Slashdot Mirror
Chinese Government Perplexed By Internet Cafes
morn writes: "BBC News is reporting, from a recent article in the Beijing Review, that debate is hotting up in China over the burgeoning Intenet cafe industry. Up to 15% of children in large cities such as Beijing,
Shanghai and Guangzhou are now said to be using the cafes. The government appears to be worried, and is overseeing the installation of 'information purifiers.'" (Read More)
"In a debate published on the Beijing Review's website, Communist Party officials warned of "online heroin", saying access to pornographic sites and "illegal games" in internet cafes pose a threat to the country's younger generation, who are becoming blighted by the "online poison". It is being said that "Some teenagers are so deeply entrapped by such internet cafes that their minds are severely distorted."
Scholars are arguing against any sort of curtailing of the cafe business, but against strong words like those, do they stand much chance?"
Curiously, my experience has been that the Chinese who are most connected to the internet tend also to be the most nationalistic and Anti-American Number of reasons. People who are connected to the internet tend to get a stronger sense of how weak China is in comparison to the United States. They tend to be younger and more energy and less sense.
The internet might lead to the fall of the Chinese government, but not necessarily in a good way. During the recent spy plane incident, most of the government censorship was aimed at people who thought that the Chinese government was too weak and conciliatory toward the United States.
So what could happen is that the internet could cause the current Chinese government to fall and get replaced by one that is much more expansionist, nationalistic, and anti-American.
Be careful what you wish for,,,,,,
The Chinese government is a lot less clueless about the internet than people here think. They've tried to attack the network and the clients for a while, but this doesn't work very well. So their efforts are largely focused on the servers, and this tends to be quite effective.
Suppose slashdot was a site in China. The way that it would work is that the moderators of the site would take into account political factors when deciding what articles to post and how to moderate responses. Responses that went past certain lines (for example if someone posted an article supporting Tibetan independence) would simply be deleted by the moderator.
Slashdot would go along with this sort of moderation, because if they didn't moderate articles in this way, then the police would come and shut the site down. It's not enough to just move the servers overseas, because as long as the people running the servers are in China, the police can come and have a nice talk with them.
It's a rather effective system. Sure people could put together a site overseas, but think of the cost? You can't just move the servers overseas, you have to relocate all of the people involved in running the servers. There would be enough "geek news" and non-political stuff to keep the site running and interesting, and the effort needed to relocate everything overseas (including the people running the site) wouldn't be worth the effort.
Because this system has evolved in China, it makes me think that the discussion about banning internet cafes is actually because people think teenagers are spending too much time in them. The Chinese government has far more effective ways of censorship than banning internet cafes.
Also, did anyone else also find it significant that the Chinese government was *debating* this issue (i.e. you had people discussing both sides of a public policy issue.)
I know that we all like to comment on foriegn governments, and how much they suck... but if China were that bad a place to live, I think all the people would move out.
Uh, they ARE trying.. Paying thousands per head to be crammed into tramp steamers run by Tongs to go to America, where they end up either in indentured servitude to pay for the passage or in some INS holding pen waiting to be deported.
If the US opened its gates wide to Chinese immigration (instead of keeping them sealed tight as hell), even having to cross thousands of miles of open ocean, you would see millions applying for citizenship within a year.
Democracy is that good. If you doubt it, try living with censorship yourself for awhile. And not just the petty bullshit "censorship" in the U$A.. Hell, just try a brief stint in Singapore and see if you don't get caned.
To mangle Churchill, "Democracy is the worst form of government ever devised by man, except for all the other ones."
The USA may not be the greatest nation on Earth, but Democracy is the greatest form of government on Earth, and the USA does have the potential to be the greatest nation.. If only social change were as easy as recompiling a tweaked source file (but then, who writes the compilers?)..
Your Working Boy,
- Otis (GAIM: OtisWild)
Do all "ISPs" in China hang off of one common backbone that goes through Chinese government routers?
Short answer: yes.
Long answer: Mostly. There are four main networks in China (as of 1997).
Chinanet: Main network with something like 90% of all retail customers. Government controlled, institutes filters by IP address at the main gateways to the rest of the world. The bulk of their traffic is routed through pipes (>80Mps) through Shanghai and Beijing. These pipes connect to somewhere in San Francisco. Leads to wierd situations where looking at a site in Hong Kong routes traffic Beijing->San Francisco->Hong Kong and back.
Golden Bridge or something like that: Smaller, competing network, with mostly business clientele. Controlled by another govt ministry. Bulk of their traffic is also routed through single pipe to US. Filtering type unknown.
Academic Networks: Two networks, the original physics research network and the more extensive educational network that links most of the major universities. Filtering type unknown. These network have much more varied connections, including 10Mbps to Hong Kong, 128kbps satellite links to European universities, etc.
These four networks are separate entities, run by different groups. There is some peering between them.
