Citizen Journalism Combating Chinese Censorship

teh_commodore writes to tell us that Breitbart has a look at how Citizen Journalism is shining a whole new light on China. "Recognizing the threat of China's growing online community, Chinese President Hu Jintao called in January for the Internet to be 'purified', and the government has since launched a number of online crackdowns. [...] 'One cannot truly say that the Internet in China is becoming more and more free, because at the same time as the development of citizen journalists, the government finds ways of blocking or censoring content,' Pain said."

Comments

Do they....

[Creepy Crawler]

Do they not get what they deserve?

Have they forgot how Chinese invaded Tibet and displaced the Buddhists?
Has anybody forgot Tiananmen Square? They hunted down amateur and professional footage alike so they could go and assassinate the dissidents.
Or in recent times, have they forgot about the forced abortions that the Chinese government puts women through for violating "Birth Law"?

And now they wish to "clean up" the Internet. Awwww. It doesnt fit in their view of authoritarian communism.

Who I do feel sad for are the people who live there, as many of them did NOT bring this upon themselves, however, it IS up to them to free this country of an evil tyranny.

Re:Do they....

[triskaidekaphile]

Change from within would be nice, but there is no way change can come from within unless there is pressure from without.

Nobody could challenge the Roman empire at its height, of course, but nobody from within could have challenged it even after the political system had started rotting. It took an outside force to economically and militarily bring down the government. Change occurred within, but it required forces from without.

The many revolutions against the European powers in the 18th-20th centuries did not occur just because the people revolted. They would never have been able to revolt if they had not developed a middle class due to trade with foreign powers and a belief that they could rule themselves which they learned from seeing other former colonies succeed. Without either of those, independence would never have occurred.

The Soviet Union did not break apart because the people suddenly rallied. The economy had taken a horrible toll during the Cold War and economic reforms led to political reforms. When the reactionaries tried to seize control in order to roll back those reforms, then the people did stand up. But none of it could have happened without the economic pressure from without.

These are simplified, of course, but fair assessments. My point is that "the people" will not spontaneously restructure society. Society will perpetuate itself despite the dissidents. Why? Because society prefers stability over instability. "The people" will never generate instability; only an external actor can do that.

China IS getting more free.

[Prysorra]

I admit I'm a hopeless optimist, but look at it this way.

Censorship is a tool used when you're losing control. Scary things are about to happen, and China doesn't anyone to know.

Interesting site

[WindBourne]

They are blocking on chinese only. By not blocking english, then they will encourage a number of chinese to learn it or some other language.