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With Olympics Over, China Re-Censors Internet
eldavojohn writes "We last left the story of Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China when the IOC had reached a deal with the Chinese government whereby some of the press restrictions were lifted. With the 2008 Olympics now but a memory, China has began censoring foreign news sources again. Maybe the West is making too big of a deal over this, as many Chinese citizens seem to like it that way."
Happiness in slavery.
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They don't like it this way, they just know better at this point. It's like hitting a dog with a stick anytime he goes to get a snack from you, eventually he won't go get the snack even if you aren't carrying a stick. The dog learns not to like snacks, because who knows if you are hiding a stick somewhere. It's just safer not to like snacks. The chinese people are tired of being hit with sticks and are afraid. It's fear, plain and simple.
The IOC must learn that there is no long term positive effect of allowing a totalitarian government to host the olympics in exchange for agreements that are slowly implemented and quickly removed, just as the western countries have learned that when the IOC makes such a mistake it is wrong to respond by boycotting the games.
The fact that only a minority is being oppressed doesn't make it not oppression, and it doesn't make it right..
Except it's not a minority being opresses it's the whole country.
I think it can compare to when you first wake up or come out of a dark area. At first all of the light hurts your eyes and your initial reaction is to shield yourself or go back to the darkness.
It has to be a slow transition to open information flow or it will be overwhelming.
As far as most Chinese are concerned their government is great. For more than a decade the average Chinese citizen has seen there lot only improve. Naturally the government there is taking full advantage of this by giving themselves all the credit. Thus to many in China it seems that the government is doing a great job, and who are they to argue with success?
It won't last though. There's a generation of children being born who will take economic prosperity for granted. It's the nature of humanity, and by that same token they'll want more than just that. With economic power in their hands they'll want political power, and that's when the government will be in trouble.
I have heard people complain about things like spam and porn on the internet and say "Why doesn't the government do something about it". If you frame the question properly in the US I bet you would get a surprising amount of support for government censorship.
More like:
Toe the "Party Line" or find yourself "Dissapeared" in short order.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
"as many Chinese citizens seem to like it that way."
Particularly those who are concerned that the masses will learn how miserable and fettered their lives are.
"You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson
You kind of went off on a tangent there. Actually, the entire post was a tangent. As far as anyone in the USA accessing anything on the internet: What is the government censoring? Please be specific here as I'm no longer in the USA and am curious what I can get here in Europe that you can't. I know of many blacklisted sites/subjects but that has more to do with internet providers than the government deciding that a certain word is verboten to search for.
Please enlighten me as to what specifically you in America can not access or search for because of government censorship.
Well, thanks to the Internet, I'm now bored with sex.
It's not just Chinese. US citizens seem to enjoy having their rights violated as well. They reelected Bush, most of those responsible for the PATRIOT act are still in office, etc. etc. As long as the government provides bread and circuses, nobody really cares about rights. That's the same for the East and West.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Many US citizens liked slavery, once. And not letting women vote. The fact that only a minority is being oppressed doesn't make it not oppression, and it doesn't make it right.
Don't give all of your examples in the past tense.... Many US citizens still support oppressing the rights of gay people. Many US citizens support the unconstitutional searches, seizures, and wiretaps that have gone on since 9/11. A huge number of US citizens supported invading a foreign country and overthowing their government.
A majority of Americans support the Children's Internet Protection Act - and so a majority of Americans also support censorship of the Internet, just like the Chinese do.
You seem to complain about media laying blame for whatever bad thing at the feet of Americans, but immediately you do the same thing with Muslims. If you think that 'the other side' is doing something wrong, then I hope you see that you are making the same mistake as they are: making a complex situation easy for yourself by blaming the people you do not associate with for anything that you perceive is wrong with that situation.
Look we already sent them a very tersely worded letter saying that, if they didn't improve their human rights record, we would probably still come to the games anyway.
What more do you want from us?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
You are missing one bit: the dog is convinced that the stick is good for it.
No, but I don't think they're entirely relative, either. For example, I think slander and libel laws are reasonable limits on speech. I could see different communities reaching different, legitimate conclusions about what precisely those laws should cover. I believe that there are many valid viewpoints, but also many less valid or completely invalid ones.
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
Yeah come to think of it, how can the "re-censor" the Internet, when they never really "un-censored" it in the first place?
