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Post-Quake, China Cuts Access to Entertainment Web Sites
thefickler writes "The Chinese Government has issued orders that all entertainment web sites and regular television programming be shut down completely for the next 3 days. Only web sites covering the recent tragic 7.8 magnitude earthquake and television stations broadcasting CCTV earthquake programming will be allowed to remain live." Can anyone with Web access in China confirm this report? From an AP story on the state of communications in the country right now, it appears at least that China is (despite ongoing monitoring) allowing freer than usual communications in the wake of the quake.
I think this is a bit over the top. Many people lost relatives or friends in the quake. Some entertainment can help them get over the grief. Now they're constanty reminded of the quake by the media. That can't be good for them.
-- Cheers!
No, it is a three days national mourning to honour victims in the earthquake. China is not only suspending entertainment websites, but also suspending everything from public entertainment to olympic torch relay and all Chinese flags will be flown at half-mast. There will also be a 3-minute silence everywhere in China at 2:28pm China time today.
Check out:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/olympics/05/18/bc.as.gen.china.earthquake.olympic.ap/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/1982617/China-earthquake-Rescue-teams-overwhelmed-by-disaster.html
I live and work in Shanghai. The leading (popular) domestic websites are all still accessible but are dominated by earthquake-related news and stories, including calls for donations.
TV stations are the same, and again, programming is dominated by earthquake news.
I noticed over the weekend that craigslist.org is no longer accessible from mainland.
A dream is good. A plan is better.
reading slashdot here in shenzhen right now.
When 9/11 occured in the states, we had 24/7 coverage and news on just about every channel. Mr. Rogers came on PBS and said that these are aweful times, but please limit what small children are being exposed to - it could be very scary and detrimental.
Parents should act like a filter for the world - especially the hype and circus that is today's news reporting.
Other than that - what is the usefulness of an order like this? I would think having something for kids and adults alike to watch other than death and destruction would help.
I would think that after a tragedy, it would better to OPEN the internet as much as possible.
I think this is part of the 3 days of mourning going on in China right now, to raise even more awareness of the quake.
Also, sites regarding the earthquake will stay up. So the websites created by people to track missing relatives, or to gather donations, will stay online. Was this absolutely necessary? probably not. But I don't think this move will hinder the rescue effort at all, but rather raise more awareness of it since earthquake related info is all the Chinese people will get in the next 3 days.
I would think that after a tragedy, it would better to OPEN the internet as much as possible.
I'm really starting to hate China.
But China has been more open and receptive about this than they ever have. Look at their history.-Red
If you want to see real government relief effort problems, look at Burma. China pales by comparison.
I am in Hong Kong, all I heard from the the official news from mainland is that there will be 3 days of "mourning for the victims of earthquake". All entertainment facilities (casino, clubs etc.) in mainland are supposedly to be closed for these 3 days, and all mainland citizens are supposed to dress "less colorfully" as well. Didn't realize that includes entertainment websites though. Of course over here in Hong Kong we find it a bit strange and obviously the local government won't follow suit. Most Hong Kong locals don't understand the logic too, but maybe it's kind of cultural difference thing again.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I'm going to do something dangerous, and quote my wife as a well informed person. According to her, right after the quake, the Chinese government banned all reporting in the effected areas. As usual, all the press backed off and went home. Except for two reporters from two papers. These two reporters rapidly reported on the actual situation, and the other newspapers and TV stations saw these competitors getting all the viewers and readers. Nationally, news organizations then defied the government order and reported on the situation openly.
:-)
So... the government is pissed, and is punishing the media organizations by sending them home for a while. I could be wrong, but that's more or less what I heard from my wife, and like in China, it's dangerous around here to disagree with the boss
Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.
I'm in China, have been for a few years. I can confirm that there doesn't seem to be much shutting down of websites. I can still go to the websites I normally go to view the latest episodes of Lost (hosted inside China, they stream rather well). As far as television, last night (Sunday night Shanghai time) I was watching the only not completely state run English station. The content was complete shit, but not earthquake related. I don't watch Chinese language stuff as it is shit propaganda or shit period soap operas or a cheap knock of "The Price is Right". Can still access all the websites I normally do, except for wikipedia, which is always hit or miss. Will keep things updated as I can.
