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China Allows Access to English Wikipedia
LinuxLefty writes "Reuters is reporting that Chinese authorities have lifted the ban on the English version of Wikipedia. The Chinese version of the site is still blocked, as are English-language versions of politically sensitive topics such as Tibet and Tiananmen Square. 'The move comes after International Olympic Committee (IOC) inspectors told Beijing organisers that the Internet must be open for the duration of the 2008 Olympics and that blocking it "would reflect very poorly" on the host country. China's government, keen to avoid sparking social discontent, keeps a tight watch over the media and often blocks or censors popular Web sites and forums where dissent may brew.'"
citation needed ;)
...and all that stuff.
Since it seems incredibly fitting, here is the Wikipedia article on Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China.
I'd be so happy if some protest group succeeds in stealing or putting out the torch. Giving the Chinese the Olympics is the worst awarding mistake since 1980.
it's a fuckin' yo-yo.
Budda collapsed out of shame.
----
Do we really want them editing it though? If you can access it, you can edit it. The last thing we need is some "patriotic" chinese people altering articles in a bad way.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
Westerners in the Olympic Village will see something very open and free but it's all a put on. The Atlantic had a good article about this not long ago. The great firewall of China is extensive and fine grained enough to block individual page views at random. It's enough to eliminate public discussion on many topics and it's enough to round up potential subversives. Information in China is not free because people in China are not free.
I shared a hospital room with a Chinese kid once, about 10 years ago. He had got sick while travelling in Europe. It came up in conversation that he thought China was fantastic in every way, and when I asked him about the massacre at Tienamen Square, he said "What massacre?"
That was the first time I really understood just how amazing the Chinese governments control of information is.
Can you picture the Chinese government as a kid? I can just see someone coaxing a little brat 'Okay now, let go of the Chinese language Wikis...'
China is unblocking the English version of Wikipedia again? And they're still not allowing the Chinese version? And they did it silently, because they never admitted to blocking it in the first place? Didn't this happen last week?
dupe
Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
None of the dissenters speak English anyway.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
If the Chinese government keeps up this bullshit, people are going to call for boycotts of companies that advertise during the olympics, and that will reduce their revenue (because it will diminish the value of advertsising during hte olympics).
Even the Dalai Lama himself has firmly said that the Olympics should not be boycotted.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/03/18/2193461.htm
He has the most to lose if China's government gets more powerful.
I agree with him, I personally don't believe a boycott of the current olympics or advertisers is warranted in this case. The olympics is the one time every four years when athletes of all nations can come together. That serves more for global peace and understanding than petty quarreling, protests, and boycotts. Note, if there was serious shit going on I'll be the at the front of the protest line.
We need China to open, isolating them further will not be helpful. It's better the Chinese (people not govt.) be exposed to how people of other cultures are and vice versa.
The Chinese government, which is filled with all sorts of Nationalism and Socialism, edits the internet everyday. They want to put themselves in a good light so that the people they are oppressing don't rise up and burn the lot of them at the stake. It would be very nice to hear from the Chinese people themselves, just as it is nice to hear from US people. Sooner or later we will all realize that the only "bad" edits are ones that prevent people like you and me from expressing our real opinions so that some ass can send us around the world to conquer yet more innocent people.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=216934&cid=17629948
So: allow access to websites in a foreign language that most Chinese can't understand, for a period of - what - two weeks? And presumably keep a list of everyone who reads those websites? And then back to normal afterwards? Wow, the IOC is really helping to open up China to new ideas about freedom and democracy, isn't it?
....but the Chinese speaking edition.
I consider selectively choosing what people can know about the past controlling the past, and we all know what that means...
He who controls the past controls the present.
He who controls the present controls the future.
America has exported large number of jobs to China. EU has started doing the same. That means that unless you live off this planet, that you are buying Chinese product. More importantly, you are supporting them, unless you are actively checking everything that you buy.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The IOC is a bunch of hypocrites. They ought to tell VANOC the same thing for the 2010 games in Vancouver.
Look what VANOC told me about the "openness" of the Internet:
http://www.abandonedstuff.com/2008/03/03/a-pre-emptive-no-from-vanoc/
They also aren't letting athletes blog openly about the Games, they can't talk about many things.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/China
I was in Beijing and Guangjou as a Westerner visiting those cities laster January (2007). I made a point of checking wikipedia and had no trouble viewing pages like the English Tiananamen square page. I'm not sure what the big deal is.
