Slashdot Mirror
China Tightens Rules For Educational BBSs
An anonymous reader writes "China is tightening control over online BBS run by colleges and universities. Educational institutions in China have received direct orders from the Chinese Ministry of Education requiring their BBSs to take actions including access limitation and registering users by their real identities, as well as strict content censorship. The admin team of the BBS of Nanjing University has refused to obey the order and has been dismissed."
This cannot come as a shock to any one who even casually follow the Chineese record on free speach.
But the thing that gets me, when I talk to some people from the PRC, is how strongly many believe it isn't oppressive, it's good for the whole of the country and then they have the temerity to point out all the crap the Bush family, the CIA and the State Dept have done over the years.
Each side of the argument is so familiar with the transgressions of the other and willing to turn a blind eye to their own.
Whatchagonnado?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The difference is that China's currently bad, but slowly getting better, while the USA is currently good (at least relative to China) but getting worse.
Personally, I'm just glad I don't live in either country.
In order to understand why these things happen, you need to find out how people of China think. Using Western standards for benchmarking civil rights of China is not a smart idea because not everybody agrees with these standards.
I worked with an exchange student from China a while ago. She was a nice girl, but she could never get the freedom of speech (expression/religion) thing. Whenever we talked about civil rights in China, she pointed out to all the porn, violence, drug use and other negative aspects of life that Americans could see on TV and everywhere else. I could not argue with her. She was raised in a differet atmosphere and that was a big issue between the two of us. She hated many things about the United States and one of them was freedom to say whatever you wanted. Three years of schooling here did not change her one bit.
Now, I know that one person does not represent the whole country, but this experience gave me some insights on why peoeple may not like the Western way of life.
That sounds about right. Most people from most oppressive countries live pretty well most of the time. If it were not so, the governments wouldn't last very long. Honestly, even after these countries are "liberated," you're going to get a lot of whining from people about the good old days.
A great example of this is South Africa. My family is from South Africa, and I still have many relatives there. If you'd told us twenty years ago that there were hit-squads, constant uprisings, military actions against blacks, and frequent prison torture, we would have had a tough time believing you. Even people who had just visited South Africa from abroad would have probably contradicted you. It seemed like a pretty nice place! Of course, in retrospect, all these things turned out to be true, but we didn't hear about it. We just went to work and went to school and never really crossed any of the invisible lines we didn't know were there.
Similarly, I can happily recommend that you go visit China sometime. It's a pretty nice place, most of the time, and you could probably even live there quite comfortably. Quite a few of my friends have been there and they enjoyed the trip. You'll have to look really hard for even the slightest signs of your being oppressed.
But that doesn't mean that everything's OK.
Acius the unfamous
To compare the abuse of a few people, most of which aren't even citizens, to that of the oppressive nature of the Chinese government is simply absurd. I'm not defending US actions, but is hyperbole to the point of flagrant dishonesty to compare the two. The very thing typed up above could very well, in China, lead to the maintainers of this website getting into at least some trouble. Ponder that.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
You don't really get it, do you? Just because other people are worse doesn't make us good. We are TORTURING people. The United States of America, Land of the Free, Home of the Brave, is TORTURING people. By policy. With the full knowledge of the government AND THE CITIZENRY.
What China does is *immaterial*. What Hitler did is immaterial. What Pol Pot did is immaterial. The United States is doing these things NOW. That is ALL that matters. Any noise to the contrary is just to try to distract you.
And, from a practical standpoint, the Chinese that you (rightly) detest can point to the fact that we're invading other countries and torturing anyone we choose. At least the Chinese torturers mostly stay home.
We can't preach from the moral high ground if we're not ON the moral high ground. How can we expect other countries to live up to ethical rules that we're willing to ignore whenever we find them inconvenient?
Because of Bush's actions, we have lost most of our ability to influence behavior in the world. The terrorists didn't just win, they hit the f*cking jackpot.