see portscans on 80 and 8080 of our public address space originating from China. At the time I suspected people were looking for apache's with mod_proxy enabled or unsecured caches. The description of the filtering method contained in the article reinforces that belief.
I also believe that posessing cryptographic software is a criminal offense in some countries. Is China one of them?
$ find
Imagine a country where the ratio is 10 guys (or more) to every girl (of child bearing age). That country is China in the year 2015 (somewhere around there, a rough estimate). We're looking at either a country where 80% (or more) will conform to homosexuality or beastiality (i'm not saying that these are bad choices). But if you introduce to the popular government run media a socialy excepted sexual relief medium (where 80% no longer have to poke eachother for jolies) they can just sit infront of their computer and enjoy and live their fantisies rather than tring a 10 guy in one girl gang bang (that poor little asian girl).
You're an idiot and a bigot hiding under the guise of an elightened speaker. It's not a cultural thing.
I love hipocrites, really, I do.
I'd just like to point out that The Republic of China (Taiwan)was originally a dictatorship founded by fleeing Nationalists, ruled by a despot. Taiwan became a democracy under Chiang Kai Chek's son (don't remember his name) and "at the request" of the US. Taiwan's democracy was little more than lip service to gain a powerful ally against The People's Republic of China. Now, haiving had a taste of freedom, the Taiwanese are unlikely to give it up without a fight, but the average PRC citizen is not likely to want to give up their gov't. Why? Read Plato's The Cave.
I only take a drink on two occasions - when I'm thirsty and when I'm not.
I only take a drink on two occasions - when I'm thirsty and when I'm not.
Brendan Behan
Hong Kong party line
There are funny tidbits like they only have 2 T1 lines for the whole country :) (they use proxies). Anyway, that's how it was in '97.
First off, the ARTICLE makes reference to the porn.
Second, the comments in the post were made by iKev, NOT jamie.
Third, READ BEFORE YOU POST. If that means reading previous articles by the author to get an Idea of what they have dealt with, DO SO!
all internet connections to everywhere in China were routed through some government office that blocked "unsuitable" material. It's doubtless that people found ways around this
If you tunnel a connection to a proxy (a proxy outside of China, of course) through ssh, the censormachine won't know what websites you're visiting.
Which would give more incentive to write software that bypasses the firewall? Reading a BBC article, or visiting playboy.com?!
If they block the flow of porn, more people will know methods to bypass the firewall, rendering it useless!
... now someone boosted him to a 2!!
Maybe moderators don't read well either.
Whoa! you must have forgotten about feudalism, absolute monarchies, class systems, and all the other ugly blots in western history.
Greek democracy was anything but egalitarian. The Roman republic was extinguished by an absolutist imperial system. The only European nation with a long history of Democracy is Iceland and their system harks back to the tribal gatherings (things) of the Germanic peoples - _not_ to any Mediterranean tradition.
Face it, most westerners are descended from powerless peasants who were lorded over for centuries by absolute monarchs and an all-powerful church that would burn you alive if you spoke your mind.
Westerners made the transition to democracy, painfully, with very little in the way of democratic tradition except for in the farthest, remotest past.
So what makes them so different from anyone else? We've been at it for a century or two. Not millenia.
-M
I remember 3-4 years back there was an announcement that Sun would provide the major contractor for both the hardware and software for Chinese filtering.
This was a year after SGI had sold a load of Challenge DM servers for the same purpose which were never used and are probably still collecting dust somewhere in the bowels of the China Resources Building in Hong Kong.
This may very well have changed since then, but it sounded like a pretty big contract. There might even be a press release somewhere in the Sun archives about it.
I remember at the time, being pretty dissapointed with SUN.
At a guess, I'd say it's done inside of the routers (Zhongguo Dianxing uses and recommends Cisco). Regretfully, when I was meeting with the techs at China Telecom, I was asking about boring questions regarding bandwidth availability, and didn't think to bug them about the Great Firewall.
j.
I was last on line in the PRC in mid-1997.
The technology is pretty simple, actually. There's only one supplier of Internet service in the PRC... The Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications Circa 1997, there were three points of entry into the national network. One which passed through Beijing, one which apparently landed at Shanghai, and one which came in through Guangzhou (presumably from Hong Kong).
What was done was a simple (apparently) IP-based firewall. Any attempts to contact such subversive websites as cnn.com, chinatimes.com, or icrt.com.tw (old Taiwan hands will chuckle at this one) would resolve all right, you would just wait forever for the connection to be established.
Many hackers, including a few who post to Slashdot, make use of proxy servers to work around this. Better-known proxy servers are blocked, and new proxy addresses get propagated. Nobody who really WANTS information is deprived of it.
