100 Million Online in China

Posted by Zonk on Friday July 1, 2005 @04:12AM from the if-you-can-see-this,-welcome dept.

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."

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Difficult, but... by Raindance · 2005-07-01 04:18 · Score: 1, Redundant

Yes, it's very difficult to 'sanitize' the internet for 100 million people, especially over TCP/IP.

However, let's not get complacent. What the network giveth, the network can taketh away, with enough tweaks and censors, from all but the most skilled computer users.

Also, the chilling effect of government censorship-- that if you post things the Chinese government does not approve of, your post may go away (at best) is hard to quantify.