Slashdot Mirror
China - We Don't Censor the Internet
kaufmanmoore writes "A Chinese government official at a United Nations summit in Athens on internet governance has claimed that no Net censorship exists at all in China. The article includes an exchange by a Chinese government official and a BBC reporter over the blocking of the BBC in China." From the article: "I don't think we should be using different standards to judge China. In China, we don't have software blocking Internet sites. Sometimes we have trouble accessing them. But that's a different problem. I know that some colleagues listen to the BBC in their offices from the Webcast. And I've heard people say that the BBC is not available in China or that it's blocked. I'm sure I don't know why people say this kind of thing. We do not have restrictions at all."
Despite the fact that many outside of China know that it indeed does exist, this piece of news is more likely intended for those within China.
I think this guy has never had one of his lies pointed out in his face.
I didn't lose it, I just don't remember where I put it.
I'm not lost, I just don't know where I am.
I'm not paranoid, everyone IS out to get me!
I'm not sleeping, I'm just resting my eyes.
Are we really going to trust a nation that doesn't even follow its own constitution*? Oh, that's right. There's an escape clause in there that says, "the government can steamroll the people, no matter what the Constitution says. You just can't steamroll each other." Well that's peachy keen.
* Disclaimer: Link is to an article on my blog. Do not click if you're afraid of people who link to their own blogs. P.S. Boo.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Well, if his high-ranking government official collegues are able to get an uncensored Internet feed, that must mean they don't have any censorship, right?
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
Technically... in Chinese legalspeek(tm) he's probably right.
It's not "censorship" it's "protection of the people from incorrect thoughts".
http://images.google.com/images?svnum=10&hs=B4b&hl =en&q=tiananmen+square&btnG=Search
e n+square&btnG=%E6%90%9C%E7%B4%A2%E5%9B%BE%E7%89%87
VS:
http://images.google.cn/images?hl=zh-CN&q=tiananm
See, do you hear anyone saying otherwise?
Can I tell my clients "I have censored your email server. It isn't down. You can get email from everyone I approve and today, that's no one."
*fitting the captcha is 'rickshaw'
And I'm going to hold my breath while I wait for the Great Pumpkin tonight.
-Chipper
Like, for instance, the Big Lie.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Quick! Someone call Google and tell them they don't have to censor their search results anymore! After all, if this guys says it, it must be true, right?
Thank you, China. Because every day, when I get up and read the U.S. news, and think "goddamn, our country is going into the toilet," all I have to do is turn to the International section to realize that it could always be worse.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
For a day... They can also allow certain networks (ones, where any would-be inspectors will be checking) unlimited access.
They are, after all, Communists — don't ever forget that...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
1. Smash up Human Rights.
2. Get all the International Community busy discussing some nonsensical omfg-lmao statement you make.
3. Profit.
My 0.02 cents
tiananmen square didn't happen either, why would we need such a thing as a filter. And no idea what google is talking about at all
"A Chinese government official at a United Nations summit in Athens on internet governance has claimed that no Net censorship exists at all in China.
If truth was that easy.
I'm a millionaire. I own a mansion and a yacht.
I think I've found Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf's new job.
Spin for one government is the same as a spin for another government, right?
Trust The Computer, The Computer is your Friend. Happiness is Mandatory! (I'm dressed as a troubleshooter this Halloween, but an Iraqi Information Minister would have worked as well)
I assert that my comment is only my opinion, not that of any employer, past, present or future.
that the Iraqi Information Minister found a new job.
I think this:
In China, we don't have software blocking Internet sites. Sometimes we have trouble accessing them. But that's a different problem.
should've read:
In China, we don't have software blocking Internet sites. Sometimes we have trouble accessing them. But that's because the hardware filters doesn't work most of the time.
US Image Search for Tiananmen Square
China Image Search for the same
Who doesn't censor the internet, now?
SAILING MISHAP
Did he move to China?
Glad to see 'Baghdad Bob' was able to find employment working for the Chinese government.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Sometimes when you buy an old radio in Wisconsin, where lots of German immigrants settled, you'll find all the shortwave radio coils have been snipped out. In WW2 the govt censored SW reception by going into people's houses and doctoring their radios so they couldnt puick up far-away radio stations. Not one of the highpoints of the bill of rights.
One of my friends (some famous game developer) was messaging me from China on iChat.
I said to myself, "gee, I wonder if China really does censor material and boot people off the internet for looking at nonapproved material?"
So I sent him a jpeg of some hot naked chick.
"Blip!" His account was almost immediately disconnected.
Later, from another connection, he told me "thanks for being an asshole and getting me disconnected from the internet. They censor stuff over here ya know."
At least he now knows that I wield complete control over his internet connectivity as long as he stays in China.
MUAHAHAAHHAAAA.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
What about hardware blocking?
A wild guess: the blocking is quite crappy (or perhaps its done deliberately), resulting in some sites being accessible given certain conditions.
Awesome example. However, I suspect some Chinese official would come back with a response of how Google wishes to promote only peaceful images of Tiananmen Square and they had nothing to do with the image results of an American-based company.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Looks like the Chinese government has learned a lesson from the Bush administration: say something often enough, no matter how blatantly in error it is, and people will start believing it....
It's not every day that you can catch a commie telling a baldfaced lie like this. These days, they usually go for the weasel approach.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I think just using the CN in a google search must not be returning the same results, but there's no way for me to test this.
& btnG=%E6%90%9C%E7%B4%A2%E5%9B%BE%E7%89%87&ie=UTF-8 &oe=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=iw
For instance - plug in the term censorship in the same link that the AC used -
http://www.google.cn/search?hl=zh-CN&q=censorship
I saw links to Wiki with full articles on censorship in the ROC. Would this work if searched while located in Bejing or anywhere else in the ROC? My guess is no. Other hardware filters are in place.
"Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair" - George Washington
...and a girlfriend. Oh, and you dont refresh slashdot every 10 minutes. Then again, maybe taking care of the last one would help with the first three.... but ill let someone else check and get back to me :)
I remember when the Telus workers went on strike and anyone with a Telus account was unable to get to the strikers web-blog due to technical, uhh hum, difficulties. Of course in hind sight it all makes sense because those technical difficulties were most likely due to staff shortages :).