Why is all of this done? Well, I don't play golf with Jiang Zemin, but I can take a guess. China is not monolithic in it's politics. There are a few moderates in the government, and a few extremely conservative troglodytes as well. The firewall is (IMNSHO) a way to appease the more conservative members of the government that letting people have access to the Internet is OK. Does it work? Nope. Does it have to? Well... Only well enough to fool a few not-very-technical 70 year-old Politburo members.
Cheers!
J.
It's true that it would be a ridiculous analogy, but it isn't--it's a play on words. "The Great Internet Content Restriction of China" wouldn't have the same ring to it, would it?
Its nice to know that if Russia or one of China's other neighboring countries catches fire, 1 billion+ people will not have to worry about it. How much cement was needed to go all the way around? I wish the US cared as much about us.
:)
> If every member in a community decides to freely believe the
> promiscous sex is immoral, then, they are still 'free'. Your post would
> imply that this is not the case.
As far as the idea that "every member" of our community disdains nude dancing goes, well, that just can't possibly be so, as the "Mons Venus" parking lot is packed every evening. In fact, if "Mons Venus" and its competitors were truly universally unpopular in Tampa, there wouldn't have been any need for legislation at all, would there? And certainly the "Mons Venus" does not force unwilling passers-by to look upon its unclad dancers. Far from it! in fact, one has to pay to get in.
No, what you have in this law, on the face of it, is an effort of one group of citizens, who hate sex and who would assumedly never visit the "Mons" themselves whether or not it were legal, to impose their anti-sex ideals upon a second, clearly defined group, the customers of "Mons Venus", who have utterly different ideals. But even that is a false face, because the highest-ranking politician who signed this law, our Mayor Greco, is himself a wholly unrepentant ex-customer of "Mons Venus"; from which we can only conclude that the entire business is an exercise in naked hypocrisy.
As far as the well-known licentiousness of American politicians, why, haven't you been paying any attention to the news at all these last few years? These are not mere baseless allegations; we taxpayers have recently spent tens of millions of dollars to prove them absolutely irrefutably in mind-bogglingly minute detail. Here, now; what do these names have in common:
Bill Clinton
Newt Gingrich
Henry Hyde
Bob Barr
Bob Livingston
Helen Chenowith
I'm sure I forgot a few, and I invite other readers to help me, ah how should I put this, flesh out this list.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
You really need to clarify your objection; to me at least it is simply incoherent.
> What I find amusing is how /. community
But I am not "the /. community". I am a single individual. I would even go so far as to say that my political opinions are not shared by the majority of posters to slashdot.
> pretends that they really support the idea of 'freedom' when in reality
> they really support their ideals.
But which freedom does the so-called "/. community" fail to support, opting instead to support their own anti-freedom "ideals"?
> What's even more amusing is that in their arguments they use the
> same weak reasoning methods that the targets of their attacks use,
> e.g. analogies. Carry on hypocrites.
In what way are analogies an especially "weak" reasoning method? Admittedly arguments based in analogies do not display the same rigidity as the rock-hard proofs of mathematics (that is to say, tautologies.) But the deductive methods of mathematics can't be applied anywhere in the real world. In fact, whenever one "mathematizes," a problem in even a "hard science" like physics, one is applying an analogy. A physicist reasons: "By experiment, we have determined that certain aspects of this stuff in the real world appear to behave analogously to mathematical variables, that is to say, purely imaginary abstractions, in equations 'A' and 'B'. Now in mathematics, equations 'A' and 'B' in combination yield equation 'C'. Therefore it is at least worth testing as a hypothesis, that those quantifiable aspect of matter in the material world will also act similarly to those numerical variablesin equation 'C'."
But in fact I presented no analogies anyway. Perhaps where you wrote "analogies" you meant "anecdotes" instead? I'd be the first to admit that an anecdote does not constitute a proof. But I also don't feel obliged to prove yet again the self-evident fact that American politicians, as a class, are both hypocritical and notoriously sexually profligate.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
Probably Chinese culture isn't so deranged as U.S. culture over the issue of sex, it's difficult to imagine another country with a culture as guiltily obsessed as this one (but then there's Afghanistan, of course) but whether or not that happens to be the case, the main reason they don't block porn is because they don't have politicians running for office who think they can get elected by making a big noisy fuss over porn.
In Tampa, Florida where I live, there is a well-known nude-dancing club with the absurd name "Mons Venus". The Mayor of Tampa, Dick Greco, used to take his business associates and clients to the "Mons Venus" in person. Despite that fact, he recently signed a bill criminlaizing nude dancing, such as that which he himself used to pay to see, in the city limits. Why? This jerk Greco is plainly grubbing for votes by presenting the public with a transparently phony display of outraged morality, of course. Votes from whom? I think William Gibson put it well in his novel "Idoru":
"...Do it and you've got yourself a job."
