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Taking My Freedom With Me to China?
Solo Han asks: "I'm considering a move to China next year, and while I have just as many problems as y'all do with the government, I still like the freedoms afforded me, especially when it comes to access of information. Chinese citizens, however, do not have the same freedoms, as we are constantly reminded here on slash-o-dot. Pr0n, mp3z, and games aside, what are the things that those of you in the Celestial Kingdom know you cannot access, and specifically, what are the websites, search engines, news sites, and other sites that are classed as potentially 'dangerous' material? This brings me to my overall question: is the censorship that real, that hard to get around, and how do you do it? What methods and technologies are you aware of or use to circumvent the Great Firewall of China?"
Maybe you can access a proxy and view through it?
I wonder if tor works from inside the great firewall of China. Any Chinese folks who've tried it and care to comment?
I visited and found I had internet access to everything I needed. However, I had VPN access so there is a good chance I might have simply missed something completely because I was using my US server.(Because RDP is much less latency sensitive so the Terminal Server connection was faster for surfing US websites than a typical browser)
Regardless, I found the place to be a blast, but I have to admit you do tend to stay on you best behavior because you constantly bump into police with very large automatic weapons.
Here is a comprehensive list of sites banned in China: http://asp-cyber.law.harvard.edu/filtering/list.ht ml
I haven't tried this myself as I've never been in China, but I've heard that searches via elgooG would effectively bypass "the great firewall". Just a rumour for me though. Could anyone verify this?
Having lived there, well
a) hope you know chinese
b) public interenet, cds, etc. is OK, and there may be more there than is let on. Note: they banned this because it's already out.
c) there are proxies that will let you circumvent, but they will know you did that. It's a moving target game.
other notes
- self censorship challenges; Americans (I'm one) are loud and boisterous. Like to challenge boundarys and assumptions. That's not their culture and frowned upon.
Basically, it's going to be different, and depends entirely where you are in that vast ranging country.
I recently spent the better part of a year living in Guangzhou followed by a few months in Chengdu. As for Porn, it was being sold on the streets. I found there to be no real enforcing of any of these "bans" the central government keeps talking about. The conry is actually very free on a day to day basis, as long as you don't bring religion or something similar into a School you're teaching at, you're ok
If I were to do this... Which I don;t recomemnd but it is an interesting thought experiment... I would start by asking what the issue is for the Chinese...
Namely they don't want dangerous ideas to spread. So low-profile sites may escape censorship.
If it were me, I would set up an SSH server on a public host (maybe hosted by someone like hub dot org). I would set it to listen on port 80. I would then also set up Squid and allow anyone from localhost to proxy through it (Squid on port 8080). Then you can port forward port 8080 on localhost to 8080 on the proxy server and proxy to anywhere else. Depending on how the GFWC works, you might be able to get around it this way. Otherwise, depending on if it recognizes that it is NOT http, you might still be blocked.
If you keep it a secret from others, it may be low enough to escape their radar. But if you get caught...
Honestly? I have travelled to many other countries, and I generally recommend trying to live under the customs of the countries. You learn more that way. If you are an American, you can always move back here when you need a change.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Posting anonymously so as not to jeapordise any future trips :-)
I hacked the Great Firewall!
When I went to China, I found that a few sites that I visit regularly, such as BBC News, were blocked, so I set up an SSH tunnel to a box back home running Squid, and did all my browsing through that. Worked fine.
if people are insufficiently informed on the matter and you have access to information that balances the view more, perhaps you'd like to share it with the rest of the class?
h ina.zhao/
a lot of people have a less than positive view of the chinese government, for good reason: it's autocratic and at times has zero qualms about flexing its power: witness what happened when zhao ziyang left power. for his remorse over the violence used in tiananmen square, he was placed under house arrest since 1989. this is the former head of state. don't believe me? look here: http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/01/16/c
ed
I will assume that the poster is an American citizen working in China, since he/she did not mention being there before. There is such a thing as extradition. Yes, that means they can't just randomly arrest US citizens for surfing the BBC and proceed with a closed-door trial w/ US Embassy intervention. Chances are, the poster will not try to start a revolution or organize a mass protest and will not be at any risk. And even if he/she did, the government would find it simply easier to just revoke the Visa and deport him/her than unlawfully detain the person. Unauthorized jailing of US citizens is equal to an international incident and it would just be easier to deport the offender. It sounds like the parent saw one too many viewings of The Red Corner. I'll say this again, the Chinese government is WAYYY too inefficent and lazy to pursue ex-pats looking at western news sources. They've got bigger fish to fish.