For all intents and purposes, when we talk about internet for the masses in China, we talk about Chinanet. All other ISPs connect to Chinanet and because of the high level router IP blocking, it is possible to block off access to well known sites (CNN, NYT, etc). Last time I checked, proxies and obscure sites were easily accessible though.
When will countries finally realize that hiding information only makes people want to find it more? Of course, if they were absolutely positive that their citizens were happy they would have nothing to fear.
Not really. It depends on how used the society is to crackpot views, rumors and plains lies. Long time users of the internet are used to this. A society that is just emerging from authoritarian rule, used to seeing only one side of things, are not used to this and are easily taken advantage of.
A non-internet example would be pyramid schemes. The average US/European/developed country person is wary of these things and rarely taken in, though the occassional sucker exists. On the other hand, it has brought down an entire country's financial system. (East European, forgot name.)
An internet example would be Malaysia, when some idiot office worker sent out an email saying there would be a riot. Thousands of forwards ensued and next thing you knew, half the office workers stayed home fearing the riot. How many millions of dollars of productivity was lost that day? If this can happen in M'sia (highly educated, 97%+ literate, etc,) can it not happen elsewhere?
We focus so much on the internet as a place of freedom that we sometimes forget that there really is a dark underbelly to it. We forget that hatred sites, anarchy sites and just plain misinformation is scattered through it. Until a population matures, there will be a lot of hiccups coming from this unchecked flow of information. Do you blame a government from trying to at least slow down this flow?
Note also that the government is trying to crack down only on cafes, not on home users, where presumably, there are parents who will exercise the requisite discipline/enlightenment.
Now it's been a while since I had that course on US/China in the Cold War, but if I recall correctly China works something like this.
Funny. I guess all the internet cafe owners I know in Beijing must be fake, since they were all private individuals trying to make a living. The only large chain I knew belonged to a guy well trained in western management philosophy. He wasn't a party member either.
China has changed a LOT since the cold war. Please don't base your assumptions on 20 year old data collected by scholars who have never set foot in the country.
1. You assume people in China can't go home for unrestricted access. There are many ISPs in China, and the measure in question is only aimed at public cafes.<br>
2. You assume people get shot for trying to circumvent it. (?!!?!) That is just ridiculous.
<br><br>
The article only talks about porn and online gambling type activities which is what's being censored in public places in North America as well. But people tend to assume that the Chinese being evil communist scum must have something much more sinister planned. Try to use your head before jumping to the conclusions your government wants you to.
Sergeant Cho: What happen? ....
Wang Wei : Someone set up us the router!
Sergeant Cho: We get signal
Captain Zhao: What!
Sergeant Cho: IRC turn on.
>Welcome to Shanghai Red's EFNet
>No bots please
Captain Zhao: It's you!!
Vinton Cerf: How are you gentlemen!!
Vinton Cerf: All your communist regime are belong to us
Vinton Cerf: You are on the way to democracy
Captain Zhao: What you say?
Vinton Cerf: You have no chance to survive, me love you long time
Vinton Cerf: Ha ha ha
>Vinton Cerf has logged out (Network Split)
Sergeant Cho: Captain!!
Captain Zhao: Take off every filtering software!!
Captain Zhao: Move communist propaganda.
Captain Zhao: For great nationalism
There's a lot of stuff going on in China right now, a lot.
Xiagang (off of post)
Tons of people have been laid off by SOE (state owned enterprises), and don't have a viable source of income. This people are were the bulk of the current unrest is coming from (protests in small cities, usually not heard of in the western media).
Liumin (migrant workers)
Lots of people are moving from the countryside to find work in the big cities/coastal areas. They live in pretty crappy situations, and work crazy hours at construction sites or in factories.
wang ba (internet "bar"/cafe)
When I last visited (a bit more than a year ago), even relatively small cities (on the order of Portland or Omaha(?)) had a good chance of having an internet bar. Lots of college students had web access (although often just access to internal Chinese sites -- because it costs more money to access international lines). China has 1.x billion people, most are in the coutryside. Most don't use computers. Even with 15 million internet users, that's hardly more than a percent or 2. Thing will change fast, but I don't think that the average farmer is going to be surfing for a long, long time.
News sites
Voices of Chinese has China headlines from lots of newspapers both US and Chinese.
China News Digest an old volunteer run news site.
China Online mainly economic/finance news.
Inside China political news
Good book
River Town talks about a man's experiences in teaching English in rural China. Very, very insightful stuff about what the non-big city/coastal life is like.
Damn, I'll probably post more later on tonight -- I didn't get into what I think the Chinese are thinking about, etc, but I'll get to it.
Lastly: I'm really sick of china-haters on slashdot. There's a lot of problems about China, but there are really no easy solutions.
there is no thing
what else could you want?
