Chinese Government To Mandate PC Censorware

An anonymous reader writes "The Chinese government has sponsored the development of a censorware package called 'Green Dam Youth Escort'; basically a PC-resident IP blocker that gets regular updates of banned sites from a central government site. There are now plans afoot to mandate that all new PCs sold in China be shipped with this software. The rationale behind this is to 'stop the poisoning of children's minds.'"

Comments

Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[eldavojohn]

basically a PC-resident IP blocker that gets regular updates of banned sites from a central government site.

That's not what I read in the article, I read that the founder of Jinhui Computer System Engineering (Mr. Zhang) said:

Mr Zhang said his company now compiles and maintains the list of blocked sites, which he says is currently limited to pornography sites. But the software makes it possible to restrict other sites.

So the company seems to be maintaining that list of sites ... if it's coming from the government why wouldn't they say? China hasn't been too shy of saying it's in control of other things. Why that level of abstraction unless the Chinese government just wants all computers to have the option of being green?

Interesting to note that might be blown out of proportion as it's unclear how this software works or if it's activated by default. The reason I say that is this line from the article:

the Green Dam software can be turned off if parents want to access blocked sites, and that the program can be uninstalled. Users who want to remove it need a password that they set when the software is installed, a precaution he said is aimed at preventing children from disabling the software.

And also:

The notice says the software must either be preinstalled on the hard drive or enclosed on a compact disc.

So it's ok if I burn this to a compact disc and include it with a netbook that has no compact disc drive? And I am not required to install that on the computer?

It seems that there are ways around this for both the producers and consumers and that this is just the trend of China being Nanny State China.

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[JordanL]

You understand what communism in any form is, right?

The state controls commerce and corporations.

Xinhua is a "private" news company... owned by the Chinese government. Its ingenious really, because "public" implies some sort of transparency. The Chinese government is very fond of the federal government privately owning corporations... you have the same level of control and no specter of transparency or oversight.

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[Jawn98685]

You are confusing communism with some form (several, actually) of government. A common mistake, but a mistake nonetheless.

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[ShieldW0lf]

Communism is when everyone on the farm gets to eat the food. Typically, everyone on the farm helps to grow it too. That's communism.

Sometimes Dad makes the decisions about what the plan will be, sometimes the wise old tribal elder makes the decisions about what the plan will be, sometimes the guy with the biggest stick makes the decisions about what the plan will be, sometimes everyone raises their hand and decides together what the plan will be. But that's politics.

If you want transparency and equality, you need to keep the communism, but get the political situation to one where everyone is raising their hands.

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[JordanL]

I'm not going to debate the merits of Communism here... that's a recipie for disaster. Suffice to say that I am limitting myself to actual circumstances as they exist and affect the topics which we are discussing.

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[morgan_greywolf]

You understand what communism in any form is, right?

The state controls commerce and corporations.

You don't understand what communism is. What you describe is socialism.

Communism is where the means of production are owned by the state. In socialism, the means of production are controlled (regulated) by the state. What China has is not actually communism, it's socialism.

Capitalism is where the free market regulates itself, with limited controls by the government.

Most industrial societies, China, the U.S. and the E.U. included, are actually hybrids between capitalism and socialism, the main differences revolving around how much the system leans towards capitalism vs. socialism.

BTW, the U.S. hasn't had true capitalism since the 1930s.

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[John Hasler]

Right. The term he wants is "state socialism".

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[Registered Coward v2]

You understand what communism in any form is, right? The state controls commerce and corporations.

Actually, no. Marx's Communism is an economic model that gives workers control over their "labor value"; rather than allow capitalists to buy labor (via wages) and make a profit on the difference between inputs costs and output revenue. Central control is not a necessary tenant for that; a commune would be a more realistic model for a Marxian society.

Amongst communism's many failings was that it was used as a guise to assert state control over a population. Political leaders repalced capitalists as the decision making body.

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[eugene2k]

Communism doesn't exist in China, nor did it ever exist in any of the communist-controlled states past or present. What you called communism is actually authoritarianism. And this is not the merits of communism that are discussed, it is in fact the actual circumstances.

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[ShieldW0lf]

I'm not going to debate the merits of Communism here... that's a recipie for disaster. Suffice to say that I am limitting myself to actual circumstances as they exist and affect the topics which we are discussing.

The actual circumstances are, you're a bastard step child who is being fed by the commune but isn't doing any work who likes to hang around behind the shed scheming and smoking cigarettes.

When you stop sucking on the teat of the Communist and Socialist countries who are actually making everything that keeps you alive and take responsibility for yourself, then you can start dissing their social systems. Until you do, you're a hypocritical blowhard.

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[JordanL]

It seems people here can't understand the difference between reality and sophism.

The only true examples of Marx's Communism I can think of are certain tribes of Native Americans. And I never said the US has true capitalism, nor that China is true Communism.

People here jump at the opportunity to tell someone how simplified their argument is, instead of actually considering the content of the argument itself. I guess that's common among all us nerds though.

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[JordanL]

I'm confused why you're attacking me personally. The point I am making is very simple and accurate, no matter how you attempt to change the topic: No private corporation in China does anything without the express blessing of the Chinese government. This is relevant as it pertains to a private company maintaining their censorware, and I have no interest in discussing the Chinese social system with you beyond that, because I don't feel like having people attack me for having a different point of view than them today.

I am making a factual observation, not a value judgement.

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[Anonymous Coward]

"The state controls commerce and corporations" is not the core idea of socialism. The core idea is "power to the people"; state control just inevitably follows from such ideals.

On the other hand, socialist ideals dictate that the state and the people should be as near the same thing as they can reasonably get, which hasn't really ever been properly implemented in any country loudly proclaiming itself socialist.

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[Tanktalus]

There are people who mistake their beliefs for who they are. This is, in my view, understandable when those beliefs surround an ethical system that they act on, but sorely mistaken when it's something to do with something they have nothing to do with, e.g., who is going to win the Stanley Cup or the World Cup, or the state of the political system in a country they don't belong to, nevermind participate in. There's no "objective" anything to these folks, don't waste your time.

Then there are just trolls. These people like telling you things on the internet that they'd never say to you in person. They probably got beat up on the playground a lot. Don't feed them.

This has been a public service announcement, paid for by ... hell, I wish I was getting paid for this. *sigh*

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[HisMother]

No private corporation in China does anything without the express blessing of the Chinese government.

This is quite different from the system in the US, in which the government does nothing without the express blessing of a private corporation.

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[introspekt.i]

It seems people here can't understand the difference between reality and sophism.

Slashdot != Reality

People here jump at the opportunity to tell someone how simplified their argument is, instead of actually considering the content of the argument itself. I guess that's common among all us nerds though.

It's just more fun being contradictory. Where's the sport in simply agreeing with what you're saying?

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[Anonymous Coward]

What!? I thought everything was black and white, we were good and they were evil, capitalism prevails and communism fails. Oh no wait I wasn't born in the states.

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[JordanL]

Where's the sport in simply agreeing with what you're saying?

Well I don't agree with that.

(Is praying for the +1 Funny mods.... ) ;)

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[zwei2stein]

More detailed:

In capitalism, worker is basically supplier company with contract that gives it certain privileges. Wage is just payment for his services.

In communism, worker owns share in company and invests to it with his work. His wage is share of profit.

Pretty much anyone who owns shares of company he works in can be considered communist :)

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[unlametheweak]

You said;

It seems that there are ways around this for both the producers and consumers and that this is just the trend of China being Nanny State China.

This is a very major problem. I don't know why you used the word just. This is a very disturbing trend that started with the Great Firewall of China.

It's sad and pathetic that foreign governments don't mind this censorship as long as it coincides with their own politically correct tastes:

...says a foreign industry official familiar with the plan. "I don't think anyone would oppose the (government's) stated objective" of blocking pornographic and violent content, "but people are really concerned about the way it's being implemented," he said.

Like the article you posted earlier on "rape-ware" games, it appears that people are more than willing to censor if there are scape-goat exceptions in the witch-hunting memes of their censorship. Of course all of these political organizations (like The Ethics Organization of Computer Software) are unethical. It will always be easy to spot morally dubious political groups, because their calling card will be children, and their bandwagon will be the Moral Majority.

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[Evil Shabazz]

Communism doesn't exist in China, nor did it ever exist in any of the communist-controlled states past or present. What you called communism is actually authoritarianism. And this is not the merits of communism that are discussed, it is in fact the actual circumstances.

"Highly concentrated and centralized power structures," in which political power is generated and maintained by a "repressive system that excludes potential challengers" and uses political parties and mass organizations to "mobilize people around the goals of the government"

Gee, that sounds suspiciously like the USA?

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[wisty]

Socialism is state owned "means of production" - the state owns the industry.

Communism is the next logical step - everything is communally owned.

"Power to the people" is not exclusive to Marxism. It's also in most humanist systems. Democracy is "political power to the people", and it predates Marx by quite a few years. Epicurus and a number of other Greeks had some thoughts on it as well. Lots of Renaissance thinkers, Luther (who broke away from the Catholic church, in part to bring religious power to the people), and quite a few others.

Libertarians and Ayn Randists will also declare that their goal is "power to the people", and they aren't communists by any stretch of the imagination.

"Power to the people through the common ownership of economic assets" is communism. But of course, everyone wants to take the moral high ground and say they are the only one standing up for the little man. "Power to Big Brother" is never a popular meme (unless Big Brother is portrayed as the lessor of two evils).

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the correct term was state capitalism and is "mixed state/private capitalism". The economic mode is that of accruing capital by investment, then producing commodities to gain more capital. And nowadays its no longer necessary to be a part of the state to perform that function either. It helps ofcourse, just as in every capitalist country.

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[howardd21]

What you say sounds kind of witty, but really? Is that true? Would Chrysler agree with you? How about the banks that did not want the TARP funds in the first place, want to pay back the TARP funds, but the government said no. As long as these companies are tied to any government funding, and in many cases there has been plenty to say they have no choice but do so, the government is telling them what to do. We call that regulation, and it is on the increase.

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[oreaq]

The state controls commerce and corporations.

You don't understand what communism is. What you describe is socialism.

Actually no. I mean it can be socialism but it can also be communism or mercantilism or fascism or something completely different.

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[ShieldW0lf]

Pretty much anyone who owns shares of company he works in can be considered communist :)

When it's inclusive of all people in the society, it's a communist economy. When it's exclusive and acts to increase power for its members by increasing its share at the expense of other people in the society, it's a conspiracy to disenfranchise others. But your understanding is a lot closer to reality than most.

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[jandersen]

No private corporation in China does anything without the express blessing of the Chinese government.