If you're not trying to topple the Chinese government from the inside, you've got nothing to worry about.
I know that sounds "insightful" from where you are, but I live in China, and nobody gets "dragged off in the dead of night". It's just like everywhere else. If you get into legal trouble, you just bribe your way out of it. If you go to China intending on overthrowing the government, you can expect to end up in their version of Leavenworth, just like any foreigner who goes to another country to make trouble.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
The Christian Science Monitor, which is a non-partisan newspaper I like to read online sometimes, wrote an article about Tiananmen Square. How many students were killed, run over by tanks, and otherwise butchered? The answer: We don't know. In fact, evidence is starting to show that no students were killed in the square at all. When there's no foreign reporters around, and the government is the only one that's talking, it is indeed dramatic misportrayal of the facts that tends to take over. That said, estimates of fatalities outside the square range vary, but it was *after* the peaceful protest left the square.
Secondly, I listen to WMBI, which is decidedly right-leaning. Yet, on one of their programs, one of the church leaders in Bejing reported that the government was not stifling state-allowed religions... in fact, the government was very much hands-off. (As Christianity is the fastest-growing religion in China, it may not be coincedence.) It was a different voice from the now-familiar persecution of believers in China, although, once again, that type of persecution was reported to have gone on in the rural areas -- it just wasn't as widespread as most Americans would believe.
I very much appreciate these examples as a welcomed, different view into what China is actually like versus what everyone says it's like.
-Rob
Marriage doesn't have to suck!
Yes *chinese* people are arrested... But I wasn't arrested for telling Chinese their policy on Taiwan was utter bullshit. Then again, I was not making a public spectacle.
I've lived in china, and though it is not quite a utopia, I'll be living there for a few years more.
Taiwan is cool too; Taipei is a happening place.
A witty saying proves you are wittier than the next guy.
If you even have to ask these questions, you're hopelessly naive,...
I can hardly believe I'm responding to the flood of xenophobic ignorance in this thread, but I have a number of close friends who have spent considerable amounts of time living and travelling through various parts of China, and the ones being naive are you and everyone else here with the exception of the OP and the guy a few comments up who pointed out the the Chinese government are largely not interested in what you, a Westerner, are doing on the internet. The Great Firewall is there to monitor and control Chinese citizens.
All this hysterical bleating about being dragged off for re-education is just absolute nonsense. The Chinese government most definately is not interested in unnecessarily pissing off Western governments right at the moment (they're even holding the next Olympics there for god's sake).
Now, if you're a Chinese citizen then this is all a very different kettle of fish altogether, but if you're a Westerner, just take along a floppy disk with PuTTY on it, ssh into a friend's box in the US, and tunnel HTTP over the connection. Simple and unmonitorable.
You know they call 'em fingers but I've never seen 'em fing. Oh, there they go.
You are wrong, sir, I can indeed waste my day away reading slashdot in china.
Many news sites in English are not blocked...yet, who knows.
A witty saying proves you are wittier than the next guy.
I have had the fortune of travelling to China back in 1998, and here is a bit of advice if you plan to make a trip of any significant length.
1. If you plan on visiting or staying for some period of time, try to avoid bringing any computers or electronic devices with you. They have a strict policy at the border to inspect and confiscate devices if they consider any materials within them to be "detrimental" to the ideologies of the government. If you absolutely need one while you are there, consider buying one in China (the prices are relatively cheap). It is easier to get one out of the country than to bring one in.
2. While the "Great Firewall of China" might be a nuisance to you, it will be very difficult to avoid. SSH tunnelling will likely be your friend in this case.
3. Be courteous and cooperate with officials. The larger cities have dedicated police forces, but once you are in the more rural areas, these locations are policed by the army. And they use nice shiny AK-47s as sidearms.
...you will be rewarded by being able to purchase almost any piece of software known to man for around $3. Any movie for about $1, and game for about $3.
There are malls there that are huge, and hold nothing but pirated software. Also, they copy EVERYthing, even entire cars. Honda in fact hired them for some parts manufacturing because they copied theirs so well for a much lower cost. If you can't beat them... They even introduced a complete copy of a "GM" car before GM even announced it. They are absolute masters at copying everything, manufacturing those copies, and even industrial espioniage. And the speed at which they do it is amazing.
It's a bootleg economy. Enjoy it I say!