China is opening, and I think it's apparent by the way they are covering the quake. No, they will not be a fully functioning democracy tomorrow, but this coverage of the quake is big news.
To the Chinese natural disasters were, in the past, covered up and silenced. They are embracing not only independent local coverage, but independent FOREIGN coverage as well (foreign access is truly amazing).
I think despite some obvious failings even today, China is truly moving forward into a more open society. Give credit where credit is due...
-------
-1 nonconforming opinion
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
and everything seems normal. A search for ææ or gaming on baidu returns a thousand similar sites: http://www.baidu.com/s?wd=%D3%CE%CF%B7 , all of them working. Lesson to be learned: twitter isnt a great news source, and neither are twitter-derived news sites.
Before I launch into opinion, let me first state the facts jack. China's Internet censorship (the great firewall part of golden shield) is regionally based. Similar to the US radio having locality based censorship. In February for example, the university I teach at(Inner Mongolia Uni of Tech/science), could not access wikipedia- but could access flickr. In Beijing, it was the opposite- its locality based and gladder for firefox kills it anyway. That said, I still have full internet. Yesterday the DNS kept crashing out, but internet is rolling along fine and dandy...or as close as we get here at 100kbs on a pppoe. All sites are behaving normally. Now opinion. While I am a firm believer and activist for Freedom of Information, in this case I believe shutting down a bit of commuications may be needed. Many people in China are a bit on edge currently, with the olympics, the protests, the whole t1b3t thing- and the earthquake moved them right to the edge. Rumours are circulating around the country here about radiation dangers, the government not acting, the goverment causing the earthquake like some kind of James Bond Villian...lots of BS. The end result of this is that people are too panicked and nervous to help out with reconstruction or aiding survivors- not good. The limiting of information until the area is secure and survivors helped is very important at this time.
This morgning here in Shanghai I noticed that the hotel TV did send western channels such as CNN but almost all Chinese channels were down. Abt three channels showed quake clearings. Somewhat leaned towards showing heroic soldiers in clean suit saving people. And the president himself directing the work. But at least this time the TV has shown a lot of quake damages.
Death toll now 33000 verified. Will rise above 40000 since now 9500 verified to be beried under rubble. 220000 injured.
Help! Help! I have been a victim of unfair moderations!
As you can see from my previous posts, I am generally a trolling idiot who has nothing constructive to say.
But, but! Someone moderated me to +4 Insightful! If math serves me correctly, 3 someones!
I ask you to stop this unfair moderation and return me to my target of "-1 hopeless."
Arigatou gozaimashita!
(Besides, I don't have "sock puppets." That accusation is unfair to the world's other sufferers of dissociative identity disorder, who function just fine in society.)
I'm in China right now. I was here (Beijing) the day the earthquake hit. At 6:00, I was having dinner in a restaurant, and the television was tuned to the national news service. I speak Chinese, and I understand it well. It was all-earthquake, all the time. Reporters were everywhere in Sichuan (they hadn't arrived in the worst-hit areas yet, it having been less than four hours). The premier was on TV talking about sending help. There were pictures of people carrying bodies and bandaged victims on their backs, footage of destroyed buildings, everything you would expect to see in a major disaster, with no conspicuous absences. It was the exact antithesis of news suppression.
In the days following the quake, I've turned on the television a couple of times. There is a lot of earthquake coverage, but I've also seen costume dramas, soap operas, musical variety shows, fund raisers, home-shopping-network style shows, and billiards tournaments.
I proxy my internet through an SSH tunnel, so I haven't noticed any changes to website availability, but I just fired up an unproxied konqueror, and I can get to the BBC, CBC, arstechnica, and slashdot through the national firewall. If somebody wants to post URLs they think are unreachable, I can give quickly determine whether they are reachable.
The sort of reactionary and racist anti-Chinese attitudes that are commonplace on Slashdot really sicken me.
