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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."
All of this is absurd, like a Dada or Surrealist depiction of a repressive government. I'm thinking of the Marx Brother's "Duck Soup" or something similar. It would all be hilarious if it didn't have real, and possibly fatal, consequences. Good luck, people of China.
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.
You cannot tell the truth (whatever this means) in a number of other countries .
I wonder whether adding all those population numbers up you'll go higher than China's.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
If the official religion of China was atheism instead of Christianity, none of this would be happening.
How's this any different from banning Big Gulps?
Big overweening governments do things like this "for your own good".
One also has to take their culture into context. THis is not the US or anywhere in the "West" for that matter, where our stand is put out all information in whatever form you want, and leave it up to the individual to determine what they want to read and what interpretation of events is correct.
China's focus is more of an "internal harmony" approach, whereby maintaing social order is a higher priority than things such as freedom of the press. Many Chinese are perfectly ok with the government censoring certain things out of the media as it fits within their belief system of internal harmony (both Zen Buddhism and Daoism maintain this concept of balance) of both the self and society. But i think far more importantly is that here in the West we are taught shockingly little history of China, but if you have ever studied it you'll see that China has been beset 5 or 6 times by massive wars, several of whcih were huge revolutions against the existing regime, and during those wars millions of Chinese were killed. Most people are shocked to think of the destruction and loss of life during World War I and II; China has had several incidents in the past 2,000 years on that scale. The Chinese have a long memory, and they more than any other society are acutely aware of the dangers of revolution and challenges to the social order, and many are quite content to let things be if that means they don't have to go through another period like that.
Again, here in the West we idolize social disturbance, and in fact I think we've done a good job overall in allowing it to come out so when it does come out now in the 20th and 21st centuries, it typically results in a political revolution instead of a violent one, and my own opinion is the Chinese approach simply represses those feelings which ultimately magnifies them and when revolution comes it blows up harder than it would have otherwise. But that's my own opinion; the Chinese seem to think differently.
China's censorship will suppress ideas and reduce innovation. They are currently enjoying an economic boom but that will slow down as wages increase (and they will). How does China expect people to innovate when they're afraid of collaborating? Censorship never helps an economy.
Don't stop where the ink does.
>> sometimes discovered footprints on the toilet seats at work
Some context here - "normal" toilets in China don't have anything to sit on, so you squat over the hole or bowl, depending on your location. I believe this phrase was meant to indicate that this woman had to work in the same office as some unsophisticated Chinese citizens.
"How to Circumvent Censorship and live to tell about it"
And then spread the word globally.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
My first thought was that she meant there were people hiding in stalls to spy on people, as in listening to people talk in the bathroom. But your comment makes more sense. I guess I'm just paranoid.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
How's this any different from banning Big Gulps?
Well, the ban on big gulps is not a ban on soda or even how much soda you can buy, it's a ban on the convenience of selling massive amounts of soda in the interest of public health. Also, the ban is clearly defined and written into law. If you read the article, you would get a taste of the ambiguity and the surprising way that censorship in China can bite you in the ass. It's neither codified nor tested in a court of law, it just happens.
Big overweening governments do things like this "for your own good".
Big overweening governments also require you to have car insurance and wear seat belts and now it's illegal to smoke in bars almost everywhere and dump your fecal matter in rivers -- on top of a number of other things that you're not bitching about. You are free not to live in NYC where Big Gulps are banned but if that experiment turns out to have a positive effect on health, you'll see a lot of other cities follow (similar to no smoking in public restaurants and dumping fecal matter in rivers). That fine line may be felt out by governments but at least it's well defined when they tell you what is and is not legal.
Are you really comparing your rights to buy soda in 64 oz containers with your right to free speech and free criticism of the government? Really? You see those as two equivocal "overweening" acts? Please.
My work here is dung.
Not sure if you noticed, but the absurdity is global. The major difference is that the Chinese have no access to decent info through censorship, whereas the majority of Westerners have no access because the sheer flood of junk info that is coming our way.
The amount of people who choose not to consume any useful information is staggering.
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.