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
And they change daily. When I was there for a few months last summer, all British news sites (BBC, Guardian, etc.) were blocked. Google groups are blocked. The SF Chronicle would be up and down depending on the day, as would Yahoo news. In general, web access is completely problematic. Earlier posters are correct - unless you are trying to do something to educate the masses, you'll be fine. They aren't after knowledgeable individuals or foreigners, they want to make sure it's not easy to join an emerging movement. Even if they were, it would only result in a bribe unless you were to be made into an example. By the way, China is lovely. The people are very sweet and warm. If you can, learn some Mandarin or Cantonese before you get there.
So there really is freedom of religion and speech in China?
So the Chinese government does not make huge amounts of money from prison labor?
And the Chinese did not lob missiles over an island full of people to keep them in line?
Just asking if these are all myths that I have seen on TV?
Now there's definitely not a 1:1 match on any of those, but it makes you think about the "shades of gray" argument....
I have. It really opened my eyes to the freedoms we enjoy versus the freedoms they enjoy.
I have family in Shanghai (huge city), Xi'an (pretty big city), BaoJi City (Medium-sized city), and a small villiage nearby. I have travelled to all of these places and stayed wih my relatives. As a native-born American, I was thoroughly impressed with the freedom that they enjoy.
Many Chinese never even come in contact with a Policeman. Judges and government officials (my cousin is a Provincial (read: State) Supreme Court Judge, and her husband is a high-ranking government official, BTW) live like common "folk," and people do and say almost anything they want. My nephews all play Counterstrike on-line against their classmates, and they all surf the internet. You have to understand that Chinese people are just not into Pr0n and such things like we (Americans) are. So, for them, not having access to Pr0n just isn't a big deal.
But hey, don't take my word for it. Go see for yourself.
Oh, and the one baby thing is only enforced in the big cities. Again, don't take my word for it. Most of my family in the smaller areas have several children.
When I was there in September, SSHing to my shell account worked just fine. Tunnel through that, and you'll be fine.
If you're going to do human rights work there, that it's probably best to do one illegal thing at a time. So, don't look at porn when your issue is Falun Gong. And likewise, don't look at Falun Gong sites if your issue is porn.
If you're just on vacation, consider spending your time seeing the sites rather than surfing the net. It'll be there when you get home.
Ignore all the idiots on this site who tell you to obey unjust laws.
Become a FSF associate member before the low #s are used
One thing to remember. Somking joints is fine at China. But don't touch those hard stuff. 50 gram is death penalty.
You're only telling half the story though. It used to be called the "Solid South" for the Democratic party, until a little something called the Civil Rights Act. Once the Northern Democrats and LBJ got their way and actually started granting rights to blacks living in the South, the Democratic party lost a large percentage of the southern white voters over that single issue. There are still some of the old Democrats hanging around, like Zell Miller, who didn't change party association, even though they no longer hold mainstream Democratic viewpoints, but by and large, the South has been ceded to the Republican party. Commission a poll from Gallup that correlates Party ID with this question: "Do you approve or disapprove of interracial marriage?" You'll have all the answers you need about which party contains the most racists. I'm also curious to hear your theories about why black voters overwhelmingly vote Democratic, since the Republican party is apparently so progressive.
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. --Robert A. Heinlein
There are automated processes in place for blocking some content, and there are automated processes that evaluate material once it is accessed in a certain pattern. There is also a manual evaluation in which material is reviewed.
There was also something about logging of IPs and caching, so review can be done later for information that can't be determined up front. All of this combines for a list of IPs, a cache of content, and a number of filtering algorithms that fairly effectively block material. However stuff does get through, but only sparsely. If one IP starts hitting a site over and over, or many people start hitting it, it draws attention.
You can download the talk at this site. Scroll down to the one entitled "How the Great Firewall works"
This may be a strange concept to you, but for many people in the world, freedom and democracy are not their top priorities. Often, security and prosperity trump it.
I have a friend from Peru; I've talked with her a fair bit about what it was like growing up; she mentioned that her favorite leader was Fujimori.
When I tell this to Americans who know anything about Peruvian politics, they seem shocked. "He was a dictator!". "Paramilitary forces killed 25 people under his orders, and Peru wants him extradited for trial!". Etc. They wonder why a person who lived in Peru could possibly have liked him.
However, things in Peru really improved when he was in charge, in her view. From here on, I'm going to cite from memory of what she's told me, so (note to the people of Peru:) if I make any errors, pleae correct me.
