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China Starts Censoring Phone Calls Mid Sentence
bhagwad writes "Several reports have emerged that China is cutting off phone calls mid-sentence when contentious words like 'protest' are used. Seems like China's draconian censorship regime is going into overdrive with even more sophisticated censoring. Of course, this comes on the heels of Google accusing them of mucking around with Gmail as well."
The New York Times publishes an article about China's great firewall, and puts it behind a firewall.
[The rest of this post is censored, to make it truly meta]
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
It's like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife.
... dropping calls in mid-sentence is simply known as "using AT&T wireless service". Zing!
Taking bets, when to see the first riots "A la Tunisia" starting?
For your listening pleasure.
etslay tartsay ay rotestpay
but
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
A group of minds working together (like a government) should be far more capable than a single mind by itself, but this seems to indicate that the opposite may be true for sufficiently large groups of minds.
I assume that as much as we hear about the "great firewall of China" and the censorship they have there, the average Chinese citizen probably doesn't run up against it very much. Something like this seems so abrupt and obviously intrusive that the general populace must surely take notice. I wonder how the government can expect to retain the respect of the people when this kind of policy is put in place. Wouldn't this backfire?
I'd be willing to bet that only phones that are already under surveillance for "subversive behavior" (activists, journalists, etc.) are subject to this technology. If not, I'd seriously question the wisdom of the government.
As a side note, I'd hate to live under this regime, but I'd have a blast playing with this system if I had access to it. What Sesame Street quotes would set off the filter, etc.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
"Meet at Tienanmen Square for big party. Bring lots of fireworks and party poppers. We are going to show the government just how much we like them"
Aybemay issidentsday couldcay eakspay in igpay atinlay?
90% of our stuff here in the US is from China. It's cheap. That's all that matters. Mass censorship, brutal putdowns of dissent, etc. - none of that matters. Real Konsumerism Politik, don't cha know.
There will be no riots, a la Tunisia. Well, maybe for about 5 minutes. Who cares? As long as we get our cheap stuff from China.
How hard is it to use different code words. If I were the govt listening on my people, I'd rather listen to them in full without trying to hide it. That seems easier to know who to track and beat down. If you drive the protestors underground, then it makes it harder to tell who is behind the rebellion and quash teh organizers. Lots of people talk, few can organize. Silence the organizers and you are 99% there.
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
Funny thing is people have been doing this for years as the Candlejack meme, who supposedly cuts
Because cutting off their calls mid-sentence will make them think how much they love and trust their government?
Talk about chilling, you don't even get a notice on your door the next morning; this means someone is listening realtime.
Do they have to start talking in dynamic codes?
"Yes, I have a nice farm. The grass I planted in the mud is doing just fine. Maybe I will get a horse."
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Our modern western cellphones are way ahead of this. They're able to drop communication mid sentence WITHOUT the need for a certain keyword.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I had a dream where the government was doing this the night before last. (But they took it a step further, using speech synthesis to replace censored phrases with less objectionable phrases.)
Isn't it great when your dreams become reality?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Chinese grad student sitting next to me: "That happened 5 years ago, this is not news, this is the job my friend has, writing this software, that is what the supercomputer is for"
I believe that ultimately China will prove that censorship does not work in the long run & when overdone will actively encourage a revolt.
You cannot "protect" people from themselves when they did not ask to be "protected".
funny that happens to me on my t-mobile line all the time, in the US.
especially when words like Bradley manning, adrian lamo, hack, or illegal activity. Call gets dropped.
could be a coincidence, but what it it isnt?
People in Tunisia (or Egypt, Libya, etc.) weren't revolting because of their lack of freedom: It certainly angered some people but the situation has been like that for decades and the masses weren't building barricades. Instead, people were revolting due to poor living conditions, lack of food, etc. (which have gotten worse lately as the food prices have been going up). If masses are hungry and they can see how the upper class lives in prosperity, a revolution occurs (As it did in France, Russia, etc.).