Laney looked at the tweaked Hillman on his screen. "You haven't told me what I'm looking for."
"Anything that might be of interest to Slitscan. Which is to say, Laney, anything that might be of interest to Slitscan's audience. Which is best visualized as a vicious, lazy, profoundly ignorant, perpetually hungry organism craving the warm god-flesh of the anointed. Personally I like to imagine something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It's covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth, Laney, no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote. Or by voting in presidential elections."
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
self-important dreck that comes out of the anti-"censorware" movement
Let me parse this...
self-important: i'm the only thing that counts (accusation generally given without argument)
dreck: crap (all of it presumably)
anti-"censorware" movement: they (as opposed to we. See Looney Tunes)
In contrast behold:
Yes, I understand that information can be used to harm others, but I genuinely believe that if that's the way we go out, then so be it. If humanity is really so weak a force as to be
destroyed by its own freedom, if some freak gets blueptrints to a nuke, builds a couple thousand, and gives the earth over to the cockroaches, then so be it - at least we lived free while we lived.
Thank you kind sir. Very good.
My own: (See Taliban, Calvinism, Puritanism, Totalitarianism)
If the best you can do is suggest a gridlocked society incapable any sort of progress, jump off a bridge.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
...Does it block /.
Shine on, you crazy diamond.
I'm all for it if they block incoming and outgoing TCP port 25 traffic.
There are so many open relays and even UCE senders in China, and I'm sick of all the UCE from there. (Some sites do already block *.cn for mail.) Legitimate mail (no UCE) can probably be sent over other channels (even if it's a government proxy, which would mean that the government shows that it's watching it's netizens and people will know that they have to use media other than plain email for sensitive communication).
I remember reading somewhere awhile back that all internet connections to everywhere in China were routed through some government office that blocked "unsuitable" material. It's doubtless that people found ways around this, but it still puts a large portion of the country under the eye of Big Brother.
Do read the above post.
True, but no one was saying that, only that chinese people liked 'anything but anarchy'. Democracy is certanly that.
Read this post. Anarchy is a universally feared condition.
Well, I hope so, but then, I'm not chinese. The thing is, most of the non-PRC people I know don't really care at all. I've talked with people from both HK and taiwant, and none of them seem to care at all.
I'm Chinese (non-American, but currently in America). I assue you that the Taiwanese do care about their freedom - that's why they have compulsory national service (a very big sacrifice for young Taiwanese males), and that's why they continue fighting even in face of force by China.
The analogy to the Great Wall of China is ridiculous. The great wall wasn't built to "keep the world out". It was built to keep the Northern invaders out, and as a grandiose monument for the Qin emperor. It in fact served as protection for travelers to the West
When watching the TV news from a Hong Kong station (in English before the handover) they used a test pattern to block stories that they did not like.
When I was in rural China (somewhere in Guangzhou) some 6 years ago, what the local TV stations would do was to rebroadcast (i.e. bootleg) the HK stations. I didn't notice that they bothered to censor stories - what they did was to overlay the HK commercials with local (usually crudely made) commercials, which would frequently overrun the alloted time slots.
We can thus harly expect that it will be familiar, or desired by most people, and anyone who thinks that democracy is some sort of inevitable future for all the world's people is smoking dope.
A little reality check is called for here. Try reading some real polictial science rather than simplistic wishful thinking from the mainstream media.
I don't recall saying that I think democracy in China will be inevitable. In fact, I've written in the past on Slashdot that I think this is anything but inevitable.
Try reading and thinking a little more carefully before jumping to conclusions about what I think.
Proof that all statements can and likely will be misinterpreted. The point I was trying to make wasn't that anyone necessarily enjoys or wants a totalitarian state, but that some may find it a lesser evil than anarchy. I don't. If you don't, great. But many people do, and there are strong reasons to believe that one's opinion on this matter, like any other, is heavily influenced by culture and heritage.
Show me someone who prefers anarchy to government and I will show you someone who leads a comfortable, middle-class and well-fed existence, who has never seen real strife in his life.
If people fear anarchy, this fear is a universal one. Not a cultural, ethnic one as you claim it is.
The Chinese people have been prepared in the past to undergo anarchy to bring about change, in the ancient past (the overthrow of dynasties during dynastic successions), in the recent past (during the overthrow of the Qing dynasty), and during modern times (Tianmen). Your claim that the Chinese people, as an ethnic group, are somehow meek and prefer totalitarianism (i.e. dynasties and communism in your original post) to necessary revolution ("the Chinese, at least traditionally, fear anarchy above all else" and "It is quite clear historically that most Chinese do not feel that it is") is incredibly offensive and displays a thorough ignorance of history.