Before he took over, rebel groups used to roam the countryside and force people into serving for them; she referred to them as terrorists. Fujimori, through a strict military crackdown, hunted them down and basically drove them out of existance. They used to escape to the college campuses; colleges used to be "no-go zones" for the military; he ignored this, and pursued them into the colleges (causing some riots, which they put down). Several rebel captives were publicly displayed as an example. While a repressive means was used, a group that used to pretty much terrorize many people in the countryside was pretty much driven out of existance. As she grew up in a small town in the countryside, this was important to her.
Then there's the drug lords. The drug lords used to call "strikes" if there were policies that they didn't like. What a strike means is that if you go to work when they've called one, they'll have you shot. They tried this when Fujimori was in power. He took the military and brought it into the cities, and appeared on television downtown, out in the open, daring them to shoot him. He then had the military transport anyone who was afraid to travel to work in armored vehicles. Some people were mad at him for bringing the military into the cities... but the strike did fail as a result.
Then there was the corruption. Before Fujimori, there were a lot of government-aided monopolies, and a lot of kickbacks. Not only did this result in public money going to help enrich those who were already rich (and private money going to keep those people in power), but it directly impacted many people. For example, products were often "bundled" with less popular products; you might not be able to get some item that you need without having to buy a bar of soap with it, or whatnot (so everyone would end up with way too much soap). Since there were no competing companies for many products, people didn't have a choice.
Etc. In short, she was glad to trade some freedoms that she didn't personally care much about for safety and prosperity. I know the quote... but in this case, things worked out well, in her opinion. Not everyone prizes having every last personal freedom and having a democracy over everything else... and it's a bit haughty to think that they should have your views.
People said I was dumb, but I proved them.
Well, from 1984-89, several U.S. Companies and the CDC, with the approval of the U.S. Department of Commerce, sold several chemicals to Iraq, who at the time, was at war with Iran. Here is a short list of goodies we sold them.
Bacillus Anthracis
Clostridium Botulinum
Histoplasma Capsulatam
Brucella Melitensis
Clostridium Perfringens
Clostridium tetani
Escherichia coli
This was confirmed By CDC records, Senate Banking Commision records, and U.N. weapons inspectors.
-William
God is everything science has yet to explain.
(Just don't get me started on the food!)
Just as a note about virtual web sites...
... If you can do this in windows, I am -sure- you can in linux.
For the sake of argument - lets say Slashdot is a virtual websites (on same box as, say, 30 other web sites). If you know the ip address is 54.14.54.163 you might have trouble getting to it... but....
In windows you can add a listing in the HOSTS file such that slashdot automatically resolves (regardless of what dns says) to 54.14.54.163 - so it will send the correct GET string to the IP address in order to view the site.
You can use this in times when you have a new webhost and your dns hasnt moved over yet, and you cannot access it via ip only (virtual websites) - lets you modify it for a few days before dns fully propogates (sp).
Time in China seems to be a lot like time on the internet. Unfortunately, this means that some of your advice is as pertinent to travelling to China today as talk of Netscape Navigator 4 and 40-bit encryption is to using the internet today. Apparently lot has changed in the past seven years.
There is no special policy whatsoever for electronic devices, and they don't even inspect them at customs. Odds are that half the people on your flight will have notebook computers, digital cameras, PDAs, and of course they will all have cell phones, most of them with cameras and web browsers.
Certain pieces of computer equipment are cheaper in China (mainly parts like RAM or hard drives) but portable computers are generally more expensive than in the US.
The "Great Firewall of China" is very much not in evidence in the large cities. Overall, it tends to block specific Chinese dissident web sites, and not obvious stuff like CNN or Voice of America. I was not affected by it at all and you probably won't be either.
Being courteous and cooperating with officials is always a good idea no matter where you go, of course.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Basically, if they want to get you, they will find something to get you. Behave yourself. Not for your sake, but for that of your friends and any relatives you may have. If you are ABC (and you know what that means if you are), this goes double. What they might not do to whites, they will do to ABC.
Be prepared to stand in line for any government business. Also, any privacy you think you might be entitled to at a bank is non-existent. If you are white, you may complain about hospitality and get a little bit of space. If you are ABC, fugetabotit.
You'll lose 25 pounds in two weeks. Be prepared for that. You'll probably also catch a cold your first week there.
Speaking of cold, everyone wears a jacket all the time. It's a cold winter over there right now. Expect to be cold most of the time. Thick blue jeans from Walmart or Farm & Fleet are a good idea. So is long underwear. It sounds stupid. It's not. I wished I had brought some, and I spend my winters outside working without any.
