Slashdot Mirror
China to Control Reports of Foreign News Agencies
afa writes "According to Xinhuanet.com, Xinhua News Agency on Sunday promulgated a set of measures to regulate the release of news and information in China by foreign news agencies. From the article: 'Where a foreign news agency violates the Measures in one of the following manners, Xinhua News Agency shall give it a warning, demand rectification within a prescribed time limit, suspend its release of specified content, suspend or cancel its qualifications of a foreign news agency for releasing news and information in China, on the merits of each case.'"
Is it just me, or is it completely unacceptable that the thoughts of over one-sixth of the world's population are being controlled by an unelected committee of 150 people?
http://outcampaign.org/
And from the submitted article it seems that they're even prepared to revoke the state-defined status of any international news-agency who contravenes these measures in any way.
What also bothers me is the notion of vetting this stuff at source. Are the XNA going to demand that news agencies do as Google have done, procuding a secondary, vetted, approved version of the news? Google argued their case for doing so to the international web community (successfully or otherwise, depends on your POV - they're getting the revenue from it anyway), but most international news agencies pride and extol themselves for their independence and impartiality. Will they bow to the same pressure in order to, as Google said (again, my own interpretation), "gain a foothold in China and at least keep its information borders actively moving traffic, however restricted"?
Scary stuff indeed.
Meta will eat itself
As someone who is in China, I read the English version of the "China Daily" as often as it is delivered to me.
This is a paper you would be within your rights to class as an "official English newspaper" from the Chinese government.
But guess what?
It contains mistakes. The reports found within, if they are the official story, are erroneous.
As alarming as it may be that the Chinese Government is trying to control what foreign publications publish in China, what is of greater concern is the dubious accuracy of their own reporting.
A case in point is a recent *front page* story on a lake where all of the fish died. The story in the paper ran with the excuse of the water temperature dropping from 40C down to 20C. If you do some research on oxygenation of water, you will find that the opposite is true: a lower water temperature holds more oxygen. Which then leads you to wonder, what really happened? (Most likely the continued hot weather caused the water to become too hot and the fish were going to die whether the temperature dropped or not.)
This is not an isolated incident in the reports I read of the English version of "China daily".
Until the Chinese can get the facts and figures straight/correct, punishing outside news agencies for reporting something differently than the "official story" is ridiculous.
FWIW, if you watch CNN, on the weekend they ran a story about 30 years after Mao's death. In China this was shown up until the point of where it started to show black and white film.
As 2008 approaches, look for a lot of activity on this front.
uh, no it's not. Charging the executive of an offshore gambling company with violating U.S. law when he steps foot on U.S. soil is quite different from censoring foreign news coming into a country. About the only thing they have in common is that they involve government action.
As an aside I have no problem with online gambling and think the government is wasting their time pursuing this. However they do have a plausible case given that this is a murky area of the law. Imagine if I was selling handguns here in the U.S. to customers in the U.K. and shipping them without filling out the proper paperwork. From my side, it's a perfectly legal operation in the U.S. However if I were to visit Heathrow, U.K. authorities might consider me an illegal arms dealer.
When will people learn you can't control, regulate or do much of anything with the internet?
They never will, because it's not true.
What's that you say?
At its heart, the Internet is simply a form of communication. All other forms of communication are regulated, why wouldn't the Internet? The fact that it's new doesn't mean that it's un-regulatable so much as the powers that be haven't regulated it... yet.
Give it time. And then the "next big thing" will come along, and the Internet will be no more interesting than a ham radio today.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
If The Measures isn't the best Orwellian name possible for a set of repressive rules, I don't know what is.
If the majority of the Chinese are content with their government or its actions (which is the case otherwise their country would be in a civil war until it changed) we as a world community have to respect their right to govern their country.
In the American Civil War, the majority of people in the Confederacy were content with their government and its actions. Should the world community have respected their right to govern their country?
