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Chinese Government Further Restricts Internet Cafes
bwhalen writes: "Once again, China is demonstrating how much they love their citizens to have open communication. They have closed/demanded restructuring of a few thousand Internet Cafes; here's the story." Previous stories on China make clear that the Chinese government and the Chinese citizenry don't see eye-to-eye on how this whole Internet thing should work.
newsflash: communist governments censor their citizens
/.'ers whine when someone posts something about alan cox 24 hours late...
really?
...damn, and
Good question. I don't know the whole answer, but there are some points that I think that contribute:
I visited southern China briefly once, and to my pampered Western eyes it was a hellhole. The pollution was unlike anything I had experienced, the poverty everywhere I looked, the polarized distribution of wealth far more stark than anything I've ever seen, the political corruption that created that division obvious (the number of Mercedes-Benzes with military numberplates, and the fact that the only properly constructed buildings were either built by foriegn multinationals or the Army gives it away pretty quickly). While the rapid improvement in living standards was undoubtedly there (nobody seemed to be starving, and many of the poor farmers seemed to be acquiring television sets and refrigerators), we see the relative poverty, not the improvement.
As far as political freedom goes - the part I visited, sure, the obvious signs of political oppression have been toned down. But when you see the place where hundreds of Falun Gong protestors were apparently arrested and carted off to prison camps, again, you don't see the improvement from the days of the Cultural Revolution, you compare it to your own country where such arrests and indefinite detention for peaceful political protest would be unthinkable.
Go you big red fire engine!
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
One of the biggest internet cafes I've seen -- it's located on the south end of Peking University. I haven't been back in more than a year, but I think it's pretty much taken control of the entire street. (it's a good location, too). (some of it was recently torn down for new construction or something).
A page of pictures
more pictures
the about-us page :
Remember to bring a grain or two of salt, but translated, some of the interesting things are
They have 1800 computers (started with 25)
They have 20Mbit connectivity (DDN direct line?)
16,000 users/daily
open 24 hours
have trained 1,800 people
have been reported on by 2300 different media organizations.
What people do at them
I remember the most common activity was playing games. Lots of folks playing some weird sniper game and starcraft. At night, always a fool or two in the back flipping between tasks/peeping porno.
Lots of BBS/bulletin board action now, I hear...
Hmmm lastly, last time I checked, the graduate student dorms (and possibly some of the undergrad dorms) at Peking University had ethernet that connected to a internal China network. People sometimes use a program called ProxyHunter to find ways out of the internal network.
Damn, when I first came in 1998, Feiyu was a crappy little place where there were 25 computers and a not-so-knowledgable staff. Things have changed, I guess.
there is no thing
what else could you want?
And the maximum jail term, I believe, is 5 years.
In China, unelected government officials arbitrarily determine that they do not want their citizens having access to the free Internet. They thus shutdown the means of getting free access. No one protests since they risk a death sentence for doing so.
Several key differences here:
While the US is way out of line on the Dmitry issue, there is absolutely no comparison between China and the USA.
Your attempt at playing devil's advocate, while admirable, is a real stretch.
First of all, the article didn't say WHY the 2000 (out of 58000) Internet cafés had been shut down. For all we know, it could be because they used pirated software.
Give me a break. No one, not even the Chinese government, denies that they squelch speech. It's central to their idea of government. According to the article, the Shanghai daily says 59 cafes had operations suspended for "rectification and improvement". That's the standard line, which generally means some people will confess and renounce their past actions and beliefs, and the appropriate personnel will be employed to monitor them in the future (for their own good, of course).
Yeah? Well, the Echolon system and the NSA and CIA closely monitor *ALL* electronic traffic in search for buzzwords such as bomb, C4, Bill Clinton etc.
It's an entirely different thing-- I know, I've seen what it's like for an internet company to do business there. Want to set up a web service there? Maybe, say, a free home page service? Sure, no problem! All content must be saved to a staging server first, where censors check it before it goes live. People signing up for accounts must provide accurate information, so that in the event objectionable content is found, they can be tracked down for-- wait for it-- "rectification and improvement".
Could we get a little less US propaganda in the news and a little more of the ACTUAL facts. I'd like to know FACTS about why these Internet cafés were shut down. I don't doubt that it had to do with censorship but I didn't see any facts in the story.
We seem to find the story remarkable for different reasons. I'm surprised that they even bothered reporting it, in the midst of continued repression of various religious groups including Falun Gong, their new death squads (oh, sorry-- drug police), and continued restatement that they will not back off any of these oppressive measures-- which seem to all make them even more attractive to the WTO.