Fly straight through. Immigration is a pain, and two hundred dollars for tickets on United as opposed to China Eastern with a stop over is worth it. It'll be some of the best money you'll ever spend. Also, your luggage will probably break sometime between leaving home and getting back home.
Watch your wallet, especially in the train station. I was there for not too long, and I had four people try to pick my pocket. Also, Beijing and Shanghai are not China. If you are going some place like Dailong, or Kaifung, life will be different.
Take amoxillician. The Chinese are very proud of Chinese herbal medicine. Proud to the point of insisting on feeding it to you until you require immediate hospitization.
Be safe while over there. Pocket knives are a good idea. If you bring US dollars, right now, you can live like a king on a beer budget. But that is not going to last longer than the year. China's going to be changing the way it pegs the RMB soon.
Have fun and good luck. If you need more, check out my journal or leave me a note there. China can get depressing, so keep a smile on your face. That'll cure most ills.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
In the US we take these as a given. I've encountered people where I work that are from other countries that truly do not comprehend the value of freedom and democracy
Actually in the US you don't take these as given, and I've encountered plenty of Americans who do not comprehend the value of freedom and democracy. These are the Americans who voted for Bush, who can't see the problems with the Patriot Act or the war on Iraq, and who really believe that the Department of Homeland Security and it's powers are there to make them safer by taking away their freedoms and regulating their liberty. These are people who ignored the founding fathers who made their famous comments about the perils of trading freedom for security. Don't get me wrong, I think the USA is a great country with many great people, But I'm afraid that a majority of those who voted there are under the misapprehension that what their government is doing and the way their country is run constitutes a free society.
// The fastest Alt-Tab in the West
I call bullshit on your statement about dropping tha tomic bomb on Japan. Japan had already attempted to surrender to Moscow weeks before Hiroshima. The Americans hamstringed that attempt. We dropped the bomb on Japan specifically because we wanted to ensure that the Japanese surrendered to the United States, instead of the Soviets. Don't forget that just months earlier we were learning how Europe was being divided up. We didn't want another East Germany at the helm of one of the most titanic war machines ever built.
the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were one of the greatest massacres in the history of the world, and the United States has to live up to that fact. Although most historians agree that we did it to stop the Soviets, I doubt that popular opinion will ever coincide with this until all the WWII vets are dead and gone.
If you doubt me, read "The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, and The Architecture of an American Myth." by Gar Alperovitz. Read a scholarly article on the question here: http://www.progressive.org/zinn0800.htm (admittedly, Zinn is not the best authority to speak of, but his article can stand as the general opinion of US historians)
This book is a scholarly work that is corroborated by scores of historians, not some dimestore reaction book. Before you go spouting off trash about the murder of tens of thousands of civilians, you better know your facts.
well my advice is short and sweet. A little expensive though. Get your own dedicated server here in the good old USA. Install PPP tunneling on it. This is easy. Make sure it goes through an SSH tunnel. Set that up as a NAT server. Then mess with your routing tables a little. Once you do that you can connect to the internet through you American gateway. Cool, eh? The alternate route. Uses less bandwidth but you can only use it with Apps that have proxy compatibility. Get your good ol' 100% Americano servero running linux up. It has to have SSHD and Squid. Make a tunnel from localhost to squid on the remote server. Just use localhost as the proxy. AES-768 is the encryption i reccomend. The last route is get a computer here. VNC into it over an SSH tunnel. TightVNC has this nice-nifty feature built it. Wanna hear from you soon. Get that wiki up and running now!
Chemical weapons include such nasties as Mustard Gas, VX, and other blood and nerve agents.
Also, I doubt very seriously that Iraq approached us, and said "Hey, we'd like to make some biological weapons so we can really stick it to the Iranians, with whom we are at war. Waddya say?"
The CDC wouldn't have been involved if the request wasn't made under the guise of medical research. If we hadn't provided it, they could have gotten it from any number of other sources.
I'm not saying we never sold them chemical weapons, or the makings thereof... Just that these aren't them.
Not everything is as sinister as you think it is.
For those that would die defending it, Freedom
has a sweet taste that the protected will never know.
You can in fact joke about killing the President
Actually, you can't joke about anything.