The aversion to flags is understandable if you remember that, according to the PRC government, Taiwan is a rogue province and not a separate country. Taiwan is part of the PRC (according to Beijing). Sovereign nations have flags, provinces don't. Showing a Taiwanese flag reminds people that there is a government in Taiwan that does not recognize that Taiwan is part of the PRC, and that government has enough control so that those flags are flown throughout the province of Taiwan.
I'm posting as an AC because I don't want to be slammed because someone didn't bother to read my post carefully. I am neither agreeing nor disagreeing with the PRCs or Taiwan's stance on this issue. I'm simply stating the situation as someone who has spent a considerable amount of time in the PRC and has discussed the whole Taiwan issue with numerous PRC citizens.
I'm not going to slam you for talking about Taiwan, I'm going to slam you for not reading the article. From the article:
In addition to the uptick in phone calls, her emails, too, grew more expansive and personal. She had told me once that we couldn't put a Chinese flag on the cover (I still don't understand why), and so I wrote her to ask if we could run a cover image that suggested a flag more abstractly, with yellow stars against a wash of red. She wrote back in Chinese:
Dear Little One,
Stars are definitely not okay either, please please do not take the risk.
I once published, in a newspaper, a picture of a book put out by the German embassy, introducing China and Germany's investment cooperation. The book's cover had a big stream on it, half of it the colors of the German flag, half of it red with yellow stars. I decided since it wasn't a flag it was okay, and sent it to print. Our newspaper office was slapped with a fine of 180,000 yuan [today, around $28,000] and I had to write a self-criticism and take a big salary cut.
Quite a lesson, yes? Sigh -- we must remember it well.
Could you please explain to me why the Chinese flag couldn't be on the cover? Or why some elements of the German flag cost them around $28,000 in fines? Are they not recognized governments by the Chinese governments?
My work here is dung.
Most of the stuff that gets posted to SlashDot these days is blogspam, advertisements... junk in other words. This is not. It's an excellent read that offers a real picture of life in the new China.
RTFA is kind of a joke, but in this case you won't regret it.
Looking for a Rails developer in Chapel Hill?
Just think that Krugman and Friedman want America to be more like China.
In sweden the 3rd largest political party still get bullied by the mainstream media.
Their main message is to stop immigration until we solve the problems we have with the immigrants who have not been properly integrated with swedish society yet. Also to avoid rising unemployment rates due to importing unemployable (illiterates) people by the truckload.
Complaints by smaller counties who get overrun by immigrants they can not take care of get silenced.
Police does not give a description of a criminal if it is an immigrant.
Any offence against an immigrant get blown out of proportion, recently a somalian woman claimed some kids had poured a glass of milk on her kid. Media covered it for 2 weeks, a rally supporting the somalians in the tiny community which had had 200 somalians to take care of. After all this, turns out noone had poured a glass of milk on her kid and all of a sudden all was silent again.
Meanwhile, gangrape at gunpoint of a swedish girl by 3 immigrants gets silenced for a year.
Until censorship in my own country gets taken care of, I don't think I am in any position to judge china.
As a sidenote, censorship in china is probably a bit complex, I am here right now and every day there is some controversal news with quite graphical material being shown, yesterday there was a big piece about teachers for 4-8 year olds who abused their students. One clip showed a teacher slapping a kid 10 times in a row, another a teacher throwing a kid around and 3rd some photos of a girl whose ear was cut off by her teacher, yes they showed the cut off ear too. I am fairly certain that would not have been shown at home, and I could see from the faces of the 100 people in the restaurant everyone was pissed off.
Socialism and capitalism are not exclusive. Where capitalism talks about private ownership socialism talks about ownership of a group.
This means that it can even be a private group.
Where they differ is where the profits go to. Capitalism is more directed to the individuals, like the CEO. Socialism is more for the people, by the people (See what I did there?)
And no system by itself will be good without at least a bit of the others. For all systems there can be failures found. The reason is that people will go overboard in one direction, no matter what that direction is.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
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.
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.
(made in china)
True but the toilets she mentioned obviously had seats, because she told us they did.
I'm a moron, I misunderstood what you were getting at. The experiment to cut back on caffeine is looking to be a failure. BRB getting more coffee.
They use squat toilets a lot in Taiwan and China and Asian countries.
They're great for public toilets because you don't have to touch anything.