From what I hear censorship is more or less being policed socially with less and less DNS interference. Instead of blocking a domain, the police or party representative goes to the internet cafe where activity is taking place (that's easy to trace to an IP etc.) and just asks who has been visiting inappropriate pages.
Maybe I was spoiled as a Westerner with better internet. I dunno, $7USD a night for a hostel in both cities doesn't seem like they'd make a special exception.
I think there's a lot of hype and FUD surrounding the issue, and while it is indisputably an issue, the magnitude and severity is relatively overplayed I think.
Then again, maybe I was being tracked the whole time I was there by invisible Chinese spooks who intercepted and allowed my DNS requests on the fly and tracked my piddly 80211g over a few thousand miles in one day...
It appears that Wikipedia is in fact, still blocked in China. I was talking to a friend in Guangzhou and she is unable to access Wikipedia.
Can anyone else verify that it is still blocked?
Free means no restrictions, ironic the FSF's GPL forces restrictions, isn't it? What's your definition of free?
Yep, I have a Chinese friend who always speaks up for the government and everything as if it 'cannot be helped'. Once I asked them about Tiananmen square and they only knew that some students protested there, they didn't even know that anyone was killed! This is the kind of brainwashing and history erasing going on in China and it sickens me. If you control history you control the present..
I like the idea of calling for boycotts of companies that are supporting this. In fact, It would be useful to point out all the companies that are heavy in bed with China. As pressure is brought on them, they will stop. Target and Walmart comes to mind. But even now, Dell. If ppl simply call up dell and tell them that they would have bought a dell, but .....
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
That's like, 0.001% of the great firewall getting switched off (so they say), for the duration of the games.
I'm sure politicians from all over the world can't wait to heap their congratulations onto this marvelous display of liberty from an exemplary free nation.
Since you said they were banned (Slashdot's editing system keeps choking on this; let's see if pulling the ideograms out and splitting it into two helps...)
Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
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Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
The Unknown Rebel - This famous photo, taken on 5 June 1989 by photographer Jeff Widener, depicts a lone protester who tried to stop the PLA's advancing tanks.
Literal meaning: June Fourth Incident
[show]Transliterations
Mandarin
- Hanyu Pinyin: Liù-Sì Shìjiàn
Literal meaning: Tiananmen Incident
[show]Transliterations
Mandarin
- Hanyu Pinyin: Tin'nmén Shìjiàn
The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, also known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre, and called the June Fourth Incident in China to avoid confusion with the two other Tiananmen Square protests, were a series of demonstrations led by labor activists, students, and intellectuals in the People's Republic of China (PRC) between April 15 and June 4, 1989. While the protests lacked a unified cause or leadership, participants were generally against the authoritarianism and economic policies of the ruling Chinese Communist Party and voiced calls for democratic reform within the structure of the government. The demonstrations centered on Tiananmen Square in Beijing, but large-scale protests also occurred in cities throughout China, including Shanghai, which stayed peaceful throughout the protests. In Beijing, the resulting military crackdown on the protesters by the PRC government left many civilians dead or injured. The reported tolls ranged from 200-300 (PRC government figures), to 400-800 (The New York Times), and to 2,000-3,000 (Chinese student associations and Chinese Red Cross).
Following the violence, the government conducted widespread arrests to suppress protestors and their supporters, cracked down on other protests around China, banned the foreign press from the country and strictly controlled coverage of the events in the PRC press. Members of the Party who had publicly sympathized with the protesters were purged, with several high-ranking members placed under house arrest, such as General Secretary Zhao Ziyang. The violent suppression of the Tiananmen Square protest caused widespread international condemnation of the PRC government.[1]
Contents
[hide]
* 1 Naming of incident
* 2 Background
* 3 Protests begin
* 4 Protests escalate
o 4.1 Nationwide and outside mainland China
* 5 Government crackdown on the protests
* 6 Number of deaths
* 7 Aftermath
o 7.1 Arrests and purges
o 7.2 Media coverage
o 7.3 Impact on domestic political trends
o 7.4 Economic impact
* 8 Issues concerning the Tiananmen protests today
o 8.1 Forbidden topic in mainland China
o 8.2 History deleted inside mainland China
o 8.3 EU-US arms embargo
o 8.4 Compensation
* 9 References in culture
o 9.1 Censored books, films and TV shows in mainland China
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
[edit] EU-US arms embargo
The European Union and United States embargo on weapons sales to the PRC, put in place as a result of the violent suppression of the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests, still remains in place. The PRC has been calling for a lifting of the ban for many years and has had a varying amount of support from members of the Council of the European Union. In early 2004, France spearheaded a movement within the EU to lift the ban. Former German Chancellor Gerhard SchrÃder publicly added his voice to that of former French President Jacques Chirac to have the embargo lifted.