Screw that! It's completely unacceptable that the thoughts of one-sixth of the world's population be controlled by ANYONE, elected or otherwise.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
No one of any import has ever bothered to stand up to the news agencies there up till now. No one wants to risk having access to all those Chinese revenues cut off.
Seems simple logic to me. Give a bully what he demands often enough and they begin to see it as their right.
-On the internet, no one cares if you're a dog.-
Of course. It seems states cannot leave the USA without being attacked. When states wanted to leave the former USSR they were free to go (although that was probably more because the USSR was very weak already, I doubt very much Stalin would have let them go as well).
It only means most Chinese don't hate their government enough to think it's beneficial to start a civil war they think they can win.
Nothing is every going to be perfect in any country. But pretending that you can't rate things along a scale is just being intellectually unserious.
Would you rather have access to news available while you're in the US or news available to you while you're in China?
I've lived in China for almost four years. When SARS broke in the Western and Hong Kong media, none of my friends here new about it for months. I distinctly remember the night when Beijing released the news. No one was on the bus the next day.
When there was the power transfer to Pres. Hu, there really was a media blackout. I can usually get CNN, NYTimes and the WoPo (but not Wikipedia, the BCC or some blogs), but nothing was available then.
If you think it's just as bad at home as it is here, then fine. Get your news from Xinhua. I'll take take Western news any day.
you realize, of course, that that list translates into not being allowed to criticize the chinese government, right?
you can think of gw bush govt anyway you want... actually, that's the whole point: you can sit here on slashdot or anywhere else and criticize gw bush and his govt all you want
but if you were to criticize the govt in china?
you would be raise the attention of these nice people
so at best, you are naive, at worst, you are seriously deluded about what really goes on in china
basically, you see the innocuous language above, "to protect chinese sovereignty" etc, and take those bureaucratic words at their least harmful interpretation
oh if only that were the truth
but i am afraid you are quite mistaken about what really goes in china with censorship
go ahead, search the internet, do some research on the subject if you don't believe me. confirm what i am saying via multiple sources from multiple countries
and keep in mind while you are doing that research that someone in china could not be doing the same thing: their access is filtered and watched
next time, please educate yourself a little before you start screaming high holy moral indignation
you're just revealing your own ignorance about reality
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
In the American Civil War, the majority of people in the Confederacy were content with their government and its actions. Should the world community have respected their right to govern their country?
Priorities have changed since the mid 19th century. Today the appropriate question would be: Does your aspiring nation seeking recognition have oil? Valuable minerals perhaps? Because in this day and age that, followed by a favorable exploitation deal with a major US/EU corporation belonging to the right people, is the qualifier for instant recognition by the great powers and thus the international community by default. Otherwise your aspiring nation will be caught indefinitely in 'prevent regional political fragmentation' hell which usually means that you can't buy weapons but the megalomanic dictator keeping the region in order for Washington and its favorite allies can buy them at discounted rates from select US/EU defense contractors. So you see that you are in for an up hill struggle if your aspiring nation can't bring anything of solid business value to the table. This is nothing personal mind you, just a solid mix of market driven economics and realpolitik. The Confederate misfortune was that cotton simply wasn't valuable enough a resource to risk pissing off the Northern states by supporting the rebels who into the bargain supported slavery which was rapidly becoming an international abomination at the time which was another barrier to anybody contemplating supporting them. Hmmmmmm..... perhaps priorites haven't changed all that much after all?
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
I cannot believe there is anyone in the world who would actually fall for something this transparent. On the offchance you're just stupid and not trying to actually deceive people, let's turn this around for a minute. Although not everyone who reads this site is American, and neither the article nor the post you are replying to mention America, you seem to want really badly to distract us from thinking about China and get us to think about America instead. You want to talk about America? Fine. Let's talk about America.
Let's talk about the Bush Administration. Everything the Bush Administration has done in the last five years, they have done in the name of preventing people from "endangering America's national security, reputation and interests".
Are there, say, any things the Bush Administration has done in the last five years that you disagree with?
