Slashdot Mirror
Complete Net Cafe Shutdown After Beijing Fire
lunchlady doris writes: "The BBC has this story that tells of a fire in an internet cafe in Beijing that killed 24 people. The mayor responded to this tragedy by shutting down all 2,400 cafes in the city, most of which are operated illegally. Only 200 cafes will be allowed to reopen, pending municipal regulation. Needless to say, the netizens of Beijing are pissed and see this as a move to quash the limited access to the net that the Chinese people currently have."
If the netcafe is already illegal, does saying "please, shutdown() your netcafe, it's illegal" change anything :)
It only takes a little cynicism to take the view that this is an opportunity for China to shut down something they don't like. To be honest, does one fire in one cybercafe really justify the closure of all such establishments?
Weird indeed. I'm actually on holiday in china so i got a chance to see the news on cctv4. apart from the fire hazard they also talked about the dangers of letting young people on the internet.And in the same item they talked about limiting youth access to karaoke bars.
What's really weird is that my internet explorer refuses to open the beijing internet cafe story on yro.slashdot.org. strange because everything else on yro (including the is china losing control story) still works. being an old slashdot reader I ssh-ed to my unix box and used lynx instead. i've no idea how they would block a single url that way, but hey, i'm a westerner in china, so i'm a little paranoid...
XENNA
(sorry 'bout the layout, btw: same story on the pc next to me)
People who go the Cafes are mostly teenagers. Closing the net cafes does not affect anything at all for most Internet surfers.
I can remember, several years ago, there was a huge fire in a dance club, which killed hundreds of people. The city closed all its dance clubs for one month and only allow those which has the right license and meets fire standards to reopen. I think it is the same thing here for Net Cafes. It has nothing to do with quashing the Internet access. It can't.
Notes: I just checked with friends in China. They can acess slashdot.com and cnn.com without any limitation.
It would appear the consensus so far is that Internet is a good thing and therefore all access should be free and open. I would tend to agree, although what is clear is this: any government saying something is illegal, or immoral, or expressing concern about the effect it might have on young people, tends to stigmatise it, but also to make it more attractive. Internet will not be seen as a learning tool if the government suggest that young people should not be spending a lot of time with it. Just like parents years ago bemoaned computer games and too much time in front of those things, but at least then (before the Sega Megadrive and Nintendo Entertainment System, at least) most home machines had a keyboard and taught people like me the basic skills to then get into REAL computing.
Internet should not be discouraged. It is a basic skill that the younger generation will need to progress in the increasingly digital economy. I don't mean computer programming, I mean basic business management and productivity increases by leveraging the power of IT. China (or any other régime for that matter) is making a mistake by making Internet taboo. Late night surfing, on these kid's own free time, should be encouraged. Making porn or whatever illegal usually does not help. I always remember that during prohibition in the US, alcohol consumption rose, and I think now of the UK where tough drug laws are doing nothing to stop alarming increases in heroin addiction.
Still, China has a long long way to go. So do many developing nations. Until the incumbent powers that be have embraced Internet themselves, they are onto a loser. Sad, because it is because of reasons like this that the younger generations are not getting enough time in front of the Internet to start noticing the finer netiquette of things, since they are effectively involved in illegal activity just by surfing in those places, and are therefore unlikely to be good netizens...
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
It surprised a lot of folks here that the government slammed all the cafes closed after the incident. This kind of things happened in the past, but the deaths happening in Beijing was embarassing...its more serious as Beijing's the capital and not some outback town. Complete shutdown's still surprising though.
Anyone above who said this is the government's way of controlling Chinese netizens from accessing information is still living 20 years in the past. Others were correct...folks with computers easily and cheaply have access from home (and can view whatever they want for the most part) Second, aside from the teens, most surfing's done at the office place through corp. lans. Third, correct again to the folks who id'ed teenagers as the netbars' main consumers (demo's: lan game users, no access to work LAN, no computer at home)
Furthermore, a few weeks ago the regulators suddenly lifted the ban on many sites that had traditionally been off limits (particularly western news orgs: cnn,la times, npr, boston globe, san fran chronicle, antlanta journo-constitution, the washington globe) Intersting...
living here for the past few years I've always been able to get slashdot (unless intl. gateways too crowded)
On the other side of the fence, Beijing's PSB stated it would begin another clean up campaign, inspecting and checking content. (announced last month) This is particularly interesting to note when paralleled with the fact there will be major government changes at the end of this year, and perhaps is a means for China to manage the social climate. (China's top three leaders Jiang Zimin, Zhu Rong Ji, and Li Peng will effectively retire)
Last note of interest: the PSB cracked down on many Chinese content providers including Tom.com, Sina, and fm365 last month. The PSB raided Beijing offices on the anniversary of TianAnMen after the content providers had placed news about this event on their sites. The sites will be punished for publishing 'unsuitable' content, although punishment is still not clear.