Now, there are certainly poor people in China. Hundreds of millions of poor people. But their conditions haven't been gotten worse, quite the opposite: Every day more companies move their operations to China and more money flows to the country. Minium wages have been increased significantly in many large cities. Sure, they're still just a fraction what they are in the western world but the quality of life is going up.
More than that, China has very collectivistic culture and people are much more comfortable with the "Government knows best" than us in the western world. Everyone who has been to China for significant amounts of time seems to say the same: They genuinely don't seem to consider censorship that big of a problem.
Nope, we aren't going to see revolts in that country in the near future.
Quite apropos that the headline showed up in my rss reader as "China Starts Censoring Phone Calls Mid Sent..." I had to open the story to see if it was intentional.
Sometimes I randomly announce to empty rooms "I know you're listening...". It only has pros: if I'm wrong, nobody knows, but me; if I'm right, I just freaked someone out real bad.
Hyperbole: I use it liberally!
And you are even doing it wrong. Candlejack kidnaps the person during their next line. So it is
I prefer the hypnotoad meme, because when peoplALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOTOAD!
Circumcision is child abuse.
I'm not so sure about the reports of people's phones cutting out. There's definitely been a radical increase in filtering and censorship here over the past month, but I'm pretty sure I've said "protest" multiple times in both English and Chinese on my (Beijing Mobile) phone without having anything happen. Speech recognition just isn't that good, unless the technology has gotten a lot better in secret -- particularly for dealing with a language like Mandarin, which is much richer in homophones than English is, and also has plenty of regional accents that would be even harder for computers to deal with.
That's not to say it's impossible -- I have no reason to believe the NYT is lying, though their China journalism is not always good -- but if it's happening, my guess is that it's limited to a small number of people whose phones are being monitored by human beings.
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IvaVay EvelutionRay.
TODO create witty sig.
You folks are so paranoid. Watch, I can say prot*&@9 [NO CARRIER]
censors bring freedom and democracy to the former former U.S.A.:
"Hey, Pendejos : Is Libya the Change You Can Believe In?"
changes to:
"Hi, Friend: Thank you for volunteering for Yemen !!!!"
Yours In Moscow,
Kilgore Trout
PRC government has 50 cent party members, and lots and lots of them.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
You don't want to pay the cost of your regulations, taxes and union bennies.
So you buy imported stuff from China. China does these things to its keep its labor force cheap and compliant and prevent resistance to unregulated, unsafe industry. This keeps the price of finished goods low for you.
Your fault.
Vote for people that will protect your nation's economy from competition with tyrannical third-world governments and don't cry when you can't afford a new phone every 9 months. Otherwise shut-up, because you caused this.
Sometimes I randomly announce to empty rooms "I know you're listening...". It only has pros: if I'm wrong, nobody knows, but me; if I'm right, I just freaked someone out real bad.
HA HA HA! That's so funny! You should clean up your grammar and punctuation, work on improving your sentence structure and comedic pacing, then start a web comic or something!
http://xkcd.com/525/
When my wife was in Shanghai, I used to always talk to her either with Skype or a VoIP calling card from the US. In both instances, our conversation would disconnect when any one of us spoke in long sentences. Some days were better than others. But, mainly because the broadband infrastructure is poorly maintained and over-subscribed.
Given the quakes that hit Japan, I can only imagine the effects on broadband being even more accentuated.
Life is not for the lazy.
Nobody censors the word "protest" in America because protesting is totally legal.
Even if you are a retard like Sarah Palin, a mentally handicapped schizophrenic like Glenn Beck, or a communist piece of shit like Chairman Mao, you are allowed to gather and protest in the free world. You can't protest or even say the word protest in China because of the overbaring influence of Big Brother.
Are you allowed to read the book 1984 in China? Is it available in stores? Can you read it on your version of the internet? If you can I suggest you check it out, because it describes modern China perfectly.
You bring up the guy who leaked a ton of classified information. If this was China he would be dead by now, it would be impossible to search the internet for information about him.
And if you mentioned is name on the phone, you would be cut off mid-sentance.
