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

the audience?

[victorl19]

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.

Re:the audience?

[dinther]

Do yourself a big favor. Turn off the TV, cancel the news papers and stay away from those kind of news sites. News is depressing, and depressing news sells. You can't fix bad news but you can agonize over it. The only result is that you are lining the pockets of entertainment news agencies by watching their adds and what's worse, throwing you into a depression causing you to think your country is going down the toilet. Try a two week self imposed news ban. Your spirits will lift, your productivity goes up and your sense of well being goes up. As a result you become a supportive. positive and productive citizen of the kind America needs to get back on it's feet again. Imagine if everyone did this! In order to take back your ability to form your own opinion you have to stop taking in big media news. This takes the power away from the big media and will restore democracy the way it was intended to work.

Inspiration to us all.

[Kadin2048]

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.

Re:Inspiration to us all.

[Firehed]

The best can still suck, and I think we've long since lost that title (assuming anyone outside the country ever thought we had it). It's rather stupid to think how much worse we could have things because it results in us thinking that we have it so great - it just lowers the standard. Think of how much better we could have things and *raise* the standard we're looking to achieve.

Re:Inspiration to us all.

[justasecond]

"China has a political situation much the same as that in the U.S.". What a load of relativistic crap!

Are you saying that the U.S. has forced abortions, political executions (with the executee's family being billed for the fucking bullet), wholesale cultural genocide (Do you know the chinese are hauling ethnic chinese by the trainload into tibet to overrun the place? Look up "tibetan spaniel" sometime to see how the fucking chinese have clubbed to death the entire population of tibet's beautiful native dogs), wholesale censorship of the press and Internet, massive "reeducation" (read: concentration) camps, support for mass-murderer dictators (Pol Pot, "Our Dear Leader", etc.).

Why don't you grow up, pull your head out of your ass and stop spouting "bush=hitler" puke. If you weren't such a skull-full-of-mush parrot for the bullshit your teachers fed you you'd understand that, while the USA is not doing so great now (bush *is* dangerous), there's much worse to be found out there in the rest of the world.

no filters

[yakumo.unr]

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

Right, Long Live The Revolution, Comrade

[Phat_Tony]

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.

He is technically correct...

[Lead Butthead]

The PRoC government doesn't censor the internet. The private sector companies does it for them, "voluntary."

Re:For Internal Consumption Only

[jfb3]

Almost everyone will be in Beijing for the Olympics and only in Beijing. Any number of visitors you think are "LARGE" (I assume you're a US citizen, CAlifornia?) are not really large for them. The margin of error in their population count is about the same as the entire population of the US. Even 200,000 new visitors at any one time to Beijing is only about a 1.3% increase in population, not such a big deal. Most of the city wouldn't even notice because these visitors won't be using the same facilities as the locals.

The Chinese government isn't concerned about minor leakage around the Great Firewall, they know it happens. Heck, I was just involved with a project that needed a faster connection with lower latency to the Beijing office and we bought/leased a private fast connection from Malaysia or Hong Kong or some such place that entirely bypassed the government firewall. Totally legal, totally legit.

What the Chinese government seems to be concerned about is managing the volume of information influx so as to manage the rate of change that is occurring. It seems they see and accept change, they just want to manage the rate of change to forestall any catastrophic problems. Now, I'm not an apologist for the government of China, I think they're generally a bunch of despotic asses. But they do have a problem "upgrading" 1.4 billion people who have almost no concept of laissez faire economics.