Slashdot Mirror
Is China's Control of the Internet Slipping?
Garp writes "According to the BBC news site the Chinese governments grip on the internet is slipping. Ever since they allowed use of the internet, the Chinese have been monitoring the information that has been flowing (jokingly referred to as the great fire-wall of china), in an attempt to ensure 'bad' philosophies don't infect their people. However, the internet is having a much more profound affect, out of the control of the government ..."
I would say that is prolly for the better for everyone, since we will be able to reach more people with more information. Perhaps this will help in the human rights debates that have been rampant in China over the past years.
We all know that China's news institutions (government controlled) will soon be ignored. The Chinese government won't always be able to restrict their users from reading information from the BBC, CNN, and other institutions.
China's GOV has to face the music. They can't and won't control what their people see on the internet--at least not forever. As more and more people there use the internet, those people will find ways to express their views.
I think it's really interesting that China has spent so much time and effort trying to protect its citizens from ideas from outside without realising that ideas that come from inside are just as dangerous. People who talk to each other cannot be fooled by propaganda, as the article mentions -- a mining disaster which killed 81 people was initially supressed, but when word about it spread on the 'net anyway the official newspapers ended up reporting on it.
The logical conclusion of this is that the much-protested firewall that China has put around itself will be of no help at all in supressing dissent, as long as chat rooms and even e-mail exist.
You should say "mainstream media" because clearly websites are a form of media and there has been plenty of criticism of the U.S. government's policies as of late. Furthermore, I'm not quite sure you've been keeping up on what the media has been reporting. The Times, Newsweek, MSNBC, FoxNews, and CNN have all been questioning the FBI's knowledge of a possible terrorist attack before 9/11. There is no shortage of pundits in this country who will criticize politicians.
Also, your statement that "In China it seems that the media is free and the government only controls its (sic) distribution" is just stupid. A free media that cannot inform anyone is not a free media at all. And I guess you're not aware of the "People's" Daily newspaper in China which is the official mouthpiece of the Communist government - clearly a form of media which is not "free" and entirely controlled by the government. The Chinese government has long shown that they do not share the same views of freedom that your average American will espouse. I think that this story is indicative of the fact that in this past century technology has made the world a much smaller place. The Internet, hopefully, will force a degree of honesty onto governments around the world and aid the people in removing depostic regimes. I also find it quite offensive that you're trying to defend China by comparing it to the United States government's behavior. You should read up a bit more on how the Chinese government treats her people and realize that not only is your statement out of line but it is also quite insulting to the millions of Chinese people living in oppression - when you downplay their oppression and try to compare it to Americans, you confuse people on the issue. There's a reason people are fleeing China to enter the United States and it's not because the US "controls the media."
yeah? what about the USS Cole? or yeah what was that... world trade centers? pentagon? are these all media hype also? I dont think most muslims hate us and I know the media does not portray it that way. I DO think most muslim led COUNTRIES hate us and that is why they fund suicide bombings and such. I couldn't agree more that the american media sucks, but you cant say that it is goverment controlled
sorry this got long (and scatterbrained)
-tid242
With a few exceptions, secrecy is deeply incompatible with democracy and with science. --Carl Sagan
I'm Polish and I've lived under communism most of my life. My girlfriend is Chinese I also work with several Chinese who are here in the UK for a few years studying
before going back.
I absolutely agree but the fact that the government stops the people from seeing the bad news makes people want it more. In the US no one wants to know what evil acts
are done on their behalf.
The worst thing of all is some other people in this thread who without thinking will state that the media always tells the trough. There is no point even trying to tell them
otherwise because its all loony talk to them. Lizard men and all that.
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
More people are killed by reckless drivers who think they have the skill/technology/brains to drive at unsafe speeds, than by murder.
Nothing gets on my nerves more than some yahoo in a way-to-big SUV tailgating me at 80MPH simply because he has no f-ing clue about such concepts as reaction time or stopping distance.