The arms embargo was discussed at a PRC-EU summit in the Netherlands between December 7 and 9, 2004. In the run-up to the summit, the PRC had attempted to increase pressure on the EU Council to lift the ban by warning that the ban could hurt PRC-EU relations. PRC Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Yesui had called the ban "outdated", and he told reporters, "If the ban is maintained, bilateral relations will definitely be affected." In the end, the EU Council did not lift the ban. EU spokeswoman FranÃoise le Bail said there were still concerns about the PRC's commitment to human rights. But at the time, the EU did state a commitment to work towards lifting the ban.
The PRC continued to press for the embargo to be lifted, and some member states began to drop their opposition. Jacques Chirac pledged to have the ban lifted by mid-2005. However, the Anti-Secession Law of the People's Republic of China passing in March 2005 increased cross-strait tensions, damaging attempts to lift the ban, and several EU Council members changed their minds. Members of the U.S. Congress had also proposed restrictions on the transfer of military technology to the EU if they lifted the ban. Thus the EU Council failed to reach a consensus, and although France and Germany pushed to have the embargo lifted, the embargo was maintained.
Britain took charge of the EU Presidency in July 2005, making the lifting of the embargo all but impossible for the duration of that period. Britain had always had some reservations on lifting the ban and wished to put it to the side, rather than sour EU-US relations further. Other issues such as the failure of the European Constitution and the ensuing disagreement over the European Budget and Common Agricultural Policy superseded the matter of the embargo in importance. Britain wanted to use its presidency to push for wholesale reform of the EU, so the lifting of the ban became even more unlikely. The election of José Manuel Barroso as European Commission President also made a lifting of the ban more difficult. At a meeting with Chinese leaders in mid-July 2005, he said that China's poor record on human rights would slow any changes to the EU's ban on arms sales to China.[30]
Political will also changed in countries that had previously been more in favor of lifting the embargo. SchrÃder lost the 2005 German federal election to Angela Merkel, who became chancellor on November 22, 2005 - Merkel made her position clear that she was strongly against lifting the ban. Jacques Chirac declared he would not stand again as a candidate for the French Presidency in 2007. His successor, Nicolas Sarkozy, is more pro-American and less in favour of lifting the embargo compared to Chirac.
In addition, the European Parliament has consistently opposed the lifting of the arms embargo to the PRC. Though its agreement is not necessary for lifting the ban, many argue it reflects the will of the European people better as it is the only directly elected European bodyâ"the EU Council is appointed by member states. The European Parliament has repeatedly opposed any lifting of the arms embargo on the PRC:
* The resolution of April 28, 2005, on the Annual Report on Human Rights in the World 2004 and the EU's policy on the matter,
* The resolution of October 23, 2003, on the annual report from the Council to the European Parl
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
in every language. it's also user friendly, totally secure, & absolutely bug free, as well as free by all known definitions. see you there? let yOUR conscience be yOUR guide. you can be more helpful than you might have imagined. there are still some choices. if they do not suit you, consider the likely results of continuing to follow the corepirate nazi hypenosys story LIEn, whereas anything of relevance is replaced almost instantly with pr ?firm? scriptdead mindphuking propaganda or 'celebrity' trivia 'foam'. meanwhile; don't forget to get a little more oxygen on yOUR brain, & look up in the sky from time to time, starting early in the day. there's lots going on up there.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071229/ap_on_sc/ye_climate_records;_ylt=A0WTcVgednZHP2gB9wms0NUE
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080108/ts_alt_afp/ushealthfrancemortality;_ylt=A9G_RngbRIVHsYAAfCas0NUE
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/31/opinion/31mon1.html?em&ex=1199336400&en=c4b5414371631707&ei=5087%0A
is it time to get real yet? A LOT of energy is being squandered in attempts to keep US in the dark. in the end (give or take a few 1000 years), the creators will prevail (world without end, etc...), as it has always been. the process of gaining yOUR release from the current hostage situation may not be what you might think it is. butt of course, most of US don't know, or care what a precarious/fatal situation we're in. for example; the insidious attempts by the felonious corepirate nazi execrable to block the suns' light, interfering with a requirement (sunlight) for us to stay healthy/alive. it's likely not good for yOUR health/memories 'else they'd be bragging about it? we're intending for the whoreabully deceptive (they'll do ANYTHING for a bit more monIE/power) felons to give up/fail even further, in attempting to control the 'weather', as well as a # of other things/events.