China is a sewer of fascism and a polluted cesspool of mistreated workers.
http://www.xkcd.com/525/
bah.
A little anecdotal rumouring, a news story does not make. It might as well be talking about werewolves and fairies for all the evidence it provides. I'm not saying it's not true, but if your phone is cut off every time you say the word 'protest' then it's not exactly going to be difficult to reproduce and actually prove.
Though you might want to get used to the sound of knocking on your door if you carry out extensive trials.....
I'd never heard of the meme and apologize for the apparent unoriginality. I'd say I should get out more, but that might be my problem...
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
I wonder if millions....billions? of chinese were to all start picking up their phones and saying "protest" over and over again could they bring the system down entirely. That would be too awesome to actually happen in real life though :-(
On my way into work this morning, a local talk radio show was making fun of Obama's Libya stance and got cut to dead air in mid sentence. It didn't come back on the air even for commercials during the 30 minutes left in my dri
What if you end your sentence with Candlejack?
How does it feel to be a liar with pants constantly on fire?
Is it possible to speak Chinese in pig Latin?
So you can conveniently hang up the phone just by ending your conversation "protest, protest"!
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
North Korea will just take 1 nuke to wipe out and the UN will not let china give nukes to NK.
and without the western economy who will buy the china stuff?
Note to the Chinese censors: GRASS MUD HORSE
If you say "I know who killed Kennedy" over the phone, if you listen really carefully you can hear a click as the gov't starts recording.
Also, do this in front of a mirror in a dark bathroom. Say, "I know who killed Kennedy" 50 times. Flip on the lights and two G-Men will be standing behind you.
"The more you tighten your grip the more star systems will slip thru your fingers"
I'm pretty sure cutting the calls short isn't the ONLY thing they're doing if they're listening to the conversation closely enough to decide to cut it off in the first place.
Let's hope their quality of life increases further. If it does, I think I could set my issues with China aside. If it doesn't, I may start yelling at people who continue to do business with known sweatshops in China.
http://xkcd.com/525/
Since you couldn't be clever enough to give credit where it's due.
Bullies are always dangerous. Specially when scared.
Their fear is desperate. Practically irrational.
Their weakness is very intense.
Say boo! And Hide.
So, practical jokers now have another way to nag others, over there. Just wait until someone is on the phone and "discreetly" shout ot loud a few choide words. Or use a sound-bite of some actor saying them somewhere. Better yet, use some big brass's voice. "Li Gang? That you?" :p
Typical on slashdot. Wake up! Look around the world now. Who is descending and who is ascending.
Everything comes from nothing.
China needs the equivalent of Cockney Rhyming Slang in Mandarin. But what do I know, I'm just a septic.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Praise Bob!
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I mean, now you're overdoing it. How about some fact checking here, folks? No chinese official in his right mind would simply cut and block a phonecall mid-sentence just because someone uses the word "protest" ... [NO CARRIER]
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Sell regular cellpnones that block harsh language and parents will give their kids no other - as long as they don't block the parents' side.
There was a rumor or such couple weeks ago that told how the officials had put more limitations - was it on web comments, I don't remember - and people choosing to use "(communist) party meeting" as an alternative for a "protest." Quite hard to filter out in a country where vast amount of "preferred" talk revolves around things related to party meetings.
Okay, so it was right after Christmas 2009. My girlfriend was in Germany visiting her family, and I was stuck here in the states. It was too expensive to call her directly, so I bought a calling card and we'd use that to talk.
Anyway, it was right after the underwear bomber thing, and she was telling me about how much crap she had to go through at the airport because she took too much shampoo.
I said, "The whole liquid thing is stupid because there's an easy, way to get around it, all you have to do is ..."
Right then, I heard a woman with a thick accent firmly exclaim, "Nein!" - and the phone went click and we were disconnected.
I kinda freaked, but I called her right back and told her what happened, which totally freaked her out. She hadn't heard the woman say "Nein!" and was worried that I was going to be getting a visit. I wanted to test fate and try telling her again, but I figured not to push my luck.