The only thing remotely interesting about this article is that some rather ill-informed politicians use the cafes as an example that China is opening up, that trade with them is working, that we should include them without any condemnation as a fabulous member of the world community. Well, there's one less example for them. But then, even that one was wearing thin in the face of thousands of people executed right before they were chosen to host the 2008 Olympics.
Don't get me wrong-- I'm not anti-China. I'm for all the people being unjustly detained for stating beliefs contradictory to the approved dogma. I'm for the hundreds of thousands of people relocated to make way for the 3 Gorges Damn, and the millions who will be killed if the damn (which is built on a fault line) breaks. It just seems clear to me, though, that if you are for the Chinese people, you have to be quite upset with their government right now. It's gone downhill since Tienenmien Square.
it's very different. Under US law it is illegal to call for the violent overthrow of the government. It is not illegal to call for elections or to say the the elections we've had are tainted. It is illegal to do those things in China. See the difference? Of course you do. You could see the difference before you even posted. So why did you post? troll? nitwit? who knows.
"Authorities closely monitor Web site content in search for buzzwords such as Taiwan, Tibet and the banned spiritual group Falun Gong, Web executives say." Yeah? Well, the Echolon system and the NSA and CIA closely monitor *ALL* electronic traffic in search for buzzwords such as bomb, C4, Bill Clinton etc.
Once again, here you can post messages about C4 or the Falun Gong (you just did) and not actually get arrested or tortured. The government may scan, but would be because it is looking for actual criminals committing actual crimes (as in part A above). There is no religion that you could write about here in the US that would get you sentenced and or tortured. But Falun Gong and Lamaism are two religions that will get you imprisoned in China. Too bad we don't have a law here against asking seemingly provocative but in reality inane questions: troll or not, you'd be going down. Oh well, we'll leave laws like that to the Chinese.
----
This should be interesting to watch in the next few years.
One big problem for most people evaluating the situation in China from outside is that it is difficult to recognize the vast range social parameters can take. Even in the US, some laws are so good that people constantly sing its praise (think First Amendment) while some are so bad that they are considered national shame by many (think DMCA). Now take that distance as unit. Starting at First Amendment, going in the direction of DMCA for, say, between 0.5 and 5 units, you will cover perhaps most of Chinese laws in terms of restriction of freedom. If you go still several times further, you'll reach the range of some more terrible states existing today, or the state of China when Nixon visited it. That state was not even defined by the laws of that time, as there were essentially none.
So depending on what your reference point is, you could say that China has made tremendous progress while at the same time it has a long way to go. If you think these two are contradictory, you will have a long time to argue which is right.
But there is a lesson to be learned. In the past century, apart from one exception (South Africa), the best support for authoritarian regimes has been the sanctions and blockades from democratic countries, and the biggest initiator of reform comes from open exchange with democratic countries. It was lucky for Chinese people that Nixon had the guts to visit it when it was in such a miserable state (even though his motivation was largely to forge an anti-Soviet alliance). Other nations still under sanctions now unfortunately have to endure many more years of dictatorship.
What about the human rights situation in China now? Based on the media report here, I would say it is so much better than it used to be. Those who consider this as the worst situation that could be simply knows too little about history, especially the darker side of history.
So is Olympics good for China? Of course it is. It is good for the Chinese people. It might also be good for the Communist government, but I don't care. I consider the Chinese people much more important than the Chinese government.
When I left China, it was hard to imagine owning a telephone unless you are an official, in that case you get it for free. It is now difficult for me to contemplate the number of cell phones in Chinese cities, and it is an eye-opener to see the prevalence of Internet cafes. We hated Bush Sr. then when he sent envoys to China so soon after Tiananmen. But in retrospect that might have done more to improve the lives of Chinese people than his son is ever capable of.
Western countries like to use carrot and stick to induce democracy in other countries. The problem is that the distance between carrot and stick is so limited it does not cover even a tiny fraction of the possible range. Static policies based on stereotype do not work. What will work is a dynamic policy that actually reward changes in the positive direction.
I have to tell you all that you do not understand the situation here in China. Do not say that I am not a free person here.
China is a nation of one billion people. We are as free as you or me. Would I write that which I cannot condone? Would the person who pays me one million dollars ever disagree with such a thing? Of course not.
We should not discuss this matter. I must leave now.