A short period of mourning is declared, with very little enforcement, and all you want to do is seize the opportunity to make it look like censorship, in particular censorship of the disaster. It is the exact opposite. Frivolous entertainment is being scaled down a bit for a mere three days, and the TV networks are saturating the public with quake information. Never has the Chinese government been more open. With previous tragedies we saw secrecy and a desire to save face, but this regime is clearly much more modern. The contrast with the terrible Burmese regime is very clear.
I don't actually agree with the declaration of mourning, and I wish that this government could be replaced with one truly chosen by the people, but this doesn't mean that the non-stop stream of slurs and vilification is OK.
In particular, I find the concept of a period of mourning to be much less offensive than Bush's 16 Sept official day of prayer for hurricane Katrina. Separation of church and state, please!
I live in Chengdu (about 100 km from the epicenter of the initial quake), the nearest big city to the affected area, and have noticed no change in what's accessible, be they Chinese or foreign hosted sites. Information was slow to spread after the earthquake, with, according to a friend, CCTV first reporting the earthquake about 4 hours afterwards. Here, the internet (but not intranet) was down until at least 2 hours afterwards, and the radio stations were almost exclusively running one track on repeat since everyone had fled from the studios. The cell network went down too, of course, though oddly enough international calls seemed to be able to make their way in.
I couldn't resist answering your idiotic post that just asked lots of pointless, stupid questions (without a question mark no less!), that seemed to lead the reader into random circles of thought like a labyrinth with no exit.
I note with interest, over the past 6 months, the noticiable uninformed anti chinese bias of the articles on Slashdot.
Um, do you even read Slashdot? Point to one topic here that isn't covered in a biased manner.
You didn't need to dig very far to find out that China is in 3 days of mourning.
So if the government declares a day of mourning, I'm not allowed to laugh at a funny television show? That sounds completely unhealthy. I don't care what your culture is.
You guys appear intellegent but incapable of independent thought when it comes to China.
It seems that you really just don't get the cultural differences and you don't understand the inter-realtionship between responsibile reporting and control.
Ooh, this one's easy. Responsible reporting and control have nothing to do with each other. If it's controlled, it's propaganda, not reporting. Deal with it.
You flap about over freedom of the press, and yet appear to have no understanding of what that is or what it means.
Another easy one. It means the press can report whatever they like without fear of being prosecuted for it.
China is made up of 56 different ethnics groups, 800 million of which are on less than $2 a day. You want to throw into that the irresponsible, almost unaccountable, sensationalist press we have in the West?
So what? The US started off with lots of poor farmers, too. I frankly don't see how this can have anything to do with freedom of the press. Do people get docked pay every time a reporter criticizes the government?
Yeah that would really work. Reporting without responsibility great invention.
And reporting with censorship is better, how? I can think of a number of ways it's worse.
A truely free press is a dangerous thing. It allows everyone to peddle whatever truth the desire and to encourage others to believe it.
Oh, so you criticize the people on Slashdot for not thinking for themselves, then say that you need to limit the spread of opinion because people might actually believe it? Either you want people to think critically or you don't. Make up your mind.
Do you believe that any Western country allows a truely free press in that sense.
Well, no. But again, I don't see your point. Just because the west does it doesn't mean China should. If we don't have a perfect free press, then maybe China could beat us at it. As-is, though, the Western system seems quite superior.
Push a negative story a little, someone starts a rumor, and you have a blood bath on your hands.
A blood bath? Really? Where? The only blood bath I can think of is Iraq, and that wasn't the media, though you can maybe blame the media for not being critical enough. You certainly can't blame them for warmongering (well, except Fox, but that's not news).
In the UK many kinds of story are not covered here by agreement between the press and Government. There is a code of practice for journalist and editors covering what should be reported.
Well, whatever works for you. It might even make sense assuming it's a gentlemanly agreement to be civil rather than a "I'll scratch your back" thing.
The reason you have this is to try to instil some degree of responsibility into the press. Even with this totally ficticious and inflamatory stories are still run.
So it doesn't work? Go figure. Of course, you spoke of an agreement not to cover stories, not about making sure they were true, so it's an even bigger surprise that it fails to accomplish a goal it doesn't seem to have in the first