No one showed up at my house, and I've flown all over the place since then without any problems.
Anyway ... so now I assume that people (or machines) are ALWAYS listening
"Are they made from real Girl Scouts?" ~Wednesday Addams
You're conflating collectivism with autocracy. Dynastic China (which, CCP brainwashing regardless, is still the foundation of Chinese culture) was rarely collectivistic. Wang Mang tried that and was killed for it. China has always been autocratic, which is why its flirtation with democracy in the first half of the 20th century was doomed to failure (even Chinese of the period could see it coming, like Dr. Lin Yutang).
Even after the ROC was consolidated after the warlord years and more-or-less stabilized after the evacuation to Taiwan, it was as democratic as any single party 3rd world country could be for another few decades, which is to say practically not at all. The ROC demonstrates that in order for the Chinese to ever actually achieve democracy, they'll first have to pretend to be democratic for several generations. (A perspective which I think is borne out by analogues in Hong Kong and Singapore.)
People don't understand how at a very, very deep level the whole of Chinese society is used to this as normal. From the burning books and burying scholars of the Qin dynasty and the destruction of the hundred schools of thought through to the literary purges of the Qing, censorship by no less than immediate death was completely normal in dynastic China. Qianlong was held in high regard by many as a model Confucian emperor even though he killed many in literary purges. Even in the republic, both before and after the Chinese Civil war there was brutal quashing of dissent by the KMT including many executions, and I don't even need to talk about the PRC's heinous history.
It's hard to explain to Westerner who have not studied Chinese history that to the average Chinese adult, public dissenters are perceived not as underdog heroes but as people who are abnormal bordering on insane. There is a reason why the CCP is always going on about 'harmony'. It is a direct appeal to Confucian ideals of social harmony and balance between the people and state which is achieved essentially without resorting to dissent but rather through long suffering.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
From what I've read, the Chinese people generally support their country's censorship
Yes, effective censorship assures that what you read from the people subject to it is consistent with the viewpoint the censoring entity wishes to hace expressed, while contrary messages are suppressed.That's the whole point of censorship.
Maybe they're just holding their phones wrong?
It gripped her hand gently. 'Regret is for humans,' it said.
People you seek to "protect" from themselves will always find some other ways to un-"protect" themselves.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Right, because if it came down to nuclear war, I'm sure that Kim Jong Il, the entire North Korean military apparatus, and all of their command and control centers would just be kicking back in downtown Pyongyang, doing nothing but waiting for that bomb to fall, rather than... you know, overrunning the entire southern end of the Korean peninsula.
And as far as the UN preventing China from giving North Korea nukes, I can't imagine a LESS effective body for doing that. Do you really think that the UN security council has a single bit of influence over what happens along the 1400-km-long border between China and North Korea? If China decided to give North Korea a nuke, the UN wouldn't hear about it until moments before the missile landed in downtown Seoul.
And if you want to see a real shit storm, watch how many nukes fly after that "one nuke" takes out Pyongyang, and China decides that they take exception to having a Minuteman deliver a nuclear payload on their doorstep.
All civil liberties violations concerns aside, this is pretty impressive when you think about it. I mean, American Airlines' phone system can't even understand me when I try to tell it a simple 4 digit flight number in easy-to-understand monotonic English, yet China has somehow developed a technology that can immediately detect very specific words and phrases in a language with five different tones!
Can you pig-latin in Mandarin?
And there be chocolate shoe heels for the ferrying ducks.
Hivemind harvest in progress..
Except the US is more sneaky about it than China.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_controversy
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers. -- Princess Leia
My favorite quote doesn't fit into 120 characters. Now no one will like me.
I haven't read the article but assuming the description is accurate...
What are the processing requirements? do they have tons and tons of machines doing voice recognition on every call, with the possibility of false-positives and negatives? or do they have cubicles with underpaid workers sitting all day listening to phone calls?
If they use the automated approach TALK ABOUT SWATING A FLY WITH AN ATOM BOMB! Wouldn't all this processing power be put to better use in some scientific project ?
