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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 ..."
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.
Well they let the cat out of the bag and now they can't get it back in. Politicians underestimate the possibilities of the internet, nothing new here.
The interesting idea is that AFAIK China has the largest population on earth, what will happen to the internet once the chinese politicians give up and let them roam free? Even if just a small part is on the net we will begin to see the influence of chinese culture. And what about language? Today english is de dominant language in the internet, but there is an awful lot of chinese speakin people that might get connected. Time for a new language class anyone?
- We are the slashdot. Resistance is futile. Prepare to be moderated -
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.
Summary:
In this paper the authors illustrate how two authoritarian regimes, China and Cuba, are maintaining control over the Internet's political impact through different combinations of reactive and proactive strategies. These cases illustrate that, contrary to assumptions, different types of authoritarian regimes may be able to control and profit from the Internet. Examining the experiences of these two countries may help to shed light on other authoritarian regimes' strategies for Internet development, as well as help to develop generalizable conclusions about the impact of the Internet on authoritarian rule.
The whole document is here
This reinforces a fundamental fact of human behaviour: People generally ignore laws. If there is a policeman standing at their elbow, they'll obey the law, but as soon as the policeman is not obviously present, they'll go back to doing whatever they feel is "right".
When it comes to mp3 trading, usage of illicit drugs, or discussing Chinese politics, there are three simple options in the hands of the government:
1. Allow them,
2. Put police everywhere (think 1984), or
3. Change how people think about such activities (public anti-drinking-and-driving campaigns are a good example of this).
The Great Firewall of China might help the government identify (and eliminate) any rebellious leaders, but it won't stop the spread of ideas and ideals.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
If you have -any- way access an outside machine that is relatively in your control (ie: shell access, which can be bought for a few dollars a month) then you can get by any protection.
Here's an article I wrote not too long ago about how to do it:
- - - -
Breaking Through Any Firewall or Proxy
There's different reasons for breaking through firewalls/proxies.
1) Get completely unfiltered access to the internet.
2) Get unmonitored, or secure, access to the internet.
3) Access services normally disallowed by the firewall.
The article will demonstrate various ways to get by most implementations of firewalls/proxies. In absolutely no way am I responsible if you do anything you're not supposed to, or even supposed to, be doing. If you get caught and fired, tough shit. If you access illegal information, tough shit. If you open up a hole and somebody breaks into your computer, tough shit. I'm not responsible. (This is for the lawsuit-happy bastards out there.)
Anyways, lets begin:
For all methods, it is expected that you have access to a machine on the other side of the firewall, and that it has access to whatever you need.
Your machine will be the CLIENT, and the machine on the other side of the firewall will be the TUNNEL. The accessed machine will be the SERVER.
Furthermore, this article also assumes you a basic knowledge of your browser's configuration, installing software on your CLIENT and TUNNEL machines, and logging in via SSH.
A Linux/Unix box is preferable for the TUNNEL, but not required by any means. The software is freely available for any system.
1) HTTP Tunneling Through SSH
Often, only some ports will be firewalled (80, 21, etc) for caching, filtering, and monitoring purposes. However, they leave direct access available for other ports (25, 23, etc).
If your browser must use a proxy to access the web, but you don't require a proxy to get mail, this is probably the implementation.
If you have direct access to non-popular ports, you can access almost any service as long as you change the port. Generaly, the main purpose of bypassing this firewall is to have unfiltered and/or unmonitored web access. The method can of course be modified to meet your needs.
Install a proxy server (ie: tinyproxy) on the TUNNEL machine. For security purposes, set the listening port to an odd port (ie: 8999, REMOTE_PROXY_PORT) or set access rights to only localhost. Install an SSH (ie: sshd) server on the TUNNEL. For security purposes, set the listening port to an odd port. Do NOT set access rights to only localhost because you'll access the proxy through ssh.
Install an SSH client on the CLIENT machine. Select a random port (LOCAL_PORT) and then set the browser's proxy to localhost:LOCAL_PORT.
Run SSH with LOCAL_PORT forwarded to REMOTE_HOST:REMOTE_PROXY_PORT.
(CLI ssh: ssh -L LOCAL_PORT:REMOTE_HOST:REMOTE_PROXY_HOST -l USERNAME REMOTE_HOST)
Once connected and logged in, if the proxy and the tunnel are working correctly, you've got completely unfiltered web access.