Now, if the UN were to wrest control of the internet from the US, they could allow China to handle its operations.
After all, they're already running their own network quite efficiently, and with no censorship whatsoever.
Oh the cultural differences!
I mean, really...this guy comes out to the U.N. with a comment he just cannot later deny. What else could happen other than this becoming a huge deal with dozens of more reports citing examples of how their filtering works. I don't understand how this guy actually thinks he could get away with such a thing!?
wake up in the morning... mount coffee/
I hereby dub this clown Bejing Bob.
Zagreus sits inside your head, Zagreus lives among the dead, Zagreus sees you in your bed and eats you in your sleep.
Just as Bush/Cheney "don't torture" ?
Just like Tibet has always been a part of China, but was momentarily mislead by the dangerous oppression of the Dalai Lama, until the people of Tibet rose up with the welcomed support of their Chinese brothers in a glorious revolution to overthrow their Buddhist oppressors and rejoin their traditional homeland.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
and I tested this out. Searching for "Tiananmen square" yields plenty of results, but 90% of them weren't accessible. I never had any other "connection problems" other times I was on the web.
Despite the fact that many outside of China know that it indeed does exist, this piece of news is more likely intended for those within China.
No kidding. I've met people recently from China and they don't know where we all get off on these things. They claim there are any number of small newspapers and such all over the place. They also think we tend to make a bigger deal of things than we ought and their country is just fine thank you very much.
Of course, if you grew up never knowing otherwise or thinking outside the box someone has constructed around you, you may be so indoctrinated. Same way Brits appear indoctrinated that they must read in the Sun or News of the World what trollop David Beckham is frollicking around Spain with or Americans feel the overwhelming urge to tell others how they ought to live and behave.
Those friends and colleagues listening to the BBC webcast, since we don't know otherwise, may be checking for new words or topics they need to add to their filters.
However you shake it up, China is in for a bit of adjustment when the 2008 Olympics bring people from all over the world into China where they will be expecting access to news and media as they had at home. Perhaps China has already thought of this and is constructing exclusion zones...
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Subvert censorship... join AnoNet.
1. go to http://images.google.cn/images?q=tiananmen
2. look at the bottom left of the page, there's a string of chinese characters
3. use google language tools to translate that string.
4. it says: "According to local laws, regulations, and policies, some search results are not shown."
5. indeed, search for "tiananmen" in http://images.google.com/images?q=tiananmen and compare
no censorship! just local laws, regulations, and policies. some results are not shown, big deal.
...china doesn't restrict the internet that this representative uses, to him, his internet is a free as a bird, he can also download illegal mp3's and movies about democracy... so he can go to the UN and have plausible deniability! -------------- Q.E.D.
I think I have just discovered where the old Iraqi Information Minister has ended up....
Web Sig: Eddy Currents
The U.S. says they don't censor news stories.
In China, we don't have a "great" wall blocking our border. Sometimes we have trouble navigating the difficult terrain or sometimes see inaccurate satellite photos. But that's a different problem.
"There are no American infidels in Baghdad. Never!"
then why was elgoog.com created at all?
i support the right to offend.
I wonder if Slashdot is on the banned list.
Any Slashdotters from China out there? Hello?
licet differant, aequabitur
"We don't censor." - China
And we don't torture.
The PRoC government doesn't censor the internet. The private sector companies does it for them, "voluntary."
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
These aren't the droids you are looking for.
You don't need to see our identification.
We can move along now.
Tien Anmen Google Images
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
"In China, we don't have software blocking Internet sites. Sometimes we have trouble accessing them. But that's a different problem. I know that some colleagues listen to the BBC in their offices from the Webcast. And I've heard people say that the BBC is not available in China or that it's blocked. I'm sure I don't know why people say this kind of thing. We do not have restrictions at all."
So, some people get it, some don't?
To quote a line from animal farm - "All pigs are created equal, but some pigs are more equal that others".
Kinda fits here.
First of all, the official ws lying: China does censor the Internet and vigorously pursues people who send or receive pornography and politically sensitive material (ask the Falun Gong or Catholic communities).
Then why does the official lie? This is part of the process of achieving your objective by using deception. It is a respected strategy in China, Japan, and Korea. It has its roots in "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu, along with other "Bin Fa". A good description of dealing with Asians can be found in, "The Asian Mind Game" by Chin-ning Chu.
The Clinton Administration brags a lot about the agreements they made with North Korea over nukes: The Koreans were using this strategy to achieve their objectives and had no intention of adhering to the agreements. Christopher Warren was totally "gamed" by China, and all he would have needed to understand what was going on would have been to read Chu's book first. He might not have made so many lousy concessions if he had. Too be fair, though, every Western government has fallen prey to this strategy. The Western weakness is expecting openess and honesty to be valued the same way among Asians. So, trade agreements with China, Japan and Korea will be honored only so long as it is advantageous for the Asians, then they will be discarded as if they never existed. We will lose a lot of trade to China, for instance, and give them terms so good we will be disadvantaged, and then any benefits we expected to receive from expectations of reciprocal concern will never materialize.
Anytime we suggest that China is censoring the Internet you will hear protestations to the contrary. If we confront them with facts, they will tell us we misunderstand the situation, but they will "look into it." They will never look into it. They will simply have diverted our concerns so they can keep playing the same game.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
I had the pleasure of working with a Chinese woman over the summer. She came to Canada last year. She says they don't censor the internet, and most if not all information we hold as correct is actually false regarding China. It's communist China, so of course they're lying, right? ...
I don't know who to listen to. Everyone has an agenda
Denial is a wonderful river, just not a great way to run your life, or country.
Sad thing is no-one was there to repute him, after the fact doesn't change the previous message, so it just adds another brick on the preverbial firewall.
"(I) have this unfortunate condition that causes me not to believe a single thing any politician says when a mic's on.
So, when they're sitting on the United Nations Human Rights Council, do they say "We do not have capital punishment. I have heard that some people die while in prison, but we do not know the reason why. We will look into it."