For a statement as sweeping as that I think you should provide some solid sources; in my experience what you say is not true. Of course, if one were to take your words to the extreme, they would imply that people in private corporations in China need to get explicit permission to go and get a new piece of paper or go to toilet. But even if we read more permissively it just doesn't add up to what I have experienced. I would say in some cases private companies actually have more freedom than in Europe or America - it certainly seems to be easier to go and build a new factory in China than in most places in Europe. In other cases there are more restrictions, but all in all it isn't all that different from the West - the usual picture of the Chinese state having total and direct control over everything is just silly, 'cos they don't.

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[Pig Hogger]

Libertarians and Ayn Randists will also declare that their goal is "power to the people", and they aren't communists by any stretch of the imagination.

Their "power to the people" is just a demagogic smokescreen to hide the fact that, like any right-wing political party, they really mean " power to the more powerful people/croporations ", which has been the norm for unevolved societies throughout History.

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[Aceticon]

Actually if I remember my high-school classes on History right, what's practiced in the so called Communist countries is not actually communism (which is an idealistic utopia where everybody is equal) but instead the "dictatorship of the proletariat" when by force the proletariat (basically, the workers) take over the means of production as a step towards communism.

This was the way to achieve communism which was defended by Marx (and Lenin).

The other way (Socialism), which was defended by Engels involves using methods such as higher taxes for the rich to move toward a society where everybody is equal (e.g. communism).

All of the so called Communist countries were the product of revolutions by workers (the proletariat), with the stated (by the leaders) aim of establishing a dictatorship of the proletariat and creating a communist state. Without exception they all became communist in name only, remained in the dictatorship stage and create a new elite (same shit, different flies) where the interests of the proletariat where replaced by the interests of the communist part as the main guideline.

Interestingly enough, things like progressive taxation and social protections (the so called "social net" such as unemployment benefits and free health-care) which come from the Socialist ideals live on in most of Western Europe (even though Socialist parties in Europe have long ditched the aim of going towards a communist state).

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[JordanL]

Perhaps I should have clarified: native companies.

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[Anonymous Coward]

And you sound suspiciously EuroTrash.

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[couchslug]

"And this is not the merits of communism that are discussed, it is in fact the actual circumstances."

Indeed, because even an attempt to implement Communism must give way to a non-Communist authoritarian state. The structures that must be destroyed and created naturally facilitate "Bolshevik" types taking power from "Menshevik" types, so Communist states die before they are born.

Communism requires Bolsheviks and Maoists to destroy monarchist and capitalist structures, so no one should be surprised if those folks run with the ball once they have it. :)

I don't hate Commies and rather admire their willingness to fight religionists, but they only thrive where other systems are allowed to degenerate.

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[Anonymous Coward]

"Power to Big Brother" is never a popular meme (unless Big Brother is portrayed as the lessor of two evils).

Odd you should mention this, as crazy as it sounds to Westerners, China has got to be one of the closest to "Power to Big Brother" countries on the planet. It may be they view it as a lesser evil, but in interview after interview it really appears most Chinese think the state (read society) should moderate personal action (they usually use a term that sounds a lot like social harmony to my ears). I am sure there is a great diversity of opinion in China, but you can really tell you are in a different culture.

It could be Chinese think of this like a V-chip for the internet. While the V-chip was promoted in the US as "empowering parents" (of course, he who controls the rating process would have tremendous power) in China it might just not occur that the state (read society) should not make the judgments.

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[Anne Thwacks]

Under capitalism, Man exploits man - under communism, its the otherway round!

Under communism, the state owns "the means of production". According to Marx, one of the four "means of production" is Labour - the people. Thus, under communism, the state owns the people. Owning people is called "slavery".

I am A Marxist of the Groucho faction

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[Anonymous Coward]

Whereas

No Government in the USA does anything without the express blessing of the private corporations.

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[bnenning]

Their "power to the people" is just a demagogic smokescreen to hide the fact that, like any right-wing political party, they really mean " power to the more powerful people/croporations ", which has been the norm for unevolved societies throughout History.

Take a look at who's handing hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to politically connected corporations these days. Hint: not libertarians.

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[Anonymous Coward]

acts to increase power for its members by increasing its share at the expense of other people in the society, it's a conspiracy to disenfranchise others

People on the "left" and some environmentalists seem to always think economy is already a Pareto-optimal system. That would be the worst possible situation for the mankind in general, right next to a mass extinction. It would mean that in order to gain a benefit over others, one must take what is theirs, over and over again. They respond with force and the cycle begins.

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[Anonymous Coward]

This has been a public service announcement, paid for by ...

Brought to you by Carls Jr.

There it is, I bet that's what you were looking for.

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[Aris Katsaris]

Only a moron would see the USA as the best-fitting sample to that description. Or even in the top hundred best-fitting samples.

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[morgan_greywolf]

I don't know whether it is or not, but it's clear that you have misconceptions about the Chinese system of government. Not all companies in China are, in fact, run by the Chinese government.

Now you are correct in saying that Xinhua is a mouthpiece of the government of the People's Republic of China. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the article is lying about the Green Dam software, which you seem to imply. Xinhua journalists are indoctrinated to give the official view of the Chinese Communist Party, but that doesn't mean they have to lie about the particulars of a piece of software. They might, but really I don't have any reason to suspect that they would be in this case.

American journalists are similarly "indoctrinated" in the U.S.; it's just done in a far more insidious manner. U.S. reporters do not lie or make up facts, but they are biased towards official points of the Democratic and Republican parties, which are not, in fact, very different. It's not very much different in China.

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[westlake]

this is just the trend of China being Nanny State China.

Trend?

What trend?

China has a tradition of centralized - intrusive - bureaucratic - government that goes back over 2,000 years.

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[ShieldW0lf]

People on the "left" and some environmentalists seem to always think economy is already a Pareto-optimal system.

Our economic systems are administered using a abstract simulation of reality, not reality itself.

These systems only functions in situations where there is scarcity. In situations where there is abundance, they become defunct.

Questions of motives aside, in the name of preserving the administrative system, wealth is intentionally destroyed and scarcity artificially created. Commonplace thing that happens every day, not something subject to debate. It happens.

When it happens, it amounts to a systemic cost, an administrative overhead.

To judge the true productive benefit of this system over another system, the systemic costs must be weighed against the productivity gains.

If the wealth destroyed to make the system work is less than the extra wealth created by the efficiencies of the system, then it is a net loss.

The less natural abundance there is, the more useful our system is. Conversely, the greater our capacity to create abundance becomes, the less useful our system is.

This means that our system is best used as a tool, to help elevate people from scarcity into abundance, after which our system should be set aside until circumstances change for the worse and we need to pull it out again. We should wish for it never to happen.

How does this relate to what you said? It relates because all this wealth destruction is done so we can collectively pretend that we live in a Pareto-optimal system and govern ourselves accordingly. THAT is what the people on the left are pissed off about, even if they aren't necessarily articulate enough to express it.

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[Registered Coward v2]

Under capitalism, Man exploits man - under communism, its the otherway round!

Under communism, the state owns "the means of production". According to Marx, one of the four "means of production" is Labour - the people. Thus, under communism, the state owns the people. Owning people is called "slavery".

Actually, if you reread Marx he has a bit different slany - and teh state does not own the means of production

I am A Marxist of the Groucho faction

That's OK, I'm a Leninist of the John faction. All hail Marx and Lenin (sounds like a good album)

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[Anonymous Coward]

No, not really.

The entire purpose of Governments, at least from their proponents, is to protect the weak from the powerful. Individualist thought proposes the State has failed this intended purpose and instead has become simply another vehicle for the power-hungry to extend their control over others. It proposes we should try to look for other solutions to our problems.

Not to be confused with what American politics calls the "Right-Wing." Their political thinking is quite different.

If you're going to criticize something, at least try to understand it first.

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[westlake]

This is quite different from the system in the US, in which the government does nothing without the express blessing of a private corporation.

This is neither Insightful or clever. It is lazy, anti-historical nonsense.

The Roman Catholic Church reaches the voter - and the politician - on more elemental level than GM.

But over the years the church has lost substantial - hard-fought - debates over divorce, birth control, abortion, end-of-life and - in some states - on marriage for homosexuals.

The system is designed to make very difficult for any one individual or institution to control all the levers of power.

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[Anonymous Coward]

It relates because all this wealth destruction is done so we can collectively pretend that we live in a Pareto-optimal system and govern ourselves accordingly. THAT is what the people on the left are pissed off about, even if they aren't necessarily articulate enough to express it.

I agree what you said about the systemic cost. There is always the threat of the "other" (islam, for example) to throw to the table in the case of people starting to question the system.
  However, some labour unions have used in their political rhetorics (in Europe) the premise of a Pareto-optimal system (and not worked against the illusion) in such a strong way that the non-radical "left", the social democrats backed by major labour unions have been colored by these arguments as having a strong contribution to the problem of systemic overhead, incapable of solving the problems of a singular voter. There seems to be unresolved tensions between the liberal (American style) left and the so called "parties for the industrial worker", namely the social democrats.

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, your understanding of Libertarianism is magnificently wrong. Libertarianism is not right-wing, not "power to corporations", basically not anything you believe. It is, however, decidedly not socialism. Which, if I might be so bold, seems to be the source of your objection.

It seems pretty easy to me to posit that "taking something that is not yours" is a-priori evil. Adding "because they are rich" to your justification does nothing to deflect the evil. The same goes for infringing on the rights of others. Socialism, Communism, Fascism, etc. - they all fail this test. Liberty may have harsh consequences, but it does not do evil to others. The meme that "the wealthy are evil and don't deserve what they have" likely stems from an old-world feudal system where wealth was in fact gained through exploiting others. In a libertarian society this is not possible. Of course, there is no truly libertarian society, so I can happily quote from a pristine idealistic society rather than messy reality.

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[Anonymous Coward]

I expect your application to Team America soon

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[Anonymous Coward]

so stupid, i hate the chinese government, screw all government... all of em. i have this predictable gag reflex any time somebody says "think of the children" "dont poison youths minds" etc etc -- poison the fuck out of em man, who gives a crap, we don't live in happy, fair, even world -- kids need to learn how much this place sucks before they get to be adults and realize it and have breakdowns and shoot their heads off.

all joking aside... we shouldn't even have government, and its too bad that the minute i say "anarchy" its meaning completely disintegrates. oh if only we could wipe the memory of democracy, communism, socialism, all those fucking plagues on the world from memory. government is just the best tool for power hungry assholes to codify the masses into little cogwheel servants...

oh final note... if this comment isn't deleted... the social contract is just more bullshit out of propagandized history books, we're all slaves, authority is imaginary... until there's a gun in your face and even then i'd let em pull the trigger before i said you were right. fight the power bitches, make your own rules.

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[Anonymous Coward]

if this comment isn't deleted

Your mom says to stop pretending to be a martyr and come upstairs for lunch.

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[Anonymous Coward]

they really mean " power to the more powerful people/croporations ", which has been the norm for unevolved societies throughout History.

I'm concerned that this is modded insightful...