I think you're right about the cycle you described. Basically the same thing that happened here in the US, during the late 19th and early 20th century.
The cost of progress was high enough here, with lives lost, opression, and all the rest, but in China, the price will be staggering. I can't even imagine the number of people that will die if opposition to their government becomes widespread at some point in time. In the US the opposition to rights of the common man was more corporate/capitalist in nature, not government based. That's an oversimplified comment, but I think it's generally true. The businesses didn't have the weapons, or a majority of them, anyway. The US government likes to keep the rabble in line, for sure, but not to the point of mass murdering the citizens, as China really wouldn't have a problem with (how the US treats citizens of other nations is a different matter, however).
In China, the government is the business, and they have the weapons. Lots of powerful, mass destruction weaponry. This clash you desribe between the government trying to open society while trying to keep it closed could lead to a wild, terrifying ride this century. If humanity shows that it is worthy of survival anytime soon, I think this proof will come out of China. I don't expect too much from our citizens living easy lives here in the first world.
Thank you for the nice list of public proxy servers. Their IP's will now be banned.
Sincerely,
The Chinese Government
Sure he didn't. He was dead for 32 years!
It's a partial quote from a paper by Stewart Brand of MIT Media Lab, presented at the first Hackers' Conference in 1984. Restated in Brand's 'The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at MIT', ISBN 0140097015, published by Viking Penguin in 1987.
The full quote runs:
I can't think of the last time anyone posted toA more accurate rendition might therefore be "I want information to be free"
And if that's flamebait, then mod Stewart Brand down, not me.
TomV
Tiananmen Square demonstrated the ruthlessness of the Chinese government. They demonstrated that absolute control over their citizens was more important than economic considerations (of course, we in the West did nothing to hold them accountable for their actions, but they must have at least known what they were risking).
Yes, China does need modern technology to survive and grow, and yes, modern technology means the Internet. They're going to do all they can to have their cake and eat it, too, but when the chips are down and they feel they have to make a choice... well, they've already demonstrated exactly where their position lies.
I, for one, would put nothing past them. Arrest and/or execute enough people and you can pretty much get away with anything. Combine police-state tactics against ISPs and Internet Cafes with heavy technological monitoring, and you can sew the place up pretty tightly...
(email addr is at acm, not mca)
We are Number One. All others are Number Two, or lower.
(email addr is at acm, not mca)
We are Number One. All others are Number Two, or lower.
--The Sphinx
Now, as for the books, I would highly recommend (in order or worth)
The China Reader edited by Orville Schell and David Shambaugh. Its a collection of scholarly articals about various modern China subjects (its not right or left wing propoganda [for the most part]).
Governing China by Kenneth Lieberthal. Its part history, part discussion of culture as it relates to China from the Nationalist era (around 1920-1949) through the present.
The previous two were basically textbooks, the final one is an autobiography of the Cultural Revolution titeled Born Red by Gao Yuan. Its discussion of the Cultural Revolution gives great insight into both the urban chinese and the chinese peasantry and how easily they can be manipulated into following mass campaigns.
In order to understand modern China's culture (not necesserily their economy), you really have to understand Mao. I can't say that I do as Mao is a very confusing man whose motives are often difficult to discerne. However, that is certainly the place to start.
Anyway, hope you check out at least one of the books, the Lieberthal book is the only one thats a bit heady, the other two are pretty easy reads.
I seriously think that Chinese governmental "information purification" wouldn't really have a great effect. Chinese citizens could just use public proxy servers or a host of other tools to circumvent any attempt the chinese government were to make.
Perhaps the only real step the Chinese government could take would be to "purify" the cafés in earnest, or, in other words, get rid of them completely.
Per that article, the Chinese government has two overriding needs: to keep their tight control over China and to embrace the Internet for economic gain. IMHO, these goals are mutually exclusive.
I was in China two years ago, and I can certainly see the Chinese government taking this stance. They have done a similar thing in regards to capitalism (which is plainly against communist ideals). Allowing people to run businesses which are independent from the government reduces their power and revenue, but is necessary for China to have a competitive economy. The Chinese government allow it (in many cases openly), but every few years they have a "crackdown" where they try to regain lost control.
My point is, it is entirely possible that China will do the same sort of thing with Internet usage. They will "regulate" it in a haphazard manner, and then when they see it posing a threat to their power, they stage a crackdown on people who run Internet cafes and don't filter sites properly. In any case, it may hasten the downfall of the government, but situations like this have existed in China for some time now (i.e. allowing private businesses and allowing tourists in).
In any case, most people in China don't seem to know or care about opinions outside of China. The government has indoctrinated them to believe that all the evils in this world originate from western society, and that China is working hard to do the best for its people. Example: the Chinese tour guides thought that westerners all knew about Tianamen Square because it was the largest square in Beijing.
