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China's New Internet Plan
eldavojohn writes "The internet in China is diverging rapidly from the state that the rest of the world enjoys it. Recent news of China's leader, Hu Jintao, has revealed a strategy to distort it even further. Jintao is tackling the issue his Communist party is having with the youth of China that are too young to remember Chairman Mao and the fanaticism the populace had for him. A strategy he is proposing is 'cleaning up' China's internet & lacing it with a little propaganda like the need to 'Consolidate the guiding status of Marxism in the ideological sphere' online. The meeting notes also declared that 'Development and administration of Internet culture must stick to the direction of socialist advanced culture, adhere to correct propaganda guidance.'"
The parallels to the Olympics of 1936 are kind of eerie -- then it was Hitler attempting to show off German might and industry, his neat and orderly Aryan society, and the superiority of the German race. Perhaps this is not as sinister, but it is certainly disturbing.
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I do not buy anything made in China. Its not easy to find out what parts of a laptop of computer are made in China, so my plan isn't foolproof, but it's what I know that I can do to stop support for the Chinese government.
What else can people do? Ideas?
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This sounds like every other government/corporate plan to me so it's governance/business as usual. When will goverments and corps realize that the internet doesn't belong to them. It belongs to the users we just allow them to use it and profit from it if we so desire. If you can't compete on your own merits as a company, ideology, or political system this is not the place for you.
FG
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them
I know it's not really what the TFB is about, but does anyone have any tech details about the Great Firewall of China? How does it work, is it some kind of giant NAT? Are there blacklist-based IP filtering, real-time content filtering? Are ISPs routes set up so that foreign IPs can only be reached via a few select routers that do the censoring?
Global warming is a cube.
"Consolidate the guiding status of Marxism in the ideological sphere"
"Development and administration of Internet culture must stick to the direction of socialist advanced culture, adhere to correct propaganda guidance"
"Internet cultural units must conscientiously take on the responsibility of encouraging development of a system of core socialist values"
Boy, does that Politburo know how to turn a phrase. I know I'm inspired.
And what, exactly, is an "Internet cultural unit"?
#!
In China the communist party wants to woo another generation with the story of how the revolution was made. Why cant they hire the guy who wrote "How StarWars was made" to write another book "How the Revolution was made".? If there is one thing Chinese communists really like it would be Force, I guess.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
US announced sweeping controls of radiowaves whereby an oligarchy of a dozen media companies will promptly fire anyone who contradicts the official culture by quoting a best selling rap singer.
Now that China is rapidly transforming into a market economy, what Marxism is there to speak of? Or maybe the good chairman wishes to enlighted the Chinese youth of the crimes of communism in China and atrocities committed by his predecessors? It would be a great lesson in how a fundamentally flawed ideology can retard a nation with great potential for decades and decades.
do not fear chinese. They are no different than anybody else.
Yes they are. They know Kung Fu.
I understand you well. I love the USA. I love the country. I love the people. A good deal of my friends and people I care for live and work in the US, simply because they were born there and live there.
I hate the US government, I hate the way corporations grasp more and more power over the people, I hate the loss of liberties for fake security.
I love the country. I hate the way it's run.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Doesn't the Internet route around damage?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
That communism isn't about competition. Communism is about eliminating all competing ideas and asserting absolute control over every aspect of life. The communist leaders understand perfectly well about the "competition of ideas". They also know they can't compete because communism is a failed ideology. Thusly they seek to control access to information and keep their people in the dark. It's typical totalitarianism.
(To the commie trolls: Yes, I KNOW that's not how communism and socialism is supposed to work, I've read both Marx and Mao. The problem is that in practice it cannot possibly work the way it's designers envisioned it because they didn't take human nature into account.)
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
I guess what china really needs is to hire rupert murdoch to assist them in their propaganda efforts.
he's been so successful at it he's managed to pull even other organizations to the right. before his day i never heard such hyperbole from cnn as a border fence being called "mexico's insistance on interfering with our national security".
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
And he wasn't impeached for getting head (which is simply bad PR, not really an impeachable offense), he was impeached in the House for lying under oath about getting head.
BIG difference there. One is a felony, the other is being an asshole.
China and Cuba, like the former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc, have nothing to do with socialism. They are state capitalist regimes. We support the struggles of workers in these countries against the bureaucratic ruling class.
A: Who is the Chinese President?
C: Yes.
A: Who?
C: I told you.
A: When?
C: Wen is the Premier.
A: When is the Premier what?
C: The Premier of China.
A: Who is the Premier?
C: No, Hu is the President!
A: That's what I wanna know!
and so on...