Sometimes people are a bit retarded and stand/squat on the sit-down toilets... in Taiwan it's like 50/50 squat/sit, so anyone that isn't fucking dumb should know not to stand on the goddamned toilet, but people do, because they are idiots.
Are you really comparing your rights to buy soda in 64 oz containers with your right to free speech and free criticism of the government? Really? You see those as two equivocal "overweening" acts? Please.
One step at a time. The argument is that it's good for public health for them to tell you what you're permitted to put into your body. Sound familiar? Maybe this is good for public health. It's still a real slippery slope based on the historical evidence. This might be an entirely benign attempt to improve life, but if history is any guide, it will have negative repercussions when others take advantage of the situation to push their own agendas for reasons which have nothing to do with public health.
Government's job in commerce should be to prevent fraud. If they want to ban substances for the good of public health, they should start with alcohol. We know how that went last time. Prohibition is essentially wrongheaded whether it's about alcohol, coca-cola, or cocaine.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Could you please explain to me why the Chinese flag couldn't be on the cover? Or why some elements of the German flag cost them around $28,000 in fines? Are they not recognized governments by the Chinese governments?
The Chinese flag is the property of the Chinese government, in the name of The People. They decide how, when, and where it shall be used, like the federal seal. Using elements of the German flag might imply Germanization of China, or even that Germany is an equal to China, either of which would clearly be unacceptable as China always has been, is, and always will be the greatest nation on Earth, etc etc.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
After reading the article, I have to admit, I had no idea it was that censored in China. I had heard about it, but did not know it was that extensive.
One step at a time. The argument is that it's good for public health for them to tell you what you're permitted to put into your body. Sound familiar?
Yeah like that time they wanted us to wear seat belts! Now we have to have airbags and we are chained to our seats in straight jackets with restraints on our foreheads and our eyes are peeled open so we're forced to watch the road and ... oh, wait, that didn't happen. I guess sometimes they can take little steps and never cross the line into absurdity.
All Australian states have their own flags. China should just create provincial flags and stop worrying about it. :)
Of course, Australia is a federation, like the US... And China certainly doesn't want its provinces to start thinking secessionally. (Do Autonomous Regions get flags?)
Jeez, not a mention of what China actually censors. Did she actually run a magazine? I ran an English magazine in China. Here's what my censor told me:
The forbidden topics are in three categories, color-coded for your convenience. The colors have cultural significance, if you're in to that sort of thing. The first, YELLOW. Yellow is pornography (think of "blue movies" and you'll get the color reference). Don't print anything too sexy. This one's pretty easy. Moving on: RED. Anti-government activity. Falun Gong, Tibetan separatists, Xinjiang separatists, talking about local unrest, protests, etc. Anything that makes the government look bad, basically. BLACK, mafia and crime. As the mafia competes with the government for authority and taxes, this one seems a no-brainer as well. Don't report about the gambling den that takes up an entire floor of a local 5-star hotel and you'll be fine.
For all other topics not covered above, follow the lead of Xinhua News.
I know I'm going to get some dumbass in here saying something like "but Chinese publications break these rules all the time!" Yes. Chinese publications. Foreigners in China, especially those in communications, have this obsession with overthrowing the system...in English. Basically, nobody cares about what's written in English, and few people read it. Even foreigners don't usually read English magazines. The Chinese government doesn't care too much about what happens in foreign languages. In fact, they're more worried about foreign influence spoiling Chinese culture than any revolution sparked by an angry ABC managing editor. "Zhong shang Ying xia" was how they put it, "Chinese up and English down" literally, or in the American vernacular "G's up and hoes down". And you ain't the G's.
I was more disturbed by the article and how the lady was just determined to hate her censor. Why? Her Western mindset, of course, and the ingrained "hero journalists vs. mustache-twirling government villains" mentality. Censors aren't evil. They're just government workers, that's all. Actually, having a censor is GOOD because if anything goes wrong, you can point to her and say, "but she APPROVED it!" Trying to dehumanize such a person as "teh CoMM13z"...well, it's just not what I would expect from a journalist. And the part at the end where she thinks the lady is looking for a "lifeline"...bah. I've done the exact same thing before, I call it "planting the seed." You see someone who's obviously going on to bigger and better things in life and you give them a nod and say, "call if you need anyone like me." Hey, it could work, right? I've had some longshots pay off before. But this journalist is so eager to be utterly depressed by seeing her tormentor exposed with feet of clay, she never bothers to question her preconceptions.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Unless someone is so fat they risk falling through the floor onto the person below them there is literally no harm they do which is not voluntarily taken on by society.
