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China Pledges To Step Up Internet Administration
angry tapir writes "China says it will step up administration of the Internet this year while continuing to build out the country's fiber-optic backbone and expand broadband access for consumers. Internet administration was mentioned in a keynote report on the work of the government to China's parliamentary session. It underlined the importance of culture and noted the need to 'strengthen the development of civic morality' and 'speed up the establishment of moral and behavioral norms that carry forward traditional Chinese virtues.' The pledge comes amid revelations that DDoS attacks against WordPress last week allegedly originated from China."
Or in other words: suppress the flow of information that might threaten CCP rule, and push more magical-thinking hogwash created by the CCP down the people's throat. Just like every other "morality" or "virtue" rule the CCP has pushed in the past 30+ years.
Chinese virtues as in blocking and tracking what people post?
If politically, the US is a nation of lawyers, then, as a single-party state, the PROC is effectively a nation of administrators. The US Congress might debate about network neutrality, but in China all issues pertaining to the Internet are viewed as problems of administration (management). China, Inc. makes more sense than the old Japan, Inc.
The PC World article references a downloadable PDF translation of Premier Wen's report to the National People's Congress from the Wall Street Journal. The part about administering the Internet comes from a section titled "Vigorously enhancing cultural development".
The word "administration" occurs at least 15 times throughout the document, chiefly in the construct "social administration" and goes well with an image of Wen as some sort of company president or CEO delivering his annual stockholders' (party) report.
Geek note: The ~3 MB PDF appears to be a series of scanned pages overlaid upon the OCR'ed text version of the document. So you can actually cut and paste the text.
Wait for the Chinese population to be as economically dependent on e-commerce as we are (which will happen very soon with widespread broadband availability). That will make it seem very unreasonable for the government to outlaw SSL without a major outcry from its populace. After that, the world should gradually move to make http over SSL the norm rather than the exception. Webmasters of the world, I'm looking at you. Let's see if the "great firewall" can handle that proficiently.
...replaced with something better.
Do you have something specific in mind that will do the same job as DNS, work reliably, and not require any entity like ICANN?
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Please. The Chinese "People" are ordinary people, much like the rest of us. They go to work, build friendships, try to get laid... imposing their control and world view in a global sense isn't much of a concern for them. But we're talking about someone that has these inclinations of imposing control.
Now, the Chinese Government calls itself "The Ruling Party", and mobilizes their police force to prevent international news reporters from actually reporting anything that has to do with a certain inspirational flower. They censure the internet for their own citizens. I think your Spidey senses will help you figure out the rest.
What gets me, is how easily American international corporations and businesses - (think "big box" and "dollar stores" among other Importers) bed down with these totalitarian statist "one party rule" Chinese thugs. I cannot think of a single instance, whereby the Chinese Mandarin Rulers in Beijing have "lightened up" a little; not on Tibet; not on Hong Kong; not on Japan; not on Southeast Asia; not on the U.S. Navy in the Pacific Far East; and not on Taiwan, to name just a few concerns. Why we Americans do not treat Mainland China, like Fidel Castro's Cuba, or the Ayatollah's Iran, is beyond my ability to comprehend the "realpolitik" of our foreign policy and MBA business smarts. They have brand new Buick factories; we have Flint Michigan, Detroit, Michigan, and now, Madison, Wisconsin. When will the U.S. Dollar, and American political, financial, and business leaders "smarten up"? I hope it's not too late, when they do.
MDelCamp1 on YouTube - check out my PlayLists there.
I'm sorry, what was your rambling point about? Superiority of the CCP or something?
It's only 4 bytes -- you can remember them.
(This post brought to you by 2001 -- where 2^32 addresses are enough for anyone, nobody gives a damn about newfangled IPv6 thing, and the childrean are all above average.)
The Chinese government has a tough problem... how do you transition a nation of over a billion people, mostly subsistence farmers, into the 21st century?
Unfortunately, one of their chosen means is to attempt to maintain an authoritarian regime. Do the actions of the CCP qualify as "... direct [the internet] in a positive way that benefits everyone in society" ? No, they don't... they seek to maintain power by maintaining order, which they define as maintaining a stranglehold on the expression of ideas. This is done for the benefit of the CCP, not the benefit of the nation.
I can't help but note that you started out as if you were claiming that the Chinese government was acting in such a way as to benefit the Chinese people... but then you describe the government as an elitist oligarchy based on factors as irrelevant to good governance as one's Mandarin accent. You then go on to reference the US debt as if that was somehow relevant to your assertions concerning the Chinese government.
The reader is left wondering what you think you point might be, and what you think constitutes support for that point.
wants to be the first monkey to touch the monolith
I read that as "stop up internet administration". I think my version is more likely to come to pass.
Isn't it funny that China's government recognizes the role the internet plays in culture? And wants to direct it in a positive way that benefits everyone in society? The entire idea is anathema to Westerners, isn't it?
Hahahahaha. You're pretty hilarious. China is just like the US, which is to say, controlled by entrenched interests who have the nation by the balls. The fact that it's different in practically every other way (except, apparently, self-entitlement) is basically irrelevant as long as the country is in the control of capitalist interests.
It's rather like the US State Department or maybe Harvard, where you have to be really smart or have family connections to get in.
And where if you don't parlay intelligence into connections, you're going to find rapidly that you don't get to play.
As opposed to, say, America, where the government's idea of benefiting everyone is running up a $223 billion deficit in March 2011 alone, more than all of 2007.
I'm sure the Chinese people are going to look back on this time when their economic growth was founded on unlimited pollution and think "Gee, I sure am grateful my parents took a gigantic shit on our country for short-term financial gain for the moneyed elite." Because, you know, it benefits everyone.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Soon they'll have Gb/s+ internet access to all those people, now if they could only figure out how to FEED THEM. But no, great job guys. Maybe if they're spending so much time online playing MMMMMORPG's, they won't notice they're starving to death. If only you could stream a bowl of rice...
After all, once they shut down NPR and PBS the only open and uncontrolled source of information that is readily accessible to all of the American people will be the 'net...and since the right doesn't like facts and the truth obscuring their message...their manipulation, that is...
Well, if you're a gambling man I think you could call an eventual attempt by the Republicans to speed up the establishment of moral and behavioral norms that carry forward traditional American virtues ("virtues" which will be defined and redefined as required by that little cadre of wealthy conservatives who own the Republicans) a "sure thing".
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"