http://video.google.com/videosearch?hl=en&q=video+cloud+spraying
dictator style micro management has never worked (for very long). it's an illness. tie that with life0cidal aggression & softwar gangster style bullying, & what do we have? a greed/fear/ego based recipe for disaster. meanwhile, you can help to stop the bleeding (loss of life & limb);
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/12/28/vermont.banning.bush.ap/index.html
the bleeding must be stopped before any healing can begin. jailing a couple of corepirate nazi hired goons would send a clear message to the rest of the world from US. any truthful look at the 'scorecard' would reveal that we are a society in decline/deep doo-doo, despite all of the scriptdead pr ?firm? generated drum beating & flag waving propaganda that we are constantly bombarded with. is it time to get real yet? please consider carefully ALL of yOUR other 'options'. the creators will prevail. as it has always been.
corepirate nazi execrable costs outweigh benefits
(Score:-)mynuts won, the king is a fink)
by ourselves on everyday 24/7
as there are no benefits, just more&more death/debt & disruption. fortunately there's an 'army' of light bringers, coming yOUR way. the little ones/innocents must/will be protected. after the big flash, ALL of yOUR imaginary 'borders' may blur a bit? for each of the creators' innocents harmed in any way, there is a debt that must/will be repaid by you/us, as the perpetrators/minions of unprecedented evile, will not be available. 'vote' with (what's left in) yOUR wallet, & by your behaviors. help bring an e
I'm getting a little tired of people yelling about how China should be more open and less restrictive and such. Especially when the whole tone is clearly aiming at "it should have been done so yesterday". Then I can only say: "Get real!". China is opening up, people are gaining more freedom. However the process is done very slowly. Slowly but steadily, and personally I think the Chinese goverment is doing a good job in the overall as well. No, I'm also not very keen about the Tibet incidents, they should have handled that differently in my opinion too. But still, this doesn't change my opinion in the overall.
Let me explain.. Keep in mind that China has been a undemocratic country for ages. Its also one of the largest countries in the world with the highest population. You can't expect people who have lived their entire lives following certain patterns and expecting certain limitations to be freed one day from the other and expect them to pick up life as usual. And if you don't believe that just take a look at what happened in (former) Eastern Germany, Iraq, Afghanistan, and so on. Sure; some of them made it alright pretty well but others resulted in pure chaos. There was a power vacuum, people didn't really know what to do and how to handle it and the results can be seen even today.
I don't think that good would come from it if China would open its borders all of a sudden. Instead I think the goverment is doing a very good job by making sure that the progress is continuing, slowly but steadily. And news reports like these only reaffirm my opinion. Freedom is coming to China, just not right now next week.
Substitute: Government with computer(s) controlling the matrix..... People-- living a virtual existence-- controlled information, controlled attitudes-- apparently idyllic existence. I wonder where Neo is right now :)
Last year, China went past Canada as our number 1 partner. The real problem is that China has prevented us from exporting to them, while Canada and Mexico actively encourage it. In addition, NAFTA has allowed all 3 countries to expand while China was contracted out jobs. In fact, with the yuan being pushed up, even slowly, it is certain that a LOT more dollars will flow to China, since they acocunt for about 17% of import.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It won't make any difference, given that the militantly racist Han Chinese Nationalist edit cabal(mostly consisting of expatriates and Communist sympathisers from Pakistan, Iran and the UK) have already whitewashed numerous articles on China's bad behaviour. Just take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_unrest_in_Tibet, where the edit-warriors have made the Tibetans look like the bad guys, even though they are the ones being oppressed and depopulated by Han Nationalist land squatters. Same with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Tibet. I was disgusted to see the article "Tibet", supposedly about the history and culture of the region, mostly devoted to a long rationalisation of why it is and always has been a part of China (except for when it was influenced by "teh Eeeeevil Western Colonialists"). Believe it or not that damn page has a google page rank of 7. Although a glance at the history page seems to indicate that some of the Han-racist/Communist tripe has been toned down over the months, WTF??!??! I think that the Tibetan diaspora should start their own wiki-site (wikis get higher placement on google searches than regular websites) and counter such bullshit.
