Slashdot Mirror
Americans And Chinese Internet Censorship
chowbok writes: "The Weekly Standard writes that despite expectations, the Chinese Government has been very successful in suppressing free internet access for their citizens. Key to this success was the assistance of Cisco, who built a giant firewall tailored to the state's needs, Yahoo (who helpfully censors search results and monitors online chats), and other Western companies."
If these firewalls are so good why do I get so much porn and get-rich-quick spam through Chinese open relays? If nothing else, the spam would be a good channel for steganographic messages to and from dissidents.
First off, who are you to impose your values on others? Maybe the chinese like their society, maybe they don't. But its not upto *you* to force your values on others.
I mean we can make up stats like there is no tommorow showing one side in favour of the other. In the end your conclusion is "This is my society, and that is yours".
The point of the censorship is not to close off the outside world, just stuff the g' determines is inappropriate.
Why don't we sell playboys and such to 6 yr olds now? While the g' in China is not just censoring from 6 yr olds the same ideas apply.
Which is why for example hate speech [in certain forms] is illegal in Canada but not in the U.S.
So are you going to say Canada is some 3rd rate country because we have "censorship" on hate speech? [*]
Everytime china comes up every american spews their views on why China is inferior. Maybe its high time you look at your own damn society for faults. On an aside. I just realized I sit on a bus full of 50 people for about 45 mins each day and I haven't said a word to any of them. For that matter they all remain quiet themselves...
Point being, if you want to look on improving a society take a look around your own. You'll be amazed at how imperfect your world is. The best thing you can do is try to improve it and stop bitching.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
There was a very insightful (and long) article that I came across on the Atlantic Monthly's site a while back. Called 'Was Democracy Just a Moment', its central point was that economic development and a strong middle class needs to develop in a country before democracy can succeed. The article predicts that democracy, were it to 'break out' today in China, would at the very least cause a split of the country:
"Under its authoritarian system China has dramatically improved the quality of life for hundreds of millions of its people. My point, hard as it may be for Americans to accept, is that Russia may be failing in part because it is a democracy and China may be succeeding in part because it is not. Having traveled through much of western China, where Muslim Turkic Uighurs (who despise the Chinese) often predominate, I find it hard to imagine a truly democratic China without at least a partial breakup of the country. Such a breakup would lead to chaos in western China, because the Uighurs are poorer and less educated than most Chinese and have a terrible historical record of governing themselves. Had the student demonstrations in 1989 in Tiananmen Square led to democracy, would the astoundingly high economic growth rates of the 1990s still obtain? I am not certain, because democracy in China would have ignited turmoil not just in the Muslim west of the country but elsewhere, too; order would have decreased but corruption would not have. The social and economic breakdowns under democratic rule in Albania and Bulgaria, where the tradition of pre-communist bourgeois life is weak or nonexistent (as in China), contrasted with more-successful democratic venues like Hungary and the Czech Republic, which have had well-established bourgeoisie, constitute further proof that our belief in democracy regardless of local conditions amounts to cultural hubris."
Heady stuff, and something that really made my head spin -- wasn't democracy good in all situations and all cases? The author would probably assert that censorship will continue to occur in China until a stable economy and strong middle class break open China to democracy, at which point it will end.
"It remains to be seen if the human brain is powerful enough to solve the problems it has created." Dr. Richard Wallace
Well, eventually Yertle the Turtle will fall in Beijing and some people will remember who helped keep him there. As it is, the chinese are working hard to displace the U.S. as #1 in many fields and they'll probably suceed in a few, just out of shear determination. Maybe it's the fear of that which makes the U.S. foreign policy the conumdrum that it is with regard to China.
Any chinese slashdotters?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Almost 1/3 of the SPAM sourcees I've encountered recently have been chinese. My ids LOGS regular ping sweeps and other probes coming from chinese held IP addresses. Chinese alerts account for about 24% of the IDS alerts. Some of these sweeps even originate in chinese government offices (since blocked because I'm tired of HUGE ping packets in my network from the beaurearu of statistics)
Considering the crap thats been spewing out of Chinese controlled IP space, I wouldn't be adverse to some reverse censorship. i.e. no chinsese IP's allowed in my network. The Chinese may not like what the NET has to offer their people, but they sure seem to dish out pretty silly stuff for the rest of us (My penis is much to big NOW, no more PLEASE).
I wonder if there was an easy way to blackhole all of mainland China? I wonder if the Chinese would consider THAT censorship?
