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100 Million Online in China
Colin Smith writes "Rising levels of personal wealth in the nation of China means that the country now has over 100 million internet users, and the authorities are discovering just how difficult it is to place a dam against information in the digital age." From the article: "Only last week, the authorities threatened to shut down websites and blogs that failed to register with regulators in a new campaign to tighten controls on what the public can see online. The so-called Great Firewall of China is constantly being breached as citizens and the authorities play a cat and mouse game with the flow of information."
No, not unless it is a recent addition. I am not from China but travel there frequently.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
With inititives like Haier (Chinese refridgerator manufacturer) building a plant in South Carolina, United States, Chinese companies are definitely expanding. An article in Time (IIRC) said that China's ecnonomy will top that of Japan by 2015, and eventually the U.S. economy. It has been said that Chinese have gotten where they are today because of discipline. Each day, Haier would gather the employees around, and have the name called of who made the most mistakes (like leaving a screw out of a refridgerator) and have them stand on designated green foot prints painted on the floor. This level of discipline will hopefully continue.
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Have you read any of Slashdot's stories about Chinese internet censorship? They are very critical of the administration, and there are often long threads in the comments about Chinese human rights abuses.
Winkydink is right though; Slashdot is not censored in China (or at least, it wasn't the last time I was in Beijing). In fact, aside from a couple of high profile sites like the BBC, hardly any english language websites are censored at all. The CCP knows that most of it's people don't speak English, so they concentrate their efforts on blocking Chinese language sites.
Some interesting 4th of July facts:
* $172.5M - The value of fireworks imports in 2004, the majority of which came from China
* $5.2M - The value of American flag imports in 2004, the majority of which came from China
* $40K - The amount average American owes in taxes to pay off the debt.
Let's face it, we can't hide in our SUVs and McMansions forever. We played the "globalism" game and lost. India and China won.
The time to pay up will be soon.
No, they don't block ports, they block hosts and IP addresses. So they'd keep you from SSHing to a forbidden server, but SSH in general is acceptable. It's just like using HTTP or any other protocol.
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