It would be better if we could somehow get people in China access to more reliable sources than han-opedia/trashopedia, like Tibetan freedom books/websites or those of western newspapers/western-reporters/analysts. I'm sure there are also many Taiwanese commentators and academics who have written critically on the Chinese Communist government. People in China need contact with that stuff as well.
The average person in china has no more freedoms now than what they had 40 years ago EXCEPT that they are allowed to trade in the open. The chinese gov. is not opening up. Nor do they have ANY intention of doing so. The whole reason why they adapted capitalism had do with efficiencies. It had nothing to do with freedom. Freedoms will not start until the gov. starts holding itself accountable to the ppl. I have seen minimal accountablility coming from there. Xiaoyu was executed, but only because his actions caused a drop in exports to the west. He was held accountable ONLY because it hurt the underlying trade. But he had been doing a number of actions for a long time and the party was turning a blind eye to it, yet, they knew all about the bribes.
Freedom may come to china, but only if the citizens push it. Sadly, that will mean more 6-4's. But sometimes that is needed.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
china is still playing all sorts of games. A quick example is CNSA claims that they are spending little money on their efforts. Yet, what is quietly missing in their reports is how many are currently employed in the space program. From quiet reports, USA is finding that they employee more ppl than NASA did in the late 60's (their pinnacle), and certainly more than RSA has. IOW, they try to downplay their space capabilities while at the same time, they are growing it. Fast.
Add on that, their military capability. It is very obvious that it is growing MUCH faster than china gov. claims. How much remains to be seen. The real problem is that China keeps their real funds secrets. If they reported how much in/out on taxes, as well as how much per department, then it would be easy to verify this. But that is kept secret (though they do report what some of the depts. use, but now way to balance or test this).
Based on your posting, I am guessing that you are married to a chinese, or are from china, but their actions speak louder than words. Look at W. Would you trust him? Hell no. Anybody that would trust him, cheney, or rove could only be an absolute idiot. But the same is true of Chinese Gov. They play more games with contracts and wording than even W. does. But what does that have to do with the chinese ppl? Absolutely nothing. These are seperate groups; ppl vs. their gov. And the reason is that their gov is foisted on them. Here in America, we the citizens are responsible for our gov, so sadly, they somewhat mirror us.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I know that the "Great Firewall" is not consistent among different places/times in China, but I can say from personal experience that English Wikipedia was accessible in China (Shanghai, Hangzhou, Jiangshan (Zhejiang Province)) during July and August 2007. This was true both on my own computer and on those in net cafes. The only article that was blocked was the Tiannanmen Square Massacre. Articles on Tibet, Internet Censorship in the People's Republic of China, and even the Mainland Wikipedia Blockade were available throughout. Does anyone else have experience to compare this with?
but china has a number of laws that make it difficult to import into there. In the end, china encourages all companies to go there and create jobs locally, and then export. It is the same practice that other countries have. India and brazil are good examples of that. But keep in mind that the yuan has gone up against the dollar, but it has gone down against the Euro. It has gone down 10% just in the last year. With china able to fix vs. a money, it will stay low.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
"inspectors told Beijing organisers that the Internet must be open for the duration of the 2008 Olympics and that blocking it "would reflect very poorly" on the host country"
Good to know the Olympic committee is all for standing up for human rights provided they're in town, and they're being paid lots of money, and those human rights only apply to people who are used to such freedoms in the first place. But seriously, if the Olympic committee gave a flying fuck about human rights they wouldn't have chosen China to host the Olympics.
