Slashdot Mirror
Telling the Truth In Today's China
eldavojohn writes "Inside the land of the Great Firewall censorship is rampant although rarely transparent. Foreign Policy has a lengthy but eyeopening recounting of what it's like being an editor for the only officially sanctioned English business publication inside the most populated country on Earth. Eveline Chao of the magazine 'China International Business' writes in her piece 'Me and My Censor' about her censor named Snow, the three taboo T's (Taiwan, Tibet, and Tiananmen), a bizarre government aversion to flags and how she was 'offered red envelopes stuffed with cash at press junkets, sometimes discovered footprints on the toilet seats at work, and had to explain to the Chinese assistants more than once that they could not turn in articles copied word for word from existing pieces they found online.' Anecdotes abound in this piece including the story of a photojournalist who 'once ran a picture he'd taken in Taiwan alongside an article, but had failed to notice a small Taiwanese flag in the background. As a result, the entire staff of his newspaper had been immediately fired and the office shut down.' " (Read more, below.)
Eldavojohn continues: "From shoddy CYA maps to language misunderstandings to an elusive 'words group' faxed out by government censors, this article exposes a lot of the internal workings and responsibilities of a 'government censor' inside mainland China but also the ridiculous absurdity of government censorship: 'I was told that we could not title a coal piece "Power Failure" because the word "failure" in bold print so close to the Olympics would make people think of the Olympics being a failure. The title "The Agony and the Ecstasy" for a soccer piece was axed because agony was a negative word and we couldn't have negative words be associated with sports.' The magazine couldn't use images of an empty bowl for its restaurant pieces because it might remind readers of the Great Famine."
But capitalism sucks and socialism is the way to go!
What part of the article indicated or led you to believe that this is a problem of socialism or capitalism and not one of basic human rights and government corruption?
Also, can you tell me which country is more socialist and which is more capitalist, USA or China? Both are working hard to meet each other in the middle.
Representation can be achieved in capitalism as well as socialism. Ethical versus morally corrupt politicians can arise in either system with ease. Why do you change the focus from one of criticism of abuse of universal human rights to some bullshit political thing?
My work here is dung.
Just think of all the man hours spent on keeping people stupid and the labour cheap so that we can all have it made in China.
Well, if there's one thing China has in abundance, it's man-hours.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
And had to explain to the Chinese assistants more than once that they could not turn in articles copied word for word from existing pieces they found online.
Oh God, it's like grad school all over again.
But seriously, what do you expect? It's a culture built on shameless plagiarism and copyright abuse. You need look no further than the huge Cisco parts scandal to see my point in all this.
Communism has become Newspeak [wikipedia.org] for totalitarianism.
And the Newspeak was right in the names of the countries; the more often you saw "Democratic" and "People's" on the label, the more oppressive you could bet the country would turn out to be:
West Germany: "Federal Republic of Germany" vs. East Germany: "German Democratic Republic"
Taiwan: "Republic of China" vs. Mainland China: "People's Republic of China"
South Korea: "Republic of Korea" vs. North Korea: "Democratic People's Republic of Korea"
"When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called 'The People's Stick.'" --Mikhail Bakunin