For example:
two Brazilian surfers were arrested in Miami's International Airport under terrorist charges. Mizael Cabral, born in Paraíba, and Daniel Correia, from Rio de Janeiro, spent a good amount of time in Uncle Sam's land working hard to save money so that they could start a surf board factory in João Pessoa. They bought as suction pump here that would make their job a lot easier, but something really weird happened in the airport while they were going back to Brazil. According to the American authorities, they were joking about having that suction pump (pump and bomb are the same word in brazilian portuguese). The man from Paraíba supposedly asked the inspector in the airport: "Haven' you found the bomb in the bag yet?" And the one from Rio would've said: "If you open up my bag, it will explode". In cuffs, the two men were taken to Miami's Jail under the charges of "false information about explosives, with malicious intentions, irresponsibility and disregard for the human lives safety". They can be sentenced up to five years in prison and they will have to pay US$ 250 thousand dollars each. They have been in jail for almost a month and the press has no access to them.
They are now back in Brazil, after plead guilty of terrorism! Deported.
There is no presumption of innocence. There is no right to appeal.
You got that right!
I shot the sheriff
ABC = American Born Chinese
---
WARNING:Slashdot karma not redeemable in the afterlife.
> the nations of the world combined could not match our power.
Got a cite for that?
I'm not necessarily disputing anything you're claiming; however, neither is it at all clear that what you've said is actually true. In particular...
> There were no limits to the power we could project.
I think you're underestimating the remaining power of the other industrialized nations at the end of WWII. Even by D-Day, Britain had enough military might remaining to take responsibility for as much of the assault as the USA.
If you look at this link, for example, you'll see that while the USA was well-supplied with equipment, it was severely undermanned for dreams of world conquest. At the end of the war, there were about 1100 divisions available to the countries most involved, of which less than 10% were American. Moreover, this link suggests that the USA didn't enjoy such a dominant position in equipment after all; for example, the USSR was producing more tanks than the US by the end of the war.
Given the numbers and logistics involved, your assertion of the manifest ability of the USA to "roll over" the rest of the world seems...optimistic.
In the cases you are listing, China and America have identical world views.
The American government just has better PR (public relations). Of course, we don't know exactly how the Chinese sell their totalitarianism to their citizens. Instead of any Great Walls or Firewalls, the US built the Great Amount of Ignorance and Arrogance in all their citizens, so we are too occupied with Must See TV and our social/professional lives. And on that same note, they never did a Friends episode in China, but if they had, I'm sure we would have gotten a completely unbiased, ethno-friendly peek into their culture, don't you?
I think the context in which the phrase "incompatible world views" was used had more to do with "how the citizens viewed the world" and less to do with "what the government oppresses onto their citizens".
Americans are so quick to condemn the Chinese, or any other, way of life, rather than take a good look at their own. Citizens of the United States do not realize how often we are censored, or how the structure of the system provides us with our limited "freedom of speech". Through the privatization of media, someone can say whatever they want (to an extent) and it doesn't matter, because no one can ever hear them.
Besides, when anyone does happen to be within "earshot", the government will just call it a "Conspiracy Theory" or a lie and a well-programmed populace will then disregard it. Then they throw out a bunch of ludicrous "theories" to water down the truth and confuse anyone looking for answers. Nearly everything TV or school teaches you is wrong. Of course, China does the same things to their citizens. Honestly, I think they put the Great Firewall into place to not only stop the truth from reaching their citizens, but to also stop the lies, too.
It's only a matter of time before we are controlled to the same extent as the Chinese. And it will happen because we will allow it to happen. We are selling out our liberties to buy us some totalitarianism in a package labeled "Security".
But you are right:
Freedom is not an incompatible world view.
Because we don't have freedom, either. "Freedom" without money, or the power to exercise it, isn't freedom. Sure, I can choose what brand of deodorant I want, but I can't speak out without being demonized, and I can't receive the education that I can definitely use. Freedom is only for the rich, not for all.
Democracy is not an incompatible world view.
Right again. Although it's not commonly accepted, it's the truth: Bush never won an election. Either term. And the choice of voting between one puppet and another is hardly "democracy".
Human rights are not an incompatible world view.
At least not with China, cause we TOTALLY agree there! With non-socialized health care, abusive police officers, and "free fire" wars like Vietnam and Iraq, not to mention torture, rocket fuel in the drinking water, and our children being fed "vegetables" like ketchup (thank Bush Sr. for that one), its obvious what we think of our fellow man. We are more concerned with an African American woman having babies to cash welfare checks than the babies that the program actually feed. Most people are so ashamed to use programs like welfare, because they will be seen as "feeding off the government". Well, we pay our taxes to spread the wealth and raise the standard of living, and whatever money we don't use for this purpose will be spent to kill poor people and make rich people richer, while they leave us with the tab.