I have nothing compelling to say
Well, from a Chinese perspective of view like me, Chinese themself sometimes benifit from blocking. So, let's image the U.S. government oneday blocks some enemy website. What methods could you ever think of doing to bypass that? Now in China nearly everyone of experianced Internet users knows at least 3 ways of bypassing GFW, that's a good skill, I think. Yes, my government is not perfect, they are doing insant things, but it makes people to be critical & skillful. On contract, I heard that Germany government & media is lying & blocking the major Chinese website sina.com.cn during the Tibet riot, and some German even Convinced that shit. I guess they have no idea how to bypass a Content-filter system. Hmm, everything has two sides. Wise people always learn from that.
I wonder if people in China will get access to the Wikipedia entry on the Panchen Lama to get some information about what happened to him, or if this will be among the pages that are still banned.
I would write down here about the world's youngest political prisoner, who was seized by Chinese thugs as part of an organised attempt to destroy a religion, but I wouldn't want to get Slashdot banned too.
If the pattern goes 9am, 10am, 11am, why isn't noon 12am?
That's a very nice summary of the Atlantic article you found.
Isn't it odd that I would not know about something that you think I wrote, especially when you look at all of the effort that obviously went into it? Don't you think that I would have simply linked to the article if I were those other people? Here's a clue, lots of people read Richard Stallman's political notes.
The level of effort you ACs exhibit without learning anything is amazing. Do you keep a database of all the things you think twitter writes or do you just keep all of it in your obsessively hateful little mind? Do you read every comment of every discusion looking for new versions of twitter? Why is it that the love expressed in my writing does not sink into your soul?
unblocked the CBC? http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/04/04/cbc-china.html/
No, someone already alerted you to the fact that linking to the journal of a Slashdot user that no one else in their right minds would link to is a good giveaway that you're the same person. Of course you're too stupid to figure it out by yourself.
The level of effort you ACs exhibit without learning anything is amazing
The level of effort you dedicate to maintaining five different accounts on a single website is amazing.
Why is it that the love expressed in my writing does not sink into your soul?
It's hard to find the "love" here. Can you direct me to some more lovable posts?
... in a few months: "China Blocks Access to English Wikipedia"
All this is giving the Chinese government an opportunity to show-off it's 'openness' during the games, when tens of thousands of journalists from all over the world will be able to access international websites without much censorship.
On the contrary, we should let the Chinese government censor as much as they can during the Olympics and let the world media, the tourists and the sportsmen expose the pain of getting to the news they take for granted at home.
The Olympic Committee should be ashamed of this 'victory': 2 months of ban lifted is a f*g joke. It will only serve the interests of the Chinese government. Let China 'reflect very poorly' when every eyes are on it!
Why don't they just start a new olympic event for China? Hacking out of the state run network to the full internet while being shot at or beaten...
wikipedia's not really my thing, but since it is supposed to be user edited, can't we just copy the chinese pages over to the english version, if only for the next few months.
perhaps someone can persuade the editors to leave them there.
The Chinese government would then either have to live with it or re-block the English pages.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
A demand from the IOC had very little to do with this. Rather, Beijing has become increasingly more responsive in denying access to materials deemed subversive to the authorities here. The means of censorship, the Golden Shield aka The Great Firewall of China, is becoming more sophisticated. James Fallows of The Atlantic Magazine recently wrote a superb piece on the inner-workings of the "Great Firewall of China". Wikipedia is now allowed along with many other sites long blocked, such as BBC News. Rather than blanket censorship that is far more obvious to those used to unfettered Internet access, they have simply cleaned up the filtering currently in place. (Anonymous Coward is currently living in northern China, near Beijing)
It is banned again. I'm in Bejing, and some people in Guangzhou confirmed it, too.
I have an earlier Firehost posting telling the story of the unbanning. Unfortunately, we have to fsck The Firewall again.
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
Sorry I think I made a mistake. The guys in Guangzhou are complaining, but Beijing users is OK to connect to the site.
In Beijing, it was the HTTPS site of Wikipedia that had been re-banned. I was always using this HTTPS version, in fear of possible man-in-the-middle attack conducted by the communist authority.
However, this is still a setback.
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
I know this is probably futile, but what the hell...
/. know how long it took for us to get these things? I don't know for certain, but I'm pretty sure it took generations. Part of the explanation is that those in power didn't always want it to happen, but another part is that democracy and political freedom are things that people need to learn, and it takes time. Just look to history to see how many times people have fought for freedom in a revolution, only to throw it away as soon as they've won. We in the West held on to it because of another revolution: the Enlightenment.