What they really mean is to bring power to the people, more specifically to the individual. There is no interest in unduly empowering Corporations or wealthy individuals, simply in leveling the playing field between all individuals. By empowering the individual, power can be returned to the people. This is by no means an unevolved social model.

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[Evil Shabazz]

I'll ignore your inability to relate to others in a civil manner the way you completely ignore irony in political commentary. Score you -1 Flamebait.

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahhh...and we can certainly trust you leftists to "set everything right" if we just give you enough power to do it, eh?

"All animals are equal...but some animals are more equal than others" - George Orwell

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[Anonymous Coward]

Well said.

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually that is what communists mean, only they don't realize that they mean it. Communist societies are ones in which a minuscule uber-elite have vast power, up to and including the power to arbitrarily exterminate other citizens. Meanwhile the average person is literally a slave.

The united states was founded upon libertarian ideals born from the enlightenment. It is not without its flaws, but it is heaven on earth compared to the hell that communism wrought across 4 continents. It is also preferable to the purgatory that soft-socialist nations have decayed into. Obama and his crew are working hard now to destroy the US, but they won't succeed. The American people are not nearly as stupid as the left likes to believe they are.

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[bogjobber]

How about the banks that did not want the TARP funds in the first place, want to pay back the TARP funds, but the government said no.

Umm....citation please?

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahhh...and we can certainly trust you leftists

You are the one quoting a radical socialist author such as George Orwell with apparent approval. And you are calling the moderates in this conversation "leftists." Dude, at least get your ad hominmen consistent here.

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[jandersen]

Can whoever modded my comment "flamebait" explain why, please? As far as I can see I made a thoughtful and balanced comment. Is it now "Flamebait" to point out facts in a sober way?

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[chonglibloodsport]

Corporations don't buy the voters, they buy their (supposed) representatives.

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[blind biker]

Democracy was implemented long, long ago already, by the romans - though it was only open to the male Citizens of Rome, it was a true democracy.

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[vuffi_raa]

here are people who mistake their beliefs for who they are.

I have top admit though that I know some people who I know (the in-laws are a good example) who truly are their beliefs though they wouldn't tell you so- they literally make every decision (where they work, where they live, what they wear, etc) based on their religious beliefs alone.

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[alexo]

Libertarians and Ayn Randists will also declare that their goal is "power to the people", and they aren't communists by any stretch of the imagination.

Their "power to the people" is just a demagogic smokescreen to hide the fact that, like any right-wing political party, they really mean " power to the more powerful people/croporations ", which has been the norm for unevolved societies throughout History.

Please name one current instance of an "evolved" society in which this is not de facto the case.

Re:Nanny State Cat Accepts Nanny State

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet the Party leaders had chauffered limos and country dachas, while the 'workers' stood in lines 3 times to buy one loaf of bread. Subsequently, we have the absurdity of the Chinese Communist Party running a particularly corrupt capitalist system.

Wouldn't it be great if some hackers used the back door in the software to load the new book" Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang " into every Chinese computer that has the Green Dam software? Just a suggestion, for hackers who would like to demonstrate their abilities, and yet do good rather than harm....While you're at it, how about adding Charter 08?

Chinese hackers to mandate leet speak

[Drakkenmensch]

It figures that chinese dissidents will still be able to get around censorship filters for a while before the communist regime learns how most basic filters can be dodged with search terms like "pr0n" and "1337 h4xx0rz".

Re:Chinese hackers to mandate leet speak

[Anonymous Coward]

It figures that chinese dissidents will still be able to get around censorship filters for a while before the communist regime learns how most basic filters can be dodged with search terms like "pr0n" and "1337 h4xx0rz".

I am sorry, but I cannot help but think that a search for "pr0n" and "1337 h4xx0rz" would come up with a list of images that would probably result in gouging my own eyes out. It is simply not tempting in the least.

Re:Chinese hackers to mandate leet speak

[eldavojohn]

It figures that chinese dissidents will still be able to get around censorship filters for a while before the communist regime learns how most basic filters can be dodged with search terms like "pr0n" and "1337 h4xx0rz".

No. Chinese "dissidents" looking to remove this filter need only uninstall it or disable it with the password they set when the software is installed.

I don't think you understand how this software works in even the most basic sense, it bans IPs. It doesn't ban searches for terms spelled correctly or incorrectly, it bans IPs. The hackers can call their sites whatever they want. They will just be added to the list of numbers sooner or later anyway. The best thing they could do to avoid being on the list is just continually change their IP addresses.

I wouldn't be surprised, however, to learn of Chinese kids implementing proxies on machines without the software to access whatever they want.

Re:Chinese hackers to mandate leet speak

[shentino]

Or the chinese government could just mandate TPM and make it technologically impossible to bypass...

They probably already make it a serious offense to disable it anyway.

Re:Chinese hackers to mandate leet speak

[fedcb22]

That's right, I guess they're just going to mandate that the millions of computers that don't have TPM on disappear. Oh, and it's not technologically impossible to bypass either. It may be very difficult, but when it comes down to it, you still have the keys.

Re:Chinese hackers to mandate leet speak

[mathnerd314]

What if they make it so that people who don't have the software can't connect to the Internet at all? For example, they could have the software add a header to each packet, and drop packets that don't have the header (in the same way that they already drop packets that match certain keywords).

Old news

[should_be_linear]

This was news back in 1984.

Re:Old news

[Quantumstate]

My school has a website blocking system and interestingly enough they have blocked the wikipedia page on 1984 (Both the year and the novel). The IT technician apparently hadn't read the book so he rather missed the situation when we mentioned it.

Re:Old news

[Anonymous Coward]

+1 ironic

Re:Old news

[menphix]

I'm curious where r u going to school? AFAIK even students in China are allowed to openly discuss the book 1984.

Re:Old news

[evilWurst]

If the wiki bans are on specific pages? Probably a lot of the literature classes in that school are required to certain books like 1984 and write an essay or report on them. The wiki ban would be a weak attempt at stopping them from trying to cheat.

Re:Old news

[Quantumstate]

In the UK. It is not the schools policy they just buy a random piece of filtering software every so often since people usually work round the system pretty rapidly.

It gives a score for some pages but others are blocked by category. 1984 got a fairly low score. Some other things which are blocked on Wikipedia with a high score are Chairman Mao, Marxism (but not Communism), Korea, torture (very high scoring).

Count down to a hack around it in...

[fprintf]

3 .... 2.... 1....

Seriously, isn't this like the dutch boy with his finger in the dike (no, not dyke, get yer minds outta the gutter).

What I mean is that many forms of DRM are hacked within days or weeks of release. I cannot imagine a concerted effort of Chinese hackers or those in sympathy with the Chinese people, would not be able to bypass this and publish, even via sneakernet, a hack around it.

Re:Count down to a hack around it in...

[Anonymous Coward]

"The Chinese government has sponsored the development of a censorware package called 'Green Dam Youth Escort';

So every PC is being shipped with a Youth Escort Service?

Re:Count down to a hack around it in...

[CRCulver]

I cannot imagine a concerted effort of Chinese hackers or those in sympathy with the Chinese people

As I wrote in another comment here, I suspect the Chinese people are generally in favour of censorship. Though people in the West may want to paint the Chinese masses as a suffering people yearning to break free of the yoke of oppressive government, such a portrayal may not stand up to facts. Indeed, just last week in the International Herald Tribune (the international version of the New York Times) there was an article about how Chinese students nowadays think Tiananmen-square style civic commitment needs to be nipped in the bud, because it would threaten China's economic development that is making them very happy.

Re:Count down to a hack around it in...

[John Hasler]

The Chinese government has long since figured out that it doesn't matter if a tiny number of geeks can get around their censorship as long as they can impose it on most of the population. And they can and do.

Re:Count down to a hack around it in...

[Registered Coward v2]

Though people in the West may want to paint the Chinese masses as a suffering people yearning to break free of the yoke of oppressive government, such a portrayal may not stand up to facts. Indeed, just last week in the International Herald Tribune (the international version of the New York Times) there was an article about how Chinese students nowadays think Tiananmen-square style civic commitment needs to be nipped in the bud, because it would threaten China's economic development that is making them very happy.

That's pretty much true everywhere - as long as people feel they're getting their share and not directly repressed they pretty much don't care what type of government they have.

Re:Count down to a hack around it in...

[T Murphy]

As far as I've heard, the sentiment in China is that democracy is too weak and leads to civil unrest, so the authoritarian rule is accepted as a needed form of government. I completely agree with you that the average Chinese person is content without democracy or what we see as basic rights. I am afraid, though, that the comparison in their mind is a choice of a stable authoritarian rule, or an unstable democracy. I would be curious what the general opinion would be if they were guaranteed equal stability with either form of government.

Re:Count down to a hack around it in...

[dave420]

A hack around it? How about clicking 'Uninstall' - it has that feature, you know.

Re:Count down to a hack around it in...

[hackingbear]

Nope. That's not the sentiment I have heard while I was in China. The people there actually like the idea of democracy and most of them have an over-idealistic view of the American democracy (like they don't quite grasp all those special interest influence and political contributions,) but they are afraid of any political movements as they still have bad memory of the cultural revolution. Big social changes only happen if it is driven by a big social movements.

Also the current main Chinese belief is pragmatism -- whatever that solves the problems on hand is good. Judging from results of most democratic countries in the world -- India, eastern Europe, Mexico, Philllipine, they don't fare much better in most aspects that people care about -- anti-corruption, health care, education, and now environment. Most of the rest are built on mountains of debts. So while they (especially the poors) still think democracy is good, they are not too eager to pursue it.

Unfortunately, democracy is an ideal that sounds very good on paper but always inescapably screwed in real world implementation, just like communism (which Chinese also got fed up with.)

Re:Count down to a hack around it in...

[Kaiwen]

"I would be curious what the general opinion would be if they were guaranteed equal stability with either form of government."

And how do you guarantee that? Having lived in numerous countries around the world, I'd argue that, if stability is your meter-stick, authoritarian regimes win hands down. By far the most unstable countries I've lived in -- democracies all -- were in central Africa; in Zaire, for example, the people lived in abject terror of the military. I'm personally of the opinion that stable democracies are in the minority, and that the US owes its stability far more to the balance of powers than to democracy per se. Absent that, democracies are easy prey to anyone who manages to amass enough power. Hardly a month goes by you don't hear yet another story of fraudulent elections, e.g.

Currently, I live in Shanghai, where I find life on a daily basis nearly indistinguishable from the States: I get up, go to work, collect my paycheck; I have all the usual amenities at my fingertips -- movies, good restaurants, excellent parks and recreational facilities, etc. And at that level, issues such as democracy and censorship tend to fade into the bleary realm of principle. With most Chinese feeling the government performs well, and with a general level of satisfaction in their daily lives, what practical difference does it make that they don't elect their national leaders, or that I can't get to Youtube?