And have the party cadres live like the proletarians? I am a hardline libertarian myself, but I think even Marx would be quite disturbed to see how these revolutions have gone. At least the old regimes had honesty. The ruling class was not part of the rest of society. Funny thing is that at least in Europe, you were probably in real terms freer in the 18th or 19th centuries than you are today by a pretty wide margin. "Advanced socialist society" is a nice way of saying "we think the cost of scientific advancement is that we must regulate you from cradle to grave."
You (should) care because corporations are many and competing, whereas there is only one Party (in China).
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Same kind of people everywhere. Bunch of retarded morons that are relics of cold war age, struggling to FORCE the youth to live like they did.
They need to die off fast so that the new ages can have a good chance.
Read radical news here
2) Communists finally discovering that totalitarianism needs proper planning/resources to be implemented right on the internet. New age of confrontation begins, but frankly I think the commies will lose this one. When the main battlefields are lost to censorship, Chinese youth will be wondering why they can't access general information websites.
This said, I think wikipedia and other places should begin investigating serious methods of discovering government tampering (as opposed to the lone propagandist). Would it be ok to solicit the help of our intelligence agencies, me wonders?
Let me add this little thought experiment:
Set-up two local sites: one in China, one in the US. In each, post articles denouncing the local country and call the country's leader every vile name known to man. In the US, you'll end up with a popular left-wing web site. In China, you'll get a knock on the door in the middle of the night and will never be heard from again.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Actually, the communists tried to outlaw kung fu.
They found out that they couldn't do so with complete effectiveness, so they tried to make it into more of a sport - competitve wu shu in which the actual martial aspects were downplayed and basically removed.
The main reason most kung fu that still exists actually still exists is because the teachers either went underground or were out of the country at the time.
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
I think China, if they want to remain Communist, should shut down their internet all together. Perhaps they should also limit computer usage rights to government, science, and the commercial business zones. Then, they would have total control over the young people once again, educating them only with propaganda filled text books and nothing else. People could also be imprisoned for even hinting at something that the government does not consider patriotic. Personal websites may be banned and consolidated into one big Facebook style website with strict controls. Imagine being forced to make pro Communist remarks through out your blog. Perhaps there will even be a quota for internet users... something like - "you must say something good about the PRC or Hu every 3 days in order to keep your PatriotBook website." The result of painful restriction would also work in favor of the government, as fewer people will be inclined to use it. Both ways they win... and soon, provided they decide to stay connected with the world, they will own most of the internet and be able to force their will on everyone. FUD is fun!
What's funny is that if you take out the specific references to Marx and China, this reads almost like a press release from the Democratic National Committee.
And yet I just read them all and am replying to them from Shenyang, Liaoning, China.
It ain't so cut and dried.
kartune85 : Incapable of reason, observation or learning. A kind of dim, drab, flightless parrot.
If you don't like Best By you can always try Sircuit Sity.
Thank God I live in America, where this kind of behavior is only exhibited by corporations (like Google, Apple, and Microsoft), and our government. Oh, wait a minute...
Let me clarify the clarification. Even getting head is not so bad. Clinton's actions were "assholish" on two counts:
1. He was married at the time. Granted, there are open marriages out there where it may be ok to get some on the side, I don't recall any evidence that this was the case with the Clintons. The fact that he had to seek her forgiveness, in fact, supports that it was a move with "asshole" status.
2. He was getting it from a subordinate employee approximately half his age. Retire the cup.
The parent is correct that the only reason it became grist for Congress' mill was the fact that he lied about it under oath. Besides, rumors abound that he wasn't the first president who might have got his winky wet the wrong way.
True. China/Cuba and other countries that call themself communist, aren't really communist, they are actually blasphemies, not communist. Communism doesn't exist.
Again, a little tip: Bush was elected. Twice. You may not like it, but that's how it is, under the rules set out in the Constitution. Indignation, righteous or otherwise, is completely irrelevant. And come January 2009, he is gone.
Not to belabour the same-old, but I think it's funny (and true, though please, anyone, feel free to clarify). Technically, George W. Bush became the President based on a ruling by the members of the Supreme Court of the United States on a disputed vote count in the State of Florida, which State was being run by George W. Bush's brother, and which members of the Supreme Court were appointed by the previous Presidents (including one or more by president George Bush Sr.?), and due to the uncertainty in the US Constitution arising around voting disputes, George Bush Jr. was permitted, with less overall votes than the next candidate (Mr. Gore), to become President by way of winning a majority of college-electoral districts, which districts are (spoken cynically, I admit) fabricated by the Executive branch of government to preserve predictability and the marginalization of the regional voting trends(*). Phew.
