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China Employs Campus Internet Overseers
d'alz writes "China's Internet police, reportedly including as many as 50,000 state agents, have monitored the Chinese citizenry's online habits. They have blocked Web sites, erased commentary and arrested people for what is deemed anti-Party, or anti-social, speech. Several hours each week Hu Yingying, a college student, goes to a little-known on-campus office crammed with computers. There she logs on, unsuspected by other students, to help police her university's Internet forum." From the article: "Under the Civilized Internet initiative, service providers and other companies have been urged to purge their servers of offensive content, ranging from pornography to anything that smacks of overt political criticism or dissent. The Chinese authorities say that more than two million supposedly 'unhealthy' images have already been deleted under this campaign by various mainland Internet service providers, and more than six hundred supposedly 'unhealthy' Internet forums were shut down. These deletions are presented as voluntary acts of corporate civic virtue, but have a coercive aspect to them, because no company would likely risk being singled out as a laggard."
From TFA: So she's a professional astroturfer as well as an informant.
Some more: 'Sterilize' the Internet would be more appropriate.
And finally: Ji Xiaoyn, please report to your local Party official for reeducation.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Considering the recent ink on Google, is anyone suprised here?
What essentially is happening in China is a 21st Century version of the Cultural Revolution - an electronic purging, if you will, of any "impure" expression among the populace.
You only get one guess as to who decides what "impure" is... or is not.
Interesting (but not at all a shock) that students are recruited to rat out their peers. There must be a big-time carrot being held out to rise up high within Party ranks.
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
In the U.S. if content the government dislikes is printed or spoken by a journalist who chooses to do so, they don't end up sentenced to forced labor, or worse, end up with their family billed for the price of the bullet used to execute them.
I'd say there's more of a difference than you think.
Never look down your nose at others. Someday, someone is bound to see your boogers.
We have tens of thousands of agents who monitor and take down websites here in the West also.
They're called Intellectual Property Lawyers.
Funny how everyone (mainstream soceity atleast) thinks it is so evil when other cultures impose their values, but completely OK when we impose ours.
Although most of its students know nothing of the university's Internet monitoring efforts, the leaders of Shanghai Normal conducted seminars last week for dozens of other Chinese universities and education officials on how to emulate their success in taming the Web.
University officials turned away a foreign reporter, however, making clear that the university does not wish to publicize its activities more broadly. "Our system is not very mature, and since we've just started operating it, there's not much to say about it," said Li Ximeng, deputy director of the university propaganda department. "Our system is not open for media, and we don't want to have it appear in the news or be publicized."
Because then someone might find out, although I doubt anyone in China would find out since it would no doubt be blocked by censors. The fact is, it's just an extension of their internal spy network, adding one more data source to allow the Chinese goverment to keep tabs on its citizens and purge "unwanted ideas." This is just astounding, especially in a country with such a large population. But I guess when you keep the rural poor in ignorance, you can pretty much run the country any way you please, even though they outnumber you. China was such a fascinating and interesting place two or three thousand years ago, but now it's taken the concept of "insular" to a new extreme.
For her part, Hu beams with pride over her contribution toward building what the government calls a "harmonious society."
Read: dissent will not be tolerated.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
The difference is that you're posting that comment with 0% chance of getting imprisioned for it, despite what many teenagers in the US seem to have convinced themselves. You think that would be the case if Slashdot and you were in China and you said the same things about the Chinese government?
In colonial India they had a tradition where when a man died, they threw his wife into a fire. Upon hearing this the British general said "well, we in Britian have a tradition too, we hang people who thow women in to fires, so you go a head with building your fire and we'll go ahead with building gallows next to your fire and after you carry out your tradition we'll carry out ours."