We in the West enjoy democracy and freedom. Well, "enjoy" may be an exaggeration, but we have it, sort of. Does anybody on
So how can we imagine that any country can just slap democracy and freedom down in the middle of society and say "Here you go, chaps, have fun"? China and the Chinese go through that phase now, what we went through 100+ years ago, and they are doing it a lot faster than we did, not least because of modern technology, but a lot of things can go wrong if the government just let it loose. Thankfully the Chinese government aren't about to let foreign pressure push them around.
What would happen if they did suddenly try to introduce full democracy and all the freedoms the Americans still only dream about? Just look at what happened in Russia: organised criminal gangs (the Russian mafia) grew very strong and tried take over, certain big companies grew extremely strong and tried to take over, the people in general suffered great need, and the government went in circles. Now they are returning to something closer to Soviet style strong-man government, because this is what the people seems to prefer.
<head>
<title>Wikipedia: China is wonderful!</title>
</head>
<body>
China is wonderful! China can do no wrong. Those Tibetans are troublemakers.
<form method="get" action="AccessTheForbiddenInternetHere.pl">
<input type="text" name="query" value="">
<input type="submit" value="Search" class="button">
</form>
</body>
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The Turing test cuts both ways
As was pointed out here http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=499300&cid=22863446 they dont care if the English speaking population have free access to information, they are already part of the upper class and so don't care about the plight of the poor. This is reinforced by http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=513156&cid=22983132 which states the firewall is easy to bypass, but fails to notice that this is only by those that have the skill & will to do this.
I spent all of yesterday at pro-Tibet rallies in London, and i found that the comments do not go far enough. I know the pro-Chinese protesters, were probably not representative of chinese people in England I general but what they were say was shocking. Generally these were rich Chinese groups (the kind wearing full fur clothes through to those who only wear name breand clothes fro head to toe), they had no useful comments all they could do was denounce our comments (which was hard due to the photographic evidence, and 1st hand information), by calling us lies, and asking if wed been to china. When that failed they resorted to simply provoking the Tibetans by swearing, and singing the Chinese national anthem (or other stuff in Chinese I didn't understand), interestingly the Tibetans remained calm (at least at the protests I was at), while the failure to get a reaction caused the Chinese to get angrier and angrier.
The fact that the pro-china protestors were free of censorship suggested two important things to me:
1) The masses (both here and in china), just want to get a job, and get on with their lives, they're not happy that china is occupying Tibet but dont care enough either way to say/do anything.
2) The Chinese build strong communities*, (like Chinatown), where self censorship prevails and the same way that sex & drugs dont come up around family dinner tables, Tibet, Tienanmen, freedom of speech, just dont get spoken about. From these self censored communities, those that misunderstand the situation (either accidental or deliberately) will come out in support of Tibetan oppression.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
If the human rights issues of the host state were the basis for stopping the Olympics then the games would never have occured in history. Look at all the times it was in the U.S.A. and what about nazi Germany.
Condemning the Chinese Government is still a valid protest but the most likely way China will change in the future will be from within.
The Chinese games will go ahead because China has invested a lot of money but many of the labourers that helped build all the stadiums won't have permits to stay around to attend any events.
The justification that the IOC had for giving the games to China was the potential for improvement of human rights. The CCP is an authoritarian regime. It is both a coercive and ideological state apparatus and without major changes from within human rights are unlikely to improve.
The division between rich in the cities and poor in the rural areas is extreme.The state compromise in 1989 was the move to capitalism to relieve political pressure that was at boiling point.
It's difficult to associate human rights improvements with the Olympic games, especially when talking about new investment in China because that is already well established. What effect has that had on the situation? It may have raised living standards for the elite and middle classes but there is still a large base making sacrifices for rest.
So I think condemning the Olympics is valid but going on past examples not very consistant. This is most likely because the Tibet issue is getting a lot of media coverage and maybe part of a new phase of American anti-china bashing.
The headline would be more appropriate as:
"China allows restricted access to English Wikipedia"
The way it is exposed seems like the Chinese government is very kindly collaborating with the international media. But blocking access to some articles still constitutes some sort of blocking, thus access, which should be complete, is still restricted.
Access was already possible through proxy tools, and even some Firefox extensions are available.