So, while technically George Bush Jr. was elected, it was an awful shady thing, and where the rules of the US Constitution were silent the interpretation by the SCOTUS went against the popular vote of the United States citizens. Given that the federal voting power parity of the average US citizen is nearly always zero (i.e. meaningless), except in swing states, thanks to the college-electoral system, I find myself melancholic when I try to think of it as a righteous preservation of freedoms and fair representation.
(*) The only example I remember was in Ohio, where 9 Republican districts won, each with something around 52% of the vote being Republican. One Democrat district, which was right in the center, won with 95% of the vote being Democratic. I'm not really sure how that works or where it was (or even how true or why it is), and even though my wallowing in ignorance generally preserves me from shock, it was somewhat jaw-dropping.
But nowaday in China, no ordinary people pay any attention to these kind of useless propaganda any more. (Students may have to memorize this thing so they can pass the exams, but I can ensure you it has zero impact on their mental state otherwise, as it hasn't had any on mine when I was a student there in 1980's.)
That is because China doesn't follow their own constitution! Their constitution says that free speech and stuff is allowed, but the government doesn't like that, so they don't use the constitution. When your constitution reaches zero, you're dead!
Your first question would be so much more convincing--check that, it would have the bare minimum of validity--if it demonstrated any awareness of the Supreme Court's rationale in ending the recount, along with some indication of why that rationale was wrong.
I don't think I'm a commie troll, but I think that at least part of your objection applies to capitalist systems as well.
If I were playing devil's advocate I might say "capitalism cannot possibly work the way its designers envisioned because they didn't take corporate nature into account." For example, there is a tendency in corporocracy to treat *everything as a transaction and *everything as property (see for example "intellectual property", the privatization of drinking water, etc).
I think the fact that corporations have co-opted our ostensibly democratic government so thoroughly is almost as serious an indictment of capitalism as the corrupted Party's betrayal of basic democratic principles in the Reddish parts of the world.
Just thinking aloud, really.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Godless heathen.
Yeah? We have Chuck Norris!
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
and now they have a repressive regime that stamps on anything that flowers within their people's minds.
oh but thats allright !!! - they had a civilization when others had not, we can let the fact that current geezers running the country stamping on youth there. it is totally acceptable.
if you know a LITTLE bit of history, and the "civilization" you are talking about, youd know that chinese are being MADE live approximately in the SAME condition that they were being made to live in 3000 years ago. only change there is now, more technology. Otherwise everything's the same.
Read radical news here
How about all of you mind your own business, let the Chinese handle their own affairs, and shut the Fuck up!
Request denied.
The Chinese would love to "handle their own affairs", as you put it, but they happen to be living under a dictatorship that murdered about 70 million of them in the 1950's and 60's, and still tosses dissidents into jail. If the Chinese were free to choose their leaders, you'd have a point, but they don't, so you're full of shit.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Ok, let me try:
freedom, reform, elections, multi-party, rehabilitate, dictatorship, fascism, freedom Tibet,
independence taiwan, Xinjiang independence, Tibetan independence, crime against humanity,
communist bandits, Chinese traitor, massacre,
how many murdered Tiananmen students does it take to top a tank,
genocide, oppression, overthrow, coup, down with communist party,
protect rights, laogai, re-education through labour, red terror, heixiazi island, yinlong island,
cultural revolution, great leap forward, Dongzhou protest, Taishi village, Suijiatun, Dalai Lama,
Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, Choekyi Nyima, tiananmen mothers, Wei Jingsheng, Wang Dan,
Wu'er Kaixi, Chai Ling, Feng Congde, Ding Zilin, Wang Ruowang, Liu Binyan, Harry Wu,
Szeto Wah, Fangzhouzi, dharma chakra, dafa, hongzhi, and finally Playboy.
If you live in China, mod me up.
US announced sweeping controls of radiowaves whereby an oligarchy of a dozen media companies will promptly fire anyone who contradicts the official culture by quoting a best selling rap singer.
If you really can't see the difference, then I'm not sure what to say to you.
P.J. O'Rourke is a bit harsh (I would choose a different last word for the quote) but he's pithy:
"Life is full of ironies for the stupid".
I mean, aside of the (probable) cutting off of non-pro-China webpages that we already have? I mean, do I care whether I get corporate or party spam?
You can filter corporate spam.