(NB: Using a SOCKS5-compliant proxy would offer an almost completely unfiltered and unmonitored connection, as long as the application supported SOCKS proxies.)
2) SSH Tunneling Through HTTP
Some implementations allow only HTTP access, while blocking all other ports.
Check out Corkscrew at http://www.agroman.net/corkscrew/
Corkscrew is a tool to allow full SSH access through a strict HTTPS session. Then through the SSH access, you can create another tunnel to allow access to all other programs.
Conclusion)
Hopefully this allows some of the people out there to worry a little less about getting caught doing things they're not supposed to. The reason for using SSH in both cases is because it's encrypted. In the event you are caught, at least you're only caught for breaking teh rules, there's nothing additionally criminalizing.
SSH can also be used for a lot more interesting things. Using Windows, you can instal Cygwin, ssh into a *Nix box and tunnel over X connections, and end up working as if you were actually at the machine.
Anyways, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.
--unformed
"The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."
One of my favorite quotes, from GURPS Illuminati (unfortunately, a roommate borrowed the book, so no exact references) goes: "Sure, the government lies and the media lies, but in a democracy, they're /different/ lies."
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.
...this BBC article was posted one day after the thirteenth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.
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.
I'm a concientious
And it would have worked too, if it hadn't been for those kids and their dratted technology, I mean dog.
scooby-dooby doooooooooooo!
I'm a concientious
Triangle Boy is one of the methods Chinese surfers are using to get around the 'Great Fire Wall' of China.
http://www.safeweb.com/tboy_whitepaper.html
Here is the gist of the free program.
Anybody who downloads triangle boy gives the ability to secretly lend his or her Internet address to users behind restricted firewalls. That, in turn, hands such users the electronic keys they need to receive unfettered access to the Web.
A hand up and a foot on every chest...
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
Read some of Hannah Arendt. She is one proponent of the, now classic, J-Curve Theory of Rising and Declining Satisfaction.
The idea, basically, is that all is well until the public's expectation for change becomes greater than the rate of change allowed by the government. When that happens, you get a revolution.
This is why Reform is so dangerous to totalitarian regimes - it's not the reform itself, but the rate of reform that does the 'damage'. Gorbachev wanted to reform the USSR's Communist Party - but he went too slowly, the people's expectations got too high, and the Berlin Wall fell.
The same is happening in China, and not just in the Internet-space. Economic reform almost caused a revolution - which manifested inself in the Tiananmen Square protests - because it was percievd as going too slowly, and NOT because the Chinese wanted the supposed end result of a Western-Style liberal democracy.
It's actually the process of change that people want, and not the end result. (which is good, as it means we have things like, you know, Progress).
Despite the grand amount of clout mainstream media has, there ARE competitors. In fact, you just mentioned a whole bunch in your post? Does that not strike you as a little odd?
I dunno: I haven't seen any posts here, or anywhere, from people in China and Cuba. Granted, there's the language barrier, but you'd hope that there were at least some english speaking in-China Linux geeks surfing, or with translators, that would have something to say on such a germaine subject. Can we confirm that people in China can even READ this part of slashdot?
Radio-Free Europe. I think the USA should set up very high end wi-fi along the borders and broadcast DHCP into china. Smuggle in cards, and repeaters...it would be fun for the whole family!
America would be loved...err. hated because of porn, er loved because of porn..err..shit what was my point!
Neck_of_the_Woods
#/usr/local/surf/glassy/overhead
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.
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You guys seem to be under the impression that the Chinese block news.bbc.co.uk and CNN.com.
They dont exactly do that. They block them occassionally - sometimes for months at a time.
Now I cant get to the BBC. Last week I could. Now I can get to CNN. (I am in China).
I think they do this to make the BBC and CNN a difficult to get to news source - while the peoples daily is always online...
Also most of the people here dont give a damn about democracy - go into one of the many internet bars round here - everyone is playing Counter Strike or using ICQ in Chinese...
I am in China (Shandong) and am posting as an AC as I forgot my username and password... Also it might be a bit unwise to post my name - tho I would if I hadnt forgot my username and password.