#dig news.bbc.co.uk ;ANSWER SECTION: ;AUTHORITY SECTION: ;ADDITIONAL SECTION:
...
news.bbc.co.uk. 900 IN CNAME newswww.bbc.net.uk.
newswww.bbc.net.uk. 300 IN A 212.58.240.41
bbc.net.uk. 172799 IN NS ns0.thny.bbc.co.uk.
bbc.net.uk. 172799 IN NS ns0.thdo.bbc.co.uk.
ns0.thdo.bbc.co.uk. 86399 IN A 212.58.224.20
ns0.thny.bbc.co.uk. 86399 IN A 212.58.240.20
tcpdump -i rl0 -vv host 212.58.240.41
tcpdump: listening on rl0, link-type EN10MB (Ethernet), capture size 96 bytes
01:41:45.567427 IP (tos 0x0, ttl 64, id 54513, offset 0, flags [DF], length: 64) me.64964 > newswww1.thny.bbc.co.uk.http: S [tcp sum ok] 2997578910:2997578910(0) win 65535 <mss 1460,nop,nop,sackOK,nop,wscale 1,nop,nop,timestamp 43747691 0>
01:42:19.758192 IP (tos 0x0, ttl 64, id 54599, offset 0, flags [DF], length: 48) me.64964 > newswww1.thny.bbc.co.uk.http: S [tcp sum ok] 2997578910:2997578910(0) win 65535 <mss 1460,nop,nop,sackOK>
# mtr 212.58.240.41
Host
1. x.x.x.x
2. ???
3. to.cl.os.se
4. 222.72.245.33
5. 218.1.1.150
6. 61.152.86.18
7. ???
sorry had to trim off stuff to bypass the lame filter
He specifically states that the BBC's website is not blocked when, in fact, it is and has been for a long time.
I'm sure I don't know why people say this kind of thing.
If I were from China, I would probably be sure that I didn't know too.
.... Cisco does it for them: http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,68326,00 .html
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
a better demonstration is to use other google image search result from other country in addition (example : iran, japan, germany...). Why ? Because it could be that .com image search people are interrested into tiananmen square image whereas china is not. In other word it could be not a censure but just incidental.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
they just hire other people to do it. Do I get it now?
damaged by dogma
How do you say "There is no pravda in Isvestia, and no isvestia in Pravda" in Chinese?
It's just...weird. Who does this official think will believe him?
I repeat, there are no American companies filtering Internet in China!
That's pretty high tech for them to be monitoring a chat program like that. I assume they dont' actively monitor every single person in the country that uses the net. So they would need some ridiculous filters to know that was a nude pic. Freakishly expensive equipment.
Hmmm... Pie...
The bottom of the page says something to the effect of "We are limiting the results of this search to comply with local laws" (apologies for inexact translation -- I can only read Chinese by way of Japanese).
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Bagdad is not under attack, we have full control. The Americans have no chance! And that was not a missile, we have very agressive birds in Irak!
is how do you know it isn't there? If you know it should exist, then it hasn't worked.
Another part is that there are a lot more stories about censorship in china than examples people can cite. Dupes if you will.
Even if they had software that could detect a pornographic image, which they don't, China doesn't censor porn at all. When I was living in China my wife and I could get all the porn we wanted; just getting news sites and things like insurance company websites you couldn't get. Basically stuff the gov't doesn't want people thinking about.
It's really spotty anyway, I could get cnn.com most of the time, but then news.google.com wouldn't work for months.
Peace, or Not?
We're talking about China, not the US.
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
Also, I do not shit in the woods.
Signed,
A. Bear
What's the point of promoting a website in your slashdot sig if it's "By Invitiation Only" and requires a password?
The proper way to test is to have someone with a .cn address try to access google.com. Of course after the filters catch their search result, they may be dragged off to a Bush/Cheney-esqe detention facility.
Google created google.cn as a pre-censored search engine. Accessing it does not demonstrate any Chinese filtering.
After 9/11 I was dating a girl from the Mainland. She had been in the states for a few years and still had a really positive view of her homeland. One night we were watching one of the tributes to the heroes of that day (she was really into that stuff) and they showed a quick summary of history for the last 25 years. As it was going on they showed the protest in Tienamen square and the student confronting the tank and then being... well you know.
She had never seen it.
She had no idea that had ever happened.
It's hard to put into words how sad she became and the rage that immediately followed towards her homeland. There's a lot governments are good at repressing things in most any country from public knowledge, but the ability to completely hide something from your people that the rest of the world knows about? That's just criminal.
--- I do not moderate.
Communications on the cheap is one of the beautiful things about the internet - today. The people can share information and express viewpoints much more easily and for far less money than was required before the web become so prevalent.
Seems their government officials have taken a page from our government's media handbook.
In the free people's republic of China, we are constantly hurt and shocked by your nation's habit of censoring what you hear, and the spreading of propaganda that you are free and we are not. Anyone who was allowed to travel would know that the opposite is true, but your government restricts travel. Either by inflating prices to make it too expensive to travel, or by malicious rumors and propaganda such as suggesting that all other nations hate Americans, and by printing stories in government controlled websites such as Slshdot that we have censorship.
Google do not promote freedom. They sold out to your government as soon as they became popular, and only allowed the company to operate in China if they agreed to censor certain websites.
But they've always been at war with Oceania.
I like music
...the Iraqi information minister found a new job.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
http://images.google.cn/images?svnum=10&hl=zh-CN&l r=&q=tank+man&btnG=??
That's the best joke I've ever heard.
Terrible karma and aiming lower, which in this environment of one-sided reason, is higher.
because Cisco IOS does not make provision for IP's entered right to left?
Offtopic> Does anyone else see CN and think 'Choatic Neutral?'
China's not evil.
They play Chaotic Neutral so the paladin in the party with detect evil won't beat them up.
Ok...I'm a geek.
And I'm single.
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
First open Baidupedia ( a Chinese wikipedia clone): http://baike.baidu.com/
Then try to search on some censored word like: (falun gong)
You should now get a "Connection reset by peer" message
Now you won't be able to access any page on that server for at least 30 minutes.Erik Dalén
Baghdad Bob is alive and well and living in China!