The point is that countries don't have rights, traditions and cultures don't have rights either, but individuals do. While everyone talks about respect for Chineese culture and Chineese traditions, they often seem to ignore how these same Chineese nationals adjust to the freedom in neighboring HK in a matter of days. It is not Chineese culture that is unable to adjust, it is China's communist government. I is not US expectations that are being judgemental and rash, it is the Chineese government. It is not only OK to help Chineese people find freedom and liberty, it is our duty as indivduals irrespective of US policy.
Couldn't happen here, right? Say, I'm just going to pop down to WalMart and buy a brand new Chinese-made big screen TV and move it into my living room (the one with the Chinese-made carpeting and drapes). After I cook my food using my Chinese-made utensils, I might just sit me down in my nice Chinese-made easy chair and dream about democracy.
The U.S. has more than just an addiction to oil - there's an addiction to cheap products too and before long our dependance will have us bowing to the Chairman too.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
I for one, would not like to be Ms Hu Yingying when the revolution comes. Sure, she might have a sob story, needs the cash, sick grandfather, all the usual. Bottom line, she's an "Informer". Same as Stazi agents, same as party spies, same as every type of sleeper agent who sells out their neighbours to dictators for a piece of the pie. Money, power, prestiege. Maybe they've got something over her.
But it doesn't matter. When the revolution comes, the people whos necks have been stamped on one too many times won't be too sympathetic and Ms Hu and her ilk are going to get their heads blown clean off, and I have no sympathy whatsoever . I condemn capital punishment, but when you've sold your fellow human beings up the bloody river as you skip joyfully about the heels of tyrants, I'm not exactly going to weep at your passing.
People like this are essentially traitors. They betray their countrymen by colluding with the illigitimate power currently in control. Treason is a weighty offense, and doing it by pointing and clicking doesn't make it any less grave.
May the Maths Be with you!
It's easy to be successful when you aren't worried about labor costs.
Friends don't let friends line-dance.
There is no way China can contain the internet forever. They can try all they want but the social change which is under way in China will not end.
You're kidding right?
Mainstream media censors news and entertainment in the US, but starting your own sidebar discussion about how corrupt politicians are or dumb the president is in a cafe won't get you arrested. The problem isn't the media - it's the people that think news is entertainment. If they abandoned shock based entertainnews, rating would falter and that would be that.
Heck, threatening the president only gets you an obligatory visit by his guards, you don't get beaten up and dissappeared. Heck, they probably agree that he's an idiot too - they get to hear his real stupidity.
Here run a test. Take the following quote:
"Every government official in [insert country your standing in here] should be run out of office on the backs of a mob and replaced with someone who isn't allowed to accept any money for their duties."
Have a chinese friend translate it for you and help you pronounce it correctly. Drive/fly to Washington, DC. Stand in front of the Capital building and shout this, repeatedly, until you're sure someone official looking hear you.
Now, fly to China and repeat this action in front of their government building in Chinese. Let us know the results when you get back home....
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
It's not like our universities are exactly bastions of free speech with all of their speech codes, free speech zones on campus and things like that. America really doesn't have any moral high ground because we tolerate things like "if you laugh at a joke that is perceived as sexist, you're a harasser." Sorry, but that is the same type of discressionary censorship power that this student has. Just swap out the usual litany of left-wing victim group terms for "subversive," "pornographic" and "state secrets" and you find that our universities and China have a lot in common. The only difference is that China is more hardcore... and a lot more honest when you think about it.
And before the yahoos come out complaining, most universities in the US are state agencies, they have no legal right to impose speech codes on non-employees. As private citizens we have every legal right to express ourselves on campus, provided that we do so in accordance with the constitutional standards of the state and federal governments and the law duly passed by the state legislature.
So Nazi Germany could make laws saying Jews were not people and subject to extermination, and that's all right? Being a sovereign nation, they had the right. So the only justification we had for toppling the Nazi regime was their invasion of other sovereign nations; if Hitler had never invaded another country, we should/could have done nothing about it?