Could we assume in, say, Europe, or the US, governments could pull this off (if they aren't already) ?
In which case we have alot more to worry about than net neutrality, crippled ISP DNS servers and media corporations spying on P2P traffic.
Oh and does this apply to international calls too? because if they do that to international calls (much like they would censor internet traffic) they are defacto violating privacy of foreign citizens.
I was talking to my mother from Beijing over Skype and mentioned that I went to the Mao mausoleum, and said to her that the Communist party likes to keep Mao around to bolster their image.
It seems like those keywords must have triggered something because right after that, the call became inaudible. I tried calling her back, but it was the same.
I then called her cell phone (a different number) which was fine until we restarted that topic. Then the same thing happened.
Finally I had to call my dad and asked him to tell her I couldn't call back.
Yet, ROC proves that Chinese society can change.
I wonder how many false positives the detection algorithm gets?
Eg. Would it trigger on phrases such as
Or
Yes, and it only took 40 years of martial law and 140,000 political prisoners in Taiwan alone. Don't get me wrong, the ROC has achieved a lot since the Chinese Civil War, but development in the first few decades was achieved at a terrible cost. When the DPP and the Pan-Greens finally achieved real democracy, they pissed it away with petty corruption and cronyism right out of the gate with Chen Shui Bian's administration. This was doubly disappointing because it has tainted the intent of the whole pro-independence movement.
ROC could end up handing itself over considering all the secret negotiations that 'one China' KMT party members keep having with PRC representatives. And as relatively successful as the SAR system has been in HK, I don't know if PRC can apply it to Taiwan without significant losses for Taiwan's society. It's such a different scale, and unless the US plays the same sort of part for Taiwan that the UK did with HK, there simply won't be enough leverage for KMT to make any good arrangement.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
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I find it to be an interesting technical problem. In fact, a technology that gets perfected to the point where it can understand contents of phone calls might get just good enough to make all the corporate answering services less annoying. Most phone systems still can barely understand what a normal speaker communicates. This technology, if developed, could make tremendous advances in such understanding. Is it good or bad overall? Well, just like all advances made as results of strife, the antagonism they help to support is temporary while the advances they help to produce are permanent. So I say it's still good news.
>>From the burning books and burying scholars of the Qin dynasty and the destruction of the hundred schools of thought through to the literary purges of the Qing, censorship by no less than immediate death was completely normal in dynastic China.
Completely normal? No.
If you've actually read any of the various Chinese historical accounts (which I doubt), you'll see the writers excoriating the emperors that executed scholars and tried to influence the writing of the histories.
It was as much an outrage then as it would be in modern society, perhaps more so (since scholars were accorded especial status).
>>China has always been autocratic, which is why its flirtation with democracy in the first half of the 20th century was doomed to failure
I always hate it when people make statements like these. The recent events in the middle east kind of show how wrong you are when you claim a people are incapable of democracy. The KMT could have easily won the Chinese Civil War.
The Chinese people have always formed resistance groups to autocracies when the abuses grew out of hand. Contrawise, they tend to accept autocracies when they benefit the people. That's why the Communist party in China right now is actually quite popular with the people - as long as China's economy is growing by leaps and bounds, they're willing to overlook the lack of freedoms.
saying "Tibet" in a skype call to China has been a convenient hands free way to end the call for some time. it Normally a takes a couple of minutes for the line to drop after saying the word.
Regardless of what the KMT does and wants (and quite frankly, I think the KMT's leadership these past 3 years have been about as beneficial to Taiwan's sovereignty and freedom as Bush's reign was for the US's international image and freedom), the fact remains that virtually no one in Taiwan wants to be a part of the PRC. SAR status won't work because the people will not stand for it. No matter how many wet dreams the KMT has about reintegration with China, I really don't see it ever happening without a significant civil and military conflict/uprising. They had their chance to make up with China 50 years ago. Taiwan has been separated from China for so long, now, that I think any concept of "One China" is as futile, offensive, and ridiculous as I'm sure ideas of Britain re-taking America back in the 1800's were -- not to mention that Taiwan's large indigenous population has never really been "Chinese", and the entire island has never been part of the People's Republic.