The CIA's venture capital company, In-Q-Tel, has funded a project called Triangle Boy:
m ity.software.idg/
http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/internet/02/15/anony
This CNN article from Feb. 2001 talks a little about it. But at that time it supposedly hadn't been deployed. Since then I've heard that Chinese Internet users are using Triangle Boy for secure connections to the outside world, bypassing the government firewalls.
The vast majority of Chineese people live in rural areas and are utterly uneducated. Only a relative few live in or near cities and have any sort of education or access to the internet in the first place. This may slowly change of course, but for the short term at least China's ability to overshadow the internet is basically non-existant.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
If it is ideas that you want to measure then remember that Karl Marx wrote Das Capital in the Reading room of the British Library.
What you appear to be unable to grasp is that whatever was done from the outside had mush less effect than what went on on the inside. The attempt by the idiotic right to claim the credit for destroying the Soviet Union is pure self delusion. The people of Eastern Europe took their own freedom, whatever we did amounted to a small effect on the margins.
That is why there has been little change in the example you cite - Saudi Arabia and Eastern Africa. Those areas have been exposed to Western ideas for far longer than Russia ever was, including the experience of British colonial rule.
The BBC World Service is certainly an effective propaganda tool. I can't say the same for Voice of America which is all propaganda all the time and about as interesting to listen to as Radio Moscow was and for about the same reason.
If you want to effect change then there are much more effective ways to do so than by puffing yourself up with self importance. The US claim to be the torchbearer of human rights is not generally accepted in the rest of the world. The practice of seggragation was only recently abolished in the south, during the cold war the US regularly conived to replace democratically elected regimes with brutal murderers who would do Washington's bidding. It is a great pity that the current administration cheered on the attempted coup in Venezuela rather than condemning it instantly as the rest of the free world did.
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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.
Actually the term Capitalism is Marxist in origin and originally refered to an economic system in which control of the means of production are controlled by means of control of capital.
In Das Kapital Marx wrote about capitalism almost all the time, the bits about the communist system to replace it are little more than an afterthought in comparison. What is somewhat hillarious for European readers is the way that many of Marx's arguments have since been adopted by the right as a defense of capitalism. This is not suprising since Marx was one of the first economists to really explain how capitalism worked and he was not completely against it. What he wanted was a means of harnessing the productivity of capitalism with a social settlement that did not mean that 95% of the population lived in dire poverty. However since Marx is not a politically correct figure to praise the good ideas that Marx had are usually ascribed to Adam Smith.
The political system we live in today is neither capitalist, nor socialist by 19th century definitions. This is something that should have really upset the Marxist idealogues since acording to the theory that is not meant to happen.
Capital is far more broadly distributed than ever before and access to capital is no longer restricted to a tiny class of plutocrats. The type of capitalism that Marx wrote about is practically dead.
Apart that is from in countries like China where control of capital and control of the state are both restricted to a tiny governing elite.
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This statement is indicative of western ignorance of modern China.
The literacy rate in China is 81.5% [CIA WorldFactbook], which when you consider the difficulty of memorizing 10's of thousands of ideograms is pretty good. There are over 11 mil university students in China right now, which means roughly 15% of people go on to university.
Second, agriculture represents only 15% of the chinese economy (50% industry and 35% services) [CIA WorldFactbook]. While apx. 50% of the population is still rural (far higher than in the US) that's far from "the vast majority".
Third, in 1990, China had 102 cities with populations over 1 million [UN Statistics Division] and probably a lot more today given China's rapid urbanization (which creates a lot of problems). In fact, as many people (apx. 210 mil in 1990) live in China's "large" (1mil+) cities as in the entire United States.
China is, of course, still relatively poor compared to the US and Western Europe. And large regions of western China are still underdeveloped. Given income levels, it is no suprise that that only a small percentage use the Internet (it's not suprising that A/C's, TV's and other modern conveniences are purchased first). But we should try to update outdated views of China as we start the 21st century.
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'm a Chinese, currently in the U.S. When some time ago slashdot posted a story about a Chinese linux company didn't publish their source code there are a lot of discussion in Chinese linux community so I know they can read slashdot. The reason you don't see many Chinese people here is probably because most slashdot stories and discussions are more about politics than technology, or technology that is too far away for average Chinese people. And the general air here is not very Chinese-friendly (my personal view, of course). If you really want to check out the linux community in China, here's a link:
http://www.linuxforum.net, it's in Chinese, good luck!
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.
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