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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."
Reminds me of back when most of my friends in highscool had two floppy disks with them at all times. One to disable netnanny, one to put it back. Oh the good ol' days.
Sigs? We don't need no stinking sigs!
Well, all governments place limits at some point on what is considered 'okay'. Some are just more strict than others. Child-porn is universally 'illegal' for instance.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
Maybe they should start working on propaganda - China rules and the rest of the world sucks. Non-Chinese news sources are fallacious and biased against China, that sort of thing. I've been kicking around the idea of fascism in our post-industrial world, but as yet I've not come up with an idea that would truly work. A closed media system is impossible to achieve, esp. in a country as large as China.
This is all, of course, for fun; the intellectual exercise is more interesting to me than applying my ideas to reality.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
Well, I suppose one of the things you could do is let companies like IBM know you aren't happy doing business with someone providing censorship technologies to China.
At least it's a start.
Then maybe put up a Freenet node.
KFG
Lets talk about censorship shall we ?, can you handle the truth ?, from where i sit China's is looking good at the moment compared to some places
Does anyone know if Slashdot is blocked or at all censored in China? A huge variety of news goes through here, as well as new technology (some of which could even prove helpful in evading the various filters...)
Ya...my school filters because the school board decided censorship was worth funding. check out http://igloo.bigfiber.net/~the1/report.jpg and http://igloo.bigfiber.net/~the1/incident.txt for my dealings with this policy.
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
When I worked at GTE the company got the contract to lay the fiber optic cable around the border of China and put in the network centers that setup a ring around China. Total control of all the traffic in and out of the country, or so they hoped. A career limiting move came when I wrote Chuck Lee, CEO of GTE, and said we were helping the same Communist government that gave us Tianamen Square and would continue to repress the Chinese people using this technology. But Bean Counters only care about profit and damn the people that get get screwed over in the process.
As a side note, I knew a lad working near me from China who had been at Tianamen Square the day before and then the day after the massacre happened. When he saw what the army had done to their own people he went home, packed and left for Hong Kong and then to the US.
Censorship is only one way the Communists will use to stay in power and shooting another bunch of college kids can happen again.
Too lazy to create a sig...
I seem to remember stumbling across a web site a few months ago that had a list of "black market" ISPs that would allow a Saudi citizen to access the Internet in a non-monitored/non-censored way. Apparently accessing the Internet using "normal" ISPs means excessive content blocking, etc.
There may already be such ISPs in China for all I know. But it's interesting to see groups of people band together to circumvent the restrictions put on them by their governments.
No, you are supporting a country in transition (remember censorship doesn't have to be 'paid' for). If you don't buy Chinese, will the country change (compare the present leadership to the Shanghai Brigage 10 years ago or that of the Great Leap Forward when China was under sanction, if you think they are the same you are believing a fallacy)?
Likewise if you think a government will change into a lets-hug-each-other one from a totalitarian one over night (or even in 20 years) you are seriously deluded. Change takes time to feed through, or else there is volatile coup after volatile coup and everyone gets screwed (or nuked).
Not that I say you should buy Chinese specially, but denying buying Chinese for some up-in-the-clouds-political-fairyland ideology is madness. Global trade is great for sharing wealth and generating more wealth (read wealth as standard of living) amongst nations, and in terms of the trickle-down effect China is doing damn well compared to any other country's development (eg Agricultural Land Rights, mobility of labour and class, etc).
But if you would prefer to condemn the worker to starve as a serf on a farm rather than work in a factory getting a better standard of living for themselves and their family that is up to you.
--
FreeNET user? Comfortable with the adverse selection?
Agreed. I mean, what kind of "government of the people" would make it illegal to distribute information on, for instance, how to watch a movie?
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
Easy! No.
HTH!
Sadly, I'm not entirely joking. And before all the trolls start off on how China's much worse - no shit? But I expect the UK to be a beacon for democracy, whereas right now it's more a flickering birthday candle. Frankly, we'd have a better chance of convincing less free regimes to be more open if we were as democratic as possible.
If you really hate my ideas, this may cheer you up: I can be arrested and detained indefinitely, without trial, in Britain right now. Because I'm not British. That's right, if you're, say, from the USA the British government can hold you forever at Her Majesty's Pleasure!