Seriously, revolts starting in one nation after the other... China has a modern military and nuclear weapons. If an armed revolt started in that country right now it would be wholesale slaughter. They wouldn't hesitate to use nuclear weapons and sacrifice a billion people. A dozen neutron bombs and thirty years later the government would have a population small enough to manage. So let them censor. If china started a civil war the world economy would tank. Food and fuel prices would soar as people started hording worldwide. The poorer nations would experience mass starvation and malnutrition. And hungry people are angry people and that would only mean more violence, so more civil wars between the haves and the have nots. The world would fall apart. So for the time being I say let china have it's censorship. China is doomsday bomb you don't want to kick until you've defused it.
If you call from abroad into the USA and you use one of several chosen words your conversation gets recorded. In the 90s those words used to be communism, union, human rights and democracy (this is for real). Nowadays they are usually jihad, taliban, and other such.
"I fully support the Chinese government's endeavors...why would I want to go to that protest"-------bleep bleep----" hello? hello?" *call dropped*
Ah the irony here will be the dozens of slashdotters who claim that this has nothing to do with socialism, or communism (in China the state does not even allow one to make the difference).
Ok, you're probably a troll, but I'll bite. This has nothing to do with socialism or communism. Socialism and communism are economic models. They are both quite neutral on the subject censorship of political speech. What's going on here is called fascism. Fascism, defined as a system of absolute governmental control, is compatible with any economic model, including the form of capitalism practiced by the western world.
I understand that the american media deliberately makes this point hard to understand, but socialism/communism are opposed to capitalism, while fascism is opposed to a democracy/republic model. You can easily have fascist capitalism, and you can easily have democratic communism.
Knowledge != Intelligence
If you've actually read any of the various Chinese historical accounts (which I doubt), you'll see the writers excoriating the emperors that executed scholars and tried to influence the writing of the histories.
The scholarly class negatively perceived maltreatment of the scholarly class? Holy shit! That's a revelation. Sarcasm aside, if all the great academics were summarily executed and all the great books burned in America, the people would rise up against that authority which perpetrated it. That did not happen in Qin society, so how can you say it was as great or greater an outrage? Either the Chinese people were/are thus more deficient in character, or their social values and priorities are different. I suggest it is the latter, and you simply don't understand Chinese society. When the purge of scholars happened it was not, albeit, a Confucian movement (that was a Han Dynasty reaction to the legacy of the aforementioned events which perpetuated itself through successive frameworks), but a Legalist one. Have you ever asked yourself why the Chinese submitted to Qin Shi Huang? To legalism? Do you have any frame of reference for what life was like before the Legalist reforms in the various states of the Zhongguo? Legalism was at its heart an anti-feudal, anti-corruption philosophy. It removed hereditary power from all but the king/hegemon (later emperor) and created a reliable framework for justice and the smooth operation of the state and its society. When Qin was overthrown it was combined with the fulfillment of the strongest of the remaining schools, Confucianism and Taoism, to form the bedrock of Chinese society and perspective. Anyway, Legalism was not tossed into Chinese society overnight, there was a century of reform throughout the Zhongguo whereupon many states adopted Legalism to varying degrees. When Qin finally conquered all the states much of the foundation was already laid. Although Legalism eliminated the outright political power of the remnants of the Zhou aristocracy, it was naturally rigid and did not include the somewhat bilateral moral obligations that would later characterize Confucian social order. The king/emperor then had absolute authority and no moral obligations about how to use it. When Qin Shi Huang killed the scholars, there was no immediate, significant response. People knew better than to stand up in a Legalist state.
The recent events in the middle east kind of show how wrong you are when you claim a people are incapable of democracy.