People get the government they deserve
Yours is an idea of "fit" -- that the government people have is the ones that they deserve. I can't even begin to describe how wrong headed this idea is. The fact is that people do not always have a choice in the matter - the force of arms, information control and propaganda, often take this choice away. You may even have heard of people in N. Korea thinking that theirs is the best country in the world - because they know no better. I recently read an article in National geographic where an Albanian peasant commented that during the time of totalitarian rule in his country, he believed that his was the best country in Europe. A people cannot rebel when they know no better, and they lack the means to do so, and sometimes people deserve more than what they have.
I have a friend who went to Belgrade recently, and he commented that the people there do not realize the harm that their government has done in Kosovo. You greatly underestimate the ability of governments to control and deceive.
Neither approach properly respects national or individual soverignty and both are flat out wrong.
The appeal to soveriegnity is the means by which many governments claim the authority to carry out their atrocities, and which other governments use to justify non-intervention.
From your post, I would gather that you would be opposed to all sorts of military intervention. I would suggest to you that the issue is much more complex than that. The have been many bad interventions in the past, but they have also been many interventions that came too late (the Rwandan genocide would be an example). What we need are moral interventions.
What you will ask next is "morality, by who's standards?". Yes, the issue is a difficult one that has to be grappled with, but your philosophy of "fit" is incredibly simplistic and harmful. I would suggest that you read the classic work "Just and unjust wars" by Michael Walzer on the topic of interventions.
But that does not imply that my observations are the result of bigotry.
I correct myself. Your observations are due to ignorance.
P.S. I do not think that democracy in China is inevitable, or that the US should forcibly impose its democratic values on other countries.
I hate to burst your buble, but Taiwan has only been a democracy for four years 2000 will only be there second presidential election. There isn't a lot of precedent there.
But it completely refutes the claim of cultural affinity for totalitarian rule.
Also, a lot of the major candidates in that race are talking about a 'reunification' china of some sort.
You've being naive. Talk of reunification is intended to placate China, which is currently making beligerent noises. The Taiwanese people elected the independent minded Lee Teng Hui, and even his simple statment that relations with China would be on a "state to state" basis outraged China.
It's a cultural thing.... The Chinese people have never been governed by anything even resembling democracy. Never.
You're an idiot and a bigot hiding under the guise of an elightened speaker. It's not a cultural thing.
There exist strong Chinese democracies - i.e. Taiwan. The fact the Communists currently rule China is an outcome of history rather than any cultural affinity for totalitarianism - the Communists were most succesful at organizing the people and repelling the Japanese invaders during the war, and they naturally assumed leadership after the war.
China has had a long history of good government - the dynastic system persisted for so long because it was highly successful; China was one of the cultural capitals of the world before civilisation even arose in many parts of the West, and was intellectually freer than most of the world. Success led to stagnation of the system perhaps, but the long run of the dynasties was due to its success, not because the Chinese people have no love of freedom.
why would anybody want to block porn ?
If American libraries are leaning toward censorship, we can only imagine what the Chinese ones might be like...
ICQ: 49636524
snowphoton@mindspring.com
Got Rhinos?
Apparently the definition of an idiot and a bigot is one who disagrees with you. Yes, the dynastic system was successful for a long time. However, that success was anything but constant. There wouldn't have been so many new dynasties had the old ones continued to be so successful. China's political history is a history of change, just like any other, but when seen from the remote perspective of history, it seems an almost stylized change. Nobody said that the Chinese have an affinity for totalitarianism. Your own argument explains perfectly what the Chinese have an affinity for... The Communist Party took over as a result of their success in fighting the Japanese. Chiang Kai-Shek was seen as weak for his avoidance of battle. The Chinese tend to choose strength, not ideology. They have accepted foreign rule if the new rulers seem best able to maintain order and govern well. At the same time, they have proven to be dogged fighters against those whose rule is perceived as unacceptable, like the Japanese during World War II. It's not that the Chinese have no love of freedom... they are pragmatists. At some point, as with all previous dynasties, the Communist dynasty will fall, and a new dynasty will take its place. But it will not happen until the Chinese people think they will be replacing with something they know will be stronger. -Goliath
Sounds just 1984... (sorry i just read the book for my first time) So first we have australia filtering inet access (including porn), now China filters it for political ideaologys, i wonder what the next country to jump on the filtering bandwagon will be.
I have lived in Taiwan for over 8 years. I have been to the PRC over 300 times. Believe me, DEMOCRACY does work for the "Chinese race". You have been brainwashed by someone or yourself to believe that the "Chinese people" need a totalitarian government in order to live and prosper.