Drunk driving has a direct and likely INVOLUNTARY cost. You don't have to pay for obesity if you dont want to.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
You should see some of the flag poles around here. Besides the US flag, you often see the flags for Pennsylvania and Montgomery County as well. I never knew we were such a hotbed of secessionism.
You don't have to pay for obesity if you dont want to.
Ok, I don't want to pay for obesity, so let's see how we can make this work.
I've got it, we'll start by making a list of all the obese people in the country so we can be sure not to roll the ambulance when one of them has a heart attack or stroke. We'll also be able to check the list in the ER and be sure they only receive treatment to the limits of their own bank accounts. That should be a good start...
Anyone else see any problem with this line of thinking?
That's because US new organizations are only interested in profit. Those things make viewers yell at them, stomp around with signs in front of their building calling for a boycott, etc. It's bad for business, so they don't do it. On the other hand, sensationalism sells, so that's what they print.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
It's a culture built on shameless plagiarism and copyright abuse.
Um, I think the usual explanation is that, in China, knowledge is seen as something that is received from an authority, and the goal of an educational exercise is to regurgitate that knowledge faithfully. Wheras, in the West, knowledge is a skill that is built by personal practice (like sports). Or something like that...
However, copyright abuse is not necessarily an outgrowth of this: it seems more like the logical consequence of everyone being able to forge a "currency".
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
She didn't hate her censor, she was tired and disgusted with the system, and decided to not support it in any way. I've changed several jobs in my career for the same reason. For example, I wrote tax software for a decade, but eventually became tired and disgusted with how rigged "the system" is, and found work for a better cause. Perfectly understandable.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Right on, eldavojohn. Capitalism and socialism are economic models. You can have a totalitarian state that allows the private ownership of capital, and you can have a democratic system with state ownership of capital. And certainly capitalism has never been a proof against corruption.
Granted, capitalism tends to go well with an open society and individual liberties simply because it's tough to keep a system going over the long run where citizens have economic freedom without political freedom, and because the success of a capitalist system depends on a legal system that protects private ownership, which is undermined when a government can seize property by fiat. And on the other side of the coin, socialist systems lend themselves to greater government involvement in daily life if for no other reason than that societies which see government involvement in ownership as appropriate, they also tend to find government involvement in other aspects of life as perfectly acceptable. But you don't have to look any further than the UK or Sweden for a good example of socialist economies with democratic systems, or China for something pretty close to a capitalist dictatorship.
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Round here in the UK you see 2L bottles all the time and occasionally 3L ones. BUT they are clearly designed to be bottles you pour into cups for multiple people to drink, not bottles that are designed to be drunk from directly.
Are these 85 oz (that is roughtly 2.5L afaict) designed to be drunk from directly?
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Bingo, I work for an American company that is mostly Chinese, and always has tons of Chinese visitors, and all the bathrooms used to have signs that say "Please do not stand on the toilets". It's a Chinese thing, nothing weird.
Oh, lord, not this argument again. Ok, so you think that, because you pay taxes and/or a health insurance premium, you should be able to tell people that they can't engage in potentially risky behavior that could result in their taking advantage of any public services or insurance.
Well, they also pay taxes, and may very well pay insurance premiums as well, but let's just set that aside.
You've convinced me. It's perfectly reasonable that, since I pay for a tiny, tiny fraction of the public services used by everyone, then I should have some say in personal behavior that could impact those services. Also, since I pay for health, car, and homeowner's insurance, the behavior of other people affects me within those contexts.
So, we'll go ahead and limit the amount of soda you can sell at once. Also, SUVs are top-heavy, so we'll ban those too; when people get into accidents, it affects my premiums. Ditto for people who live on the California coast, along the Gulf of Mexico, and Tornado Alley; not only do these people impact my homeowner's insurance, but federal money goes to bail those dopes out whenever weather happens. Since I'm paying for them, they shouldn't be allowed to live in dangerous places like Oklahoma.
