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.
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
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 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.
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.
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.
Late 20th century: Democracy versus Communism.
Early 21st century: Democracy versus... Capitalism?
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
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."