Come on over to Taiwan sometime, the presedential election is coming up! Yeah that's right, ELECTION by the Chinese people here (most of them third generation Fujianese). You should not discount democracy until YOU have seen it! Believe me as I have seen most of the PRC (most likely more than you), and real democracy there would do the place some real good.
You place way too many assumptions on "Chinese", which means that you are either:
1. A xenophobic Chinese, OR
2. A prejudiced westerner
Whatever you are, you are very wrong in assuming that "Chinese" fear anarchy above all else.
How many ethnic Chinese live in the USA, Canada, Taiwan, Europe and other democratic nations? Ask them all if they would prefer to live in communist China. I don't know the exact numbers, but I can tell you the percentage is most likely less than 0.1 %
How many Chinese flee the PRC annually in search of a life under a democratic government? I don't know the exact number, but it is probably a number higher than the GDP of Switzerland.
Oh, and, why do the Taiwanese not vote to reunite with that wonderful "mainland"? I mean, they all came from there three generations ago. Ask anyone on the island, "are you Chinese", they say "yes". Ask them with a clear "are you MAINLAND Chinese", and they will most likely either scream "NO" or slash your throat.
Think again, but this time with your own brain, the DEMOCRATIC way! Believe me, hundreds of ethnic Chinese do it every day, contrary to your belief.
Real men don't need signitures!!!
Hello!
Which candidates are claiming reunification with China? Where did you read this? What planet are you from?
I am here in Taiwan and read the papers everyday. No one is talking about "reunification" with the "motherland". If any electorate did, he would basically be conceeding the race altogether.
Real men don't need signitures!!!
I feel so bad for the intellectuals in China... They can't feed thier minds the way that they want to.
<br><br>
I hope that in the <b>near</b> future the linux community (soon to be arch enemy of china) can set up a MASSIVE collection of U.S. based proxy servers. I think the U.S, the same way the pumped radio signals into radio-free europe, has an obligation to find a way to pump non-censored internet into china. As a community of intellectuals, we MUST find a way to set up proxies such that they are abundant enough that the chinese government has no chance of being able to filter them!
a) To prevent access to foreign "propoganda" sites that might encourage China's citizen's to become more resistant to the Communist Party's wishes. (It would appear that they consider the New York Times to be one.
b) To prevent the orginaisation of grassroot political groups via the internet.
Anyone here will know that a) is simply impossible. Sites can change URL's in a matter of minutes, multiple mirrors etc etc. (We need only look at how poor some of the existing "censorship" products are in the West to realise that what China's government want to do is extremely difficult.)
They do however, have a better chance at preventing b), with possible human rights implications. The article states that the only ISP in China is run by the government. Since they control the remote access equipment, it would be fairly trivial not to stop someone from sending "undersirable" material, but to find out whom did. (eg. Search google one too many times about democracy and you might have a surprise visit from the local army squad.) Presumably the use of encryption would also render you immediately suspect.
It will be interesting to see how this one develops...
I've lived in China for the last four years. I can verify the comments made by Serf (many sites are blocked) and add that there were originally attempts to block porn sites in addition to news sites. I beleive Beijing gave up because 1. there were too many sites to keep up with and more importantly, 2. they really didn't care that much. I think that some major sites such as playboy might still be blocked. Beijing is currently trying to control the content of sites within China. There was lots of controversy over Chinese sites with foreign investment such as China.com, Zhaodaole, and many more. After the WTO agreement was made there was supposed to be moves made to allow foreign investment in such ventures. However, Beijing is now trying to control content by two ways: 1. All sites with content must be majority owned by the Ministry of Information (I might be wrong about the exact bureau but you get the idea) and 2. All "journalists" posting content on the net must be certified by Beijing. However, it looks like anything that might possibly irritate Beijing might be labeled as content. So you might have to be a journalist in order to post your own web page. I really don't see how Beijing thinks it will be able to control all of this as the internet continues to spread. I'm convinced the only reason they are not even more parinoid is because they don't really understand the power of the web. I think it is just a matter of time before the routers in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou (the three international routers) are changed from blocking a certain list of sites to having a list of approved sites that can be passed through.
Yeah but of those billions of people very little actually even know what the internet is. Most are to busy worrying whether or not there cow is going to produce enough milk for supper that night. Not to mention that the government has been repressing the people of china for years, this isnt anything new really, they are probably used to it by now. I highly dont most will care. Doesnt make it right but that is just how it is.
They probably attach more value to knowing who's surfing what so they can do something about it than just blocking content. If everything goes through a proxy, they can tell which way most of it is going. Without going to paranoid extremes and imagining dawn raids on alleged internet subversives, I find that the possibility that they are cataloguing hits to sites and probably matching names to surfers more worrying than just the blocking of content.
