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Chinese Social Websites Go Under "Maintenance"
Shastri writes "After blocking several prominent social websites like Twitter, Youtube ahead of Tiananmen anniversary, by the great firewall of China, some popular social sites in China have also gone under 'maintenance'. While it is anybody's guess as to whether these events are related or purely coincidental, the announced maintenance come mostly unscheduled and last for several days might give a hint. A spreadsheet (in Chinese) is being maintained enumerating the sites that have gone down for a maintenance."
They don't want any organised protests.
I reject your reality and substitute my own.
After blocking several prominent social websites like Twitter
Thank you!
Freedom is so overrated.
Interesting. At first, in reading the summary, I thought this was the governments attempt to censor various sites. However, the article seems to imply that this is some passive aggressive form at protesting the censorship by major social websites. It's kinda like having an enemy go on a hunger strike to protest killing his people. It sounds interesting, in the current environment, it'll probably have the same effect as online petitions.
Coincidence? I think not.
Sig? No thanks. I don't smoke.
...when governments realize that the truth of what they are actually doing will shock, disgust, appall their people.
IMHO free flowing information is what ultimately caused taking down the Berlin wall.
Now, that we know that our governments torture, steal, abuse their power, serve the money-printing oligarchy instead of serving us, what are we going to do?
I guess... http://www.flickr.com/photos/andreinla/235687297/
and
http://www.flickr.com/photos/andreinla/3135176066/
the Communist state and political ideology. Noone could seriously think that the Communist party would not use any available tool to keep power.
So I was hoping to announce this to my Chinese friends, but looks like on Xiaonei, you're not allowed to write http://www.danwei.org/net_nanny_follies/chinese_websites_under_mainten.php, äå½ç½'ç(TM)çæS, tiananmen, or the link to the spreadsheet. If you do, it gives you the following error: "èäè¦å'åfæ"æææYå...å®ãèæf...å...å®ãåäsåå'Sæ-å...ä-äæå½"å...å®" (no politically sensitive stuff, porn, or ads, etc.)
....make sure you use scare quotes. That's the only way to "communicate" a trivial "fact" can call it "news".
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
At a certain point, does shutting down various websites and muzzling the press have the opposite effect than intended? Will anger over shutdown websites have those not in the know to ask what happened on this day, and is this something worth clamping down on by the government? In other words does a government working too hard to suppress knowledge and direct opinions go too far and have the opposite effect and cause unfavorable results? Also, there are many Chinese factory workers that make all sorts of nice, legitimate products that they can't afford because they would need three months of their wages to buy it. Wouldn't it make you a bit angry, especially if you worked 60 hours a week, with few other benefits?
Additionally, mainstream historians are currently of the opinion that what ended communist governments in Eastern Europe had little to do with Ronald Reagan's bluster. Instead, the current theory roughly goes that instead the citizens just got tired of the government became discontented, and found less overt ways to protest or rebel and eventually the unrest and general lack of popular support caused the government to collapse. Sorry, Reagan is God fans and libertarians, but large scale armed resistance or large scale protests will probably not happen in China and the final result will not be a libertarian paradise.
Impersonating Tycho from Penny Arcade since before there was a PA.
If the rest of the world stops doing business with China (who slaughter their own people and suppress political freedom) and the USA (who slaughters other nations' people and kills and tortures civilians) then these nations will wither and be unable to continue their courses of action.
It is up to the world to cut them off until their behaviour has become more acceptable by international norms. But I suppose the allure of those cheap Chinese goods and Hollywood films is worth more than people's lives, so that will never happen.
This may not be a bad thing. Every June 4th we mount an all out vigil for the Tienanmen Square massacre. We add it to our website, add it to every message and email we send out on that day. Maybe the "middle class" Chinese, the ones most likely to make a difference, the ones with the education and financial resources to access the web and interact with the rest of the world will notice something amiss within their "harmonious" society when every June 4th their Internet goes blank.
This "maintenance' was done by the webmasters themselves. When you look at the spreadsheet most websites are not that popular and created by hobbyists. Furthermore they stated that they participated voluntarily. Some of the messages are really interesting:
thequietsnow.com:
Due to a reason we all know this site is presently under maintenannce.