Vis-a-vis the government, the only significant attitudinal difference I've noticed is that the Chinese feel a bit more detached from theirs. As much as Americans like to diss their own government, it's generally one of the first places they turn to for help -- the US has government hotlines for everything -- and they expect to get it. Chinese tend to be a bit more pessimistic about such things. But then, so were Zairians.

Lee Kaiwen, Shanghai, China

Re:Count down to a hack around it in...

[Kaiwen]

"it has that feature, you know."

It's its current iteration, at least.

The grandparent post is correct. The Great Firewall, dubbed the most sophisticated of its kind in the world, is easily circumvented by anyone who knows how to spell "anonymous proxy" or, barring that, "Tor". IP-banning software, even if it's mandated in the future, will be no different. The operative word here is won't, not can't, and the point is the vast majority of Chinese netizens won't bother circumventing it, even if they know they can.

Of course, I run Linux (Ubuntu, thanks for asking), so all this is moot to me.

Lee Kaiwen, Shanghai

I'm not sure if I'm cynical...

[Engeekneer]

..but I kind of expect this from the Chinese government already. I also doubt it stops at blocking IP addesses. It'll be interesting to hear what people really find the sofware doing.

Can't be expected to change much

[CRCulver]

I imagine things will stay pretty much the same as they always have, even if the censorship is moving from the Great Firewall of China to the PC. Before, if you were an expat or a clued-up local, you would just install Tor on your PC. Now you would just wipe the hard drive and install your OS of choice from a trustworthy CD. The Chinese government can be happy that the vast majority of people will not seek to get around the blocks, and the intelligentsia will find it easy to get the information they want. It seems like a win for both sides.

I would caution, however, against vilifying China too much in this regard. Even much of the Chinese intelligentsia believes that their country needs a brutal government to avoid total chaos. Often the very Chinese you think would be rebelling against measures like this--people who read foreign news and travel or even reside abroad--think it necessary for the health of their country. Moments like this do lead one to question if American notions of freedom are truly applicable to every country.

Re:Can't be expected to change much

[sakdoctor]

This is just more bullshit "orders from the top" that won't affect anything.

I bought a laptop from a large, reputable chain and after handing over the cash they still whipped out the white-label CDR with sharpie written "Windows XP Chinese edition".
Had to decline because it would have been a serious waste of 45 min.

Re:Can't be expected to change much

[Registered Coward v2]

I would caution, however, against vilifying China too much in this regard. Even much of the Chinese intelligentsia believes that their country needs a brutal government to avoid total chaos. Often the very Chinese you think would be rebelling against measures like this--people who read foreign news and travel or even reside abroad--think it necessary for the health of their country. Moments like this do lead one to question if American notions of freedom are truly applicable to every country.

If you don't subscribe to the idea that China is one monolithic country but rather a collection of differing groups bound together by a strong central government (such as the old USSR); then the "chaos" would be a natural breakup into separate nations.

Re:Can't be expected to change much

[imgod2u]

The U.S. notion of freedom doesn't even apply to the U.S. See Patriot Act and the recent changes to FISA. See the DMCA. See the Bush (and now Obama) administration.

While I truly believe in the ideals of democracy and civil rights, there have always been times when practicality has been opposed to it. Of course, an authoritarian government cannot sustain itself (see USSR, China pre-capitalist expansion, Cuba, etc.) economically, so eventually the government will have to let the reigns loose if it wants to preserve the country in the global scheme of things.

Re:Can't be expected to change much

[Pig Hogger]

Even much of the Chinese intelligentsia believes that their country needs a brutal government to avoid total chaos.

The chinese have, indeed, a passion for disorganization. The term "clusterfuck", abbreviated C.F. is actually the politicall-correct version of the original meaning of C.F., which was "chinese firedrill".

The current communist régime is fighting very hard to rid China of it's historical demons that made it stagnate for so long (how else a billion people strong nation could be comparatively harmless compared to, say, Israël, which for it's absurdly tiny size, has brought about an unprecedented amount of grief and destruction on Earth?), then fell prey to western imperialism, and one such demon is their passion for disorganization...

Re:Can't be expected to change much

[plasticsquirrel]

Moments like this do lead one to question if American notions of freedom are truly applicable to every country.

The following is from a book called Understanding This Chinese Generation, by Nan Huaijin, a very famous Confucian scholar and Buddhist master in China. Not only does it discuss this subject of American-style democracy being wrong for Chinese culture, but it also exposes a keen understanding of the U.S. government's inseparable ties to powerful economic forces. Intelligent and educated Chinese actually have a very sober view of the American system that is difficult to get from within it. This book was written years ago as well, so it is all the more impressive and prescient. We seldom hear the views of educated and intelligent Chinese, so /.'ers would do well to read this and understand his perspective.

Four years back I had a series of conversations with an American graduate student studying in China. Our discussions, which he transcribed and planned on translating into English, focused on issues relating to Western and Chinese culture. On one occasion, when the issue of freedom and democracy came up, I remarked, "In our modern era America alone carries the flag of Western cultural glory, championing democracy and freedom. But what Americans like to call democracy and freedom is actually the 'American style of democracy and freedom.' Although this style is by no means suitable for most other people and places, it is especially inappropriate for the five thousand year old culture of China. However, not only do Americans not understand this fact, but you also refuse to even consider its possibility. So your good intentions and American style of democracy and freedom are matched by an equally powerful response of antipathy wherever they turn up."

"What exactly do you mean when you say the American style of democracy and freedom," he asked. I replied, "The answer requires quite a complex discussion of two hundred years of contributing factors, from the founding of your country to the present. To summarize though, from the eighteenth century to the present, as America's forefathers flocked to the New World, they carried with them the culture of the European industrial revolution. However, coming from many different countries such as England, France, Germany, and Austria they carried with them the unique cultural perspectives of their individual ethnic backgrounds. These perspectives, combined with an ideological inclination toward the promotion of the general welfare, helped form the spiritual foundation of your nation â" 'of the people, by the people, and for the people.' However, regardless of what shape it assumes, hiding in the framework of liberalism and democracy has been the secret ingredient of the market forces that drive industry and commerce. This was true at the birth of your nation, and after two hundred years remains true to this very day. To be honest, the behind-the-scenes bosses who actually manage your democratic politics are inseparable from the capitalist and commercial industrial complex which surrounds them. Yes its true! Even today, America's territorial ambitions abroad have been quite limited. However, the same thing cannot be said of your desire to occupy foreign markets. This hidden agenda, when added to the tangle of your democratic politics and an unsophisticated provincial populace, has resulted in hesitation, inconsistency, and fence-sitting on the international scene. If you really want to live up to your superpower status, you must combine your international political experience with an in-depth study of the Chinese classic The Spring And Autumn Annals. Only then will you grasp the righteous principle of 'restoring the nation and insuring its posterity.'" Having returned home, today this American colleague has begun teaching The Spring and Autumn Annals and its related commentaries at Harvard University.

There is also an interesting passage abo

Re:Can't be expected to change much

[Anonymous Coward]

Very interesting post. I was having a similar conversation with a friend recently (both of us have lived in China), and I was saying that I didn't think the Western ideas of free speech and democracy could be applied to Chinese culture.

If in its classical period, the written language and culture of Western Europe had been integrated, then it would resemble China, and the West and its history would not be what they are today.

The Romans å'ï¼Y

Re:Can't be expected to change much

[Aris Katsaris]

Comparatively harmless. Tibet not included. Western Turkestan not include. Falun Gong not included. Tien-a-men not included. Aggression against Taiwan not included. Anyone who actually wants to access the Internet not included.

No, the only grief you care about, is when JEWS are involved.

Don't try to pass off antisemetism as some sort of insight in global politics. The "grief and destruction" supposedly surrounding Israel is a result of it being a useful anti-Western rallying cry for Arabs and Muslims in the middle east -- much greater grief and destruction (e.g. Darfur in Sudan -- which the Chinese support) goes unnoticed by you and them.

China is one of the main supporters of Sudan, btw. So much for "comparatively harmless". And Sudan in turn has supported the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda -- one of the most brutally murderous squads anywhere.

Re:Can't be expected to change much

[nurb432]

Sure, you can wipe the PC and go on your merry way ( unless TPM is in place ), but don't count on getting online. It would be trivial to require this 'monitor' to be wedged in down in your IP stack before you can connect to an ISP ( sort of like how AOL and NetZero did it ).

Even worse, if you try it, the ISP might report you to the government as an attempt to 'circumvent'.

Re:Can't be expected to change much

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm. A Confucianist says "you're all wrong, and you need to study Confucianism". A Chinese scholar insists that China is the center of the world. Someone from country A says "you country B folk can't see past your bias!" and then goes on a spiel deeply infused with country A bias.

All of this is unsurprising - and unhelpful.

Re:Can't be expected to change much

[Kaiwen]

"I imagine things will stay pretty much the same ... . Before ... you would just install Tor on your PC. Now you would just wipe the hard drive and install your OS of choice from a trustworthy CD."

Agreed, in part. However, as others have argued, technologically there is nothing preventing the government from, say, forcing the software into the IP stack, or requiring ISPs to incorporate it into the software suite they already install on customer PCs ("You need this to access the Internet" is all your friendly serviceman need say)***. Of course, as long as the software is restricted to IP banning, any anonymous proxy will still circumvent it. But can you say "feature creep"? Let Skype be a lesson to us all: Breaching Trust: An analysis of surveillance and security practices on China's TOM-Skype platform (http://www.nartv.org/mirror/breachingtrust.pdf).

I would caution, however, against vilifying China too much in this regard. Even much of the Chinese intelligentsia believes that their country needs a brutal government to avoid total chaos.

I was tempted to argue with your adjectives here, but then why? Ask the inmates at Gitmo or Abu Ghraib about the brutality of the US government, and then note the ease with which the Patriot Act passed, and the significant percentage of American intelligentsia that argued for its necessity in protecting American values. The American bogeyman is the "terrorist", hell-bent on destroying "freedom". Replace "terrorist" and "freedom" with "political dissident" and "social harmony" and the Chinese argument becomes indistinguishable. Certain levels of censorship and monitoring (pronounced "warrantless wiretapping") are viewed as necessary and essential tools in the struggle to protect social harmony from the onslaught of its political enemies, and most Chinese are more than happy to allow it.

Lee Kaiwen, Shanghai.

***Actually, I'm surprised it wasn't done this way. Since the the software only needs to be present on PCs that actually access the Internet, what more efficient point of attack than ISPs? Mandating the software for Internet service would go along way toward ensuring its ubiquity. 'Course, I don't wanna be giving the government any ideas :-).

Re:Can't be expected to change much

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, CC - I'd be happy to take away YOUR freedom to express your views, and do unhampered reading on the internet. Obviously, you can't handle it responsibly, since you advocate dictatorship. I also think you should be allowed to view only official Communist government sponsored sites. And you should be locked up for a few years, and beaten daily, if you disobey or complain about the restrictions. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, doncha know.