Also, there is no Chinese "people." There are Chinese individuals, and they are most definitely not the government. They are its victims. You might want to look into organ harvesting to see what's going on over there.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
Uh, tank guy didn't get run over.
Anyway, you have to realize that Chinese values are fundamentally different from your own. "The Right Thing", to you, might mean freedom of expression, the right to bear arms, etc., but that's not true of all people. Here in Canada, we believe The Right Thing is gays should be allowed to marry, and nobody should walk around packin'. In China, people believe The Right Thing is a centralized, stable government.
Personally, I find it easy to understand the sentiments of the people you mentioned who believed Tiananmen was a case of "tough shit", because given China's chaotic political history, especially in the recent past, organized, stable government is a top priority for many people. And you can't blame them, given the shit they had to suffer through with unstable governments. Many people today still remember said shit, and deems it important to pass these values, namely avoiding said shit, down to the next generation. And the protestors were challenging those very values - the main goal behind the protest was further government reforms, and sought to basically remove the Party from power. In essence, completely disrupting the stable government that China had suffered through three or four periods of complete chaos for.
Obviously Westerners, when presented with the two sides, take the side of the idealistic students clamouring for rights and liberty, since you've enjoyed the luxuries of stable government for centuries. I mean, when was the last major revolution in the Western world? The French Revolution? The availability of these luxuries means that you no longer rank them as high as someone who's lived through several turbulent governments would, and instead prioritize further luxuries like the freedoms I mentioned above. Well, when you look at those freedoms from the perspective of someone who just came out of the feudal age, they're really not that essential to life. So you must understand why they don't rank as high on the list of priorities for a Chinese person.
Anyone can "stand up for what they believe", but it takes a very brave individual to change what they believe. - Loundry
Whine Whine Whine...
If you were in other countries you could get imprisoned or killed from saying that. While I do appreciate people keeping an eye on our rights to make sure they don't slip away quietly. However when you are a in a country that doesn't guarantee (or even respects) freedom of speech things like Open Source as free speech, or pornography etc... all seem like silly ideas. They just want to say Hey I dislike this government without getting killed.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I do not blame muslims for everything. I merely state facts.
Extremists like you are exactly the same as muslim extremists.
You look for crazy, far-out interpretations of islam in order to justify hating them.
They look for the exact same crazy far-out interpretations in order to justify hating you.
Meanwhile, the vast majority of muslims don't give a damn about the batshit crazy stuff either of you come up with because (a) there is always more to the story than you guys are willing to present and (b) its obvious you guys are just grasping at straws to rationalize your own illogical beliefs.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Oh, I'm sorry, he didn't get run over. Factual error.
I'm not sorry for anything else I said, however, and I find flaw in many of your arguments. One is the typically snobby, infuriating attitude that the fact that one culture's values are "different" from another excuses them from behaving like civilized human beings to one another. "Here in Canada" we have a charter of rights and freedoms, as a matter of fact, which -should- guarantee that every citizen in the country has equal rights and opportunity. We're also a part of the UN, part of whose mandate is to guarantee these same rights to all people on a global basis. The fact that the Chinese apparently believe that the right thing is a "stable, centralized government," even if it means quietly killing and torturing some of its own people and overthrowing the governments of its neighbours, does not mean that it IS the right thing. Some morals go beyond boundaries, they're what join us together as human beings.
Secondly I find it absolutely laughable, and perhaps intentionally misleading that you would even -suggest- that the past few centuries have been in any way peaceful for the Western world (of which France is not considered a part, incidentally). Starting from the 18th century (a "few hundred" as you would put it), there have been over 40 major conflicts involving North America, either on its own soil or others (ones that you seem to have conveniently forgotten include both World Wars, the Vietnam and Korean Wars, and a few other blatantly obvious choices). Try reading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_North_America to educate yourself, assuming that Wikipedia isn't censored where you live. We have -not- had stable governments for centuries and we've been through our own share of atrocities ("Here in Canada" we also had concentration camps for the Japanese during the second World War, which you also seem to have conveniently forgotten).
Yes, we do take the side of idealistic students clamouring for rights and liberty, because it's the same thing that we are clamouring for every day. Freedom of expression is -not- a luxury, and if you honestly believe that it is, then I truly feel sorry for you.