You can all sleep safer, now, knowing that.
This is where the serious fun begins.
Hey.
I operate a website that criticizes our local school system.
We have similar censorship policies in Fort Bend ISD and I have set up CGI-Proxy accounts for people in the past so they could access totally appropriate websites that were wrongly blocked.
Anyway, I'd like your permission to use your story as a front page article. You do a really excellent job demonstrating the ignorance and total disregard for students that these administrators have for us.
Reply here or email me - news @ fortbendisdsucks. com. Thanks!
In one sense you're right, but the definition of child porn varies wildly, even within a single legal structure.
So wildly that "child porn" has no real meaning. Hell, just "child" is a major issue of debate. And to the extent that it is universally illegal is due mostly to an American promotion, with the usual strong arm tactics, to create a universal condemnation, not due to any cultural aversion in and of itself.
Governments tend to do things for purely politica reasons, and right now, in the world scheme of things, it's politically advantageous to adopt certain tenets of American Puritanism.
Note that Japan has a long history of prostitution as not only a cultural norm, but in some respects a respected profession. Now it is illegal.
But not because the Japanese themselves really see anything innately wrong with it. It's politics.
KFG
Try controlling radio frequencies never mind speficially laying pipe for conventional net access.
Jonathanjk.com
I don't think they have changed that much from the "bad ol' days"
They haven't changed at all, and it's best not to forget that. There's really no way to resolve the issue. If you really want to be proactive about it the only thing you can do is take what they give away for free and use it for your benefit while not actually providing them with direct profit; and letting them know you're doing it.
Not, I'll note, in the sense of a boycott. Just out of a real sense of personal ethics. Then even if it has no ultimate effect you still "win."
Ghandi repeatedly tried to point out that nonviolence wasn't a political technique. It was a personal way of life.
KFG
That said, I don't think Communism is a viable system.
The definition has gotten bumped around a bit. They are not "communists" as originally defined, but a single-party dictatorship.
Also, economic system and freedom of speech can be orthogonal things. Communism used to mean mostly an economic system, not a speech control system.
I think birth control is the best hope for mankind.
But Darwinian natural selection will eventually prevent it. Even now there seems to be more people who like having children for the sake of having children because those who don't like children tend not to pass on the gene. There are some women who have an opiate-like substance released when they are pregrant. Thus, they get high having babies. Natural selection will likely create more of those. The voluntary approach will eventually no longer work.
Table-ized A.I.
If rulers take too much grain,
people rapidly starve.
If rulers take too much freedom,
people easily rebel.
If rulers take too much happiness,
people gladly die.
By not interfering the sage improves the people's lives.
- Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
...see here.
That's a very good question. How can we help the people in China have better access to information on the Internet? But I think an equally important question that no one seems to have asked yet is, "Are the people of China ready for a democratic, capitalistic system?"
Don't get me wrong here, I am a full supporter of the individual and the democratic system, but taking a look at the Chinese governments over the past years, and if you look at the Chinese cultural mindset, I might be inclined to say that China isn't quite ready for a fully democratic system in the way that we imagine it. I'm Chinese and I would love nothing more than to see a lot of the people enjoy the same freedoms (speech, press, assocation, etc.) that we do here in the US. However, the Chinese mentality has always been of subservience and obedience. Hierarchy has been one of the fundamental institutions in our way of life. Even today, families form the nuclear unit, but a hierarchy exists spanning generations (the father makes the decisions, the grandfather has an even greater influence, etc.). And during the entire period before the Revolution of 1911, China was governed in a feudal manner (emporer->governors->officials->etc.) Going from what is a bureaucracy of pseudo-feudalism and the control of an oligarchy with certain members having more power than others (e.g. Jiang and the CCP) to a system where everyone can vote and elect officials would be a huge transition that I think most of China will not be able to handle.Literacy in China is decent, but education in the countryside is poor. People in the countryside, I feel, are not quite ready to take the big leap. For years, decisions have been made for them. I think collectivization is a good example of how the Communist party has helped the poor, less educated earn better livings for themselves. In the early 1950s, after the Nationalists had fled the country, China implemented mass collectivization of farms and actually increased productivity levels dramatically. It was only the Great Leap Forward and Mao's crazed vision that ruined the whole system. When farms decollectivized, farmers actually saw a decline in farming output. Similarly, I think that the central planning government has many advantages for helping redevelop the countryside and reeducate the people to help get them ready for a democratic system. They just aren't ready yet.