Wouldn't it be great if some hackers used the back door in the Green Dam software to load the new book" Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang " into every Chinese computer that has the Green Dam software? Just a suggestion, for hackers who would like to demonstrate their abilities, and yet do good rather than harm....While you're at it, how about adding Charter 08?

But does it run on Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

...or that means Linux is officially banned in China

Re:But does it run on Linux

[ickleberry]

you could just have a Linux box on the same network as the filtered windows box. really if they wanted it to be more effective they should have put it in the rou.. shit i need to stop giving those chinese bastards ideas

Re:But does it run on Linux

[FrostDust]

Ever heard of Red Flag Linux? I'd expect them to they eventually made it compatible, or even have it pre-installed.

a BIOS modification

[itsthebin]

I doubt it.

only runs on windows - probably

another bottom feeder trying to get a juicy govt contract - probably

will it work - of course not

Haha, this silliness reminds me of

[Anonymous Coward]

the amish computer virus...

Please don't click this link: http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Lab/4199/virus.html

Don't say I didn't warn you!

'stop the poisoning of children's minds'

[sdnoob]

There's only one way to do that, and installing censorware on every PC in the country *isn't* it.

Re:'stop the poisoning of children's minds'

[TaoPhoenix]

Cleaning up their Industry might help.

Re:'stop the poisoning of children's minds'

[Rogerborg]

Well, it's their fault. If they'd just lend us more money, we could afford to "pay" them more for their products, and then they could spend "our" money on cleaning up their processes.

Re:'stop the poisoning of children's minds'

[Anonymous Coward]

There's only one way to do that, and installing censorware on every PC in the country *isn't* it.

Ideal for implementation in the UK then, I can see NuLabour drooling over this tech already!

Re:'stop the poisoning of children's minds'

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha ha ha ha ha!

--Peking University student

More propaganda

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it's just me but it seems like there is around-the-clock negative news coverage of China from western media outlets. When was the last time you read a positive news article about China? I think we feed our people just as much propaganda as the Chinese government does, if not more.

Re:More propaganda

[moz25]

Yes, it's just you. You are not pointing out factual errors in the article, just complaining that there is a report of something you apparently agree is rather negative. How about complaining that the unelected politicians over there commit to this behavior?

Exactly why are you trying to compare China with the free(er) world? They are entirely different situations when it comes to control of information. The very fact that you can say "wow, this is all propaganda" without fearing that knock on your door already contradicts what you're trying to say.

The Chinese government has an elaborate system in place to *control* which news media its citizens may get their information from. Criticize the state and your site gets blocked. With some bad luck, you personally get blocked as well.

We on the other hand, can consult any news media we like. Some choose to consult the likes of Fox News, which seems to have 24/7 negative reporting on the US government (i.e. Obama). Now we may see that as pure propaganda, but we are still free to make up our minds on our own terms and *without* government intervention.

Re:More propaganda

[Anonymous Coward]

When was the last time you read a positive news article about China?

Every single weeknight, without fail. On Bloomberg.

I don't know who's the bigger idiot: you or the two schmucks who modded you up.

Re:More propaganda

[imgod2u]

Since when has "propaganda" meant "sole news source enforced by the government"? Last I checked, it simply meant an unfair advertisement in which data was either excluded, made up, or presented in such a form as to support one point of view.

Yes, the U.S. is miles ahead of the Chinese media in that there is still a free (for purchase) press. That doesn't take away from the fact that they all seem to like to report on the negative actions of the Chinese government (and there are many). Now, this may very well be just a side-effect of the fact that people in the U.S. have a generally negative feeling towards the Chinese government and that reporting such things that reinforces this view sells news. That doesn't make it any less lopsided.

I've always viewed the press as a 4th branch of government. Its purpose should not be to report what brings in money; it should be reporting as much of the facts as it can get its hands on. In that, our current media has failed.

Re:More propaganda

[Jesus_666]

Last entirely positive news? Must've been when they bought our (German) monorail tech. It s been a couple of years, though.

Re:More propaganda

[PRMan]

I've always viewed the press as a 4th branch of government. Its purpose should not be to report what brings in money; it should be reporting as much of the facts as it can get its hands on. In that, our current media has failed.

Actually, compared to Congress and the Whitehouse, I'd say it's doing better. The Supreme Court has been decent (note I didn't say great) lately, though.

Re:More propaganda

[moz25]

Dude, you're not sane in your head.

If you've been on this website for longer than a few days, you will notice that any pro-censorship effort by *any* government gets a lot of negative commentary.

There were several articles about Australian government sucking because they tried state-mandated censorship (for the children of course), there were tons of articles in the YRO category criticizing the US government (voting machines sucking, Bush sucking, Obama maybe being too pro-copyright, etc).

Exactly why should China be treated any differently?

Maybe you are a little over-sensitive to the idea that China isn't all that?

E-rate

[AMSmith42]

And I thought e-rate was bad. At least this kind of filtering in the U.S. is only mandated in the elementary schools and public libraries... so far.

Re:E-rate

[John Hasler]

> And I thought e-rate was bad. At least this kind of filtering in the U.S. is only
> mandated in the elementary schools and public libraries...

Only ones that get Federal money (which is almost all, unfortunately)

> ...so far.

Look up the "Child Online Protection Act". The Supreme Court killed it.

Re:E-rate

[AMSmith42]

Yes, the CIPA is what I'm referring to in regard to e-rate. Naturally, an entity wouldn't be subject to it if it wasn't applying for money. Like most schools, as you pointed out, ours does.

I hadn't realized that about the COPA. Thanks for the tip. This doesn't mean that someone won't try again though.

Censore Malware?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did anyone else read this as "Chinese Government to Censor Malware" the first time around?

Kind of disturbing...

[MoldySpore]

China is the country that the USA keeps borrowing money from...wonder how long it will be before we start noticing some policy changes to our internet? What would the US government do if the Chinese government demanded we censor our internet the same way they are, or they won't let us borrow anymore money?

A slippery slope, indeed.

Re:Kind of disturbing...

[Anonymous Coward]

China is caught in a trap where the US is concerned. They own so much of our debt that they cannot afford to take actions that would harm our economy. Whenever our government feels like deficit spending, China throws good money after bad trying to protect their considerable investment. I'm constantly amazed at how okay our elected officials are with this arrangement since it will eventually lead to an economic catastrophe for both countries. The mindset always seems to be that it's a problem the next generation of politicians will have to deal with.

Re:Kind of disturbing...

[patro]

What would the US government do if the Chinese government demanded we censor our internet the same way they are, or they won't let us borrow anymore money?

A slippery slope, indeed.

If they don't let the US borrow more money then the US won't be able to pay interest for the existing debts, so that's a double edged sword.

Re:Kind of disturbing...

[Krneki]

You could do the same as Pirate Bay. USA here -> o , China over there -------> O. My laws here, yours there.

Re:Kind of disturbing...

[castironpigeon]

Meh. China doesn't sponsor US politicians. Corporations do. China doesn't legitimize their positions. US citizens do. So how would China influence US policy? They wouldn't. And besides there are worse influences here at home to worry about.

Re:Kind of disturbing...

[Registered Coward v2]

China is the country that the USA keeps borrowing money from...wonder how long it will be before we start noticing some policy changes to our internet? What would the US government do if the Chinese government demanded we censor our internet the same way they are, or they won't let us borrow anymore money?

A slippery slope, indeed.

In the end, the political calculus is:

Which side is willing to endure the most pain?

The US could just as easily refuse to honor the Chinese debt; or massively devalue the dollar and wipe it out. Not good options, but both sides have power in this situation.

Re:Kind of disturbing...

[SDF-7]

Given this and especially this you might want to rethink that statement.

Re:Kind of disturbing...

[Anonymous Coward]

What would the US government do if the Chinese government demanded we censor our internet the same way they are, or they won't let us borrow anymore money?

Can't say I can really see the motivation here. The Chinese government is interested in controlling the information its citizens get, to ensure it continues to control the country without challenge. It doesn't have any real interest in controlling what US citizens see or read.

Anyhow, just supposing a US goverment was foolish enough to accede to such a request and force all ISPs to block some (say) anti-Chinese govt websites - do you really think no one would leak the order, and even if they didn't, that no-one would notice the blocking? And what do you think whould happen electorally to a US goverment which was found to be taking such orders from its Chinese 'masters'?

Re:Kind of disturbing...

[pedrop357]

Basically, the same group of people who take the position that nearly every policy and action taken towards people under 18 is A-OK because people under 18 "have no rights" also seem to have no problem saddling that same group of people with huge amounts of unrequested debt.

Re:Kind of disturbing...

[nurb432]

While i agree, think beyond that: Think WTO/UN and the whole world slowly becoming a monitored nanny-state.

Re:Kind of disturbing...

[Philip_the_physicist]

There is an old saying, updated only because of inflation: If you owe the bank $100k, you have a problem. If you owe the bank $100M, the bamk has a problem

Multiply the sums by a large factor,and it applies to states as well.

another great way of stealing people's money

[Pharago]

i wouldn't be surprised if there were some monetary ties between some government officials and those licensing the software, read:corruption they make a program and pass a law so that everybody must use it, now they charge the government who pays a hefty amount of money that comes from taxes, and a new bussiness is made, i wonder how much money are we talking here

Paedophiles and terrorists?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do I need to say more? The sickos who object to this kind of responsible internets management should be thrown in jail

Anal Vapors Part 1

[Anonymous Coward]

by Drunken Bastard i.e. Brian Shanor

Dr. Jurkov, the world renowned gynecologist sat in his office examining the patient file he agreed to examine because he owed a nonsexual favor (for once) to his brother. This case interested him as they sat discussing it one day, and he decided to take the case just because he thought his brother was full of shit and misinterpreted the results of the tests. That was 6 weeks ago. Today, he believed the outrageous test results which were in front of him as he waited for the patient to show up for her appointment.

A few moments later, he was interrupted from his daydreams of young boy scouts by a knock on the door. His receptionist poked her head in.

" Doctor, your next appointment is in the waiting room."

"Yeah, the nasty bitch with the constipation problem. She's here for her test results. Send her in." As the receptionist went to get the patient, he reached into his pants and pulled a worm out of a festering sore on his penis. "Here comes your mother, you little bastard," he said and ate it with a flourish. He turned around as the nasty woman was shown in. "Good afternoon," he said and held out his hand to shake hers, but thought better of it when he saw her slick pus coated fingers. "Have you been scratching your herpes sores again? I thought we discussed that earlier."

"I'm sorry, doctor, but it felt so good. Uh, do you have my test results?" she asked as she started to lick her fingers. The doctor fought back the urge to help lick her fingers and her crotch, remembering that he actually gave her the disease during a previous appointment.

"Yes... And they are very interesting. Tell me, do you engage in anal intercourse?"

"Yes, especially with this itch."

"Hmmm. I see. Are you, by any chance, bisexual?"