If you try and filter Party spam, you get a trip to the pokey where mean men with big blunt objects remind you why you love to read the Party emails so much.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
George Bush Jr. was permitted, with less overall votes than the next candidate (Mr. Gore), to become President by way of winning a majority of college-electoral districts, which districts are (spoken cynically, I admit) fabricated by the Executive branch of government to preserve predictability and the marginalization of the regional voting trends(*). Phew.
knit one: college-electoral doesn't mean anything. You're thinking of the electoral college (or as homer called it, the eletrical college)
fabricated electoral college districts? You mean.. STATES? Each *STATE* determines how their electoral college votes go, it has nothing at all to do with federal laws.
Given that you have such a poor understanding of how the electoral college works, am I at all surprised by the rest of your post? Nope!
I see lots of Chinese in Second Life these days and they're in world to talk, exchange ideas, and get information about the rest of the world because the SL grid is outside of censor controls. Short of blocking SL right out, or co-oping Linden Labs to parse every chat/IM/and image I don't see this changing anytime soon. This isn't just special to SL, I'm sure many of the international MMO's and Metaverses that Chinese access by pass censorship as well.
I also think the common person there is about fed up with this crap. Did anyone see the news today about the huge wave of forced abortions in one of the provinces that they government mandated in order to preserve birth quotas? Pretty much anyone that was pregnant and had any kind of discrepancy in what's allowed with a pregnancy was hauled in and give shots that aborted the fetus (even in some cases 9 months along!). ref, NPR story the morning of April 23, 2007.
Pretty screwed up if you ask me.
By censoring the internet, China is censoring innovation. The only reason the West has exploded with innovation in the last decade or so is solely because of the absolute freedom to exchange ideas on the internet: both on a cultural level and a technical level.
Communist China will find out the hard way that stifling communication will only stifle their economic growth. They've bended over the past few decades to nascent capitalism because they couldn't deny its effectiveness. They will soon find out that they need to open up the internet too in order to let their society grow.
China is moving forward, even though it seems like a snail's pace to the West. However, they're getting it, just very slowly.
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I would say, this is nice news, just don't distort this. Let's take a look and see what comes out of that. I think it is unprecedented attempt.
http://id3as.livejournal.com/
What are you even talking about? Is it something special about the land? Does the countryside get insta-worse when you cross the border into Canada? Did Hawaii get prettier when it was granted statehood? Or do you just love the political geography? The shape of the coastline?
You say you love the people... you do realize that they're responsible for their government, right? So is that a general "I love all people", or is that more of a jingoistic and/or arbitrary "I love Americans"?
If other reasons we do lack, we swear no one will die when we attack
If you need these to be censored.. you need to type them in Chinese.. Not many Chinese in China are going to search in English or Ping Ying. BTW, I was in Chengdu, Sichuan. I was reading these articles all the time.
- Tong Lin
Possibly but lots of other things could have happened after that finally culminating in Florida not sending any electors to Washington (because time was running out) and the election of being thrown to the US House where Bush would have won easily.
No matter where you go, there you are.
hey wasnt jintao the name of the villian in that movie with jackie chan and the black dude...
Now here's one iPoddy site! iPod Range
"it is a strong level of pressure against a government and would be exceptionally bad for a country who's economy relies so strongly on trade and manufacturing such as China."
It surely would force China government to drastically change their economic plans but don't fool yourself: you just *can't* boicott the economy of a country with 1200 million people the wide China is. They could just close their borders for forty years and they even wouldn't notice (not to say they haven't more opportunities opening their borders than closing them, but that a country the size of China is a whole world on and by itself: their internal market is enormous and they are aplenty of raw materials).
I wish I could put a <blink> tag in there.
True science means that when you re-evaluate the evidence, you re-evaluate your faith.
Actually I've read part of their constitution and it does have all that stuff in there about free speech etc. However, their constitution, unlike the US constitution, seems to try to be more specific than ours is (it talks about jobs and crime etc). In US history class a while back, my teacher mentioned that it was widely agreed that the key to a good founding document is flexibility, so you have to be general. China's is a lot less general than ours.
In addition, theres usually an escape clause for the government, some kind of gottcha:
Article 36.Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of religious belief. No state organ, public organization or individual may compel citizens to believe in, or not to believe in, any religion; nor may they discriminate against citizens who believe in, or do not believe in, any religion. The state protects normal religious activities. No one may make use of religion to engage in activities that disrupt public order, impair the health of citizens or interfere with the educational system of the state. Religious bodies and religious affairs are not subject to any foreign domination.
Emphasis mine. Who decides what is normal etc.I know we have that problem in the US when we deal with cults, and extremists. When worded like that, you can pretty much define anything to be abhorrent. That's why the founders of the US said that the government couldn't regulate religion at all, because they were afraid of those gottchas. Then they said that they can get you for "disrupting public order". Well we all know what that means.
