Slashdot Mirror
China Shuts Down 17,000 Internet Bars
Astin writes: "According to this article, Chinese authorities have shut down more than 17,000 Internet bars for failing to block Web sites considered subversive or pornographic. Out of the 94,000 Internet bars in China, 17,488 have been shut down and another 28,000 were ordered to install monitoring software soon. Of the 27 million Internet users in China, about 4.5 million rely on these bars. Foreign news organizations fall under the category of 'subversive'."
China is about as marxist as my left nipple. Its politico-economic situation is a weird, bastard stepchild between military-owned capitalism, nationalism, communism and nepotism. Marxism it is not.
From the article:
"Some youths will submerge themselves in Internet bars for long periods, playing unhealthy games and adversely affecting their development as normal students."
If porn and video games do not make for normal students, I dare say that there has never been a normal male child, ever. Sex and games occupied most of my time while I was a student.
And I'm plenty normal. Just ask my psychiatrist.
Talisman
"Study your math, kids. Key to the universe." -The Archangel Gabriel
No, it's the Chinese government's way of life. The people don't exactly have a choice.
The people may not have a choice, but be careful when you say that the Chinese people don't support what the government is doing. There are a billion Chinese people. Telling a Chinese girl that she's "one in a million" is like telling her that there are 1,000 girls that look just like her.
When half a million students go downtown and shout angry slogans and act up, that's one half of one percent of one percent of their population. That's an insignifigant little piece of dirt. And believe it or not, a good majority of that billion people, the truly "Silent Majority" in China, watched those kids get run over by tanks with the same satisfaction we reserve for watching the Klu Klux Klan get pegged with glass bottles on T.V.
China is extremely conservative. That's what happens when your survive the Chinese Cultural Revolution, when young people rose up, took control, killed all the skilled doctors, lawyers and artisans, and ran loose across the countryside committing mass murder. The Chinese people on the whole have had enough radical change for two lifetimes. They are a product of their history, just like us.
A lot of Chinese Americans I know roll their eyes when they hear about the "Concert(s) for Tibetan Freedom". Held in stadiums on the very land from which we marched millions of Native Americans across the Trail of Tears to their death, it seems to them to be at best hypocritical and at worst pure vanity on our part to assume that the Chinese government is so very different from our own.
Be careful throwing stones on behalf of the Chinese. They are a proud and strong culture, they outnumber us, they have seen wars so terrible that our country can only imagine. They have had tiny revolutions that lasted longer than our entire country has been in existence.
I'm not approving the action; I'm saying you should weigh your opinion and your ignorance together carefully first.
If guns kill people, then CmdrTaco's keyboard misspells words.
From this story:
"Out of the 94,000 Internet bars in China, 17,488 have been shut down and another 28,000 were ordered to install monitoring software soon. Of the 27 million Internet users in China, about 4.5 million rely on these bars."
From a previous Slashdot story:
"Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a longtime proponent of censorware, introduced the amendment...Essentially it says that any school or library which receives federal funds to build its network must install censorware. Since these funds are the chief way that poor and middle-income areas bring the internet into public institutions, effectively this means that only rich counties will have the option of an uncensored internet."
I'm so glad that I don't live in China, where the government attempts to censor public internet access.
I'm an American, and you know, I never fail to be fascinated/frustrated at how vigorously other Americans attack China. Who said that our system is the best? And who are you to criticize another country for providing for its people in the best way they deem possible? It's not like the leaders are in it for the fun of it -- good god, they have to serve 1.2 billion people! Let me see you manage a country that large, by giving people all the same freedoms we enjoy here. We have enough trouble already, with only 1/5 the population... If you think about it, it's like people here have been programmed to hate China just because it's one of the few remaining "Communist" countries around. Do we really need another enemy? Why create one when China doesn't want to be an enemy? Never mind that their increasingly capitalist structure has given far more people over there opportunities than can be said about some of our population here. When you criticize China, are you doing so because you've really thought about the issues, or because that's all the media has told you to do here? Sometimes the freedom of thought is more quashed here than in less-priviliged, knowledge-embracing countries...