"Yes I like to carpet munch."

"Were you engaging in cunnilingus and ingested menses?"

"Cunni.....what?"

"Carpet munching."

"Yes, and I pulled out a couple of bloody tampons before I started, but I ended up getting a mouthful of tomato paste."

"And you swallowed it?"

"Yes."

"And you took it in the rear and ate bloody fish within 48 hours of each other?"

"Yes. Does this have anything to do with this killer constipation?"

"Oh I think it explains your condition quite nicely. You see, you are pregnant. More precisely, you have a rectal pregnancy. You were impregnated up the anus. I've seen this in porno movies and medical journals before. That is why I had to ask you those questions. This will be the first bowel movement birth I have ever seen. You are going to have a bunghole baby."

"When?"

"Well, you're about 2 months along now. At 8 months, we can give you a laxative to induce labor. The constipation will get worse, but it will feel good to take a birth shit."

"Alright, doctor, I guess I'll see you in 2 weeks."

Six months passed. During this time, the woman came in regularly for examinations. The doctor stopped using his penis and started fisting her on his desk. When he examined her anus, he would trim back her hemorrhoidal tissue and take it home to cook and serve as ravioli. Gradually, his penile worm problem cleared up, but the festering sore remained, so he found a woman who would give him head and suck out all the rancid pus.

When the time to give birth approached, he met the woman as she was wheeled into the hospital. "Ah. So good to see you. How are you feeling?" he asked as he looked over her shit-bloated body.

"It hurts!!! Oh God, IT HUUURRRRTTSSSS!!!!!"

"There. There....There. There.... Nurse! Wheel her into the delivery room."

She was taken to a room, stripped, and bent over a table and strapped into that position. A nurse came and began feeding her bars of Ex Lax and started a Milk of Magnesia I.V. A bit later, the doctor came in to examine her. "Well, let's have a look and see wha....." He was horrified by what he saw. In front of him were two of the foulest bodily openings he had ever seen. One had a crackled pus c

Re:Anal Vapors Part 1

[Anonymous Coward]

What the fuck?

It could be a good thing

[Krneki]

You could argue that it looks like a government solution for PC security. Yes, it can be abused, but if you implement it properly with the consent of the user I don't see any problem with it.

Anyway, isn't easier to create this filter on ISP level? Like a security package that you can choose.

Of course the devil is in the details, but there is no reason to start bashing China for this type of approach.

Re:It could be a good thing

[Anonymous Coward]

it seems you know NOTHING about China.

Re:It could be a good thing

[Darkness404]

...Except for a few facts. This is being done not just by a government, but one of the most oppressive, authoritarian, and anti-freedom governments on the face of the earth.

If there is one thing worse than not having an anti-virus (on a Windows box at least) its having a bad or outdated one.

The problem with blocking things like this on the ISP level with malware and such is censorship. Assuming a normal policy of "we aren't going to review or fix this" will lead to, in time many legitimate websites being blocked the reason being twofold, first there isn't a one-stop-shop for malware, you don't go to www.example.com/files/malware to download all malware, its tiny, many times infected and hijacked websites that contain malware. Then what happens when a domain name that had malware expires and a legitimate website springs up? If it was a large business and the ISP didn't quickly unblock it they could easily sue.

someone reverse engineer it

[Anonymous Coward]

I would like to see some analysis of the software, i.e. decompilation and other reverse engineering. That's likely the only *true* way to find out what's its doing...

I'm interested in the technical details, like will running it inside a dedicated virtual machine or otherwise sandboxed meet the requirements of the "rule"? Speaking of, will the "rule" ever be truly be available publicly? (Like on-the-internet publicly, not must-show-up-in-person-at-Communist-Party-Headquarters-and-turn-over-your-passport publicly, because we know how they run things in Commie China.)

Anal Vapors Part 2

[Anonymous Coward]

Later that day, a nurse brought the baby to its mother.

"Is this the bastard that nearly killed me?" the woman whispered.

"Do you have a name for him?" the nurse asked.

"Due to the torture he gave me already, I am calling him Anal Vapors."

Hearing a knock, they looked toward the door. "Hello," said the doctor, "how are mother and little shit doing?"

"She named him Anal Vapors."

"Whatever. Did you...." The doctor stopped and watched with amazement as the women was overcome with a puking fit. As she convulsed spasmodically, foamy blood and mucus poured from her mouth and nose. The doctor walked over to the bed. "Are you all right? Hey there!" he said as he slapped her hard a few times. "Nurse, get Anus Boy out of here and then start a Pepto Bismol enema." However, before anything could be done, the mother convulsed a few more times and with a final heave of stomach contents, died. "Oh well," said the doctor. "I'm not giving her mouth-to-mouth, that's for sure. Too much laxative. She lost 85 pounds giving birth."

An hour later, in the office, the doctor and his receptionist were discussing the boy's fate. "The boy doesn't have any other family, doctor. His father was a drag queen and prostitute who died 3 months ago in a fight over a customer."

"What was his father's name?" asked the doctor.

"Stan the Stud."

"I knew him! I mean, we were acquainted. Oh well. What do I care? Send the little shit to an orphanage. Also, have his mother's body autopsied. I want all of her rectal worms. They are very tasty... to the fish, I mean."

After a week in the hospital, young Anal Vapors was sent to a nearby orphanage. He stayed there for 18 months until he was adopted by a young couple. With them, the boy had a normal, happy childhood until the age of 13. That was when his grandmother died and his grandfather came to live with them. At first, everything was fine. He taught the boy how to hunt, fish, make fart noises, and many other useful boyhood practices. Anal Vapor's mom got a job and left him with his grandfather during the day. During one of these days alone with grandpa, Anal Vapors' life was changed forever.

Anal Vapors was happily playing in the living room with his G.I. Joe toys when he heard Grandpa calling from his upstairs bedroom. "Boy!!!...Boy!!!...Come up here."

Anal Vapors dropped his toys and ran up to the old man's room thinking he had dropped his dentures in the toilet while taking a shit again. "What is it, Grandpa?" he asked breathlessly.

"Come here, boy. I've got an itch for you to scratch." Anal Vapors had scratched the old man's back before, so this did not seem unusual. He started to go around behind the man's wheelchair. "No. Not there. Here." He moved his lap quilt aside and Anal Vapors saw his penis standing up and pointing at him. "Just start scratching around the sack there, boy." Afraid not to do as he was told, the boy obeyed, much to the old man's delight. He groaned with pleasure and started kicking his left leg like a dog. "Aaaaaaaahhhhh! Much better. Now, boy, take off them pants and get on my lap. I'm going to show you a new game. It's called Pack the Shithole."

"I don't want to," said a terrified Anal Vapors.

"Shut up and do it, you simpering little shit, and don't make me tell you again." Reluctantly, Anal Vapors climbed onto the old man's lap. Grandpa grabbed him by the shoulders and picked him up. "That's better. Now, to play, we just do this." He then positioned his dick against the boy's anus and set him down, sliding in."

"Ow!!! It hurts! Stop!!!"

"It will the first few times. Now we move you up and down like you're on a horsey."

"No!! Please!! Stop!!"

"Aren't we having fun?" the old man asked. He moved Anal Vapors up and down faster and faster until finally, he pulled out and fired his wad up Anal Vapors' spine. "Not bad, for a virgin." He threw Anal Vapors onto the floor. "Get out of here, you dirty little shit." Anal Vapors went into his room where only the cold walls cou

Anal Vapors Part 3

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody from home would recognize Anal Vapors as the young nerd who ran away a few years earlier. His greasy seldom washed hair hung halfway down his back. His entire body bore the scars from cigarette burns, whiplashes, knife cuts, and other acts of abuse and torture. He had long dirty fingernails with which he would fondle customers and pick bugs out of peoples' and animals' anuses for food.

Anal Vapors lived off the land as he traveled. His favorite snack was bloodfilled ticks he pulled off the anuses of cattle, horses, and dogs. His best meal came when he found a pregnant cow. He killed her, split her open, and ate the calf fetus and placenta. He topped it off with a deep drink of amniotic fluid.

It took Anal Vapors two months to get home. He arrived at the outskirts of town late in the evening, so he decided to wait until the next day when the old man would be alone. He found a cow barn where he could spend the night. When he went inside, to his delight, he found a large pile of maggot infested afterbirth. After eating his fill, he entered a cow's stall and proceeded to eat her out. While he was doing this, the cow's period exploded into his face in a massive vaginal bloodfart. He wiped the dripping cow menses from his face with his hand and ate it. He then thoroughly licked all the blood from the cow and the stall. Then, completely satisfied, he found an empty stall and slept.

Early the next morning, Anal Vapors watched his parents leave for work. He saw them walk by a yellow ribbon tied around a tree and a sign which read, "We love you, son."

"How sweet," he said to himself. He thought about pulling the sign down and shitting on it but figured to use his shit buildup for better things.

A few minutes later, Anal Vapors was at the front door. He found the house key under the door mat and was quickly inside. "Honey! I'm home," he yelled. No answer. "Hey, you old shitstain, where are you?"

"Who's there? ... Who's there?" came from upstairs.

"You wanna learn a new game?" Anal Vapors asked as he began to climb the stairs.

"Who's there?... I... I have a gun."

"Sure you do ... And I'm going to cut it off and feed it to you." Anal Vapors reached the bedroom doorway and entered. The old man had not changed much. He looked a bit older, of course, but he still sat in that wheelchair with the same lap quilt which had become so familiar to one young boy.

"Who are you? Why are you in my house?" pleaded the old man.

Anal Vapors started toward the old man. "Don't you know me? You made me and its not your house.... Now scream."

"What?" the old man looked confused.

"SCREAM YOU CHUNK OF HORSESHIT!!!" Anal Vapors yelled in the old man's face. He reached over and slapped the old man twice.

"Help!!!! Heeeellllp!!!!!" the old man wailed.

"That's better," said Anal Vapors with a grin. "Now, shut up." He slapped the old man a few more times until the old man was quietly whimpering. "Now, we're going to play a game. It's called Tie the Old Man Up and Kill Him. You like that game?"

"Please," the old man begged. "Don't..."

"I said SHUT YOUR ANUSMOUTH, DUMB ASS!" Anal Vapors slapped him around for a few minutes and then stopped. "I think we'll start with some Pack the Shithole. I'll even use your favorite toy." Anal Vapors left the room momentarily. When he returned, he had the broomstick which his anus had come to know so well. He was going to enjoy this. "Let's play!" he said as he kicked over the wheelchair and shoved the old man onto his stomach. The old man protested loudly, but Anal Vapors didn't mind. In fact, the wails encouraged him. He pulled the old man's pants off and shoved the broomstick deeply into his rectum. Blood began to flow immediately around the broomstick. "You're a little tight, old shit, but I think I'll fix that." He started a rhythmic plunging of the broomstick and moved it faster and faster. After a few minutes, the broomstick broke off with a wet snap in the old man's rectum. "

Anal Vapors Part 4

[Anonymous Coward]

Anal Vapors disappeared into the mountains for a while until the old man's death blew over. He found a cave to live in and only left to find animals to molest and eat. Sometimes, at night, he went down to farms in the valleys and raped cattle and sheep. However, farmers began noticing that their animals were not acting normally. For example, some farmers reported that their cattle were afraid of the dark and long pointed objects. More mysterious was a sudden surge of pregnancies in cattle and sheep in the area. When calves and lambs with human features were born, a widespread scare went through the communities. Searches were made for aliens and other monsters which could explain the strange occurrences. However, no explanation was found because Anal Vapors stayed in the mountains away from search parties.

