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."

Comments

Looks censored to me

[Anonymous Coward]

http://images.google.com/images?svnum=10&hs=B4b&hl =en&q=tiananmen+square&btnG=Search

VS:

http://images.google.cn/images?hl=zh-CN&q=tiananme n+square&btnG=%E6%90%9C%E7%B4%A2%E5%9B%BE%E7%89%87

Re:For Internal Consumption Only

[steve_ellis]

Based on my experience in hotels in China aimed at foreign tourists (so-called 5-star hotels--certified 5-star by the Chinese government), all of them appeared to have unfiltered internet access available. Since many of them are affiliated with big western hotel chains, I'm guessing they get their feeds from their corporate parent, although the government itself may provide unfiltered feeds to hotels targeted at foreigners. I observed this in several major cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Xian & Guangzhou). On the other hand, the great firewall is in place and working very nicely on residential dial-up, DSL, and in internet cafes (my nephew has at times had both dial-up and DSL service).

Want to know what it is like for real Chinese?

[juuri]

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.