Chinese Internet Censorship Proves Difficult

An anonymous reader writes "BBC reports that despite incredible efforts by the Chinese government, online dissent and distribution of censored information continues and even influences government policies."

Comments

Conflicting Values

[reclusivemonkey]

Does anybody know how much involvement the Chinese Government has with Red Flag? It seems to me that the principles of open source software sit uneasily with censorship.

China is _not_ communist

[rsilvergun]

They're a Fascist Dictatorship with Communist Rhetoric. Communism makes for great posters and propaganda when you're nearly starving and working 16 hrs/day. But given that people at large in China seem to have very little say in how "their" resources are spent (if they did, would they allow sweat shops to exist?), I don't see how you can call them Communist.

That said, I don't think Communism is a viable system. You can never get past that whole "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" thing. China didn't, Russia didn't and neither did Cuba. I'm a Socialist myself. Violent or at least forceful revolutions like Communism is usually associated with almost always end with a brutal, Fascist government. I better solution is for the poor and disenfranchised to control their population so that the value of their labor increases (kinda like what happened with the Black Plague but minus the Plague). As funny as it sounds, I think birth control is the best hope for mankind. Now if we can only get those pesky religious and cultural factors to go away so the poor will use it...