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?"

Comments

Re:Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

List of Chinese Banned Websites

[clotito]

Here is a comprehensive list of sites banned in China: http://asp-cyber.law.harvard.edu/filtering/list.ht ml

Censorship.....Bah!

[fenix99]

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

Re:I have said it before, and I will say it again

[DNS-and-BIND]

Oh, give me a $#%&king break.

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.

Re:How can you ask, and still be planning to go?

[CurlyG]

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.

UNTRUE

[fliptout]

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.

Have you ever BEEN to CHINA?

[Xiaotou]

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.

Re:Freedom is not an "incompatable world view"

[Rei]

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.

Re:Just Like That?

[kd5ujz]

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.

Re:Well...

[Stargoat]

I just came back from China. Internet sucks, particularly outside of Beijing and Shanghai. Daily access to life, such as going where you want to go is not bad, until you run into government officials. The communists will make your life hell. Simple things, like sending knives through the mail, are impossible to do. If they come to your house, even though you legally bought it, that butcher knife you use to cut your meat is illegal.

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.

Re:Freedom is not an "incompatable world view"

[detect]

Um, yeah maybe you forgot about a little place called Guantanamo Bay. If you think China is bad you obviously do not know about the following:

Degrading torture on Habib: lawyer
By Tamara McLean and Brendan Nicholson
January 27, 2005

The lawyer for Australian Guantanamo Bay detainee Mamdouh Habib has outlined an extraordinary series of torture methods that he says were used against his client by the United States.

Steven Hopper said that Mr Habib was tied to the ground while a prostitute menstruated on him after he failed to co-operate with interrogators.

Mr Habib is due back in Australia within a week after the US said it would release him without charge. The US has held him for more than three years on suspicion he knew about the September 11, 2001, attacks on the US and trained with al-Qaeda.

Mr Hopper made the claims at an Australia Day forum in Sydney focusing on Australia's political relationship with the US.

"Make no doubt about it, Guantanamo Bay wasn't a prisoner-of-war camp," Mr Hopper said. "It was a facility designed to interrogate people. It was nothing more than a vulgar concentration camp and it has marked a new high in the rise of American fascism."

Mr Hopper said the Americans used prostitutes as "tools". "They'd say to detainees 'If you co-operate with us, we'll let you at this woman for the night'. And if they wouldn't agree they'd use them in other ways."

According to British detainees held with Mr Habib and since released, "one of the prostitutes stood over him naked while he was strapped to the floor and menstruated on him".

Mr Hopper told The Age last night that interrogators also defaced photographs of his four children that had been sent to him by his wife Maha. He said they superimposed the heads from the photographs on the bodies of animals offensive to Muslims, such as pigs.

These were enlarged and put on the wall of the interrogation room. "They held up a picture of Maha and said 'It's a shame we had to kill your family'," Mr Hopper told the forum.

He said Mr Habib said he was subjected to interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay similar to those used on prisoners at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.

A spokesman for Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said the Federal Government was aware of similar allegations of torture made by former British detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

"We haven't heard those sorts of allegations from Mr Habib," he said. "But if he's got any evidence to support those sorts of claims we'd pass them on."

Mr Habib was detained in Afghanistan in late 2001 and sent to Egypt before being flown to Guantanamo Bay in 2002.

Mr Hopper also detailed alleged abuses against Mr Habib in Egypt, saying he was strapped to the ceiling with only an electrified barrel to stand on.

"On other occasions they used German shepherd guard dogs and (interrogators) told him they train dogs to sexually assault people," the lawyer said. But he said Mr Habib said he was not sexually assaulted by the dogs. "Who would admit to it, particularly an Arab Muslim male?"

The Government said it would charter a jet to fly Mr Habib back from Cuba. He will be free to go home.

Re:Well...

[OneIsNotPrime]

ABC = American Born Chinese

misinformation

[TheOverlord]

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)