This article on a number of levels troubles me. One, the Beijing Review, as alluded to earlier by mgarraha is not a "Review" by any means. It is magazine only published, to my knowledge, in English for foreign consumption and is little more than a propaganda rag for the Communist Party. The articles in it are the English equivalent to The People's Daily on the mainland, which is the generally regarded as good for reading what the Party's stance is, and for using, not reading in the loo. Lead article currently, how China's students are practicing democracy in their classrooms.
Secondly, why is the BBC using this as a "legitimate" source of news? What's next, taking an IRA newspaper and use it to show a changing cultural historical perspective on a free Ireland?
Chinese kids did not suddenly wake up one day and wonder if there was a thing called "the Internet"...it was handled to them on a silver platter by we Capitalistic Pigs (TM). Good for us.
Without starting a brou-ha-ha on "Worldwide Governments", let us consider the benefits of open markets: Open Ideas. China cannot enter the mainstream and continually shut their own people out of it.
I've lived in certain Asian third-world, communist societies and was pleased at how many openly thumb their noses at the system. It's in the little things -- like negotiating state-controlled currency for USD or sneaking into "clubs" where people get a chance to explore ideas and exchange information with foreigners. The down side: when Brother Mao wants you back in line, you'd better move fast.
The more we work with the people of China, the more the people will work on their government. Overall, US factories in Asia provide a significant influx of democratic principles -- we only hear about the abuse of some companies. We don't hear about the effects one man I know has had on a small city in Asia that is learning about progression through hard work (what we call raises and bonuses).
Next come the unions, then comes the crackdowns. It's a sad cycle, but each time it happens the government loses a little more.
Oh, and don't sweat the kids working in factories. It may appall you (as it did me), but it's all they got until things change. Large economics require them to work; productive people want to do better for themselves and their families. These are the same kids who grow up to build Internet Cafes.
In the end each of their labors adds to a collective conscience that wants better. The governments would do better keeping them on the farms and teaching them "Remedial Mao" than grouping them together and letting them think aloud.
Yes, you're quite right, I should have said would have instead of did, respectively, however this is a mistake I made because I was irritated with the original comment I was replying to and didn't proofread closely enough. You have my apologies. Any literature about Marx, however, very plainly demonstrates that what occurred in China and the USSR were not what he intended nor what his writings put forward. Here's a nice short one that simply states the difference, but there is a large amount of his shorter letters and articles on the 'net that can be found with a simple search. I'd also like to point out that he was alive during the events going on in Poland and eastern Europe, as well as political unrest Russia, and commented on revolutions and many of the smaller events that did influence the later Russian Revolution or its participants. It's not as if it's something that just happened in one weekend. It had many factors involved, and while Karl Marx's writings were one of them, they were interpreted in ways I'm sure he did not intend or would have approved of.
(Whoever modded my comment:) Just because I make a mistake does not mean I am a troll. Why don't you just reply with a note that you don't like what I have to say, or send me some hate mail? I don't care if you disagree, but I'm getting rather sick of being called something I'm not. Not everyone who expresses an opinion other than your own does it out of spite.
My Webcomic: Asylum on 5th Street
In between the spin of the spy plane incident and the weekly condemnation of Falun Gong, I found a Beijing Review editorial, followed by 1 opinion for and 3 against banning the cafes altogether. For those already baffled by the front page, it's under "Free Forum" in the top navigation bar.
Per that article, the Chinese government has two overriding needs: to keep their tight control over China and to embrace the Internet for economic gain. IMHO, these goals are mutually exclusive.
Sometimes, you can walk a fine line between two opposing needs. There is a happy medium where each need is satisfied. I believe that there is an "unhappy medium" where neither need is satisfied, and the government is actually at risk of losing the Internet opportunity as well as their own control over their people.
The Internet is not about technology. It's been around since the sixties, and the Web could have been invented in the seventies. The Web is about community; the technology only gives us an opportunity to meet, and that's where the magic starts. Strict control over a portion of the Internet immediately renders that portion useless.
I think that the only chance for the Chinese government to survive in its present form (and, frankly, I'd rather it didn't) would be for it to close off the Internet entirely to its people, and to ignore it as an economic opportunity. I feel that anything less would destablize the Chinese government. The nation would not collapse, China would still exist, but it would have a new form of government.
If the Chinese government allows access but try to control it, they will destroy their own power structure and lose an economic opportunity simultaneously.
Makes sense -- why would China block Commu-linux propaganda? I fact I believe that RMS specifically requested that he be able to read Slashdot when he visted home last year. Yep, RMS is a spy. It's a good thing he works at MIT, where there is no useful technology or information to be stolen. Unforutnately, his works of sabatoge (GNU EMACS, GCC, et cetera) have set US industry back about ten years in lost productivity and software quality.
</kidding>
Kathleen
--
Graphic designer and Mac lover.
Kathleen
--
Graphic designer and Mac lover.
Yes.