After several years of this isolated existence, Anal Vapors desired to reenter both society and human species. He was now an adult. He stood well over six feet tall and had a beard which was caked with blood and pus. His long greasy bugfilled hair hung down the entire length of his back, and his long dirty fingernails resembled claws. He began to move about the country, stopping in small towns for short periods of time. He would molest a few kids and pets and do various acts of torture on senior citizens for a couple of weeks at a time and then move on. Everywhere he went, he left a trail of mutilated sexually ravaged bodies and half eaten entrails.

His life had settled into a routine of sorts until one day, something completely unexpected occurred. Anal Vapors fell in love. During his travels, he had wound up in New York. He liked it there because he could rape and pillage in one part of town and walk freely just a few blocks away. On this day, Anal Vapors was walking around scanning for victims when he saw a woman. To him, she was a goddess. Her lumpy pear shaped figure set his heart and genitals on fire. Her hair was black and fully as long and nasty as his. But what definitely caught Anal Vapors' attention was her long dirty fingernails.

"There must be enough under them nails to eat for a week," he said to himself. "I must meet her." Anal Vapors built up a massive belch in his stomach before walking over to her and letting it fly into her face. Spit and food particles coated her now smiling face. He noted with delight that it tasted and smelled like the bloated maggot ridden dog he ate the night before. "Oh! Excuse me, lardbitch," he said with a wink.

"Not bad," she said while sniffing the air and licking the saliva soaked maggot particles from her lower lip. Then she melted his heart with her best rotten teeth smile and blew her breath into his face. Streaks of white ran through his beard as her dragon anus breath hit him. He thought he could smell a hint of afterbirth and hemorrhoidal tissue in that foul wind. She then spat a bloodstreaked lungcooky into her hand and let him eat it from her palm.

"Wow!" he said after finishing. "Who are you, wench?"

"My name is Genitalveve," she said. "Smells like you have a good case of crotch rot, Mr....."

"Vapors. Anal Vapors. And I do have some rotten flesh down there. I think I'm getting gangrene down there."

"Come over to my place and I'll see what I can do for it. And you can see what you can do for me." She took Anal Vapors by the arm and led him home. On the way, he sucked pus from a festering sore on a dog's anus and they shared it during a passionate kiss. When they came to her house, she led him in and pushed him onto the couch. "Wait here until I call for you," she said and then licked out one of his nostrils. So Anal Vapors sat on the couch admiring Genitalveve's kiddy porn paintings on the wall until she called, "Come here."

"Coming," he said. He took a long look at a painting of a boy being molested with a cucumber and then moved toward the bedroom. As he left the living room, his gaze rested on a broomstick standing in a corner. He pushed the bedroom door open and stopped.

"Well, what do you think?" Ge

AS IF!!!!

[hengdi]

I live in China. This will not happen.

The very idea that you must even sell each computer with said software on it is a non-starter. The rule of law here is very thin; if you don't annoy the govt. you can pretty much do what you like.

I bought a computer today from the flea market that is Harbin's main computer store (the infamous downstairs section, for those of you living here). This is a zero-regulated place where the very idea of mandating computer software is laughable.

It's like a few weeks ago when there was an article about mandating Red Flag Linux in cybercafes. This place is very capitalist and such measures simply won't even be enacted, let alone enforced.

Even the Chinese government know this. From TFA:

"The software must either be preinstalled on the hard drive or enclosed on a compact disc"

So at the very best, it'll be a CD thrown away when new machines are purchased.

Re:AS IF!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot the [CARRIER LOST]-joke ;-)

Re:AS IF!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed; this is a requirement to SUPPLY filtering software, not to actually USE it. Very few people outside of China would volunteer to be censored, but the Chinese might not be so quick to resist. I can see how parents might voluntarily add such a thing from the handy CD for a computer to be used primarily by children. But otherwise, forget it. Enforcement is absolutely impossible.

Any censorship that the government truly cares about is never going to rely on the individual PC.

Re:AS IF!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd expect to be preinstalled and 90% of people uninstall it after the first boot.

Fight communist tyranny and opression

[Ellis D Trippman]

It should be the patriotic duty of any American company shipping PCs to China to crack and re-write this software and ship PCs with a hacked version that bypasses all Chinese censorship but still appears to be the official party censorware.

Re:Fight communist tyranny and opression

[deemen]

Patriotism is a disease

Re:Fight communist tyranny and opression

[Darkness404]

Hope you were trying to get a +5 funny mod, but seriously how many PCs do we ship to China? Heck, how many American companies really sell PCs? You have Dell and HP and thats about it. I don't think the average Chinese person is on a Dell or HP computer, plus where do you think all the components are made? China. Its trvial to put together a computer whenever you have a CPU, HD, Motherboard, all the cables, RAM, Case, PSU, etc. right there.

Plus, despite what you might think, even the Chinese people who have come to the US to study, can get around censorship, etc. Think that its necessary to have a authoritarian government to continue the growth of China. Sure, it would be good if China became free, but many Chinese are opposed to the idea both because of brainwashing by a party-controlled media and the recent success in China economic wise while the "free world" is suffering a major economic meltdown.

Re:Fight communist tyranny and opression

[Anonymous Coward]

Your mom is a disease.

Re:Fight communist tyranny and opression

[dave420]

The software can be uninstalled. It only prevents kids from accessing porn on the internet. The list of blocked sites is maintained by a private company, not the government. Maybe it should be your patriotic duty to read the article?

Doesn't quite work like that

[Sycraft-fu]

You have to understand that at the level of nations, money doesn't work the same way as it does on an individual level. A more accurate statement is that the US is selling securities to China, not that China is lending money to the US. While there are similarities, there are differences too.

One difference is that the US will sell securities to anyone interested, they are sold on an open market. It isn't a case of them going to China and saying "Please buy our treasury notes." Rather the notes are offered for sale, and anyone who wants them can buy them.

So, what happens if China stops buying? Well then the government is going to have to raise interest rates on their securities to keep them moving. The higher the interest the, well higher the amount of interested parties. That would mean the US would have to pay out more money ultimately, but it isn't as though it isn't a legit option. China isn't the only buyer out there, they aren't even the biggest buyer (the US government itself holds the most government debt almost 50%, US mutual funds follow after that is China). So while the loss of China as a buyer would necessitate either selling less (meaning cutting spending or raising taxes) or increasing the yield, it wouldn't lead to the securities stopping.

Then you have the other factor that these securities only have value because the US government says they do. They are a promise to pay sort of thing. The specifics vary (like if they pay periodic interest or a lump sum) but the general idea is it is just the government saying "We promise to pay you this many US dollars at a given time." That also means the government has the power to not pay. Now doing so arbitrarily would have severe repercussions, however in the event of China attempting to directly force changes in US law, well then it might not. Basically if the US can find a justification that makes the rest of its large note holders (like Japan, who is right after China) happy, then maybe they can freeze or null China's holdings. China attempts to force the US to adopt unconstitutional laws, threatening economic attack, the US responds in kind with an economic attack.

Thus China can't just take the "You do as I say or I screw you," attitude, because the US has the ability to screw them too. Those securities are good only so long as the US government decides they are.

Finally there's always the possibility of large scale, possibly hyper, inflation. All the US securities are payable in US dollars. So, the US lacks the dollars to pay? Well they just print more dollars. That again has consequences, see Zimbabwe for what extreme hyperinflation does. However, it is an option if backed in to a corner and more so in the US since the US dollar is the world's reserve currency. This would also screw China over since as there are more dollars out there, each is worth less thus their securities are worth less. If you have a note that pays 5% per year for 10 years, and there's 20% per year inflation for those 10 years, you lost a lot of money on that instrument.

What I'm getting at is that it isn't a simple situation. It isn't like you walking to the bank and asking for a loan. The US doesn't go to China begging for cash. China buys US debt for various reasons, not the least of which that so far it has been an extremely safe investment (the US has never defaulted on payment). They might stop buying as much, or buying any, if they feel it doesn't make economic sense, but trying to use it to threaten political change would be a really bad idea. They could easily find themselves with a bunch of worthless paper on their hands.

Re:Doesn't quite work like that

[MoldySpore]

While it is different, and they do actually buy securities, they are doing some pure "lending" too, in addition to buying up our national debt and other shady stuff.

"China is the single largest foreign holder of U.S. Treasurys. The money it lends to the Feds finances our significant budget deficits. (Americans have been paying about $450 billion a year in interest on the national credit card; without that debt to pay off, personal income taxes could be almost 40 percent lower." CBS Article

Re:Doesn't quite work like that

[Anonymous Coward]

What you said is partly true. Actually China prefer not to buy U.S. bonds, which are not that profitable since U.S. dollar is becoming cheaper. China has a lot of other better choices.

Re:Doesn't quite work like that

[KudyardRipling]

China attempts to force the US to adopt unconstitutional laws, threatening economic attack, the US responds in kind with an economic attack...They might stop buying as much, or buying any, if they feel it doesn't make economic sense, but trying to use it to threaten political change would be a really bad idea. They could easily find themselves with a bunch of worthless paper on their hands.

Perhaps it is high time to consider every take out establishment as a front for PRC interests. I guess we'll all starve then...

Re:Doesn't quite work like that

[FreelanceWizard]

The article isn't terribly clear, but a close reading seems to indicate that the wording is a rhetorical touch; China is lending money to the United States, but it does so through the purchase of Treasury bonds. Treasury bonds constitute a means of financing a budget deficit, you see, so you can view China buying Treasury bonds sold by the U.S. to generate funds to cover a budget deficit as China lending money to the U.S. to finance its deficit. (As a side note, you can view buying bonds in a company in the same light; a bond is, in essence, a financial instrument that constitutes a loan.)

In short, it's exactly as the GP says it is. CBS tried to dumb it down and in the process created an article that's somewhat confusing to those who know more than nothing about the subject. :)

Let the UN run the internet

[p51d007]

If ICANN ever give up "control" of the internet, so to speak, and they give it to the UN (useless nations), then it will be like that every where. People have become sheep, we give up our freedoms for (so called) security. Look at the patriot act. I'm a law and order type of person, but ANYTHING the government does that takes away my rights scares the crap out of me. We already have thought police.......what do you think political correctness is about? Can't speak your mind anymore, might offend someone. We've been lead down this path, and, unfortunately, I don't think we can recover. 1984 is here, it just took a few more decades to come to be.