I'm not saying that anyone should do this mind you, I'm just saying what goes around eventually comes around.
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
Wasn't it Joseph Stalin who said (paraphrasing here), "If you want to hang a capitalist, you can easily find another capitalist willing to sell you the rope."
Thanks a lot, Cisco.
I can see where the Chinese government is coming from here. They don't want anyone to get any bright ideas or fall for other countries' propaganda. Perfectly logical. However, the evil of the plan comes out when you see that the Chinese are terribly oppressed, and that the censorship cloud covers everything that the government doesn't like. Which would be a lot of things. Maybe the U.S. is trying to see if it works well, so they could possibly instate a similar system in the future...
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
The researcher that is cited as developing the anonymizer Triangle Boy in this article is working for the company SafeWeb which is supposed to be:
1. A CIA front
2. A company that produces software that they won't bug fix and yet is supposed to ensure anonymity.
Tchah! The only thing governments and their spook-agencies are good at doing is fscking things up.
I can view almost all internet sites from China. I'm posting this from Beijing right now from a major Chinese University. I can access most websites except for a few free content sites (geocities) and some news sites (cnn.com). Its strange, they block CNN but not New York Times, which, IMHO, is more critical of the Chinese government. Notice that Slashdot isn't blocked and its critical of almost everyone! So there filtering is not very consistent. They could get rid of the firewall tommorow and I think it would hardly change things.
I don't know about Chinese sites, I can only care about sites in English. As for spam, surely this is just b/c the networks in China are just not that well managed yet (e.g., like @Home networks once were...).
As for Cisco and Yahoo, they are doing business in China, and they are following Chinese laws. So what is the problem? Idealism and making money are mostly incompatible.
The leadership recognises that to compete in the world the China must interact with the rest of it, but to preserve their positions in power the leaders restrict it. Keep in mind that there are conservative elements in the Beijing goverment who are opposed to many of these advances. Once the government loses more of these people and they're replaced with leaders from the new middle and upper classes, well, things should change.
On another note... I wonder if any chinese leaders have mod points on slashdot?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Seriously, this is reaching a point where the corporate profit motive is starting to get in the way of pesky things like morals and human rights, etc.
I remember some Canadian professor going into this in great detail. Basically, the lack on morality in the pure profit motive is going to screw with the log term prospects of the planet
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I've been meaning to read IBM and the Holocaust. It basically talks about how IBM's punch card machines that they created customly for hitler were "indispensable in rounding up prisoners, keeping the trains fully packed and on time, tallying the deaths, and organizing the entire war effort."
I should say that although all of this is sad, I don't think there is any malicious intent on any of the companies. Its almost as though the whole takes actions that none of the individuals would.
What amazes me, is that the censorship is very content selective and seems to ease over time. For example, in the October releaase of Harpers Index there is one statement about China. The article was blocked the instant it was published, and for the full month Harpers was blocked in China. When the November index came out, one could access the October index and Harpers!
During the APEC meetings here late last year, when all President Bush and other big wigs were in town, CNN, BBC, and other news sites all became miraculasly available! Of course, they were all immediately blocked after APEC had ended.
Will /. get blocked while running this subject?
Real men don't need signitures!!!
Most modern states employ a much more effective filter than anything Cisco could come up with:
People don't want to criticize their own govt's, or take responsibility for what their leaders do.
In fact, the "Great Firewall" China is using is a sign of the leadership's political naivete.
A system in which dissenting views are allowed (limited) exposure -- only to be swamped out by flag-waving and soundbytes -- gives people the illusion that they are living in an open society and participating in an open debate. But as long as vast swathes of history and unpopular facts are not widely known, critics will seem as though they are coming from left field and will be generally ignored, if not hated. Ironically, this small amount of openness serves to "immunize" the populace from taking opposing views seriously.
Ralph Reed said it best:
"In public policy, it matters less who has the best arguments and more who gets heard -- and by whom."
IMNSHO, if the Chinese leadership does a good enough job in K-12 education of instilling patriotism and belief in the fundamental justness of the regime, as well as making sure that the govt. view dominates most "respectable" news outlets and debate forums, then those rare voices arguing for, say, a withdrawal from Tibet will seem like traitorous whackos. Further, pride from allowing dissenting voices to be heard will even further reinforce the fundamental belief that they are the "good guys" in every conflict.
When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.
