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 ..."

Comments

How is this different from corporate control?

[gelfling]

In the West, about 90% of all internet activity goes through 9 portals which are controlled by a tiny cadre of huge media conglomerates, each run nearly as the singular expression of one person's ego.

We will not be forced into oppression, but seduced by it and ultimately the internet will become a weapon of tyranny.

A Theory of Progression in Government

[gartogg]

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.

The fact that there were McDonalds restaurants in Russia fed the public there the image of how Americans live, and with that as a model, it became increasingly obvious that Communism was failing to fulfill it's mission of Utopia. In 1984, Orwell realized that as long as the government asserted that everything was improving, people would not be too inquisitiveabout the subject. In Russia, this became impossible, and the people lost faith in their government.

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. Chinese Communism, now that they have seen how materialism works, focuses on supression of intellectualism among their masses, and is now faced with intellectualism's holy grail, the internet, which allows the masses to see the intellectual side of Democracy.

Obviously, the Orwellian Prophecy has come partially true in this part of the world.

"Inside an imposing building in Beijing is the Ministry of Information Industry, where a hi-tech police force keeps watch over the internet 24 hours a day. Its job is to keep ordinary Chinese people from accessing unhealthy information. That could be anything from Playboy to the BBC." -BBC News, China Loses Grip on Internet.

"The Misistry of Truth -- Minitrue, in Newspeak -- was startlingly different form any other building in sight. It was an enormous Pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete, soaring up, terrace after terrace, three hundred meters into the air... [it] concerned itself with news, entertainment, education, and the fine arts, [anything from Playboy to the BBC]" -1984, by George Orwell.

The only difference between Oceania and China is an external one, and it is essential. China has no external enemy to pour material into to prevent it's citizen's rising standard of living. Instead, it has Europe, the United States, and many other regions of the world that have accepted democracy and capitalism.

Re:Prolly for the better.

[Zeinfeld]

Perhaps this will help in the human rights debates that have been rampant in China over the past years.

The point which is missed in 90% of the posts on this board is that the information most damaging to the communist party comes from inside china, not from outside. External events have a much lesser effect on a country the size of China than internal.

The Soviet Union did not fall because of Reagan, or any policy of the West. It fell because its own people rejected it, first in the satelite states, finally in Moscow. Solidarity, the Polish trade union brought down the USSR in the end. The Berlin wall fell when a bunch of students attacket it en masse and the guards in the watch towers disobeyed orders and refused to shoot.

The issues in China are complex, they are no longer a Stalinist communist regime, they are not democratic, they have adopted a 19th century model of capitalism in which the actual role of the state is to protect the oligarchs and exploiters. The gerantocracy that runs the country is largely in its 80s and their principle driving principle is fear. In particular fear of a return to the days of the cultural revolution of Mao and fear of partition into separate states that are dominated by foreign powers as happened at the turn of the century when the US, Germany, France, Britain and Japan each carved out spheres of influence.

China is rapidly industrializing and output is rising fast. Economically China will be one of the maor powers within ten years. Already the Chineese middle class is larger than the US middle class. As with India, China is a first world power whose strength is obscured by a vast third world hinterland.

Change is comming, but it isn't going to be driven by external forces. In fact external forces are more likely to be counterproductive. The critical mistake made by the Tiannanen Square protesters was building the statue of liberty. Up to that point the communist party was affraid to crush the protests, in particular they were affraid that the soldiers would refuse to fire. However the statue of liberty was a symbol of an alliance with a foreign power and the troops could be sent in to crush that.