If you read the report that says that 85% of those surveyed think the government should control the internet, it says, "This survey was funded by the New York-based Markle Foundation and directed by an internationally respected research team at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. As required of all public-opinion polling in China, either the survey or the surveyors must be approved by the government, and some topics that Westerners might have liked to see addressed directly, such as censorship, were not." How is any public survey useful if the respondents to the survey had to be filtered by the government?!?
Open Standards Portal
I disagree with your reasoning. You quote things, then say they are true for every Muslim. Like an individual Muslim cannot have their own opinion on any subject.
The same can be said for Americans, but that still doesn't make it correct.
The American president says that same-sex marriage is wrong, guns are an important right, privacy is not (he should be able to look at everybody he wants in great detail, without their knowledge), America brings democracy where ever it goes and if he thinks your middle eastern village has a terrorist in it, he should be able to bomb it.
You know that being American actually means something. It is not just a name. Being American means that you consider these things a virtue.
"Here in Canada" we have a charter of rights and freedoms, as a matter of fact, which -should- guarantee that every citizen in the country has equal rights and opportunity.
Don't twist my argument. My example was to show that different people in different countries have different moral grounds. Canada happens to have some similar things as the US due to similar culture, and as I said, have some dissimilar things as well. How about I protest your right to have guns?
Some morals go beyond boundaries, they're what join us together as human beings.
Wow, did you just single-handedly settle the absolute morals debate, and expected everyone to just go along with your assertion? The justification is that you believe this to be fact, thus everyone else should too? This is the exact underlying problem I'm attacking.
Secondly I find it absolutely laughable, and perhaps intentionally misleading that you would even -suggest- that the past few centuries have been in any way peaceful for the Western world (of which France is not considered a part, incidentally). Starting from the 18th century (a "few hundred" as you would put it), there have been over 40 major conflicts involving North America, either on its own soil or others (ones that you seem to have conveniently forgotten include both World Wars, the Vietnam and Korean Wars, and a few other blatantly obvious choices). Try reading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_North_America to educate yourself, assuming that Wikipedia isn't censored where you live. We have -not- had stable governments for centuries and we've been through our own share of atrocities ("Here in Canada" we also had concentration camps for the Japanese during the second World War, which you also seem to have conveniently forgotten).
You missed my point completely, perhaps intentionally. It was not about peace or conflicts. Internal chaos is not the same as conflict against other countries. Let me simplify:
- Government changes three times in the span of about thirty years, lots of people die, lots of people starve, lots of people homeless, not to mention all the opportunistic warlords making their own landgrab.
- Chinese person: "Shit, this sucks. Let's pick a government and stick with it for a while and trust it to do the right thing."
- After about another forty years of turmoil, things are finally starting to look up.
- Government censorship.
- Westerner: "HOLY FUCK THE GOVERNMENT IS CENSORING SHIT! OUR GOVERNMENT DOESN'T DO THAT, SO THAT AIN'T RIGHT! DOWN WITH THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT!"
- Chinese person: "Well gee, I don't really give a damn about the censored stuff or very explicitly and loudly expressing my ideas about how the government sucks. Also, the economy's booming lately, and changing governments suck. Yay government!
To summarize, your way is not necessarily the best way, even if it is the only way you know. Other people in other countries have had different circumstances and came up with different methods to cope, and developed different value systems as a result. Learn to look at things from a different perspective, and deal with it.
On a kind of related tangent, this is exactly the reason, in my experience, for a lot of Middle- and Far-East resentment against the US. Americans are on this moral high horse and tries to push their own values and standards onto everybody else, which is especially ridiculous considering all the hypocritical bullshit that goes on in America. You know what I'm talking about.
Yes, we do take the side of idealistic students clamouring for rights and liberty, because it's the same thing that we are clamouring for every day.
Clamour in your own country? Fine. That's the value system your society has decided to adopt. Quit judging other countries' value systems.
Freedom
Anyone can "stand up for what they believe", but it takes a very brave individual to change what they believe. - Loundry
It took them this long to be sure that international attention had died down sufficiently.
Sorry, but I'm going to have to agree with the other poster that you've simply missed out on the fact that the Chinese actually do *like* this system. If you had a time machine and took pictures of what happened at Abu Ghraib back to 2000 and asked most Americans what they thought of the events, they would've been horrified. Tell them that these were prisoners of war, and they might have been setting bombs that killed soldiers, and most Americans would have still been appalled.