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
...We do not have restrictions at all.*"
* there are no restrictions. Some packet loss or slow performance may be epxected since data to some sites in the west is passed through a 2400baud acoustic coupled modem.
I did not have sex with "that woman"!
This is like a generic episode of The Simpson's where some random individual will high-lariously ignore reality.
"...we correct it."
at least he knows or implies censhorship is a shame.
People in the west like to think of Chinese people as victims of a cruel, tyranical government. That is imposing your cultural standards on a society with a very different opinion on how society should conduct itself. Also, I spent 14 months in China and I experienced very little cencorship on the internet. During 4 months I spent there in 1998, I remember reading slashdot frequently, and many times saw stories about the "great firewall of China". I never had any trouble accessing any of the sites that was supposedly blocked. I had the same experience during 10 months there in 2004. The only thing I ever found that appeared to be blocked was google image search, and occasionally google cache. Yes there is some internet cencorship in China, but not that's not neccesarily against the will of the general public.
The US government is not the only government on the planet telling lies.
The Olympics will not change anything in China. China will simply do what it has always done. Western access points will have unrestricted access as they currently do (for the most part). Rural access points will remain restricted. Places where Westerners might mingle with the locals and check the Internet will have their access temporarily restored, but it will be quickly taken away again as soon as the Olympics are over. This is exactly what happened last time Rice visited China. They opened up access to CNN and some other choice sites while she was there, t hen shut them off the second she was over the border.
Best quote from the Chinese gov't official:
...
"Some people say that there are journalists in China that have been arrested. We have hundreds of journalists in China, and some of them have legal problems. It has nothing to do with freedom of expression."
Yeah, I'd say being imprisoned is a pretty big legal problem
-ryry
To see for yourself, try out: http://www.linkwan.com/vr2/#world Click the Beijing, China location. It will do a traceroute to the website of your choice, if it is reachable from China of course! (It is a java app, warning)
For example, for www.nationalpost.com (Canadian news paper):
"www.nationalpost.com was found in 25 hops. But problems starting at hop 9 in network "CHINANET backbone network" are causing IP Packets to be dropped"
Others similarly unreachable:
www.cbc.ca (canadian broadcasting corporation)
www.freetibet.com (funnily enough just a domain squatter)
etc.
Some that work :)
www.china.com
www.xinhuanet.com (official state news agency of China)
Anyway, I found out about this when my webhost managed to get a block of their IPs banned, which prevented my hosted site (completely unrelated to the site they wanted to be banned) from being seen by my friends in mainland China since the webhost used virtual hosting to share IPs.
...Internet censors you!
Red Herring??
In Communist China, the Internet blocks YOU!
One of my friends from China is teaching me Chinese. I found an image with some characters I liked on a Falun Gong website and sent her the link. She doesn't live in China, but her PC blocked the site and she couldn't see the image. Her ISP wasn't blocking it, it was hard coded into the OS. (She uses IE). This article has no idea what China is doing.
They don't get the Internet, so they're not censoring it. They get their own parallel network that uses the same protocols, but filters out unwanted contact with the grubby, wild and wooly Internet. It is a different animal than the Internet. SinoNet, perhaps.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
If you travel a lot, it becomes clear that different parts of the world have news broadcasts with a different slant.
Manufacturing Consent
American version:U TF-8&oe=UTF-8
T F-8&oe=UTF-8
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en-US&q=2%2B2&ie=
Chinese version:
http://www.google.cn/search?hl=zh-CN&q=2%2B2&ie=U
That reminds me of the time a Packard Bell sales rep told me (in the mid 90's) that they had no wide-spread reliability problems.
"Remember, there never were pineapple-almond cookies here."
They don't censor anything, the tubes just fill up from time to time... >_>
Scott Swezey
They were never, "Stay the course."
I have searched from within China. No tibet.org.
I could get slashdot.org.
People there I met knew people whose job it is to find and block the offensive sites.
One figure I heard is 50,000 devoted to searching for bad sites (blogs also) and blocking.
-Jay
If you travel a lot, it becomes clear that different parts of the world have news broadcasts with a different slant.
A "Slant" is quite different than outright suppression of any news on an event at all. What Tienanmen-level events has the US has that no-one in the US knows about and media are not allowed to publish stories on?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
When dealing wiht the Chinese you will find out they will say what you want to hear from them, and will sign what you want to be signed by them.
That they really mean what they say to you or that they will comply with what they signed in front of you, is quite another matter.
A friend once told me that he knew an American living in China for a while. This person had their bike stolen and when he went to report it to the police, the policeman told him, "You must be mistaken, there is no theft in China".
Just like the US does not torture
We in China do not censure
Just like the US has free and fair elections
We have free and fair elections too...just we
don't get people to vote and then miscount the votes...
its more economic that way
And we have bypassed the middleman for e.g Blackwell etc...
See we learned how to do what US does but much better and more efficiently !
I was in China for a month last year. In the Western hotels you would invariably get the BBC news on the tv, BUT every once in while a story about China would start and then a few seconds later the channel would black out. It would be out for a few minutes then it would come back on and another story would be playing. It amused me that they had the capability to black it out but didn't take the trouble to play it on a delay so that they could censor it before the story started.
On the whole, I found people reasonably well informed. They certainly didn't see things the same way we did but they knew quite a lot about both the outside world and their own country. They are fiercly proud of their country and what they have achieved, with good reason.
Start. BBspeech:October 31, 2006, 4:56 AM PST all nonEastAsia data thoughtcrime, outerparty goodthink rectify nonEastAsia data reflect Oldspeak: "We do not censor the internet". Minitrue directive: Fullwise data re: thoughtcrime April 15, 1989 to June 4, 1989, rectify: memoryhole. Fullwise connections and content of 19,032 thoughtcrime websites, rectify: datahole. End. smith.winston@minitrue.gov
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
What your saying is that if Google takes the action then it is googles responsibiltiy. Ignoring the fact that China's gov. forced them into a possition where they were required to behave in this way. Google is a company responsible for staying in bussiness. China is a country responsible for the effects of their laws/policies.
I guess we all agree.