Salocin.com
the source where i read it is kind of weird, in my english grammer book (i'm from israel), in a reading comprehension, where it was told there that the religous people , the very religous one are having proxies, censoring sensetive information. i think the whole idea seems rather stupid than weird, yet, the net is free, for free, and for free people. so the heck that is stupid in my opinion, think about it.
Dan.
Arrgh, I meant to say Hong Kong, not Taiwan...
Gotta hit that Preview button...
TangoChaz
"It's not enough to be on the right track -- you have to be moving faster than the train." -- Rod Davis, Editor of Seahorse Mag.
TangoChaz
--------------------
Wise men talk because they have something to say, fools because the
I'm sure the chinese will discover really powerful encryption and hide their plans to overthrow the government in recipes, its just a matter of time.
No not really. The power of the encryption is almost irrelevant, unless the PRC allows weak encryption to take place so they can monitor supposedly secret communication. With a little intelligent study of the traffic, it would still be easy [well, feasable] to identify encrypted communications as being encrypted, and block them entirely.
And whether or not that works, it would be possible to identify the individuals who are using encrypted technology and deal with them in a more direct method...
TangoChaz
TangoChaz
"It's not enough to be on the right track -- you have to be moving faster than the train." -- Rod Davis, Editor of Seahorse Mag.
TangoChaz
--------------------
Wise men talk because they have something to say, fools because the
Now, if the proxies included encrypted lists of alternates as part of their protocols, then clients could transparently surf the net even when the government blocked a particular proxy.
;-]
Ease up there Tex... "Make something even a fool can use and only a fool will use it." (Yeah I realize it doesn't work in the literal.)
In other words, don't think that all this censorship is only passive. You can count on there being someone who activeley looks for stuff to block, kinda like the various porn filter software companies, only with different motives.
If you make it too easy to find, the wrong people will find it and you will nullify your own efforts. Rememer, WE are the subversives, here...
TangoChaz
TangoChaz
"It's not enough to be on the right track -- you have to be moving faster than the train." -- Rod Davis, Editor of Seahorse Mag.
TangoChaz
--------------------
Wise men talk because they have something to say, fools because the
I have had at least three occasions to chat with individuals in Taiwan. I thought I'd take the opportunity to find out what changes had taken place. The conversations were very short...
Every time I used the terms ROC or China, that individual seemed to get disconnected before they could reply.
My experience with US government has lead me to uderestimate the savvy-ness of the individuals controlling the filters, but it appears that the ROC doesn't share that attribute.
I wonder if PGP could make it through?
Tangochaz
TangoChaz
"It's not enough to be on the right track -- you have to be moving faster than the train." -- Rod Davis, Editor of Seahorse Mag.
TangoChaz
--------------------
Wise men talk because they have something to say, fools because the
It really is sad that we live in a world with imposing prohibitions - just because someone, somewhere has deemed certain material innapropriate for whatever reasons, other people have restricted instead of full lives. Where is it going to end? As an individual, I dont wont a government telling me what I can and cannot do, especially when the cannot has nothing to do with deteriorating the quality of other peoples lives. I want to see porn. I want to HEAR, or read other peoples opinions. Life is so short, too short for others to restrict my scope of experiances. From the title comments we can see another form of prejudice - political restrictions are bad and pornographic restrictions are good? Not so, my friend. Other societies have no taboos with pornography unlike the English speaking societies. I was raised in a society which played full scale pornographic movies every night on public, free for all TV. No black bars or cut scenes. This is a cultrul issue, and again, who does the government think it is when it imposes restrictions on what I may see. All forms of ccensorship are bad, be they political or pornographical. To quote a fellow /.-er, we are slashdot, open source, closed minds. Ha.
Revolution = Evolution
This got scored a 1?
-Remove the 86 from my email to contact me.-
At least I bothered logging in.
-Remove the 86 from my email to contact me.-
I've been waiting for a long time to post this, but haven't found a relevant thread till now...
/. about a year ago, i sent him an email with the url, and two weeks later he wrote to ask me what i was trying to send to him, becasue aparantly the university's censors felt that /. was innappropriate content, and my message had been blocked, and my cousin warned. so CmdrTaco, be proud, it seems that (at least a year ago) /. is dangerous and/or dissedent(sp?) material!
My cousin is attending the University of Beijing (pardon my bad translations, english is my second language and i'm not that great with translating things into and from it yet, but i digress(sp?))
My point is, when i first found
Ma Tin-Yuan
Who thinks america isn't that bad, as long as i avoid eating at McDonalds...
Hence the word "claims".
i.e. they say they're for freedom, so they have an image to maintain. Not that they are for freedom.
For their way of doing government, freedom is flat-out the most dangerous idea there is.