Fast forward a few years until it's *our* government doing it, and patriotism / nationalism / partisanship or what-have-you has made a bunch of people wrap their brains around the notion that torture is good. Why? Because they love their country / their chosen ideology / their President or whatever, and they rationalize away any negative behavior as good. The Chinese people do the same thing. It seems to be a universal human quality that one takes pride in the group one is in and rationalizes away all bad behavior. So, I'm not surprised that the Chinese like it.
Plus, unlike us, they have been raised from birth with a values system that prioritizes social stability and harmony over individual liberty. 2500 years of Confucian thought doesn't just vanish with the modern age. China would never be the birthplace of democracy. It's just not a natural progression of their dominant social philosophies. Hopefully, they can learn, but they'll have to overcome far more inertia than the early American colonists did. FAR more inertia.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
It irks me that democracy has become such a buzzword, placed on a pedestal as some sort of basic human allowance. But it's really not the best form of government, and some would argue that it's not even a good one. Most countries that claim to be democratic don't even directly implement it.
There is no good form of government. As Churchill said: "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried." Democracy in its purest form is actually pretty terrible. The whole "two wolves and one sheep deciding what to have for dinner." But democracy as it's commonly implemented today actually has several, common anti-democratic features, like a prohibition on the right of a majority to decide what speech is acceptable or what race gets to ride on the bus or what religions one is allowed to believe in.
It's mostly those anti-democratic elements of modern democracies that most people praise when they talk about democracy being a fundamental human rights -- the right to dissent, to be different, and to still have equality of opportunities. The right to vote for your leaders is only half of the equation. (It is still important, though, as we have no system to reliably produce enlightened despots instead of the standard god-awful variety.)
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I am a westerner living and working in China now, I find that partly because of the governments insular attitudes, people in China are blissfully unaware.
When I say blissfully, I mean most are actually very happy people. The level of freedom they have in the workplace these days (I'm talking white collar) is of an equal or higher standard than the west in terms of conditions. I think most people feel there are enough problems in the world for each person to be a good representative of their people.
It is hard to convince people who already value quality of life with family and living conditions and find happiness in small things that they are missing something. Many know they are missing something, but don't feel this is in any way particular to being Chinese, more to do with being in a aggressive capitalist society.
This is also posted from within China.
And while a great number of sites are inaccessible (a number of blogs on wordpress.com and blogspot.com for a starter), it seems otherwise completely random which sites have been blocked and they simply time out as opposed to telling you that you can't go there,
At least when I was living in Singapore, things were done properly. If you accessed a site deemed BadForYou(tm), you would be diverted to another site explaining that access had been blocked by the Media something something Bureau.
And that kind of makes me wonder - how come there is no outcry regarding the blocking of sites in Singapore? Most middle eastern countries? And of course the equally morally-indefensible child porn filter in some Scandinavian countries?
If you really want to block something, then PLEASE stop P2P downloads of Celine Dion but that allegedly still works.
Here's a thought experiment. Suppose you're a Chinese entrepreneur given cash by a bunch of gullible Americans. You're an approved organisation which means you give results that won't annoy the Chinese government and cause them to pull your approval. Polling people is expensive. Do you 1) Poll lots more randomly selected people than the survey requires and cherry pick to the the politically correct results or 2) Make shit up, or poll a bunch of people who are politically reliable.
The survey is worthless.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
I lived in Taiwan and Asia for 5 years. I know and interact with a fair number of Mainland Chinese now that I'm back. Many (most) have Masters degrees or higher and have lived in the US for 10+ years.
The thing I've discovered is they are extremely Nationalist. Because I spent most of my time in Asia in Taiwan and married there I get plenty of earful of how Taiwan (and Tibet) are part of China and how ANYONE who disagrees needs to be beaten up (literally, financially or otherwise) because China is a bigger more powerful entity than anyone else. (might makes right is the prevailing Political theory among the educated)
Nationalism in China is running at levels not seen since August 1914.
So it is not "Slavery = Happiness," But "Nationalism = Happiness."
The communists are really riding a tiger here. They are constantly stoking the flames of Nationalism and desperately dependent on Economic growth to give them legitimacy and allow them continued rule. So long as they can continue to step on the throats of smaller people (Tibet) and have money in their pockets it makes the people feel happy.
Anyways, there are whole volumes of books out there for those that are interested (Look up Tyranny of History (0140146776) to get started). Also ask the next Mainland Chinese person you meet outside of China what he thought of the French President meeting with the Dali Lama recently. You will get some very interesting answers.