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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.
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.
That's already happening. Chinese living in the West, though they can see its freedoms, sometimes feel that the authoritarian model of their home country is the right way to do things. I've met plenty of Chinese immigrants in various countries who claim that China would fall apart if it weren't ruled with a strong hand, and Westerners just don't understand their society.
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
First, you're thinking exactly like the Chinese government and that is rather disturbing. Second, it doesn't really matter what people try to edit Wikipedia, you're supposed to check facts not just blindly obey Wikipedia or SLashdot for that matter. Third, even if they did vandalize these pages it is quite likely that someone somewhere is going to notice and revert the page back.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
I was thinking of the other way around, people replacing random pages with information about Tibet or Tiananmen.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
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.
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..
They don't understand because the Chinese people are ignorant. They reject all contradications because they've been taught from birth that "this is the truth". Just like how a christian would reject evolution if they had be taught from birth that the earth is 6000 years old, they are no different.
You can't understand nonsense.
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/
I hate this logically fallacious special pleading argument. Hate it you hear!
How can the chinese communist party be so completely corrupt and evil? It work's in mysterious ways, you just can't understand it.
(Usually used in the context of god)
Countries that are heavy in bed with china? Just about any company that wants anything manufactured, especially in the tech field. Apple stuff is built in china, Cisco routers are built in china, nearly all mobile phones are, nearly all TVs... Hell, it's been *years* since I've seen a PSU that didn't have chinese lettering on it.
Basically if you really want to boycott china you'd have to give up on technology.
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.
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.
However as a fact most Westerners do not understand very much about the, I think, quite complex structure of Chinese society. Even if you lived there it is not easy to get a feeling for what people ranging from the very poor countryside worker to the super rich entrepeneur really thinks about the government. Chinese people are not stupid, the have the same thoughts about their government as we have. Most people in China (except the very poor people) have access to the net and know how get past the firewall. Most people's English is much better then most people's Chinese in Europe or the states. They are able to read the news and follow the ongoing controversy.
It is so easy for us to say: ok we see that our system works in our country, so please do the same in China. But I think one also has to notice that the Chinese government does make efforts to steer the country in the right direction. The country is just so big and hard to control due to its extremly diverse ethnicity and the big gap between rich and poor. If things change from one day to the next, there will be a civil war and a lot of people will die and suffer. More than do right now because of the oppression by the government.
Chinese people know that they are oppressed and they are sick of it. The country is gonna change. But not tomorrow and not the day after. Not even because of the Olympic games. It takes time.
-- LP-Research
I've met plenty of Chinese immigrants in various countries who claim that China would fall apart if it weren't ruled with a strong hand
Amazing!! I am married with a Chinese woman, and I have thought until now that it was her own idea!
In China, the ideas have you, I think.
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?
You're pretty much right. At least those Chinese people that I've meet over here that have been wealthy enough to move, have very much worshipers of authority. I guess that's part of the reason that they're wealthy.
But on my first trip to China, many of the common people don't like their government and don't worship authority.
I'm about to head back to China soon to start teaching. It's a wonderful place, the people are very nice, the food is great, the chaos is great. The only problem is the media and government, but I think that can change.
This idea has been there for more than 5000 years, if you want to change it, I guess you need some time.
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
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?
unblocked the CBC? http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/04/04/cbc-china.html/
... 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!
"the have the same thoughts about their government as we have. "
Most chinese people, in fact, place unity as a higher priority than human rights. They have been brainwashed to.
"Most people's English is much better then most people's Chinese in Europe or the states. "
So most of them know three rote phrases? wow, thats all the language skills need to participate in complex sociopolitical debate.
" But I think one also has to notice that the Chinese government does make efforts to steer the country in the right direction. "
"The right direction" being defined as the ability of the ruling class to stay in power, you're absolutely right.
"The country is just so big and hard to control due to its extremly diverse ethnicity and the big gap between rich and poor. If things change from one day to the next, there will be a civil war and a lot of people will die and suffer. More than do right now because of the oppression by the government"
I'll grant you that point.
The English sites will be seen be only the most educated: Those who stand to benefit most from maintaining the status quo. Unblocking only English language sites was a pretty slick move, for evil levels of slickness.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
The "West" has zero respect for the Chinese government. Why you ask? It's simple. The CCP does *NOT* reflect the chinese population as a whole. Unless it's democractic, it's another self-righteous regime.
To be honest I see it only as a propaganda war between China and the west, no more, no less. China's point of view (not just the Chinese government's view or a nobody cared dissident's view, but an average Chinese view) is intentionally suppressed in the west and there's no such thing as fairness and balanced report.
Funny you say that. We Americans feel the same way we are reported around the world. The fact is, we are never going get a "fair and ballanced" report. So get over it. The only question to ask yourself is who's going to be in charge? Which leaves me to my next question...
To fight this propaganda war, controlling the media is the necessary sin. If it's now being done too harshly and awkwardly, China's skill of manipulating the media needs to be improved.
I understand now. You would rather put trust in a government you have no voice in, than your average Chinese citizen? And I thought China was supposed to be civilized...
Also I don't buy those free speech lectures. Time and time again it's been proved hypocritical and even ill-intentioned, or useless to say the least.
Shouldn't it be to duty of the caring citizen to form an opinion rather than have the government shove it down their throat?