Does anyone know about the Chinese government's ability to monitor SSL-encrypted content? I'm involved with an organization that might want to get some info in and out of China on an SSL connection that the gov't would not like. How is their cracking capability? Do they monitor this? Do they care?
Sorry for the AC posting, just trying to stay secure.
TIA
Late 20th century: Democracy versus Communism.
Early 21st century: Democracy versus... Capitalism?
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
I was in China in early September. At first it
was frustrating. I couldn't get washpost, nytimes, etc. but I could get Drudge Report and Fox News. Go figure. The band Liberal Media Establishment but let right wing nut through. I could piece enough information from the outside world. The International Herald Tribune and USA Today were only available at 5 star hotels. I wasn't staying in 5 start hotels; but I could bribe the Maitre D' at them to get copies. Surprising, they lifted the band on some news sources after the Sept. 11 tragedies. The government also banned https traffic; so I couldn't get to travelocity to change my air reservations (I was headed to the Middle East).
That's what really pissed me off. The definitely have a different way of doing things. On the other hand; I was able to conduct fairly free and open discussions with people about politics. As long as the government keeps providing 10% annual growth rates; the people are going to put up with restrictions on the press. They have bigger problems with pollution, poverty and economic relocation. On the other hand, dog-eat-dog capitalism is alive and well. There's a McDonald's, starbucks, and KFC on every corner in the big cities. You can buy a coke anywhere.
I guess it's pretty easy for fat, rich Americans to get pissed about the government in China; but let's face it, we have corruption here and our own government willfully disregards public opinion. We gunned down protesting students at Kent State. It's not all that different than Tien An Men Square when you get right down to it. At least we have McDonalds', Starbucks and KFC on every corner.
I am one of the webmasters for the University of Michigan and my servers have been blocked from China for over a year. First they blocked just the IP addresses of our main servers (http://www.umich.edu/ & http://www-personal.umich.edu/) but when we moved our hosts to other IPs they blocked at least the entire subnet we use for public web servers. We get frantic e-mail from Chinese students all the time looking for access to our site so they can come here to study.
I hope triangle boy will help with this, but does anyone know of anything more proactive *I* could be doing?
But the US happens to have its own obsessions of what is permissible. US obsessions are about disparaging foods, certain kinds of pornography, cryptography, and anything that might step on the toes of big media companies. And in the US, the means of enforcing those restrictions are oddball restrictions on any kind of hardware that plays audio and video, throwing people in jail, sending FBI agents to foreign countries to "help" them, trade sanctions, and prohibiting certain goods from being imported.
Yes, China has different obsessions (although there seems to be some overlap with US obsessions). But both governments are throwing their considerable weight around to prohibit access from the kind of content they consider harmful. When the US abandons restrictions like the DMCA, software patents, baroque rules on pornography, and the various export restrictions on cryptography, the US position on criticizing China would get a lot stronger. Until then, one can only conclude that both countries have haphazard and serious restrictions on speech.
Sure, CNN.com is blocked & so is BBC.co.uk. No, NYT.com & BBCWORLD.com aren't blocked. So yes, I also don't understand the logic behind the specific blocks themselves
That's just another ironic thing. The Chinese Communist Party already looks more like Captalist Party. Bear in mind, the Great Firewall of China is a dual purpose technology: stop people from accessing information. But, at the same time, stop conservatives from finding excuse to block the internet altogether.
The real issue is that the majority of people (in this case, internet users) themselves are not interested to actually access this information.
That isn't too surprising to me. Put that this way, how often does an American (or British or French or Japanese or whoever), will read news (newspaper or website) originated outside his/her own home country?
The censorship nowadays is not really that bad. Their official news broadcast (usually) covers most the important world headlines. Of course, the emphasize is different. I don't think you will be too interested in whether the Chinese will get a medal in Winter Olympic, or vice versa. No worries, people know where to get information whenever they need. (It was quite clear that they got US-Sino military plane collision event well before official broadcast. Guess what had happened.)
Believe it or not...freedom of information is not a human right in most places. There are many other things that are true human rights violations. I'm afraid censorship just doesn't fall into the same category as, say, genocide.
We Americans must understand that most Chinese support the anti-human-rights policies of the Chinese government. Many Chinese have come onto this message board to criticize our support of human rights in China. On the issue of nationalism and human rights, most Chinese agree with the Beijing government. Most Chinese think and act in this way.