Equality under the law is not an incompatible world view.
Poor men get prison for robbing a convenience store. Rich men get NOTHING for stealing millions of dollars out of their employees' 401k. Yup, that's equality under the law, if I do say so myself.
And these ideas are no more alien to Japan than they were to us in 1945, when after a long spree of fire bombing that wiped out the majority of their major cities, we then p
I'm writing this way too late to get modded high enough for anyone to see but maybe someone will see it and it'll help. The irony is that I'm so late in posting as I'm in China and just woke up this morning.
I was here briefly last summer and am now doing a semester abroad. China really is not that a bad of a place to be. It seems most of the replies are very negative or sarcastic about the security situation in China. In all seriousness, living here as a foreigner is not that bad. Sure you have to deal with weird, to the US, government regulations, but I don't feel as though I'm under an iron fist or anything. Just respect the culture and their customs/laws and you will have a great time.
Oh and if you take the time to learn even a bit of the language it can help immensely. I know I've run into many people who were much more cordial when I told them (in Chinese) that I was a student here learning the language.
Everyone has different experiences, especially if you are ABC or even look remotely Chinese. But instead of listening to a bunch of other people talk about it, just take a 2 week trip to China and see for yourself. I think more Americans need to get out and see the realities of the world (although my cynicism says that when the they do the average Americans will do something stupid, get into trouble, and then blame it not on themselves but on the country they are in)
Scotland chose to join the union so that analogy doesn't really hold up. (Treaty of Northhampton 1329) Also we had a referendum on independance in 1979 and the majority voted against it. (33% for) If the Scots are still pissed about Wallace getting killed and want independence, they should get it. Probably shouldn't use Mel Gibson films as a source for historical reference. :->
You'll lose 25 pounds in two weeks. Be prepared for that. You'll probably also catch a cold your first week there.
No wonder you lost 25 lbs in 2 weeks, you went North!
Food in Southern China is much better IMHO, I gained 20lbs during my 1 year stay in Guangzhou.
The city itself is very dirty though (Guangdong province is sort of an industrial province), that was back in 2000. From what my friends who recently came back from there told me, looks like its a much cleaner place to live now.
Also, if you're living in major cities in China (i.e: Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou), transportation is really easy, there's almost always a dozen different ways just to get to a location.
It's not 'American, born-Chinese', IT IS American-Born Chinese.
This term refers to someone who's family line comes from the region of the planet referred to as China, but is unfamiliar with the ways and customs of the Chinese culture and government.
This is a problem because they will not afford you the same courtesy they would an obviously "white" American due to his explainable ignorance of their ways and customs. An ABC gets no slack in China. They are expected to be aware of the way things are done, and if anything are treated worse due to their ignorance of what could be thought of as "their own culture".
Obviously this is a close minded viewpoint, but it does happen to ABC who visit China.
Of blankness, I know nothing.
There are some serious misunderstandings about China being voiced here -- even by people who have gone there. I can understand this. I spent seven years in China and saw many misunderstandings both by people who had just gotten there and by people who had lived there but never bothered to really immerse themselves in it.
China is a wonderful place. The people are nice. The culture is respect-worthy. The landscape is beautiful. The history is intoxicating.
Is there corruption, especially in the really rural areas? Yes. But if you understand the culture and the guanxi (relationships) system then you will have few problems. They ask for 15 RMB for something that is supposed to be free? Give it. Who cares? It's two bucks. Though usually, if you speak some chinese, you can demonstrate that you are a friend of the country and of its people and get around with no hassles.
As for the government's rejection of human rights -- things are relative. I don't approve of everything that the Chinese government does, but I also appreciate that there is an amount of ethnorelativism that needs to be engaged consciously. For instance, the UN definition of human rights includes a provision that allows everyone to live at a certain basic level -- something we know as welfare. But Americans wouldn't submit to that being a human right. Much of the world's declaration of human rights is not considered valid in the developing world because people see them as western-defined examples of human _needs_ -- something everyone accepts. (Read Azar. Human needs fit into three groups -- security (food, protection, water, etc), acceptance (for whatever group you identify with) and access to/participation in the institutions that allocate resources (markets or governments.)
As for Internet access -- it is easy to come by. It isn't the fastest stuff in the world (esp. outside of the big cities) but the blocks are nominal. You can get around them as well. Some methods are mentioned in this thread.
