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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."
It seems these days that when I read about China censorship, it's merely a continuation of policies that have existed for years.
What's remarkable to me is that the admin group refused and was merely dismissed. A couple decades ago, I'd expect them to be jailed at the least.
It really took guts for them to stand up to this, and I wonder if there will be fallout for them the rest of the world will never hear. It says they were merely dismissed, but can you trust that infomation?
China have been addressing the "problem" of the internet for a while now, beginning with the block of adult sites and now the censorship of their own countries' sites.
I guess they are learning from the 80's, when the startings of the internet helped demolish stalinism from Eastern Europe. They know they need to control the content people view to avoid letting their control on power drop.
Business Voyeur
Firewalls+total control of the information infrastructure+ willingness to do anything necessary+trusted computing (well, that last one is a comin).
You may not be able to shut it off completely with the current level of technology, but you can block it off to 99+% of the populace that use electronics. With all the evolution in computers lately, it is essentially an arms race between blocking those who want access to all info outside the great fire wall and those who control the fire wall and are trying to control access. So far those who want access are are winning, but it wouldn't take much technological advnacement to leapfrog the fire wall ahead. (Such as if China mandated all computers must be of this specific type that the gov has complete control of, kinda like paladium).
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Seeing all the sarcasm, no one is surprised at China's actions in this matter, nor do they really expect different. However, while I don't condone this action and in fact abhor it, don't be surprised if kids born in the US 10 years from now don't have a RFID chip popped in under their skin right after the APGAR test. It will be justified under any number of reasons, security, health monitoring, etc
Kudos to the team for standing up and saying no, that takes guts
Now go buy your cheap goods at Walmart
In my PUBLIC high school, they censora crap load of webpages, ie(slashdot, most wikipedia topics, and duh the porn and game site) Whats the difference between PUBLIC schools doing it and China doing it?
The killing was done on the streets around Tiananmen Square after the protestors were driven out of the square. The Chinese depend on this error when they claim that no killing happened.
Funny you should mention that incident, because it presented an easy solution for one of China's biggest problems. (Sorry for getting OT here)
China had effected scrict financial penalties for having more than one child sometine last century. Unfortunately, the typical agricultural sector family unit survives by having cheap labor, in the form of extra children. However, in order not to incur legal penalties, these families often hide those extra kids. As these kids grew up, it quickly became apparent that these kids had no identity, and without identity, they wouldn't be able to find work or acquire government benefits. The PRC refused to ackowledge their existence.
Then, one day, the whole Tiananmen Square incident came about, and the PRC realized they could kill two birds with one stone. Rallying and arming as many "black children" [literal translation] as they could find on short notice, the PRC made a deal: "Kill one student protestor, and you may take possession of his identity. We will then cover the rest of your tuition and housing." After the bloodbath was over, all the "black children" were now legitimate, and since all students were accounted for, "no one" had really died. To this day, China can logistically claim there were no casualties in the incident. And what of the victim's families? They got a letter from school saying that their kids were striking off on their own and didn't want to see them again.
China's very good at understating a lot of facts. (I should know - I still have relatives there.)
Solomon Kevin Chang
"Twice half-assed makes an ass whole." --Solomon K. Chang
This didn't start with Communism. Chinese civilization has a long history of pursuing social order. The intensity with which Western countries tend to defend and rationalize individual liberties would confuse many Chinese from many historical epochs. To them, an authoritarian regime which makes these sorts of dictates is the norm. The Communists are simply the latest in a long line of rulers to do this.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
- The chat rooms operated by the Tsinghua University have been closed down for non-students and, obviously, students require to indentify themselves.
- NO BBS has been asked to get identification from its users. No BBS have been asked to censor themselves (at least not in a new development and not in the context of this article)
- Only Tsinghua University has been asked to get identification from its students to access its chatrooms. No other university has been asked to do this (in the context of this article, of course).
- New rules have been passed which, according to TFA, 'will hold chat room operators liable for any "objectionable content" on their sites.' So it must be speaking of keeping "objectional content" away from websites of chatrooms or some online forums. And this need not be political content but just things like porn. But keep in mind that TFA is full of opinion [like calling the move an effort "to limit the exchange of ideas on the Internet" and "the Communist Party's Propaganda Department". And it states opinions as facts including it in the same sentences as facts instead of stating it separately. Like "China's most popular online chat room, hosted by Beijing's Tsinghua University, has been closed to non-students to limit the exchange of ideas on the Internet" and "the Communist Party's Propaganda Department has increased its monitoring of cyberspace for subversive trends, the report said." (emphasis mine)] so it's hard to distinguish what is fact and what is opinion. TFA continues to say that " As a result, Weblog portals have discouraged their users from discussing political or sensitive topics." But it's just the editors' opinion and it doesn't have any recent developments to back it up. (Maybe just the old complaints)
- TFA also says the Ministry of Education has ' issued a circular on strengthening "political thought" at universities'. Again, you can't tell what is fact and what is the editors' opinion.
- Nowhere does the article mention anything about the "dismissal of the admin team of Nanjing Univesity". This might be another article not linked in summary or this might be just a lie by the poster.
The summary is just one big lie trying to make China look bad, written by someone who hates China. (And it groups a lot of stories together) And even TFA is not very unbiased. Proof that Slashdot has no journalistic integrity or ethics and occasionally spews out complete lies.Well, ruthlessly efficient government had it all over the most common ancient alternative in the pre-enlightenment world: ruthlessly inefficient government. Take the Romans; they had a certain flair for flamboyant and outré acts of cruelty, but they were too efficient to apply them indiscriminately. Pretty much if you didn't do anything that had the potential to affect tax revenues, it was your own business.
All in all Roman despotism -- then Muslim despotism after that, were vastly prefrable to the native varieties.
China was never perfect, but it was far better than average over many centuries in the efficiency of its administration.
The thing that makes a despotism liveable is knowing what the rules are. It's like having a map of a minefield. Once knowing where the mines becomes second nature, you don't even have to think about it. The modern idea of democracy took hold in European civilization during the chaos that follows social innovation and religious war. Which makes me think the Chinese system is not long to last. They are trying to foster economic growth, but the social changes that will cause is certain to destroy the sense of stability which is their reason to exist.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
your words demonstrate a portion of the culture dealing w/ self-repression.
what you repress is willingness to drop the quantitative when discussing the qualitative.
self-repression is common everywhere, so you are not alone.
They are trying to foster economic growth, but the social changes that will cause is certain to destroy the sense of stability which is their reason to exist.
Too true. There's a lot of justified fear and worry over letting an autocracy like China become a superpower. But the path China is taking is economic, and that comes with certain conditions. The WHOLE REASON China is doing so well economically now is because they have a key resource the developed countries don't have - a seemingly endless supply of dirt-cheap labor, including semi-skilled labor. But as cash flows into China two things will happen: 1) that labor will turn middle-class, inflation will set in, and it won't be so cheap anymore. Also it will start having opinions and expecting more out of life. 2) The have-nots will get very unhappy - we're seeing that already. Never mind 3) other, poorer countries will imitate and out-China China and 4) Corruption will sap prosperity and power.
I figure the powers-that-be are keen on this, and are looking at options for maintaining their power by other means, such as external warfare to distract the populace or de-privitization of industry, once the infrastructure has been built.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?