Do you remember the accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy in Serbia? At most 3 people were killed. Hordes of Chinese at major American universities came out of the woodwork to hold demonstrations and to condemn American society. Nonetheless, these Chinese are totally silent on brutal torture of Tibetans. Most Chinese think and
act in this way.
These same Chinese, while condemning American society, fight with tooth and nail to stay in the United States of America (USA).
Another interesting fact about these Chinese in the USA is that many of them are the sons and daughters of officials in the Chinese Communist Party. They siphoned off large sums of money from mainland China and put that money in American banks. They live the good life here in the USA. They fight with tooth and nail to stay in the USA -- to enjoy the human rights that we have -- while they fully support the brutal nationalistic policies of the Chinese government.
My point is that we should not be condemning American companies for wanting to do business with mainland China. If American companies avoid China, then the Taiwanese (the bunch of Chinese on Taiwan) will swoop into China to steal marketshare from us. The Taiwanese exploited our good intentions back in 1989. After the Chinese government committed the Tienanmen Square incident, the American government and its businesses froze or pulled investments out of China. The Taiwanese seized this window of opportunity. They and the Chinese in Hong Kong flooded China with investments. Today, the Taiwanese have invested more than $50 billion into more than 50,000 businesses in mainland China. The Taiwanese have manipulated Americans into losing business and marketshare in China. We should not be fools. We should terminate our relationship with Taiwan.
So, how do we deal with China? We enact a law that prohibits any son or daughter of an official (or party member) in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from entering the USA. For example, if Zhu Rongji has a son in the USA, then we kick him out. If he sneaks into the country on
false papers, then we arrest him and deport him to mainland China. We can take advantage of the new office (and tools and funding) of homeland security to enact this policy. This policy will apply to both the highest ranking member of the CCP and the lowest ranking member of the CCP. We Americans will seize (i. e. not return) any funds that such Chinese transfer from mainland China to the USA.
This law should not be lifted until the Chinese grant self-autonomy to the Tibetans and support human rights in all of China. If you want China to change, you "_HIT_ and _BEAT_" the Chinese. Leave the American companies alone; they are not responsible for the situation
in China. The Chinese are solely responsible for the putrid crap that exists in China.
Further, Taiwanese wishing to enter the USA must obtain a passport from Beijing. The Taiwanese constitution supports the nationalistic territorial ambitions of Beijing. That constitution claims that Tibet, Mongolia, and Taiwan are all part of "One China".
What the thugs in charge in China don't realize is that it's internal communication that's going to enable the Chinese people to throw off their yoke.
Back when Deng and his fellow gerontocrats murdered the protestors in Tienanmen square, they had to bring in soldiers from rural areas, who had no idea what was going on in Peking. The local garrison wouldn't have done it.
Ceacescu was overthrown when the lies broke down, and the Romanian army could see for themselves that the people on the other side of the barricades were their friends, families and neighbors. (Not a handful of evil counter-revolutionaries as state propaganda insisted.)
When the thug-in-charge ordered them to open fire on the protestors in Bucharest, the army decided that that wasn't what they'd signed up for, and opted instead to kill the bloodthirsty motherfucker.
When the Chinese are able to communicate widely and nearly instantaneously amongst themselves, it's going to be all over for the Party. I missed the demolition of the Berlin wall, but I sure hope to be in China when they start pulling down the statues of Mao.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I can't help but see a picture of a screaming lefty with a leash on his neck leading up to the hand of a giant Bureaucrat screaming "Corporate Evil!"
And opposite him a screaming righty with a leash on his neck leading up to the hand of a giant Executive screaming "Government Evil!"
That's not really fair, of course, since most corporations don't have armies, police forces, jails, or the power to tax.
But it's close enough for the sake of this argument.
You're all on the game board, people, so get some Visex and clear your eyes, because people die by the millions in this game.
I admit sometimes I don't want to play, but I'm on the board and standing eyes shut with my hands over my ears won't protect me.
I don't know how much advice I can really give people on one issue or another. Would I cooperate with a foreign government to hide the truth from their people? No. Do I blame the Cisco salesguy who wants to pay off his wife's college debt and send his kid to school and pay those back taxes... No.
It's crappy, but most people try to play the moves they think are right for them. I try (and sometimes fail) to judge events as events and people as people. I try (and sometimes fail) not to see other people as enemies when they just want something different than I do.
But a few questions here come to mind that need answering:
1) Do you really want to spend your energy opposing this?
2) What can you do that might be productive?
3) Is it really any of your business?