The U.S. Gov't wants Americans to celebrate the overthrow of an oppressive regime that took place over 200 years ago, yet it's terrified that the same notions of freedom might cause the same thing to happen to them!
The solution they've chosen? Encourage a lip-service token "patriotism" that keeps the masses tranquilized and makes the thinkers too cynical to care about their country and the sad, sad state it's in.
China may seem more oppressive, but at least they're making progress, little by little. In the grand scheme of things, this "Great Firewall" is just a minor setback.
--
Stay up hacking each weekend. Sleep is for the week.
Just imagine being in the US Gov't.'s shoes:
You represent a country that claims to be for freedom and whatnot, and your main beef with the Chinese gov't. is that they censor what you don't want censored and they don't censor what you do want censored!
Now, your challenge as a Patriotic Puritan Bureaucrat is to convince a hostile nation (i.e. one that doesn't always kowtow to the Inherent Might-Makes-Right Moral Superiority of Uncle Sam) that censoring some things is wrong, while censoring other things is somehow acceptable or even commendable!
Frankly, I don't see how we can convince other nations to embrace liberty until we drop our masks of pretension and hypocrisy and embrace it ourselves.
--
Stay up hacking each weekend. Sleep is for the week.
Support of certain right-wing figures? Huh?
Let's outline the situation.
PRC = autocratic xenophobic state that is hell bent on "liberating" and "uniting" the Chinese "motherland." Irregardless of the sentiments of those that live there Tibet & Taiwan. Never mind that Formosa has never historically been a part of China.
Taiwain = successful island nation of nationalist refugees from the chinese civil war, the "other" Chinese government. fledgling democratic tradition.
Now as I remember, that whole "1996 incident" occurred at the last Taiwanese election, where China was launching missiles over Formosa to intimidate the population into not voting for independence. The "state-to-state thing" was only recent - this past year.
Let us not get into the subject of Israel flaunting US support in the face of its neighbors, who have invaded it not once, not twice, but three times in the past 45 odd years since its inception. Check your assumptions...
You can't take a billion plus people and try to control their basic freedoms without some backlash... I think within a year or two we are going to see a collapse of the Chinese Communist Regime currently in power.
Anarchy will rule but as compared with a the current situation anything is better...
What I don't understand is exactly how many people in China have internet access, and if there are that many people I'm sure there are ways to get around the firewalls using anonymizing programs etc... Smart programmers exist in China as well as in the US.
Just my two cents.
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
NPS Internet Solutions, LLC
www.npsis.com
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
www.haidacarver.com
Several posters commented about how the people who really want information use proxies/anonymizers. They remarked that if these were shut down, then new addresses propogated. Presumably, they propogated by word of mouth, ie people sending e-mails to their friends and stuff.
Now, if the proxies included encrypted lists of alternates as part of their protocols, then clients could transparently surf the net even when the government blocked a particular proxy. In other words, remodulate the shield frequency. I'm assuming that it wouldn't be too hard to come up with a free client or a hack to Mozilla or something like that, and server software that was designed to cooperate with it.
Network programming is not my forte, so I wouldn't know how to do this, but I'm sure there are plenty of people here who do. Now, if we set up a site for the express purpose of influencing and subverting the Chinese government, it would be interesting to see how the US government. reacted.
Given Al Gore's campaign financing situation, it seems like turnabout would be fair play.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Looks interesting, don't it? It looks like they're individually picking and choosing sites to block (since they aren't blocking porn) or any US newspapers besides the NYT. I wonder how long it'll take our friends across the lake to subcontract to one of our censorware organizations (false positives wouldn't overly concern them, would they?). Maybe when THAT happens, people will finally realize the parallel between censorware and repressive governments.
What, me worry?
Probably the main reason the New York Times is considered iffy is the unrelenting criticism of China's human rights record by William Safire, who recently said China's leaders were double-crossers and certain political trends are "leading [China] toward a political earthquake".
I was actually in the city of Guangzhou.
Fight Spammers!
When at the Jinan University, I spent some time in the computer center. The head of the networking department (who got paid $250/month) was married to one of the doctors in the acupuncture department (in the university hospital) that I was being treated at.
The university (in October 1996) had a 28.8 line that went to the filtering office in Beijing (sp?). I had ping times of over 1 second. It may have improved since.
When watching the TV news from a Hong Kong station (in English before the handover) they used a test pattern to block stories that they did not like.
As we all know, there is a way around any security. But this censorship does allow the government to keep more control.
This control will be lost over time. Some of it will be lost, some of it will be given up.
Fight Spammers!