Of course, I'm not an expert in the politics of China and I'm working off of what I have experienced living there and studying the history of the nation. I do feel that at this point, China is similar (but not the same) to the Taiwan of the late 1980s. It is emerging as a huge source of labor and production, but it is under a government which is not efficient nor understanding of human rights. In Taiwan, the effects were less dramatic under a dictatorship of the Nationalist party, but the effects were there: secret police, one-candidate elections, no freedom of speech, etc. China is in a similar position, but the relative faults are exarcerbated by the size of the country and the bureauracracy involved. But, I think because of these similarities, China has a lot to learn about the way that Taiwan has turned out. After its first true, free election just a few years ago (and its second one coming up), Taiwan has turned into a political nightmare. Political parties are self-destructing, backstabbing occurs on a daily basis, fights break out in the Legislature, etc. etc. This is from a country that was "democratic" since the 1970s and has just recently actually become so. Now, imagine that happening in China going from a communist system to something completely different. The political system could very well implode even more so than Taiwan's political system has. Taiwan is badly off, but it can slowly right its course. Were China to implode, could it ever regain any footing again? Is China ready for democracy?
Yes, it likely would have helped the US free slaves faster. In fact, a simple embargo of US farm products from the South would have very likely removed the economic incentive for slavery, and as it was primarily an economic institution, it would no longer have made sense for it to exist.
As to the question of economic strength today, I don't know. But the economy would likely not have been one of slavery for nearly as long as it was.
The trouble is that the censorship technologies are pretty much the same as the non-censorship technologies. It's not that Cisco sells the Chinese government special censorship routers, the technology that the Chinese government uses is basically the same comodity technology that everyone else uses. The router has no way of knowing if its the Chinese government trying to censor political sites or a company trying to keep its intranet isolated.
But I also don't understand the logic behind some of the posts. It seems to me that it is far, far better for Western companies help the Chinese government get a censored internet than to take the moral high ground, and not sell the Chinese the technology at all.
Think of the Trojan horse. If you don't sell the Chinese these sorts of technologies, they are going to be less likely to develop internet infrastructure. If you sell the Chinese these sorts of technologies, yes the Chinese government will try to censor the content, but they'll fail miserably at it.
One of the things I've learned from traveling to 20 different foreign countries and living in about 10 of them over the last 25 years, is that democracy DOES NOT work in every country.
For whatever reason, some people prefer the strong hand of a dictator. Some people prefer a democratic solution, and some people prefer socialism.
To have the arrogrance to dictate that everyone wants or is better off as a democracy is committing the very thing you despise.
There are geographic, sociological, as well as biological reasons for the various political systems around the world.
It is high time we in the West get off our high horse, and let the rest of the world deal with their own countries as they see fit.
North Korea, China, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq et al are not the way they are because ONLY one person acting ALONE got them into their current political system. A lot of people were/are involved, including the complicity of the general population.
I am a Chinese. It is not about Communism in China after 1980. It is all about power and interests. Most officials are corrupted in China. Officials at province level take tens of millions bribe for projects like high way construction. Highest officials do not take bribes. Their sons and daughters start companies in state monopolized industry and make billions with their parents power. A China Vice Premier's daughter spent 14 million dollars to buy an apartment in Manhattan. I have seen that apartment in person. That Vice Premier is in charge of China Telecommunication and IT industry in 90's(Telecommunication is monopolized by state in China). The closer to power, the richer. The officials will absolutely obey the orders from higher-ups if they want to continue make big money on their position. Law enforcement and court serve the power not the people. Communists will never give up their power until revolution comes. On the other side, people far away from power are poor and miserable. Almost one billion peasant's income did not experience notable growth since 1990. The average annual income of a adult peasant is about 200 us dollars and still subject to many taxes. So they can endure 3 dollars per day salary and work over twelve hours in foreign invested factory. That's how the cheap stuff in Walmart comes. High GDPs of China are just supported by heavy foreign investment and sacrifices of peasants. There will be nothing left except nice buildings in Beijing and Shanghai when foreign investment withdraws. The economic structure would become more and more rigid until one day it collapses.