Same thing here in USA

[Fuzi719]

What about local and state governments right here in the USA that have required the same thing on computers used by "the children" ("Think of the children!")? How about even attempts by federal legislators to do the same thing? People who spout off the typical "those horrible Chinese!" lines usually neglect to see the very similar tactics used right here in the good ol' USA. And the US media typically fails to report what happens here, but readily paints a negative picture of life in China.

Re:Same thing here in USA

[Anonymous Coward]

how about you give some examples instead of just spouting nonsense.

Re:Same thing here in USA

[Fuzi719]

Are you kidding? Have you been in a cave for the last 20 years? Right now many public libraries are forced to use "net-nanny" software on all computers. Some do-nothing congressmen have proposed legislation many times to require such software on all computers. You act as if that's something that has never happened and that just points to your failure to know or understand the world around you. The Western world is not immune to the underhanded and totally ridiculous. Look at the filtering attempted in the UK and Australia already. Right now even US based usenet services have had entire blocks of totally legitimate groups deleted simply because they are on a blacklist for "potential" abuses... not that there have even been abuses discovered, just that they have the potential. So, don't get all uber-patriotic and say it doesn't happen here... it does. Wake up.

Re:Same thing here in USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Same as in France too.. (and maybe tomorow in Europe - I'm very pessimistic on this point..)
  Remember the famous "HADOPI law" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadopi) enacted last month in France, which requires the user to install a "security package certified by the gouvernment" on his/her computer in order to not be SUSPECTED of "use of a Internet connection disregardful towards the copyright laws" and punished by a conection cut without proper judiciary court ruling.

Meh...

[Anonymous Coward]

That is what I would call utter and complete human failure. Just as the uneducated will assume government run healthcare is good because that's all they've been told. Education and knowledge is your only weapon against the tyranny. Know your history, people -- Especially now that the prophecies of a tyrannical government is becomming a reality today.

Re:Meh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Government run healthcare can be good. Come on over to Europe some day and try it out, you'll like it.

Re:Meh...

[david_thornley]

C'mon, government-run healthcare would almost certainly be better than what we've got now. So would privately run healthcare. Heck, almost any system would be better than what we've got, which is astronomical costs supporting mediocre public health numbers.

Does it run BSD? It better!

[davidwr]

After all, what's more left-wing than Berkeley? *joke*

Communism! You keep using that word....

[Phizzle]

I do not think it means what you think it means.

Inigo Montoya

Re:Communism! You keep using that word....

[querist]

That was Fezzik's line, not Inigo's. (Good one for bringing in a "Princess Bride" quote, however.)

Re:Communism! You keep using that word....

[pushing-robot]

You guessed wrong.

Only a matter of time

[Anonymous Coward]

before some cracker breaks into the update system, and turns most of China's computers into an enormous botnet.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

This would be old Cuba?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the Castro Cuba is actually an example of communism WORKING.

Especially compared to when it was basically a corporatism state where the corporations were the rulers and the president a puppet kept there by cronyism and strong arm tactics.

Re:This would be old Cuba?

[imgod2u]

I agree that Castro Cuba was actually an implemented communist economy (leaning more towards socialist though due to the central concentration of power sometimes deviating from the desires and needs of the population). I don't think that qualifies as "working". What's the average quality of life there? How is the country doing economically in the global scheme of things?

Last I checked, it was a pretty poor country whose industry consisted of tourism, sugar, tobacco and raw materials. Its education system is a sham, its medical facilities outdated. Hell Cuba imports 80% of their food because their agriculture system is so poor.

A lot of that may have to do with the U.S. embargo but it's pretty plain to see Cuba is anything but a self-sustaining working communal system.

New Market :-)

[Anonymous Coward]

I predict a great future market in China for Knoppiz et al.

You know what...

[Anonymous Coward]

mark me as a troll all you want but God bless the USA.

Re:You know what...

[Fuzi719]

Who's god?

Yeah, sure, good luck with that, China..

[kheldan]

..because net-nanny software is ALWAYS so damned successful at what it does, and there's absolutely NO way to circumvent it or uninstall it, right? I'll just be over here, laughing my ass off while China learns the hard way what the rest of the world already knows: it doesn't work.

"the children"

[Anonymous Coward]

I think what annoys me most about this is the "stop the poisoning of children's minds" thing.

I don't have children. I don't want children. Why in the hell should MY browsing options be dictated by what others think that children should or should not see? If this is to come pre-installed, you can bet that the government will be checking computers connected to the internet to make sure it STAYS installed, and isn't just formatted away.

I mean... so far this is only being thought of for China... but give north america time.

Chinese gov't mandates indentured servitude for US

[Anonymous Coward]

citizens. Here's HOPING the US can remain solvent until 2012. All hail the merciful lord Barry Soetoro!

My kids would disown me for getting it wrong...

[Phizzle]

It was definitely Inigos line - you can youtube it, he even pronounced "word" as "whord", like Stewie pronounces "Cool Whip".

"The worst tyrannies...

[Anonymous Coward]

"... were the ones where a government required its own logic on every embedded node."

-- Vernor Vinge.

Cui bono

[Kaseijin]

Often the very Chinese you think would be rebelling against measures like this--people who read foreign news and travel or even reside abroad--think it necessary for the health of their country. Moments like this do lead one to question if American notions of freedom are truly applicable to every country.

Why would I expect the privileged class to rock the boat? They're the ones who benefit from the status quo, not the hundreds of millions of rural poor or the conquered peoples who never wanted anything to do with Beijing.

Re:Cui bono

[Kaiwen]

"Why would I expect the privileged class to rock the boat?"

Interesting. This has been precisely the argument coming from Western China experts for the past quarter century -- the view that as China develops economically, the people (i.e., the "privileged class") benefiting the most would begin to demand equal amounts of political power. Now you argue it'll lead to a population of sheep. Which is, not incidentally, what most Americans seem to believe the Chinese people are now.

"the hundreds of millions of rural poor ... who never wanted anything to do with Beijing"

Quite the cultural expert, aren't we? The "hundreds of millions of rural poor" have about as much to do with Beijing as they have with any Chinese government. Not because Beijing is autocratic (save for a brief period of republican rule, China has never known anything else) but simply because in any average year in rural China it hardly makes a difference what's happening in Beijing.

Or does it? The fact is China has experienced near miraculous economic growth over the past thirty years. As to the "rural poor", according to the latest World Bank numbers China's poverty rate plummeted from 69% in 1978, to 10% in 2004 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_China) -- significantly lower than the US's usual 12 to 17% (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States). In fact no other country in the world has equaled China's record on poverty reduction in the last quarter century.

If I were amongst the "hundreds of millions of" Chinese "rural poor", I think I'd have good reason to be happy with Beijing.

Lee Kaiwen, Shanghai

Re:Cui bono

[Anonymous Coward]

And world bank numbers are based on Chinese numbers and Not ever in China buraucrat has made their numbers look better to look better for their bosses. :)

From my visits in China I have seen a lot of poor people. Granted not necessary under poverty line, but without access to free education these classes of people can't rise themselves out from the poverty.

Even bigger problem is that environment is so polluted and it's getting worse that these poor people will suffer more as lot of them live more or less from the land.

So in sense a lot of people are and will get poorer because of destroying the environment.

Of course in a lot of sense if you are middle class or better and don't care about politics and are lucky of staying clear of court system China isn't that bad place.

Even some would say the court system is more clearer than in USA where you need to pay for laywer to win in court. In China you just pay directly to judge more than other party and will win the case.

Re:Cui bono

[Kaseijin]

Now you argue it'll lead to a population of sheep. Which is, not incidentally, what most Americans seem to believe the Chinese people are now.

Not at all. I argue that people act to protect what they have, and Chinese people are no exception.

"the hundreds of millions of rural poor ... who never wanted anything to do with Beijing"

I wrote, "the hundreds of millions of rural poor or the conquered peoples who never wanted anything to do with Beijing". The second "the" marks a separate phrase.

The fact is China has experienced near miraculous economic growth over the past thirty years.

Your own source notes that the fruits of this expansion have been distributed unequally and that government policies have exacerbated the situation.

As to the "rural poor", according to the latest World Bank numbers China's poverty rate plummeted from 69% in 1978, to 10% in 2004 -- significantly lower than the US's usual 12 to 17%.

I would rather discuss China as China, but I would be remiss not to point out that the US government's poverty line is more than 20 times higher than the World Bank's. In fact, it's just under the World Bank's definition of high income. (Incidentally, the official US poverty rate has fluctuated between 11 and 16% since 1965. The Wikipedia article cites an offline source for the alternative figures but doesn't explain the small discrepancy.)

The latest World Bank numbers retroactively raise the poverty line, giving China a poverty rate of 84% in 1981 and 16% in 2005. Whatever numbers one uses, most of the reduction was in the early 1980s, and most of it seems attributable to reversing the failed policies that produced such shocking poverty. This was vital, but singling out China diminishes the accomplishments of other countries that avoided China's mistakes.

The World Bank itself acknowledges that any poverty threshold is arbitrary. (It's too bad this message gets lost whenever it publishes another round of estimates.) The effects of poverty are numerous and continuous, and calculations of purchasing power parity are not nearly as precise as the numbers imply. In other words, poverty is relative.

not necessarily bad

[speedtux]

The mandate is that the software is provided free with the system, not that users actually use it. It doesn't even have to be pre-installed, it's OK to have it provided on a CD.

Won'[t someone think of the children?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah well, you can get away with anything as long as it's packaged as "for the good of the innocent children". They're learning their lesson well from us in the US.

Why do this?

[jonwil]

If they really want to block these sites, cant they just add some more firewall rules to the great firewall of china like they do for all the other "subversive" sites?

Eyes Wired Shut

[akayani]

And the very first thing China will block is the word 'democracy' they wouldn't want to poison any minds with that word or what it links to. Pornography is the excuse for censorship, it is not the reason to implement it.

Back door in Green Dam -Tom Paine

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't it be great if some hackers used the back door in the software to load the new book" Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang " into every Chinese computer that has the Green Dam software? Just a suggestion, for hackers who would like to demonstrate their abilities, and yet do good rather than harm....While you're at it, how about adding Charter 08?

Of course, Chinese dissenters go to jail-

[Anonymous Coward]

Those who comment that the Chinese people don't want freedom should reflect that if they say anything else, they will be thrown into jail and beaten daily, their families will be hounded, and they can never get a job again. It would be appropriate to give those who are apologists for the Chinese Communist dictatorship the same treatment - and perfectly fair and reasonable, per their views, as well.

Wouldn't it be really great if some hackers used the back door in the Green Dam software to load the new book" Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang " into every Chinese computer that has the Green Dam software, and Charter 08? Free Tibet, and China too!