China likes to use strong arm tactics to force other companies to do their 'censorship' for them. China strong armed Google in it's censorship. And gives China the ability to claim their government does not censor the internet for their citizens.
How many ISPs in China are strong armed to censor websites?
\
And that's what information-concerned goverments exploit most.
You probably can tell nothing "for sure" about anything which is not directly related to you. The only way to know "for real" what happened in Tiannanmen (sorry for the typo) is asking someone who was there and whom we trust. You can tell that of almost everything in the world.
But the point is not "are you absolutely sure of what happened?", the point is : so many people from so many different sources aren't making a lie up for me. I know I can't be sure, but I also know it probably happened that way.
I have some expertise in these kind of information-compulsory-controlling govts, and I can tell they use misinformation all they can, I've seen and lived with it.
We westerns are more or less used to doubt from the info we receive, and that's because of we are -more or less- used to confront the info, or not to trust entirely in one source.
That's the hole govts like cuba or china exploits, if they say "hey, are you sure??" we say, "well, not really", but the fact is it happened
I was just there and found that out the hard way!
But *technically* they are NOT blocking the IPs...
you just can't translate the name to the IP rendering
it blocked effectively. (Speaking of dyndns only.)
GoDaddy and 1&1 both offer huge amounts of bandwidth for virtually nothing - less than US$4 a month. Luck is not needed, just a little research.
"China's filtering regime is pervasive, sophisticated and effective." But not to worry, the US will catch up.
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
Nothing to see here people... Move Along.... Move Along..... Seriously..... I know nothing of this "Firewall" you speak of.....http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censo rship_in_mainland_China it must be to stop trucks of information :) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_of_tubes
"Gentlemen, You cannot fight in here, this is the War Room...." - Dr Strangelove
Out of curiosity, does anyone know if there's an equivalent of /. in Europe, because I'm so tired of reading the naive/ignorant ravings from the 'Joe Sixpacks' of the USA who don't seem to have a -fucking clue- (where is Iraq again?) when it comes to current events or how the rest of the world views things. Fox news is good for you.
You are the next fallen empire. Get ready.
I happened to work at a company who's primary mission was to liberate the Chinese from their firewall. I believe the motivation was to encourage promote democracy through free speech. It was backed by some pretty influential agencies. Our products worked using a special blend of encryption and peer-to-peer redirection to provide anonymous Internet access.
Using our software: every site in China works as expected. Without our software: all censored sites are blocked.
To say the great firewall doesn't exist is an outright lie.
He's right ! You all know the internets is a Series of Tubes. If you have a working Series of Tubes from Beijing to, say, Microsoft, and there is a working Series of Tubes between Microsoft and the BBC, there is a working Series of Tubes between Beijing and the BBC.
During the Korean conflict, the Chinese stated that they were not aggressors. When called on that, the speaker said that "the People's Republic of China, by definition, is incapable of aggression." (I pause briefly for you to collect your thoughts from this non sequitur.)
Perhaps they thought that everyone else might have forgotten that little bit of sophistry....
Strike while the irony is hot! -- The Freethinker
....We're making it better!
I fear the Y2038 bug
I was there and I have family there; I can indeed say that it is being blocked. When I visited, Google was so horribly censored that it was not worth using. Now I would imagine that it is usable, minus the features the Marxist regime does not want.
I have friends living or have lived in China within the past two years. I had them test out various things and am positive that BBC was being blocked. I ended up setting up encrypted proxies for them to use.
That government official claiming that he sees/hears people in the office listening to BBC news...I guess maybe only government officials have special privileges over the peons. I would think that comment would anger the Chinese people even more...but they're all pretty brainwashed, so who knows, maybe they appreciate the censorship.
There are comments above on the differences between Google.cn and Google.com wrt tiannamen sq. I would point out Google is performing the censorship - an American corporation - not the Chinese govt. Same goes for Yahoo and whatever Murdoch channel that gets broadcast. Self restraint from 'partners' is so helpful. I am sure they are all proud to be playing their part in supporting freedom and truth in China.
And the internet was definitely censored.
All blog sites were always unavailable.
Google groups was always unavailable.
Friggin gbadev.org was censored.
The funniest was the television censorship.
We were near the hong kong border, so we got 2 Hong Kong stations on our local cable. Hong Kong, which is still pretty free, would have news stories about the mainland. But as soon as they started to say ANYTHING bad about the mainland, it would cut, mid-word, to a commercial.
This was just a few months ago -- not like things have changed much.
And they claim they don't censor things.
Well, there have been forced abortions and other atrocious conditions for workers in the Northern Mariana Islands. How does that happen in a place legally allowed to put "Made in the USA" on its labels? Well, that's easy - just buy off a few congresscritters through Jack Abramoff.
Frontline had an episode about this and the censorship in China. It looks the past 17 years on the events, censorship on the media like the Internet and education, analysis of what happened to the guy who withstood the tanks (is he still alive?), etc... There is also a free 90 streaming video about it. It even showed search engine like Google's results in China and outside of China. Big differences with censorships.
From AQFL.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Watch this Frontline episode. It also showed the differences as well. I wonder if people can access google.com (non-China) from China without proxy usages?
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Who has the right to say whether a target culture is broken? Assuming that point can be adequately answered, is being broken enough?
IMHO, nations invade other nations if and only if it is their best interests to do so. Ethics and morality play no part in the decision making calculus.
Take Dafur for example. I think we can all agree that Dafur qualifies as being unfit for human survival, and has been for a few years now. Yet we in the West are/have been totally apathetic about the tragedy that has been unfolding there.
Why?
Because it doesn't affect us, and we have no vested interest in anything that happens there. Same thing with Rwanda a few years before.
Our inaction is utterly shameful.
Our leaders have decided that the Sudan has no economic or geo-political value. Hence, the lives of the people who live there are similarly without value, and we are quite content to let them die.
The multiple genocides in Bosnia were ignored until it became embarrassing that such atrocities could happen in the heart of Europe that the Western powers finally made a token effort, but it was too little, too late.
We do have an interest in Afghanistan (because we were attacked by a private militia that set up camp there) and in Iraq because they have the largest undeveloped oil deposits in the world.
