20 Years After Tiananmen, China Stifles Online Dissent

Posted by timothy on Sunday May 31, 2009 @09:46AM from the do-the-wave-if-you're-an-authoritarian dept.

alphadogg writes with this snippet from Network World: "The Internet has brought new hope to reformists in China since the country crushed pro-democracy protests in the capital 20 years ago. But as dissidents have gone high-tech, the government in turn has worked to restrict free speech on the Internet, stifling threats to its rule that could grow online. China has stepped up monitoring of dissidents and Internet censorship ahead of June 4, when hundreds were killed in 1989 after Beijing sent soldiers to its central Tiananmen Square to disperse protestors. The authoritarian government wants to ensure that date and other sensitive anniversaries this year pass without public disturbances, observers say. In recent months, China has blocked YouTube and closed two blog hosting sites, bullog.cn and fatianxia.com, known for their liberal content."

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Re:Some surprising results searching google.cn by goldaryn · 2009-05-31 11:41 · Score: 5, Informative

> Is google.cn only censored when it detects IP addresses within China?

Yes. Do not use a Chinese proxy, even if you are curious. You could get someone killed or thrown in jail.

If you are really curious, try putting some banned keywords into some Chinese websites from your own internet connection.

Many Chinese web searches are accessible from $your_country.