Anyone else see any problem with this line of thinking?
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Call me paranoid, but when I read that, the first thing to go through my mind was some Chinese laborer being ordered to electronically bug the restroom. Something along the lines of placing something in the plenum above the ceiling tiles.
When you want to make a private phone call, you usually do it outside where it's very noisy, or in a small restroom.
Life is not for the lazy.
China is and has always been a totalitarian dictatorship, and in it's current form continues to be an abomination!
We (the USofA) are trying our damnedest to catch up!
IMHO!
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
Seat belts are a good example of this government creep. They were initally sold to the public in most states on the idea of don't worry, it's not a primary offense, you can't be pulled over for it. Once people got used to seat belt laws it changed to be a primary offense, you can get pulled over for it. Once people got used to that, we started to have "Click-it or Ticket" campaigns to specifically go after this as a primary offense.
And the censorship is in the interests of public order.
Different purpose: When you are on a public road you will not subject others to the damaging economic consequences of you not having insurance.
Other examples of government encroachment. Smoking bans spread from government offices, required non-smoking areas, then more and more, and eventually into total bans within private establishments. You don't like smoke in a bar or restaurant? Don't patronize it or apply to work there. That's freedom.
Direct health hazard to others in a public area where others likely do not know you are doing it, and therefore be harmed. This is not equivalent.
What? Okay, now you're just making crap up.
So are you, if you have a point, then make it.
A story about German companies in a magazine on business showing a landscape of Germany with elements of the Germany flag surrounding it is worthy of a $28k fine because ... you claim the Chinese government thinks it implies Germanization of China?
If it doesn't promote China then it's bad, mmkay? If it promotes any other nation then it's bad, mmkay? You just have to think the way they think.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
With that in mind, I found that statement rather confusing. It sounded ominous but I could interpret it in two different ways.
I'm genuinely sorry if I implied that in words or tone.
Stating that there are some things that the US has done that are "morally repugnant" was meant to acknowledge that in the strongest terms possible.
What I object to are the people - common in the internet wilderness - who demonize this country and its leaders, usually to validate their own political beliefs. (FWIW, neither Bush nor Cheney were "Hitlerian", nor is Obama a 'secret muslim bent on destroying our country' nor 'a cryptocommunist'. Democrats aren't modern-day Jacobites looking to decapitate everyone making more than $40k/year, nor are Republicans all top-hat-wearing Monopoly guys hoping to exploit "just one more sweatshop", nor are they all frothing born-again evangelists trying to extirpate anything against their creed-of-the-day.)
In my mind, it's like regarding as equivalent someone who agonizes over and then turns himself in for shoplifting, and a sociopathic serial murderer. Yes, both did "something wrong", but orders of magnitude different in both scope and context.
The "Trail of Tears" (4000 dead) was shameful, but honestly *nothing* in comparison to (for example) the Chinese 'Great Leap Forward' (18-32 million deaths), the Holocaust (5-16 million) or even Russian anti-Jewish pogroms (70-250k). To even suggest it in the same breath of equivalence is frankly mendacious.
The US internment of Japanese during WW2 was a blot on our national character both in execution and in principle, but (almost) laughable when compared to industrialized and continual internment programs like the Soviet Gulags or even more recent Balkan efforts at ethnic cleansing through genocide and institutional rape.
And the US implementation of slavery is perhaps the most indelible and persistent moral accusation against the US, one that the Founding Fathers 'punted' on and which thereby resulted in the bloodiest US war ever. To criticize the US on it, one has to begin with an almost amnesiac disregard for the historical context of the previous centuries, and simultaneously disregard the sacrifice of nearly 400,000 Americans who gave everything to end slavery (as much as the war may have technically been about state's rights, the overwhelming motivation of the Union soldiery was to 'end slavery').
There is definitely a place to criticize the US's conduct and policies; I daresay our system REQUIRES that we do so. I think some of the things we've done are reprehensible.
But let's try just a teensy bit to keep it in perspective, and not blow everything out of proportion just to get "our guy" in office, yes?
-Styopa