I mean, heck, maybe we're mainly just venting. I know I am...
Yahoo has servers located in Beijing, and those servers provide the content that is "regulated" (for lack of a better term) by the CN government. Anything "outside" the Beijing data-center is the same that you or I would see from anywhere else in the world, and it's up to the Great Firewall of China to restrict access to it.
Now, since the Beijing servers geographically, and net-geographically separated from the rest of the net, the standard French argument fails, because the "distinction" (inside vs. outside) is much more easily made.
If France wants to wall off its country, and have finite known IP space and say "this is the only IP space that French citizens could possibly be in", then I suspect Yahoo would be just as helpful in letting them shut their closed-minded selves off from the world.
D
My favorite paragraph from the article:
But what is "normal" in China can be altered under duress. When Chinese authorities ordered Microsoft to surrender its software's underlying source codes--the keys to encryption--as the price of doing business there, Microsoft chose to fight, spearheading an unprecedented Beijing-based coalition of American, Japanese, and European Chambers of Commerce. Faced with being left behind technologically, the Chinese authorities dropped their demands. Theoretically, China's desire to be part of the Internet should have given the capitalists who wired it similar leverage. Instead, the leverage all seems to have remained with the government, as Western companies fell all over themselves bidding for its favor. AOL, Netscape Communications, and Sun Microsystems all helped disseminate government propaganda by backing the China Internet Corporation, an arm of the state-run Xinhua news agency.
So, let me get this straight: Microsoft leveraged their power for "good", while the others all fell down and capitulated to the Chinese government to get the easy money... what is that telling us...
You cannot expect western businesses to defend democracy, when it is completely outside their purview.
Who are you to tell me what I can expect of those I do business with? If I tell you I'm only going to buy your widgets if you dress up like a leprechaun, you damn well better be wearing green knickers and shoes with buckles next time I see you if you want to make the sale. I see you've defined capitalism and democracy nicely, but you seem to have forgotten that these ideas only apply to human societies. In a human society, such as we have here, we can influence each others behavior with a wide variety of subtle and not-so-subtle pressures, of which the law and the dollar are but two. For instance, if I see a tobacco company executive or a tobacco farmer on the street, I won't hesitate to let that person know what a worthless, parasitical waste of flesh that person is. I'd defend their right to grow and sell tobacco, but I'd think that they're scum for doing it.
They have no reason to care, and that is how it should be.
If only you were alone in this disturbing sentiment... Maybe someday you'll be in a position where you'll need help, but since I have no reason to care, why should I? Imagine yourself choking to death in a crowded restaurant, while everyone else goes about their "business", ignoring you. The chinese people are having their freedom to speak choked off, but why should western corps. care? Heck, it's a great opportunity to make a buck!
"If you're thinking what I'm thinking, you're right." -
Dont get me wrong, I do believe the US is a more free society than many other countries in the world. (not all etc). But just because its good, doesnt mean it cant be improved, and that it cant slide down to bad.
Ok, I think we agree on this. I'm glad to read the clarification. Yes, censorship does happen in the US, and probably more than it should. But, I think we have the best overall thing going right now. And, if someone does care to question a government action (censorship or otherwise), they generally are able to do so.
Censorship of free speech has no purpose at any time. This is distinct from say not allowing the media to broadcast the plans of invasion before it happens.
I'm genuinely curious about your definitions here. Where does the line between censorship and, I guess you would call it, "broadcasting military information" lie?
How would someone questioning the govt's involvement in the war (specifically WWI and II) allow the conquest of Europe?
The act of questioning in itself would not lead to defeat. Of course, if everybody had decided we shouldn't fight the war, we probably wouldn't have. And for that matter, we didn't until Japan kicked us directly in the back side. I guess my concern more is with reporting strategies, troop locations, etc during this middle of the war. Which places me at my previous question. WWI was just stupid. WWII almost certainly would have been lost if the US wouldn't have gotten involved. Hence, Europe probably would have been conquered.
I agree with you, in as much as a different solution is necessary, I only intended to point out a start. I'll just tread cautiously and say that I had no intention of stopping there.
...
Some may say that this is going to far, that we as citizens should not "take matters into our own hands" in vigilante fashion
As far as that is concerned, our country is already a democracy, and we are in control of it. I would call it fair to say that by extension we are responsible for the actions of our government. In short, when we don't agree, it is not only acceptable, but our obligation to take matters into our own hands.
On another note, it's good to see I'm not only one thinking this way.