You shouldn't worry about having your freedoms repressed. Just be sensitive. Just like you wouldn't walk around Saudi Arabia (as a woman) wearing a bikini top screaming "you should be allowed to do this too!" you don't walk around China doing things that aren't culturally acceptable. It is disrespectful. And in China respect means a lot.
So I hope you do it. The best seven years of my life (so far) were those spent in China. It was a mind-opening experience. If you have any questions you can email me. (Just make sure that you write a good subject line so I don't click "junk.") Take care! Oh, and don't listen to anyone who says China sucks or is oppressive. The experience of individuals can be awful anywhere. But statistically speaking the vast majority of Chinese and of foreigners live happily.
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
"Freedom is not an incompatable world view."
Freedom? Freedom from? Freedom to? None of these concepts are core to Chinese philosophy. You are not born free according to traditional Eastern philosophy; you are born into a complex web of social interaction and obligations.
"Democracy is not an incompatable world view."
Yeah it is.
Democracy is completely alien to the Chinese worldview; it only came through Canton/HK after the Western powers invaded in the 18th/19th centuries. Chinese philosophy, especially Confucius and Mencius, advocated human existence as simply a set of key relationships. There's no such thing as a formal developement of individualism in China; traditional Chinese philosophy views the basic unit of society as the family, not the person. Your obligations to society define your role; try reading up on it sometime. Collective good >> individual; has been so for the past 3000 years in China. Communism is not at all incompatible with Chinese tradition.
"Human rights are not an incompatable world view."
The concept of inalienable human rights is totally foreign to China. You are not born with rights in traditional Chinese society; you are born with obligations you parents, your family, and your (historically) Emporer.
"Equality under the law is not an incompatable world view."
This one is interesting. Chinese history is full of specific examples of law and philosophy that espouse DIFFERENT punishments for DIFFERENT classes of people; this has been the case since the existence of the Tang Code - the predominant legal system in ALL of ASIA. Japan's law system up until the Meiji era was based on this system. This system specfiically CODIFIED different punishments depending on if you were related to the Emperor, whether you were an official, or had money and could pay to have your punishments reduced.
This was not arbitrary and evil; it was based on specific philosophy from Confucious. the Confucian school of thought held that Junzi, or those educated elite, should not be held to the same laws as the peasants; moral law should guide them and terrestrial law should be limited to application to peasants.
Your view is purely that from a Western society; freedom, by it's very nature, cannot be forced down a society's throat - witness Iraq. You must have a tradition of open thought and philosophy to set the stage for democracy to even start. It's foolish to think you can export your 3 branches of government to China along with the Bill of Rights (or what's left of it after Patriot Act I) and expect everyone in the world to be jolly. China WILL become a democratic society, but expecting overnight change from a country with 4000+ years of contrary philosophy and traditions is naiive.
How about opening fire on 10,000 men, women and children, peacefully gathered to celebrate a religious festival?
Oh wait, that wasn't China! That was Britain!
I guess the British ought to be described, to this day, as a nation ruled by a gestapo-like military, eh?
Oh but wait you say, that tragedy happened a long time ago.
So, believe it or not, did Tiananmen. Politically, 1989 was an eternity ago. But it's difficult to make this clear to someone who hasn't bothered to go to China and witness how much the nation has changed, politically and socially, since those years.
Which is not to say that it's perfect, but the days of the lone student standing in front of a tank are well behind us.
This is utter nonsense. Tibet has been independent of China for most of its history. Imperial China claimed sovereignty over every state with which it had diplomatic relations, on the theory that the Emperor could only enter into the relationship of master to vassal, including Japan, Okinawa (an independant country until 1609), Korea, and Vietnam. China has long claimed sovereignty over Tibet, but Tibet was de facto an independent state and did not acknowledge Chinese sovereignty.
As a matter of international law, the critical fact is that in 1951, at the time of the Chinese invasion, Tibet was an independant state. It had a distinctive population occupying a well-defined territory under the effective control of its own government. The government of Tibet issued coins and currency and passports that were internationally recognized. It entered into diplomatic relations as a sovereign nation with other countries, including Nepal,Mongolia, Great Britain, and Ladakh. In fact, The Republic of China negotiated with Tibet as a sovereign nation at the Simla Conference in 1913-1914.
The Government said it would charter a jet to fly Mr Habib back from Cuba. He will be free to go home.
You miss that part?
Haida Manga