Prior to the 9/11 attacks, we in the West really didn't care about anything that was happening in Afghanistan. We had the occasional news story of them blowing up an ancient statue of Buddha, and heard that they had banned girls from schools, but our interest was brief and transient.
Prior to the Gulf War II, we didn't really care what happened in Iraq either. Saddam Hussein was a convenient bogeyman, but there was no interest in what the life of the average Iraqi citizen was.
Both nations were invaded because of self-interest. Afghanistan, because we wanted the villains in Al Queda, and Iraq because we wanted control of their oil.
Ethically, I do not believe there is any way to justify the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, AND justify our inaction with regard to Dafur.
But then again, ethics has nothing to do with foreign policy.
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
I just returned from a 3 week stay in China. I couldn't help trying a few things via the free internet available from my hotel:
1) Google the word 'democracy'. Sure, you get plenty of hits. The first one is Wikipedia. 404 Not Found, and Google didn't cache it. Coincidence?
2) www.dcblogs.com. Attempting to access this site brings you instead to a page that looks a lot like a domain squatter page except it's in Chinese and has a very nationalistic looking image in its center.
No censorship indeed.
China - We're Not Chinese
So sorry. I stand corrected.
But did you really think I was referring to Taiwan? Things that make you go hmmm...
"Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair" - George Washington
I don't think that this guy is actually claiming they don't censor anything. He's specifically talking about the BBC, and I think what he's actually saying is that there are no restrictions on any BBC content. He can't say that outright without admitting that there are restrictions on other content, so he chose his words carefully to be somewhat ambiguous.
He's very good at evading an answer, and so we are going to draw our own conclusions about what he meant due to his ambiguity. That's his intention, I guess. Obviously they do censor the internet, and his cover-up comment about having trouble accessing some sites admits it (not counting the fact that there very well could be network infrastructure issues in less-developed parts of the country.)
Of course, many people report that the BBC site is in fact blocked (at least in central China), so maybe he's lying about that.
Without a lot of people reporting if it is blocked and where they live (perhaps it is not blocked from the major modern cities in China, only in less-developed areas), though, it's only fair to give him some benefit of the doubt. A snaky government pawn, maybe, but let's not call him a liar for claims he didn't actually make.
Call him snaky and slimy for telling half-truths and being good at manipulating words, fine. I support that, and I wholly support the irrefutable truth that there is plenty of censorship in China.
I have an aunt in china, and my father travels a lot, sometimes he goes to china. When he was in China last, he was visiting my aunt, and they had one of those 'moments' where they discover how sophisticated the censorship in China is.
My father had the BBC website open in his web browser. My aunts computer was next to it, and she opened the BBC website, and they noticed that on my aunts computer, there were gaps where news stories should have been. On my fathers computer, they contained little snippets of headlines, photos, etc. These stories were 'snipped' out of the HTML on my aunts computer.
They were obviously quite confused, as they were accessing the internet over the same internet connection, until my father realised that he was using a VPN into an office in Australia. So all his web traffic was going over an encrypted tunnel to Australia, where it was getting uncensored full access to the internet, while my Aunt was getting the Chinese version of the internet, which from the evidence visible, was either getting modified before being transmitted from the BBC servers, or being censored on its way into china via some kind of transparent content modifying proxy.
Not only does China censor the internet. They've got advanced methods for doing it.
A little overkill never hurt anybody.
Once the lying bastard returns home, all countries should lauch simultaneous nuke salvos on every major city.
That should soften up their hardware based firewall.
After it's done we can lie that we didn't do it.
This is a Good Point (tm).
No. You can't look at my Sig; it's mine, and I'm not showing you.
To what extant do they really need to block the net? I mean I don't think that many people in China speak English, French, Spanish, or whatever other language might turn them onto Democracy. And those that do speak those languages no doubt already have their own ideas about their government. However blocking sites in Chinese that originate outside of China might be what the government is after.
They'll run someone down with a tank, and filter all dissemination of information and make damn sure no one in their country will ever know it happened, but I'm supposed to believe they wouldn't censor the internet?
Hell, I'm pretty sure the internet is getting filtered in the U.S., the fact that China does it is just a given.
http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2006/10/1732834.php
/.'d last week.
A nice little read that was
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
I haven't been to China, but I've worked with many people who immigrated from China. All deny the horror stories that keep getting brought up from events of a few decades ago.
China has been forced into an accelerated social and economic growth that far outstrips what any other nation has been able to bear to date. The vast majority of their country was far behind north america from an infrastructure perspective only a few years ago, so the rollout of high speed networks and technology has had a much greater impact on their society than ours.
Until I see it myself or hear it from the people I know and trust, I'll be treating the above flamage as litte more than propaganda.
A nation's currency and trade are worth as much as their word. If they don't deliver, their word is worthless, and their currency devalues. No one trades with a liar and a cheat. Obviously China is neither, as they're one of the world's biggest trading partners.
Softwood. NAFTA. Well over a decade.
'nuff said.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
MOD PARENTS UP!
Can you hear me now?
Ghandi would do okay here... in China, he'd be dead by now.
We need to keep that in mind when dealing with China. They do not have remotely the same set of moral axioms that the west does at this point.
Someone did follow Gandhi's example in the US. He's dead by now. He was shot.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Just like USA Doesn't Violate Human Rights in its Concentration Camps.
There is one difference. In China they admit there's only one party. (The one party in the United States is called the Incumbents.)
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
> we don't have software blocking Internet sites. Sometimes we have trouble accessing them.
I did not have sex with that woman. Sometimes I have trouble accessing my zipper.
I was in Beijing when the Wikipedia ban was lifted. I said to my friends, "hey, I can look at Wikipedia without going through my proxy now!" They asked me if I could get to the page on the Tienanmen Square massacre. I tried, nope. Then... I tried going back to the main page... and it was filtered again.
I could do this with 100% reliability. If I had a fresh connection (like if I tried the next day) I could get on Wikipedia and browse around. Then I'd try to hit that page and my entire access to the site would just shut off like a switch.