Don't beg for the right to live - take it.
WWI example? How about something much more recent? After the Korean War, the officers, including me, were ordered to not say anything critical about the war. Truman knew support for the war was waning, and we botched the war up pretty badly to that point (MacArthur refusing to believe Chinese troups were in Korea and also leaving us stranded at Chosin Reservoir). Many of us felt like we had something to say (about training, about the inadequate M1 carbine, about command posts 100+ miles from the troops, WWII equipment that had been improperly stored, etc.) that could save future lives, but we had to stay quiet. According to our division commander, the US had never given orders like that to a group of officers. We fought for a country surrounded by Chinese troups in -25 degree F weather, and we couldn't talk about it. If the country doesn't trust its officers after that, you think it trusts its citizens?z
You are wrong.
If a society does not allow a person to exercise their right of conscience, to articulate a belief or a point of view that runs contrary to sanctioned doctrine, or to engage in self-determination, then that society is wrong, and no amount of double-thinking left-leaning uber-tolerance changes that fact.
Nobody is talking about forcing Chinese citizens to abandon their long-held culture, or turn them into good little capitalist consumers like the rest of us. If they choose to live in impoverished little communes, renouncing all forms of material wealth, so be it.
What we are talking about is giving them a choice.
Is a Chinese person less entitled to pornography than you? Are they less entitled to worship the God of their choosing? How about deciding for themselves if they can or can't support several children, more than one of which might be female? (Perish the thought...)
In short, get out of the classroom, get a goddamn job, and take a fucking stand for something, even if it is only here on Slashdot.
For those that would die defending it, Freedom
has a sweet taste that the protected will never know.
If a society does not allow a person to exercise their right of conscience, to articulate a belief or a point of view that runs contrary to sanctioned doctrine, or to engage in self-determination, then that society is wrong[...]
/. before (as I'm sure someone w/ a 4-digit UID knows), but the argument that there is a universal wrong way to run your government is useless without some sort of universal judge. Since the Chinese government doesn't acknowlege the existance of God, they can't acknowlege the existence of right or wrong, only benificial and detrimental to the well-being of their people. The judgement of detrimental vs. benificial is made by the Chinese, as a whole, just like the decision to adopt Socialism in the first place. They are the only ones they deem capapble of making value judgements on their society. Until you start paying their bills, you get no say.
/. knows, only stupid folks believe in that "fairy tale".
Sorry, but a giant says you to that one. We've had this discussion a million times on
Now, of course, if you were to say that God wants Man to have free will, and the idea of an authoritarian state is an affront to God and a sin in and of itself, you'd have a very valid point. Of course, you'd never say that, because everyone on
What I'm trying to say is that I agree with you, China's government is wrong. Unfortunately, we have placed ourselves in a position where we cannot argue without risking our cherished freedom from objectivity.
If you fall off a building, go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will be like hey, free dummy
Would you not feel like suing the store for discrimination?
Um... who is being discriminated against here?
But anyway, I would probably be annoyed that I couldn't buy my stuff, but they're not the only office supply store in town, and if they really were using their business to push an agenda I disagreed with, I wouldn't give them my money anyway.
--
Benjamin Coates
The Australian government's Department of Foreign Affairs website was blocked in China sometime in 1997. The story goes that the Australian Embassy in Beijing made repeated requests for the block to be lifted only to be told that it was the result of a "technical problem" and not deliberate blocking by the Chinese government. Finally in mid-2001, a representative of the Chinese government, based in either Canberra or Sydney, was called in to provide an explanation as to why the "technical problem" had not been resolved after some four years. Within hours of the meeting (I understand that it was 2-3 hours) the website was available for viewing in China. Having lived in China for a while now, I find that it is not the fact that some international news sources are blocked, but that the only source of Chinese language news comes from official sources. It is illegal, and rigorously monitored, to publish 'news' in China that does not originate from the official Xinhua News Agency (or one of its sister publications). This means that Chinese readers get the sort of view of China that an American would get if they only watched CNN.
A dream is good. A plan is better.
The author of the article states:
"The only practical solution to this puzzle is for the Bush administration to make Internet freedom in China a high priority".
That's just plain naive. All the Chinese people I know would take that as just another example of American arrogance. It's strange, the author sounds like he's never been to China... maybe he just never got out enough.
How about before making Internet freedom a priority in China, we try making it a priority in the US? Any one ever heard of the DMCA?...
golem1024