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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?"
Nothing for you to see here. Please move along.
Does that answer your question?
What methods and technologies are you aware of or use to circumvent the Great Firewall of China?
Somehow I don't think it's wise to do such circumvention if you want to stay there short-term/long-term/permanently.
What would US officials think if a foreigner, who is planning to move to USA, talks about how stupid the whole security thing is, and asks for advice to get around it?
If USA can attack another country "Just Like That"(tm), I would consider Chinese's censorship a godsend given it's only imposed within its own country. If you decided to move there, respect its laws; if you don't agree with its laws, go somewhere else. You always have a choice.
At home I have unlimited access to the internet, but at work I can only access port 80, and I would never try to get around company's security policy because it's restricting my freedom to surf, although others might still try that.
And remember, when you get caught, it's going to be ugly no matter where you are.
So in my opinion, if you want to go into other's territory, make sure you find out what can and cannot be done there, and stick to the rules.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
No sir you are wrong. There is NO censorship here in China, none at all! Yes siree, everything is free and open. As we say here in Chi
You have a constitutionally protected right to be wrong, and I the right to ignore you.
So basically your question is stating "I'm going to China and expect to be able to break their laws as I was fortunate enough to be born in a more free society."
Don't whine to the foreign media when you're jailed as a subversive influence.
Trolling is a art,
What kind of problems? Did you sell military secrets to the Chinese?
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
Why don't you move to China and do all of those things while maintaining a blog of your adventure. Thus, if your blog suddenly disappears or is abandoned, then we will know for sure what happens in China when you do those things..
Here is a comprehensive list of sites banned in China: http://asp-cyber.law.harvard.edu/filtering/list.ht ml
Do you like having your legs unbroken?
Yes actually, if they were broken I would very much like to unbreak them.
and dont use the people's explorer of internet. But i hear the chinese food there rocks (or as they call it there, 'food')
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
I'm actually reading your post from China right now, and I'm not entirely sure what you're asking:
Do you really want to ... play ... a game. Are you a big fan of ... the ... general? Are you a big fan of ... Chinese? Do you like ... your legs?
I would highly recommend ... going to China. Their jails are ... nice.
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!
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.
Freedom is not an incompatable world view.
Democracy is not an incompatable world view.
Human rights are not an incompatable world view.
Equality under the law is not an incompatable world view.
All of these are basic rights for all human beings. The fact that the Communist government of China has refused to recognize them is not due to "an incompatable world view," its due to a small nomenklatura of Communist elites denying these rights to their people. The ideas themselves are no more alien to China than they were alien to Japan in 1945.
- Crow T. Trollbot
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.
It seems to me very few of you have actually been to China or even understand how the system there works. For the same reason why Europeans think we're a country of hicks driving around in a pickup with shotguns who elected a idiot to office is why you think the Chinese is some sort of omni-present superpower that oversees all of the minute details of its citizens' lives and takes sadistic pleasure in torture. You're taking in media hype and a fear of the unknown. China has its share of problems: freedom of speech and freedom of religion come to mind. These are serious issues that need to be addressed but that doesn't mean everytime you commit a crime in China you will be sent into "reeducation." That also doesn't mean if you use a proxy to surf the web that they're going to break your thumbs. The Chinese government are too busy with the same serious issues that the US is dealing with to be bothered by these minor offenses.
While it may sound like the Chinese police force operate a Gestapo-like regime but that's far from the truth. Believe or not, China has laws and 99% of the time, they are followed. They also have lawyers that will free an innocent man. Some people vision of a totalitarian society governed by "The Party" are just too far fetched. Do they honestly think that the police operate on whatever laws they please and the people live in constant fear? I'll tell you from actually lived in China that it is hardly the case. People are way too reoccupied w/ making money to give a shit. Just remember the same media that is telling you to be afraid of China is the same one that ran the special on 20/20 about the wide-spread dangers of drier lint fires and the world-wide SARS epedemic.
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.
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.
How about helping those that want to break the yoke but can't.
You make the mistake of thinking you can educate the fundamental stupidity out of people. You can't.
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)
The difference is this: in the United States, prison labor may only be used to produce goods and services for the state. It is illegal for prison-produced goods to compete on the open market and it is illegal for prisons to profit off anyone but other governmental agencies.
For instance, if you're a government executive and the government gives you an allowance with which to outfit your office, you can buy desks for a song. Prisons who teach woodworking as a trade skill offer some beautifully-made things for under $100. They can do this because their labor costs are pretty much nothing. However, the prison can only sell it to other branches of the government--you won't find them for sale in the prison gift shop.
Prison labor is also used to clean up roadways; to dig firebreaks in areas where forest fires are a concern; to make license plates; etc.
I'm not offended by manual labor in the service of the state being a criminal punishment. I'm offended by the idea of convicts being used to make their wardens and jailers independently wealthy, which is precisely what happens in China.
Before you go about preaching there's no difference between what we do and what they do, you may wish to learn what the difference is.
I have lived in Shanghai for 4 years (U.S. born, white male). Life in Shanghai is very easy. Its simply a very large city...other than that, there is nothing that a normal U.S. citizen would find "oppressive". If you are a person who is compelled to stand on street corners in the U.S. and stir up a riot over government policies, then neither the U.S. nor China are for you at the moment. But if you are a normal person who isn't interested in stirring a revolution, China is simply not an oppressive place. You can have small group and one-on-one conversations about anything you want (even politically sensitive issues). You can access almost any content you may desire over the net (some porn sites have been blocked...some chinese political content (in Madarin, so you couldn't read it anyway) has been blocked)...but google works as you would expect and most any business which requires internet access can be conducted fairly easily. Sure, doing things like extending your visa requires going to a gov building and waiting in line, but how often do you do this? Its not much different than going to a U.S. gov office. Other services are mostly private/free-enterprise and are very easily accessed; your largest barrier is language. As with almost any travel around the world, an open mind and a friendly smile will do lots to improve your experience. In terms of the Internet...it is very slow to access non-China servers. This is caused by two major issues: 1 - the "Great Firewall" and 2 - enormous amounts of local traffic (lots of it due to infected PCs). Best guess is that its item 2 that is the biggest problem with traffic, since the content filter isn't real-time (or so it would appear). MS's recent announcement to not continue to security patch unlicensed copies of Windows will no doubt add to this problem. As to other places besides Shanghai, well this is the top city China for westerners to do business so its the easiest...for anywhere else you can scale down your expectations on services from here; but freedom of expression, movement, etc...are all pretty smooth so long as your not here to stir up trouble. Good luck to you...