In any case, heres a link: PRC ConstitutionApparently, I'm the only one who got this.. and here I am having spent the last of my mod points a few hours ago..
New Google ads for China:
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Your quest to avoid Chinese-made goods is pointless, unless you plan on going off-grid and not buying any manufactured goods at all. Even if you try to buy stuff "Made in the USA" or anywhere else, it is likely to contain some material made in China. When it comes to electronics, your quest is completely quixodic - there are probably hundreds of parts and materials contained in your device that were made in China.
So, does it mean, that if you pray, you must pray only in private when nobody has a chance of noticing, because if they notice then they will catch you to jail. Or is there something else that I have missed? Well, Article 36 seems almost fine, except for the fact that the government has power, which is what ruins everything. Am I right?
'Consolidate the guiding status of Marxism in the ideological sphere' online. The meeting notes also declared that 'Development and administration of Internet culture must stick to the direction of socialist advanced culture, adhere to correct propaganda guidance.'
The guiding status of Marxism and Chairman Mao? The very same Chairman Mao who said:
[...]
Yeah. That's still a guiding a principle. Communism is dead in China. It died with Deng Xiaopeng, when he declared "To be rich is glorious." Mao is a t-shirt. Mao is an cigarette lighter. Mao is a brand. Chairman Mao's visage now competes with the visage of another old man with a title that was fond of red, Colonel Sanders. The Chinese Communisty Party's name is an anachornism. They're no longer communist. They're no longer socialist. They're just another the run of a mill totalitarian regime.
I'm sure Hu's plans will meet with smashing success. The prolitariate will get right on it, right after they finish paying for their gucci bag.
Which is why correct propaganda guidance is important, without correct propaganda guidance, it would be easy for the wrong facts to be reported and the wrong things to be said. Even worse than incorrect propaganda is marginally correct propaganda, where it is not clear who we should punish - or how much to punish. It is very hard here in the communications office...
I don't think the problem is that they have power, it's that they say it more bluntly. The expression in words reflects the way they want to act.
First, in America, you will be monitored. Secondly, are you sure that you will not disappear? Gitmo, Kazikstan, etc are not being filled up JUST with those that fight America abroad. The fact that the media has somewhat comedown on the admin for locking up Americans in gitmo, will make them want to move Americans to other more discrete places.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
....it evolved.
Our understanding of capitalism is akin to our understanding of psychology or sociology, both of which are disciplines which study pre-existing facets of the human experience.
This is why a Nobel prize is given for economics, because the process of discovery is every bit as real for it as it is for chemistry, medicine or physics.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Seriously, there is nothing new with this talk. Those are just political talks. Such talks are regularly given in China.
AC 1 : "Great, now assemble some of your Chinese peers together to let the local Party Representative know about these foreign ideas, then see what happens!"
AC 2 : "They would just brush you off and tell you to write them a letter (which will be thrown in the bin).
Much like every Government representative on Earth does."
Precisely. Unless it directly influences their bottom line government members (and police) here don't care about anything.
kartune85 : Incapable of reason, observation or learning. A kind of dim, drab, flightless parrot.
...whoah...
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
Still here.
kartune85 : Incapable of reason, observation or learning. A kind of dim, drab, flightless parrot.
Additionally, Slashdot has refused me mod points for more than two years now, despite Excellent karma and regular meta-moderation, ever since I used a full set of five on one inane, loudmouthed moron in one thread.
:-P
Slashdot censors me more than China does.
kartune85 : Incapable of reason, observation or learning. A kind of dim, drab, flightless parrot.
You should get your facts straight
I've got my facts straight, sunshine. Mao killed tens of millions more Chinese than Tojo ever did.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
That's NOT for you to say!
It's for ANYONE to say. The government of China is a corrupt, murderous kleptocracy, and the Chinese people deserve to bring the Red Dynasty to justice.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The present internet policy of Chinese leader Hu Jintao is anti-business, anti-progressive and will retard the gigantic technological progress which the Chinese have made during the past couple of decades because it will stifle creativity and innovation. Information, communication and networking are the engines which power creativity and innovation and Jintao's meddling in search engines and internet usage of its citizen will effectively run these engines to the ground and possibly cause the Chinese to fail like the Soviets did. Ikey http://www.ezymoneyinfo.com/fast
The creator of $100,000 monthly for life system. http://www.secret33.com/home-based-business-progr
"The internet in China is diverging rapidly from the state that the rest of the world enjoys it."
How about: The Chinese "internet" becomes less and less like the rest of the world's internet every day.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)