I also saw this on Google News. I was browsing through it one day just fine. Then a friend mentioned a story about a drug whose name I now forget. I did a search for the drug, the entire site died for the rest of the day. Google News access was always spotty though.
But just in case anybody out there let this get through their filters and thought maybe it was true, it's not. Take it from someone who has been there, Chinese internet is definitely filtered.
The PRC is so full of shit.
I did business in china for a while, and stayed there for about 2 years. There are tons of websites that are actively being blocked.
The government continues to brainwash its own people, instilling a deep hatred for what the Japanese did to them during WWII. If only the people really knew what their OWN government did to them in 1989. You think it's bad enough that a foreign people to kill your own, imagine your own family killing you, and pretending it never happened.
It absolutely sickens me. I love the Chinese people, but while I was there, I just couldn't say a damn thing to them about what really goes on.
thanks to Cisco, the Chinese gov is equipped with the adequate hardwares to build its Great FireWall of China!
when me and my online friends see news like this, we laugh at it, we spit on it, then we forget it for now and move on, till the shit comes out again.
I was in China over the summer and once carelessly worded a search for photographs of Tiananmen Square lit up at night. Google Images essentially stopped working for about fifteen minutes. This made sense. What did not make sense was when I triggered the block by searching on Google Images for "tang dynasty clothing" and "zooey deschanel". Any insights?
It was a major event when Wikipedia was unblocked a week or two ago. Unfortunately, it's been blocked again.
-- My choice of computing platform is a symbol of my individuality and belief in personal freedom.
You might want to be in China, and visit Tibet, before you say this.
I agree with parts of what you say, but you seem to have an extreme point on this. Please, come visit Beijing, and I can take you to Tibet, and you can see things with your own eyes. I want to stress that I -- a geek from Canadian, not a politican from China -- do not argue with you, only the extremity of your opinion, and the moral highground from which you opine.
China suffers the double-edged sword of restricted journalism, but it's a country that is only 2 generations from open civil war. There are soldiers still alive today from a war that put this country almost back to stone clubs. Unrestrained growth would be like the US colonization, wild-west, and similar lawlessness, which you would also argue against.
Coyotes disappeared from Yellowstone, which -- as the first park -- shows that some errors are mistakes, not malice. Meanwhile, nowhere in Lhasa did I see a "rat-bounty" on Tibettan dogs. Based on your in-depth knowledge of China, can you tell me the density (animals per person) of stray dogs, and the cost of a dog-license? How about in your hometown? Yes, canine is tasty, a bit like bear meat, but slightly gooey. Maybe you're right, and this strain of Canine is indeed extinct, and only due to the brutal slaying on Beijing's orders, and had noting to do with an impoverished, hungry culture that recently had a civil war.
The "trainloads of ethnics" is actually "in Tibet, no One-Child Family Restriction". The new railway to Lhasa is not exactly bursting with immigrants.
I can summarize the US history to sound like your perception of China; it's not the complete truth, though, and we both know it. To do so would be bad journalism, which -- in the US -- the president can now order you captured and detained forever on suspicion of terrorism. Discussing Katrina and 0911 is pretty terrible, away you go!
"DHS" and "KGB" are similar definitions.
Shoot, even my own country -- Canada, whom no one seems to hate -- has had issues: Oka, Rwanda, Ipperwash. We once clubbed seals (which are now devouring suppressed fish-stocks like Yellowstone Ungulates devouring fauna)
I only urge you to read more -- especially the historical mistakes of your home country -- before mounting the high horse, setting the lance, and charging at the mistakes of another. My oldest friends know this is from my past misadventures with my own tired horse and well-worn lance.
Allan
--
DongChengQu, Beijing, China
FWIW: today: google.com: partially-filtered; wikipedia.org: filtered
Yeah, I was watching this hour long thing on the Tank Man online at PBS. I was appalled to see the last section, the section that focuses on censorship, censored by American copyright law.
Hello Pot! My name is Kettle...
Well, it should be easy to check.
Does http://www.falun.se/ work (my hometown)?
If that doesn't work, but http://www.borlange.se/ works (the neighbour county), then I'd say that, yes, you're being blocked.
Methods of regulation aside, both Chinese and US governments manipulate/censor media to suit their agendas, and it seems that in both countries the population either does not care about it, or is in no position to effectively question it.
I tend to think it's a little bit stereotypical that the slaughter of a 'handbag dog' by peasants would seem to elicit more emotion than one of the largest genocide attempts ever, or any other major problem for that matter.
I would continue, but this is ultimately doomed to be a pissing contest between a pot and a kettle.
That explanation is a load of malarky. Try searching for Tianamen Square (note poor spelling): you find the picture. Try searching on proper spelling: whoops, no picture. Try searching for "six four" in Chinese, which (I'm told) is as unambiguous if you're Chinese as the spoken words "nine eleven" are to an American, and you'll get... actually, I'm not sure what you'll get, because after about ten minutes of searching politically sensitive terms on Google China I now get my connection reset every time I try to connect to them. Cute, guys. OK, we'll try an anonymous proxy, here we go, that works.
l r=&nojs=1&q=%E5%85%AD%E5%9B%9B to do it on Google China and http://images.google.co.jp/images?svnum=10&hl=ja&l r=&q=%E5%85%AD%E5%9B%9B to do the exact same search on Google Japan . (You'll note the image results you see are from Chinese-language sources. Japanese people don't refer to the event as 6-4 any more than they refer to 9-11 as 9-11: off the top of my head, 9-11 is the "American simultaneous terror attacks" or /bei doujihatsu tero kougeki/, don't know what they call the Tiananmen Square incident. Probably "Tiananmen Square incident".)
Yep, as I expected, *no image search results whatsoever*. Sounds strange, given that "64" should be showing up in all sorts of documents, right? After all, its a freaking number. Search for a random two digit number and you'd expect to get scads of documents, right? 63 gets hundreds of results. 65 gets hundreds of results. 64 gets consigned to the memory hole. Don't believe me? http://images.google.cn/images?svnum=10&hl=zh-CN&
It requires first-order willful ignorance of the facts to conclude this behavior is the result of anything but censorship.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
"we don't have software blocking Internet sites".
as far as i know, the great firewall mainly uses hardware.