The site will be under non-technical maintenance from 3. Juin to 6. Juin
[...]
For a harmonious environment, to make an appeal to create a harmonious sociaty, I advice all webmasters and internet users to do the following during maintenance period;
1. Go out for a walk, get some fresh air, due to the hot weather, please wear a white t-shirt
2. Since the current internet is extremely unharmonious, in order to create a healty and harmonious internet environment, please put all your websites into "maintenance state", in oder to provide a better net environment
3. If you don't want to put your site into "maintenance state", please change your site into black and white colors, in oder to provide a better net environment
4. Please put your site onto the maintenance spreedsheat.
whenn.net:
Long live the harmony~~~
Due to a reason we all know
In order to supress my extremely unharmonious thoughts
this blog voluntarily will go under "technical and non-technical maintenance"
passcd.com
Just says "20" on the page
So really, this "maintenance day" is a good sign. It makes a lot of net users aware of the event, since a lot of young Chinese haven't been confronted with this event a lot. This hopefully makes them to think more...
On xiaonei, many statuses get blocked, too, with the warning not to post "politically sensitive" content. Being in Tsinghua as an international student, I've seen Chinese students testing and changing their statuses with messages like "Democracy, Freedom, CCP, ..." It was shortly after midnight that Xiaonei.com even crashed for a while due to the massive status changes. But it seems to me the young generation sees this testing more as a game and really doesn't grasp the seriousness.
What really striked me was that one status saying "In memory of 8^2 5!/3! years" got deleted on xiaonei... (You math and comp sci nerds can figure the hidden message out ;) )
Another thing I've noted is how pointless it is to talk with Chinese about their politics. They are extremely sensitive and immediately get defensive. A hong kong girl was talking about this event with a mainland student and she became very agitated. The chinese guy was absolutely overwhelmed by the critics, didn't know how to react (he was the only chinese in a group of international students) and immediately started to defend the government's action, saying things like sometimes politics has to use violence to achieve it's goal... (basically implying that they did the right thing)
Anyway, I just hope that, untill China finally faces this event correctly, people in other countries will do all their efforts not to let it become forgotten.
Babelfish + http://bbs.linyueru.com/
You have no right to carry on the current operation, because this possible below one of reasons to create
The great Great Wall starts to assume an awe-inspiring pose, closes the forum to lie low until something blows over temporarily.
Not.
Chinese internet users aren't stupid, they know what is going on. In many cases, all it does is call attention to the anniversary, perhaps more than would have been paid otherwise.
In any case, most Chinese I know seem fairly cynical about it. A translated conversation from Xiaonei, in response to a blog post by a friend about the economic crisis:
AAA: Well written!! But why can't I share it? (think Facebook sharing, posting a link to it on your own homepage)
BBB: Yeah, I can't share it either. Must be because it's today!
000(the author): Well, I can post it, you guys should be able to share it....
CCC: (a few comments about the actual content of the article)
DDD: I guess Xiaonei is having problems recently. Anything with numbers seems to run into problems.
AAA: Anything with certain numbers runs into problems around this time of year....
EEE: I'm sure this maintenance is perfectly normal, as it is for all other Chinese websites right now.(sarcasm)
BBB: There is no spoon~~! (this in English)
FFF: Wow, nice word choice guys.
Bad translation, there was a good pun or two in there I couldn't figure out how to translate. In any case, they're masters at not using any words censors would find suspicious. But they're all at least aware of it, even if its a minor annoyance.
And it will probably remain just that: A minor annoyance for most, perhaps making them remember, but they don't care that much. The ones that really want to protest will just use text messages or IM anyway, and even they hardcore democracy types know where the line is drawn. For the most part, it seems really unnecessary. If they really wanted to organize protests, they'd have been organized long before the 3 days before the anniversary, and then use texting or cells or IM to expand. I doubt there will be any protests to speak of anyway- the Chinese sort of have a silent agreement here, they know where to draw the line.
To quote Kris Kristofferson and Fred Foster, "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose".
While China is economically prosperous, I wonder how many people in China are doing better now than they were 10 years ago. If the majority aren't doing better, they are in serious trouble. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon enough.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
"Under maintenance" is obviously a message coded in anagram.