You're quite the idealist. In case you weren't paying attention, Egypt and Tunisia were both already 'democracies' before their recent revolutions. I wouldn't be too quick to judge their latest democratic reforms successful until they demonstrate they have rid themselves of the precedent of democracy in name only. I have a feeling that as soon as the next election is over, whichever political group has the new majority will be back in the business of suppressing minority political groups and speech immediately, and it will be status quo ante.
The KMT could have easily won the Chinese Civil War.
So? Did you miss the part about how the KMT was as much an authoritarian party as the CCP? Do you know anything about the White Terror in Taiwan?
The Chinese people have always formed resistance groups to autocracies when the abuses grew out of hand.
Where was this theoretical resistance during the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution? Pfff.
Contrawise, they tend to accept autocracies when they benefit the people.
They have, literally, always accepted autocracy. Even Chinese revolts were led by strongmen and warlords, always to the effect of installing a new hierarchical, top-down, autocratic system (which even the KMT created, names notwithstanding).
That's why the Communist party in China right now is actually quite popular with the
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
...I would pay 10 bucks to see a film with that title...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I work with Chinese people at a University lab. Most of them agree that dissenters are seen as "weird" in China, but they still would rather not have such social pressure on themselves and enjoy the social freedom they have in the US. I say social, because economic freedom is a separate issue. They realize the hypocrisies of the elders (Chinese professors, politicians, etc.) and the crappy treatment they get as educated people, and so they would rather go somewhere they are appreciated and given some autonomy. I talked with one of my colleagues today about this, and he said it is very abnormal for a Chinese citizen that goes overseas to study to go back home unless they work for the government or military, because those are the only two ways to make connections and get rich.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
You have too much time on your hands. I would wager you are a historian or a political science guy. People aren't as one dimensional as you claim, I have counter-examples with people I work with who are born-and-bred Chinese. There are numerous exceptions to the cultural identity you claim the Chinese all exhibit. I don't pretend to know your credentials, but it sounds to me like you either A) aren't Chinese and pretending to know everything based on some history classes, B) Spend too much time as a grad student or post-doc dissecting things until they are no longer reality or, C) simply generalize a group of people based on their history way too much. I agree history has a place in the pursuit of knowledge, but its no tool for extrapolating future behavior.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
I say, let it happen. The world needs another reset where the wealth is redistributed and people are made free. Its bound to happen some day anyway, just look at history and how many times people get desperate when the shit hits the fan. Just be prepared, get rifle and 1000+ rounds of ammunition for hunting and self defense. Stash water and water purification supplies. Get some tools with redundant supply, like two axes, two knives, two sharpening stones, two saws etc. Also, stash a bunch of dried goods such as beans and rice and also store plant seeds appropriate for your climate. I may sound like a loony but it never hurts to be prepared.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
A group of minds working together (like a government) should be far more capable than a single mind by itself, but this seems to indicate that the opposite may be true for sufficiently large groups of minds.
To fit into a group, you usually need to be seen to agree with the groups' agenda. With paranoid groups, such as the Chinese communist party or religious groups, everyone does their very best to fit in, which only entrenches the groups' agenda (and often makes it even more paranoid, creating a vicious circle). Even if privately most members disagree, publicly they will try their best to look devout and keen. It's not just a matter of acceptance, it's about being held in esteem.
For example, in a communist party... an open minded communist probably won't get a far as a die-hard communist, whereas a devout person, who always puts the "ideal" (ie. agenda) first "is a strong person with our righteous principles and so deserves our support".
I remember from childhood church functions where Sunday church goers looked down on us who didn't go to church as not faithful enough. In return we saw them as inflexible and illogical, much like many of us see the Chinese communist party.
This type of group thinking tends to be based on an agenda, and because having an agenda tends to cloud one's thinking, the group as a whole doesn't think think straight.
Think of it as an intellectual mob mentality.
Repeat for all such words that censors would take note of. Problem solved.
What's the Chinese translation of "1 pr0t3st 4g41nst th3 g0v3rnm3nt"?
They wouldn't hesitate to use nuclear weapons and sacrifice a billion people
Congratulations. You win "most sensationalist post of the day". I can only hope you were not being serious - life with such a xenophobic, apocalyptic mindset could not be pleasant.