If so, why? After all, they were only trying to prevent the endangering of America's national security, reputation and interests.
Let's say the Bush Administration announced they were going to start banning importing or reading of foreign newspaper articles or websites that "endanger America's national security, reputation and interests". Would you at all mistrust them with that power? Would you complain?
If so, why? In this hypothetical example, they say they're only going to go after publications which "endanger America's national security, reputation and interests". What's so horribly bad and oppressive about that?
And the answer of course is obvious, which is that something like "endangering national security, reputation and interests" is so vague that if you write a blank check to anyone in a position of governmental power to take action aginst it, they can define "national security, reputation and interests" to suit their own needs and use that blank check to shut down simply anything and anybody they don't like. Likewise, pretty much anything that tries to hold any government accountable for its actions can be easily labelled by that government "undermin[ing] national unity". Almost any group any government doesn't like can be easily labelled an "evil cult". I don't think I need to explain the problem with the clause "include[s] other content banned by Chinese laws and administrative regulations".
Which part of Xinhua's little announcement/article is horribly bad and oppressive? The whole thing. It's dressed up in pretty language, sure, but hey, fascism always is.
What China is doing here is unambiguously, unconditionally wrong, and what America is or isn't doing has absolutely nothing to do with that. You can try to make excuses for China; you can be an instrument of a totaltarian government if for some reason you get off on that. But you can't change what China is doing by dressing it up with pretty words.
In the meanwhile, I never cease to be saddened to see how much mileage propagandists can get out of accusing others of "bias"...
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Because freedom of information across national and international boundaries is essential to the general freedom of the human race - freedom in terms of free from torture, free from oppression and exploitation, etc. The blocking of very specific forms of commerce in order to preserve business rules and local laws on what is considered acceptable business practive, if applied within reason, will have little impact on the planet overall.
Clearly there is a similarity between the desire to control information in general and the desire to control commercial activities, but there is always going to be some kind of regulation of any communications medium (the alternative being anarchy - which I'm sure some people would support). The question is whether the regulation being proposed is reasonable. Curtailing freedom of the press will probably facilitate abuse of human rights. Curtailing of gambling activities will most likely not.
Require journalists to launder reporting done outside China to make the PRC government look good, and revoke the ability to report from inside China for those publishing stories that don't tow the Party line. Nice. Of course, unconfiscable pictures from wireless digital cameras with satellite links are still going to get the story out of this government's oppression and brutality--it just won't have an AP byline anymore.
I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.
It only means most Chinese don't hate their government enough to think it's beneficial to start a civil war they think they can win.
Perhaps that was true fifteen or twenty years ago. But much of China -- at least the eastern seaboard -- has seen a great deal of economic growth in the meantime. I'd be willing to bet most Chinese are pretty satifisfied.
One thing I've become convinced of, especially in the last six years, is that democracy doesn't ensure a good or wise government. It certainly doesn't ensure a government that thoughtful people are happy with. I can understand why Aristotle listed democracy under the forms of government that are pernicious.
The important thing that various republican forms we call "democracy" do is give people the the power to "throw the bums out". It's easier and less disruptive than a full scale revolution. The more democratic the form of government, the less disruptive an involuntary change of government is.
Whihc makes holding those in power accountable for their actions easier and more efficient under a democracy.
It is probably impossible to change an unvirtuous, corrupt, but economically fortunate government under any system, because people don't feel the need to call the government to account. Most people don't like to spend a lot of time thinking about policy and politics, and so they judge by how things seem to be going right now. It's only after the bad policies of government become undeniably obvious that the urge to change their government takes the people.
Stifling bad news is not a wise policy, certainly when taken to extremes. Certain things are too big to hide, such as a futile and unpopular war, or economic growth stalling, or wanton greed by those in power and their favored cronies in the face of extreme disparities of opportunity.
Sooner or later, governments of every stripe harvest the fruit of their bad policies. The question is whether they leave gracefully or threaten to bring down their own house around their ears. The Chinese government should firghten any thinking person.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.