Re: access to cnn and slashdot.
that's not exactly completely true. right now, I'm studying in china, and I can't get cnn.com from my dial-up, but I can get slashdot.
Of course it can be... Look at India. Sure, the government collapses once in a while, but I think India's a lot harder to run: $2.2k GNP per cap, vs China's $3.6k GNP, massive ethnic strife in India and interests from so many different states, etc.
My point is that India is a pretty radical experiment in democracy... just consider the expense of running elections in a place that has a $2200 per capita GNP.
I don't think there is such a thing. I'm just finishing up a year studying in China, and my building had a grand total of 1 set of double doors unlocked during my 8-12 classes for a building with at least 500 students in it. There is a 20 minute window between 9:50 and 10:10 where another set of double doors is unlocked, so that students can leave faster after class.
The reality is that, "Investigators blamed the high death toll on locked emergency exits. " This is all there is to the story.
Don't just read the article -- read between the lines, to what's really going on here. The cafes are often dimly lit, hidden from view and with heavy doors to deter the authorities - but which can turn them into a death trap in case of fire.
Would those doors have been locked in an American or other western country's cyber cafes? The subject at hand is freedom of information and civil rights, two subjects which I hope are very important to the average slashdot reader.
"First you gotta do the truffle shuffle."
The students are killed as all possible exits were either blocked or locked up.
... these sorts of things are documented to have happened historically in the United States as well)
The building has only one entrance/exit, and it was locked at the time of fire, and the windows were barred with steel. As a matter of fact the owner didn't get proper license to open an Internet cafe and the door was always locked to avoid inspection.
Two points you should consider in all this (please note that this isn't intended as a slight against China
1) Making a service illegal often leads to safety issues like this. Speakeasies during prohibition in the United States, unsanitary abortion clinics in the United States prior to Roe v. Wade, etc. The answere isn't to shut down all internet cafes, as if the demand is strong enough they will reopen regardless, perhaps even more secretively, and likely be just as unsafe as before.
2) Have you considered the possiblity that the fire was deliberately set by agent provocatuers, in order to manufacture an excuse for a widespread crackdown? What better way to turn a very unpopular move into an acceptable one "we have your safety at heart, that's why we must take away your access to information that we don't want you to see"? Again, this sort of thing (though generally without the loss of life) has happened in western society more than once.
Of course, I'd expect people in Beijing has tough time accessing Internet in the future, as the conservative people would sneak chance to impose more restrictions.
Creating conditions where such an action becomes popular is a time-honored method by doing exactly this: sneaking it "through the front door" so to speak, in plain view, because the frightened masses have suddenly started demanding exactly what before they would have fought tooth and nail to avoid. Whether it is exploiting happy circumstance, or manufacturing such circumstance, nearly every government engages in this despicable behavior, including my own right now in response to 9/11 (USA).
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Since 90% of Beijing's Internet cafes have been operating illegally anyway, there is nothing to be gained by ordering all of them to shut down. The government is just using this incident to say "Look, the evil Internet is killing our children".
The government also took the opportunity to encourage citizens to turn in any Internet cafes they are aware of, in the name of public safety. These tactics are reminiscent of the "turn in your brother in the name of the people" tactics used by most authoritarian states over the years.
This is nothing but a thinly-veiled move to further restrict the Internet in China. It's a terrible shame that those students died, but they died because of a government that forces them to do their free speaking behind locked doors. Rest assured that the cafes, both legitimate and otherwise, will have a much harder time starting back up once the government completes their (lengthy) "fire inspections".
However, if you care to read any news on it, you can see that the reason to shutdown netcafes is for safety and license inspection, it has nothing to do with squeezing free of speech and human right. While it may be true that China Government has problems with human right, do you guys has to related all the bad things happened in China to human right and free speech?
Personally, I am of the opinion that the Chinese government set that very convenient fire itself, just to provide an excuse to seize control of the net cafes. Therefore I would say it relates to the free speech issue after all. Even worse, I am fairly certain our precious US government would do the same type of manipulation to justify their actions...
Murphy was an optimist.