Given how successful western democracy is compaired to totalitarianism, why would you ever continue to shill for the CCP? What's in it for you? Money, granted freedom, the ability to look down on your fellow chinese citizen with an elitist attitude?
I have a better idea. Instead of looking to the West as your problem, why not look inward toward your own government. They are root of all your troubles. And only people such as yourself can solve the problem, not us. So please, don't take your frustration out on the western media. They're the least of your problems.
Life is not for the lazy.
I think that a culture of free press and (relatively) non violent protests is important for the spread of information in a society - give China sometime and it should work out. It is not like Chinese are somehow more stupid of stubborn amongst us.
Here is a blog article that shows the effects that Internet and Phones have had on various societies.
http://slashdot.org/submission/1062723/Cheap-mobile-data-plan?art_pos=2
I agree that it might be difficult and agree in general with your post. In fact there is a post on my blog about it.
But if I may nitpick, your examples don't really hold up. East Germany changed dramatically after the fall of the wall. In fact the current chancellor is from former east Germany. Iraq never had a problem with censorship (atleast compared to Iran) - and after fall of Saddam the spread of information has only improved. Saddam's hanging was infact spread through mobile phones. Afghanistan was a hellhole for information, it still is. But I would say that the current situation in Afganistan is waay better than what it was under the Taliban (what with the destruction of Bamiyan Buddhas and all).
So it appears that the examples you gave are not those of pure chaos, but of rapid and dramatic improvements.
http://slashdot.org/submission/1062723/Cheap-mobile-data-plan?art_pos=2
This of course is a quite medieval view from our perspective (at least for the ones of us who do not comply with capital punishment as we have it in the states etc.), but comes from the fact that many Chinese have to face hardships in daily life that people in the western societies are confronted with less often.
Take for example mutilated children who are being sneaked into the subway by a mafia organization to collect money. People see this kind of thing every day when they go to work. Of course they are terrified and wish for the responsible criminals to be punished.
I do not want to justify any violation of human rights. Also I am sure that the goverment is involved with the mafia (or represents one itself) all over the country to gain money. I just want to explain why people think what they think and that it is not all due to brainwashing. So most of them know three rote phrases? wow, thats all the language skills need to participate in complex sociopolitical debate. Eg. in Shanghai there are almost fifty larger or smaller universities. There are thousands of students. And I guarantee you that most of these students could indeed easily join a discussion as we are having it right now. Children get eductaion in the English language from the first year in school.
By the way there are more native Chinese (Mandarin ) speaking people in the world than there are native English speakers. Do you know three phrases in Chinese?
-- LP-Research
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
Thank you for writing back. I'd appreciate very much if you could spare a few minutes, forget the ideological differences, and read a small piece by Fareed Zakaria:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/36493
As one who protested in Beijing in 1989, I should have more to dislike CCP than you. Yet I don't. And it's not because I belonged to the well-off class. Most Chinese students came to the US not because we can afford the tuition, but because we tested high in GRE and can get scholarships and assistantships to cover the tuitions and fees. Most well-off Chinese kids nowadays go to the UK.
Then why, you may ask? Because after coming to the US, experienced three presidential elections and watched C-SPAN and local politics constantly, I realized it's painfully naive to assume that just because China is not democratic in the same way that you elect your president and congress, then CCP automatically reflects less Chinese population than your president and congress reflects the US population. Right on the contrary.
Deng, Jiang, and the current Hu-Wen have all enjoyed very high approval rate. My mother who retired 10 years ago from a teaching post and only earns a small pension approves them. My older brother who was laid off from a state-owned enterprise then found himself a contractor's job approves them. Our cousins in the countryside who don't farm the corps anymore but worked in the "sweatshops" had a lot to complain before, but also say they're much better off therefore thought the government is OK. And about Tiananmen, tell you the truth, it's much less about democracy than about inflation. Also it's interesting to note that empirically I feel the the current government enjoys the highest approval rate, and Deng's approval rate is lower.
So, please read Fareed Zakaria and admit you don't know much about China, and let us deal with our own problems. Also Chinese normally don't like finger-pointing unless it's our business, so if you want to complain the US wasn't treated fairly around the globe, please don't take it on us.
Also a side note on how successful western democracy is compared to totalitarianism. I actually believed the propaganda and sent my niece to study in India. So far all I've got are complaints. Constant ethnic conflicts, strikes, chaos. Luckily India enjoys much friendliness from the west.
No, we Chinese are not trying to copy India. I believe most think tanks were and are looking at Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, and even Japan, where totalitarianism were gradually transformed to democracy. I've said once and once again, bear with us, be patient. Let the nature run its course.
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.
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China is wonderful! China can do no wrong. Those Tibetans are troublemakers.
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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!
What they were right? I mean, how much do you understand about China which makes you so confident that the claims were wrong?
At least, the Chinese immigrants experienced the Western model. Did you actually get to live and experience the political, social, and cultural realities in China?
As you might have guessed, I do think China will fall apart if not ruled with a sufficiently strong hand, if only due to the chicken and egg problem. If the people don't know enough about democracy and how it's supposed to work, it will not work. And the censorship and FUD in China doesn't help.
But at any rate it's still not possible to do it in the foreseeable future without tearing apart a lot of things... which could really lead to chaos.
Don't quote me on this.