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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."
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.)
AFAIK Chinese civilians do not have any rights.
Right to peaceful protest: No.
Right to choice of political persuation: No.
Right to choice of religion: No.
Right to have children: No.
Wait! Whats a sig?
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.
A lot of the people who know about it only know a sanitised version of events ("a bunch of students tried to incite a violent dangerous and unjust revolution and the army valiantly stopped their attempt to damage society" or some such), not the whole truth. Many will guess that there was more to it, many will know there is (through information sources not controlled by the government), but many more will not or will not let themselves be interested enough to enquire in case such an enquiry gets them marked as a troublesome individual.