Instead of reiterating the same ground prejudices, perhaps one should take a step back and look at thing in a wider perspective.
Firstly, a number of studies claim that 'China's Internet-filtering regime is the most sophisticated effort of its kind in the world'. The researchers involved are probably honest and reliable people, or mostly; I have no reason to suspect that they aren't. But, as with everything that issues a strong opinion about anything, one has to assess it carefully. We get their conclusion; would somebody else reach the same conclusion from the data they have collected? I don't know, I haven't seen their data. I am sure if the study is scientifically sound, I can get to see the full data. Perhaps what they have in their data is simply that there's a number of web sites that they couldn't reach from inside China, whatever the explanation may be - in that case it is not right to conclude that 'there must be censorship going on'. As an example, my own website (which is a mere empty shell) can't be reached from China for some reason; annoying, because I would have liked to use it to make some of my holiday photos available to my friends, but hardly a case of censorship.
What I am saying here is: just because some people have presented a conclusion it doesn't mean that they are right. It is ultimately always your own responsibility to gain insight and reach you own conclusion.
Secondly, is it possible that what this guy says could be true? I can't honestly say that it can't. Think about it - filtering, for one thing, isn't only happening in China, we do it too. I am sure everybody (or most) can see the sense in trying to filter out childporn, scams and terrorism if it is at all possible. Is that 'oppression of freedom'? Of course it is, but it is also right in many people's view, even most of those that believe in democracy and freedom of speech. So it is just a matter of which subjects you want to oppress; a question of culture more than anything else.
And don't we in the west have policeforces that are busy chasing down what they see as potentially dangerous thoughts? Like, eg. if you are devout muslim that automatically makes you just that little bit more suspicious. So in China they tend to suspect people who talk about certain things that they believe are characteristic of the groups they have identified (rightly or wrongly) as being troublemakers. Such as the word 'democracy' - this is not a Chinese word. Of course the Chinese, like anybody else, want to have influence on their own lives and their government, but I am not sure they necessarily think of this as 'democracy'. 'Democracy' is an idea that has come from the outside and which has been used by western powers as signifying something more or less like American style charlatan politicians, unbridled capitalism and imperialism; or that is how it has looked to the Chinese. You can't blame them for not trusting us; not after the Opium Wars, and the whole debacle that was western and Japanese involvement in China in the first half of the 20'th century.
All in all, try to think independently, make up your own minds rather than letting some pundits tell you what to think. Maybe when you have acquired some genuine insight you will still reach the same conclusion; or maybe not.
GP said that his well-educated Chinese girlfriend had never heard of the Tiananmen Square protests. You'd have a hard time finding a well-educated high school senior in America who had no idea about the Kent State shootings and had never seen that photo.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
http://images.google.cn/images?q=tank+man&btnG=%E6 %90%9C%E7%B4%A2&svnum=10&hl=zh-CN&lr=&nojs=1
a lot of people seem to think the guy was run over by the tank.
Wrong. Iraq was one of the aggressors atacking Israel in 1948. That war never ended (except with Jordan and Egypt) — Israel was perfectly justified in its attack (and, of course, in its desire to stay military superior in the face of hostility). But let's not get distracted by Israel — you don't seem to be seriously disputing the justness of our war in 1991.
As I reminded already, that war ended in cease-fire, which Saddam Hussein violated many times — years before Bush's all-out resumption of hostilities, Clinton and Blair have found it neccessary to attack Iraq's forces on several occasions.
Wrong. There were no sanctions before Saddam's attack on Kuwait — and yet he ruled personally for over a decade before then, and his Baath party for much longer. It is sheer naivette (if not stupidity) to claim, he could've been overthrown — look at his fellow Baath ruler in Syria, for example.
That said, I'm glad, we agree, that the sanctions were not working...
There is no "evidence". There are allusions — most of them groundless or outright faulty (as the most common fallacy of "War for Oil" is).
Whatever the reasons for inaction were back then, I'm glad, that by 2003 US administration found the interests of Democracy (as per the neo-Conservative argument) to be more compelling.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Please, come visit Beijing, and I can take you to Tibet...
I've traveled to China a few times already. While my travel visa granted me access to all the mainland (except HK), I could not travel to Tibet (or its province I think) unless I applied for a permission.
If you make an offer to someone to travel to Tibet, please be aware that is requires a different permission granted by the Chinese consulate/s located in the country you live in. If I'm not mistaken, this "permission" is just another type of visa to be applied for.
Life is not for the lazy.
Heya;
I'm not a visa service, but the visa is 200rmb (USD24), I applied in Beijing both times through my travel agency, adding 4% to the air ticket cost. Foreign diplomats and foreign media are not permitted access. All others are OK, from what I've seen.
China Mainland includes all except HK, Macau, and Taiwan (even though TW is where the Kunming retreated to, TW is Greater-China, in BJ's eyes -- tough love for an errant child). There are also 4 cities in China that have rules like District of Columbia in the US: the municipality is federally-run (BJ, TJ, SH, and SZ?). Tibet is an autonomous region: Beijing allows it more latitude to run itself right now. Tibettans can vote for some levels of government, actually, according to Xinhua articles.
You need an additional visa to Tibet, but it's not too difficult nor expensive. If you visit Zhumolangmashan, you'll also need an additional visa: 600rmb (UDS75) for foreigners, 35rmb (USD5) for your guide and driver if they are PRC citizens, and we were also charged 100rmb (USD12) for our vehicle.
The point of my original article was: take a look before you render such a strong opinion, and I will help you get that look if you really want to. Visa discussions are a bit of a rat-hole tangent, best chased by skinny little terriers.
The original tangent:
http://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/Beijing_Subway -- unfiltered today
http://myspace.com/ -- unfiltered today
http://northbound.com/ -- unfiltered today
http://google.com/ -- unfiltered today
They're not even that subtle. When I tried "falun gong," I got "[Sorry, you can not show to see the entries]" (translated by Google) while "Beijing" worked fine. No 30-minute block, though.
Reasoning probably is, if you know about these things, you're criminal beyond saving already, anyway.