I admit, I'd have a hard time if another country tried to make policy here in the US, but wait, don't they? OPEC raises prices and suddenly our government has to drill in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge. The Taliban government of Afghanistan decides to house Osama Bin Laden and the result is the destruction of the World Trade Center and the start of the war on terror. The Soviet Union launches Sputnik and the US lands men on the Moon. Perhaps these aren't the intentional acts of one nation trying to run another, but their consequences are the same -- one nations alters its behavior because of the effect of what another nation does. And that alteration doesn't have to be destructive, that's just usually the most common occurrence.
And so China may indeed do what it likes, but that isn't going to stop those of us on the outside from trying to influence what's going on inside China.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
The political system in China is for all intents and purposes a democracy, though only the communist party has any power.
A single party state is not a democracy. It's a dictatorship, albiet one in which the dictator is no longer a single figurehead, but rather a single organisation, in this case the communist party. Voting in China is only a cynical rubber stamp on a rigged process.
The citizens of China obey the laws that the government enacted, but without the complicity of the citizens, the government itself couldn't continue existing.
A dictatorship does require that people be complancant, in the sense that they do not rebel for fear of reprisal. But, it does not require them to consent to its rule. This is key. The consent of the people of China has never been given for the communist party to rule.
It is not by the will of the people that they govern, only by the fear of the people. That's not a democracy no matter how anyone spins it.
May the Maths Be with you!
I have to tell you some basic knowledge:
1) people in China DO DISCUSS democracy in everywhere. The full progress of building modern China has been called "New democracism movement & revolution" since 1919.
2) China has NEVER been as a real commuist country, please do remember this. If not, you will never understand the whole things happened in China from 20 century
3) U.S. has been develop democracy for over 250 years and China just started about less than 100 years. In the passed the U.S. even contained a large amount of slaves which China had dropped for thousands years!!!!
We censor things here because they threaten monetary income; ignoble, I'll admit, but we don't jail you just for criticizing the government. People of the free world, first recognize what you have, and others have not. That's the first step to freedom for those who don't have it. This is not the excuse for sensoring. You might not be jailed in the U.S. so why some Afghanistans who even never know the U.S. were bombed?http://anonetnfo.brinkster.net/ will solve all your problems.
Do you really believe that tripe?
The Politically Correct movement is about speech against speech. Those who hold certain political views against what they consider social ills, such as: Racism, Sexism, Political and/or Wealth Inequality, blah blah blah. A litany of left of center views. Welcome to life in a Democratic Republic where free speech is -- supposedly -- valued.
Contrast this with China under Mao. Where, at the zenith of Mao's power, people were expected to believe that he could utter no incorrect statement. That he would live for ten thousand years. That he was sacred, essentially a religious prophet (who preached against religion -- he was a Communist after all). Anyone who spoke even slightly against Mao, by suggesting that he was just a person, a human who could make mistakes like anyone else, they risked being grabbed by party officials and dragged to the center of town. There they would be charged with "Capitalist Thought" and forced to "Self-Criticize" in front of their townsfolk. They would have to recite a litany of their crimes against Mao and the Party. And if they were lucky they would simply be stripped of their job, their children would be removed from school, and their supply of "Rice Coupons" (food) cut to nothing. Then their local citizenship would papers would be destroyed and they would be sent to live with peasants in a twenty-seven thousand person commune. Where they would likely starve.
If, on the other hand, they did not properly repent, they would have a heavy stone sign with the words "Capitalist Criminal" engraved upon it, hung from their necks with piano wire. They would be forced to sit on their knees in the center of town and wait while for days while the sign, so heavy that the piano wire would cut through their necks to the vertebrae, slowly killed them. If they were lucky they might repent and beg forgiveness. Whereupon an executioner would put a rifle bullet in the back of their head. And then charge the family a fee for the bullet and service. No shit.
I'm sorry, but campus political correctness in the US doesn't even come close to the suffering the Chinese have had to endure.