While China is economically prosperous
I wouldn't call it "economically properous". I would call it "in recovery".
Why is there always some hidden assumption that China must be economically prosperous? The downside of an economy of heavily dependent on exports is when the rest of the world's economy melts down, your buyers suddenly disappear.
My blog
Well, from 1958-61, an estimated 20-40 million people starved to death. Those events are still firmly in many people's memories. So while "prosperous" might not be the best word to describe most people, anybody middle aged or older has seen some fairly large improvements, materially, in their lives, and generally feel that the younger generation has an even brighter future.
or they could just copy the Slashdot way and put the messages in HTTP respond headers.
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
Amazingly, there remain people, who would argue, that the US is either "the same" or "not much better", and deny, that China's human rights record is particularly bad.
I mean, just imagine, the US government shutting down Twitter or any Leftist web-site at around, say, Iraq-invasion anniversary...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
This is why
In short, a massacre followed by a cover-up of the events.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
People who knows about it are using May 35th, Red Square, something Twen0 (use Chinese character for two and digit or litter O for zero) etc. Unfortunately, many teenagers don't know about, so they cannot understand what's Twen0 means, students abroad don't believe it, they think that was because US Gov lying to Chinese and want Chinese people "kill" their own Gov by themselves. Even people from elsewhere but not Beijing aged 40 or 50 (They were students at that time, and joined the event) cannot believe what happened in Beijing, they questioned my family, was that ture? Damn it we were about dying that time but they don't believe it.
Because we are afraid of censorship.
I'm truly glad the media in Hong Kong are reporting this truthfully.
Good Lord, the first sentence of this post is so dreadfully worded that I had to read it three times. Can *anybody* tell me that this sentence structure makes sense?
"After blocking several prominent social websites like Twitter, Youtube ahead of Tiananmen anniversary, by the great firewall of China, some popular social sites in China have also gone under 'maintenance'."
Your mistake here is thinking that these "middle class" Chinese people are not aware of Tiananmen/June 04. Indeed they all know about it, and are still supportive of the government's action. These people are voluntarily chosing to supress dissent and bring down their own blogs to support their government. They are being "patriotic" and that is the attitude, which you have to work to change.
The whole thing is kind of similar to the Iraq War issue over here. My liberal friends think that none of the war supporters are aware of the "Missing WMDs" and related issues. They brandish these as some kind of a trump card, thinking that the moment they mention "missing WMD," any supporter will change their mind. Of course that never actually happens as the other side sees these facts as no big deal. We all agree on the facts, it's just that we disagree on their meaning and context. (Another example: Clinton blowjob/impeachment. We all got the same facts, yet there is a wide disagreement about their significance.)
Or consider forced abortions in China. While injecting formaldehyde into a fetus is highly objectionable to most people in the West, a typical Chinese person will find it a "regrettable" yet appropriate means for population control. They would tell you that the parents were to blame for an unauthorized conception, and the abortion was needed to maintain peace, prosperity, equality, whatever. You need to help the Chinese place knowledge into its proper context, not simply "add it to every message."
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
A bit like the cameras in london go "down for maintenance" whenever there is a protest. the maintenance even follows protests from street to street - amazing!!!
Didn't the communists have a part to play in causing the famine? As part of a war effort? One chinese communist supporter at the time lost heart in the revolution, describing her government as a bunch of armed thugs.
/must/ end, because of the laws of nature (economists be damned). When that happens, will we see a loosening of government censorship in China? Seems unlikely.
There is a social contract between the government and the people that the government will return increasing prosperity to the people. The present growth of China
In the eyes of the government, stamping on freedom is about saving face and rationalised as being for the public good.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Tieneman Square was also just maintenance...
http://www.beanleafpress.com
It's nearly acceptable if you replace "by" with "with".
Oh, and you must be new here.
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
I'll tell you what's actually coincidental (though it was inevitable): this is the China Anniversary of the massacre.
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
Sorry, just got off my sister from South Carolina. Her friend was in the car that was mentioned in this story.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Lee Kaiwen, Shanghai, China
After blocking several prominent social websites like Twitter
Thank you!
Freedom is so overrated.
Indeed. And that spreadsheet should soon go to maintenance mode. It's out of date after all.