If you just say P - R - O - T - E - S - T, will the system still catch it? Oh, wait... make that "square with little lines sticking out of it etc..."
The Chinese government has been suppressing the rights of their citizens. Now they're cutting people off mid sentence. I call on all Chinese people to stand up in protest and
I got to say, I think China in this instance is being obscene with their censorship, way past the point of reason, do they at least know if an ambassador is talking they are not allowed, or does the app not make any distinction, because it could happen to the wrong person with seri.............
Of course there are exceptions in Chinese society, there are in any society, but that doesn't make anything different, least of all history. Individuals might make headlines and be commemorated by monuments and biographies etc. and they may be catalysts, but unless a significant portion of a society's population is ready to follow (based on cultural norms and environmental concerns), even a genius can be dismissed as a madman and the most noble person decried as subversive.
You can't study billions of individuals as individuals. What each person's favorite food or color or music is has no relevance to history individually. Only in the aggregate can a culture and society be somewhat understood, and only the most important and influencial outliers are given individual attention.
I agree history has a place in the pursuit of knowledge, but its no tool for extrapolating future behavior.
You're a fool.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
>>The scholarly class negatively perceived maltreatment of the scholarly class? Holy shit! That's a revelation
Nice way of dismissing the issue. If persecution and locking down of thought was a Chinese norm, they wouldn't have reacted to it in such a way in the Grand Histories.
>>Do you have any frame of reference for what life was like before the Legalist reforms in the various states of the Zhongguo?
Oddly enough, the Chinese had a tradition of academic openness called "The 100 Schools of Thought" before the Qin unified China and executed everyone who wasn't a legalist, and burned all their books.
>>...the people would rise up against that authority which perpetrated it. That did not happen in Qin society, so how can you say it was as great or greater an outrage?
>>People knew better than to stand up in a Legalist state.
This is the same Qin society that rebelled and overthrew the Qin dynasty after only 15 years? Oh. Right. That one. And the killing of the Confucians was one of the major reasons why the people rebelled against the Qin.
It would really help if you had your facts straight before drawing conclusions from them about how the Chinese people love authoritarianism and have no sense of their natural rights. They do put up with more than Americans, but they do stand up for themselves when their rulers become too tyrannical. The history of China is filled with revolutions against dictatorial regimes. Look up "losing the mandate of heaven."
>>Egypt and Tunisia were both already 'democracies'
It's not a democracy when you haven't had a contested election in 30 years, sorry. Might as well call Saddam's Iraq a democracy.
>>Did you miss the part about how the KMT was as much an authoritarian party as the CCP?
I dismissed it because you obviously have been sipping Chomsky's wine a little too hard, and let it get to your head. The CCP were so much worse than the KMT, in every aspect, that to equate the two is insane.
>>Where was this theoretical resistance during the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution?
They left China. Or tried to. A lot got killed by the CCP trying to flee. More than a million ended up in Vietnam.
Our economy has become dependent on cheap Chinese crap. Do you think we could produce good remotely as cheaply?
No problem, you might say, hey, great, we'll have to produce over here again and jobs are created! Yes, so much for the theory. But would you buy a TV for 5k (and I'm not talking about a 70 incher here)? Or a computer for 12k? A DVD player for 1-2k? Who'd buy that? Nobody would.
Think back to the times when goods were produced here and factor in inflation, and you'll notice that electronic devices did actually cost that much when you factor in purchasing power and wage levels. You did pay about 2-3 month's worth of wages for a TV. And it's not because there were fewer or because the raw materials were so much more expensive, it's simply the labour cost.
If we suddenly get cut off from our cheap Chinese crap, you'll suddenly notice just HOW far our prices have skyrocketed, too, because suddenly all those cheap crap electronics that were slipped into the market basket for calculating inflation will cost a fortune again.
China certainly does not fear that we might stop buying their crap. We are fully dependent on them.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What, no clever response, Turtle?