Of course, when his unnecessary and reckless conduct causes my death it is an "accident," while a woman who shoots her abusive husband dead in his sleep is considered a "murderer"
I'm a lawyer with excellent karma. Something's gotta be wrong.
A history teacher I once took some courses from in High School (Military History and US History) subscribed to an interesting theory; The fall of Russian Communism resulted from McDonalds.
If this theory is meant to be taken literally, then it is an insult to the Russian people. They aren't that stupid, nor ignorant, at least those that I know in Moscow and StPetersburg. Even many years before the fall of Russian Communism many Russians were well aware about the world outside Russia and the failings of their political system. To say that Russian Communism fell because of McDonalds is such as gross simplification of what happened that it is meaningless.
In China, it seems as though a similar evolution is occuring; The alter-ego of Soviet Commuism, Chinese Communism, is being exposed to it's antithesis. Russian Communism focused, as I understand, mainly on supression and communitization of materialism, but was then faced with the holy grail of materialism, McDonalds.
First off you can't suppress something and spread it throughout the community at the same time.
Second, Chinese Communism split from what was Soviet Communism back in the 1950s as China pissed off the USSR by declaring that they were going to Do It Their Way.
Nowadays calling the Chinese government Communist is a joke. A joke perpetuated primarily for the benefit of the old party members who still wield control. They have even whipped up an excuse that allows self-proclaimed capitalists to join the Chinese Communist Party! The best explanation of China's current policy is this:
The CCP leaders are riding in a taxicab, ahead is a fork in the road with one path leading to Communism and one to Capitalism. The driver asks: Which way should I go? After a brief discussion, the leaders tell the driver to signal a turn to Communism, but to actually turn towards Capitalism.
The CCP wants to keep control over information, but the party isn't stupid. There is just an ongoing high level conflict on government policy, the Internet is just one of the controls being exploited by each side.
one could argue the plight of the palistinians is the fault of arafat as well as the surrounding arab nations as much as anything israel has done.
I tried out Freenet recently, and if there were any political dissidents using it, it wasn't apparent. The single biggest application of Freenet seems to be child pornography.
Find free books.
This is so true. I used to hold the ignorant view of China until I went there for a vacation earlier this year.
Mind you, I didn't ventured into the really small villages (pop less than 1000) and rural areas, but I could tell things are a lot different that what I used to perceive it as.
I was in a fishing village in souther China with no paved roads, but they had buses with VCD videos playing. And in the same area were more Internet cafe than I'd image people could use. Sure enough when I went in there were half a dozen kids, no more than 12 years old, playing network games.
I spent 2 hours in there checking email and reading news. I certainly didn't feel like anything was being blocked. They had 128bit I.E. browser so I was able to do my banking too.
I could go on forever. Bottom line is that people should stop making ignorant comments about China unless they've been there.
I actually wonder if he really believed that. Although he tries very hard to persuade people that the revolution is at hand he also said that philosophers have analysed the world in many ways, the real task is to change it.
I think that Marx's prophecy of a revolution should be considered in the same light as 1984, not primarily prophecy but instead a means of effecting change. Victorian Britain was scared of revolution above all else, revolution meant the horrors of the French reign of terror and the Bonapartist attempt to establish dictatorship across Europe.
Victorian society did change, they may have changed in part because Marx's prophecy meant that liberal reformers were listened to and the elites accepted gradual change rather than risk revolution.
What he didnt count on was publicly held stock, wide spread education, and that the investment of the extremely wealthy would make the whole country more wealthy.
I think that Marx's ideas reached their sell by date long before we got to the point where the middle class was the majority of the population and most people owned stock. Certainly after WWI with the Bolshevick coup the forces of reactionism are doing their utmost to reform social conditions before the revolution sweeps them away.
Incidentally, the term 'Bolshevick revolution' is a misnomer, actually the Tzar was removed from power in a relatively peaceful revolution led by the Menchevicks who tried to establish a liberal democratic state. The mistake they made was not announcing an end to the war which is what gave Lenin and Stalin an opportunity. The proletariat cared more about ending the war than the promise of a democratic society.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/