It seems short-sighted to me for the Chinese government to be blocking various North American news sites while allowing unfettered access to a Web simply saturated with the visual viscera of our culture. Look at Beijing and Tokyo. The uniform of the next revolution, IMHO, is bleached hair, skater pants and Nikes. Punk DIY is just starting to grow under the glass towers of corporate Hong Kong. Let 'em keep the Times.
... in the U.S., if we don't keep discussions like this going...
We have PIII chips with traceable serial nos., M$ Word documents with traceable serial nos., doubleclick.com with traceable cooking-planting nos., blah.
Looking at the article's description of a massive series of "fire-wall like" censor boxes, don't be surprised if something like that happens here.   Here, it doesn't have to be "political" to be censored   And let me say this in terms of what's happening with the discussions of restricting access to things like Napster in an attempt to not only save bandwidth but to "catch" those illegally trading copyrighted MP3s.   But it hurts those who are legitimately trading public domain stuff.   And also note that many of the pr0n web filters inadvertantly filter out legitimate medical searches and such.
I expect as long as you have a "free and open" media such as the internet (web, BBS, USENET, email, etc.), we can at least bring out the issues and keep the net unrestricted.   I think the restriction should be at the user's discretion (and at their PC if they choose), not at the gov'ts.
JMHO.
-- Win2k: "It's not so much that it's only 65,000 bugs, it's just that they stopped at 65,535 to prevent an overflow."
what do they mean they can't send email without the government knowing?!?! haven't they heard about hotmail/yahoomail/[place-your-web-based-email-syst em-here]?
heck, if all else fails setup an ftp server so that people can upload text files that are sent through an offshore smtp server or something.
and what does the fact that china.com is a portal have anything to do with which sites you visit? didn't get that one...
There are two kinds of people in the world: Those with good memory.
I suppose the Chinese governement doesn't block encrypted code, right?
Monkey sense
I was actually refering to the Secure Socket Layer which lets you visit sites over an encypted protocol (https). I realise that most sites don't use this but the possibility is out there.
Monkey sense
Everyone keeps talking about American culture, but I still haven't seen any.
With nuclear bombs to blow us all sky high.
There's fools and idiots sitting on the trigger.
It's depressing, and it's senseless, and that's why...
I like chinese,
I like chinese,
They only come up to you knees,
Yet they're always friendly and they're ready to to please.
I like chinese,
I like chinese,
There's nine hundred million of them in the world today,
You'd better learn to like them, that's what I say.
I like chinese,
I like chinese,
They come from a long way overseas,
But they're cute, and they're cuddly, and they're ready to please.
I like chinese food,
The waiters never are rude,
Think the many things they've done to impress,
There's maoism, taoism, eging and chess.
I like chinese,
I like chinese,
I like their tiny little trees,
Their zen, their ping-pong, their ying and yang-eze.
I like chinese thought,
The wisdom that Confusious taught,
If Darwin is anything to shout about,
The chinese will survive us all without any doubt.
So, I like chinese,
I like chinese,
They only come up to you knees,
Yet they're wise, and they're witty, and they're ready to please
Wo ai Zhong-guo ren [Wo, I chumba run] ... Chi Chen]
Wo ai Zhong-guo ren
Wo ai Zhong-guo ren
Ni Hao Ma? Ni Hao Ma? Ni Hao Ma? Zai zhen [Ne hamma?
I like chinese,
I like chinese,
They're food is guaranteed to please,
A fourteen, a seven, a nine and li-chese
I like chinese,
I like chinese,
I like their tiny little trees,
Their zen, their ping-pong, their yin and yang-eze
I like chinese,
I like chinese,
(fade out....)
No, a 2. It's about three screen pages down from the top, far beyond the average Slashdot moderator's attention span.
So, I wonder if they'll call it, The Great Firewall of China. Oh, I'm sorry!! I couldn't resist.
Holy shit, I must be STONED. I didn't even bother reading the damn headline of the article. Here I was thinking I was being funny and original. How embarrassing.
I'm so glad I'm canadian (except for the damn taxes)
btw, isn't china in a state where the rich get richer? And a lot of people are jobless?
My personal site does have some political content (not too much) that China's Government would surely find objectionable. No one from China has accessed my site. However, my site is small and gets very little non-US traffic to start with. I'd be interested (as I'm sure China also would be) in finding out how many of slashdot readers websites are getting traffic from China, and whether or not they have content China would rather not have it's citizens have access to.
The Chinese version of Network Solutions, CNNIC, would be more than happy to help you track users on your .cn site
Short Quote from page:
The third party web site traffic audit of CNNIC can collect data from the under-investigated web sites in a long term and possible for long term save of data.
Does anyone know what percentage of China uses the internet. Bet its less than AOL.
This is all a conspiracy! They don't have the firewall set up so that the Chinese can't view political things, it so that they can't be running Napster and using up all the expensive bandwidth!
piku