China Takes Its Already Strict Internet Regulations One Step Further

New submitter DaveS7 writes with this story about new regulations from the Chinese government designed to further crack down on online media. Chinese authorities have released a new set of regulations for online media, raising concerns about tightening control over freedom of expression by the Communist regime. Contained in the ordinance, released on April 28 by the Cyberspace Administration of China, is a clause saying that persons responsible for managing flagged sites will be summoned by state personnel in case of violations. Internet censorship in China is mostly managed by individual websites, which are encouraged to toe the Party line before the Party steps in to rectify things for them. The new ordinance increases the number of conditions that, if met by online media, result in automatic state intervention.

Comments

Tough choices...

[Anonymous Coward]

Give up billions of customers or side with the tyrants? I wonder which choice the investor class supports?

China ~ Europe

[antiperimetaparalogo]

Yes, us Europeans and our left-wing "anti-discrimination/racist/nationalism/etc" gag laws... oh, sorry, it's about communist China...

Re:Let's not judge others

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, enslaved people want to be subjugated and controlled much like poor people want to be poor.

Capitalism does not create freedom

[plopez]

In the 80's and 90's there was a common wisdom that introducing capitalism into a country would create liberty and democracy. But China is proof that it does not work that way. Other data are Imperial Rome (Eastern and Western branches as well), Nazi Germany, Imperial China, The British Empire, Fascist Italy, and the Ottoman Empire. All of them had market economies at times in some cases very wealthy and vibrant. But none of them could be considered democracies either due to central autocratic rule, or through restriction in franchise based on wealth e.g. land ownership) or gender.

Re:Capitalism does not create freedom

[sexconker]

In the 80's and 90's there was a common wisdom that introducing capitalism into a country would create liberty and democracy. But China is proof that it does not work that way. Other data are Imperial Rome (Eastern and Western branches as well), Nazi Germany, Imperial China, The British Empire, Fascist Italy, and the Ottoman Empire. All of them had market economies at times in some cases very wealthy and vibrant. But none of them could be considered democracies either due to central autocratic rule, or through restriction in franchise based on wealth e.g. land ownership) or gender.

You forgot the biggest example of all - the US of A.

Re:Capitalism does not create freedom

[Intrepid imaginaut]

China was a struggling third world country before they wisely began to adopt capitalism, It's far from a free market, operating more like a nation sized corporation, but to call it communist is off the rails. It still has a caste system for example. It's operating pretty much along the lines China has operated for quite a long time, except without an obvious emperor.

Imperial Rome was sort of similar, but it's worth noting that the public had a strong voice in politics, as indicated by the bread and circuses they were provided to keep them happy, a fully operational social welfare system that existed thousands of years ago.

Nazi Germany was never capitalist, for example Hitler in 1927: "We are socialists. We are enemies of today's capitalistic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are determined to destroy this system under all conditions." Goebbels: "The worker in a capitalist state - that is his greatest misfortune - no longer a human being, no longer a creator, no longer a shaper of things. He has become a machine."

  In 1941, former Nazi boss of Danzig, Hermann Rauschning, wrote that the last part of the German Revolution was Nazism, which was just as much a realization of Marxist as of nationalist ideas, and he notes that the only ones who refuse to admit this are supporters of Marxist theories and Nazis themselves. Rauschning also writes in his book that Marxism itself was part of a single great revolutionary movement which included Marxist Socialism, Nazism, Communist Bolshevism, Fascism and nihilism. Rauschning knew Hitler well and repudiated him and his movement at great risk before the rest of the world recognized the full danger of Nazism.

Much the same could be said of fascist Italy.

The only group in your list that could credibly be called capitalist were the British Empire, and during its height (mostly mid 19th century to the start of the 20th century) liberty and democracy did indeed bloom, culminating in universal suffrage and the outline of what we today call a modern democracy appearing. Not so much in the colonies of course but that was the Imperial part of the equation

Re:Capitalism does not create freedom

[plopez]

I'll take issue with you on a number of points. Rome was first a Republic; by the rich, for the rich, and of the rich. If you were poor, landless, a female, or a slave you had no voce. This seems to be the model the modern Republicans would like to embrace. After the Caesars took over, the Senate was often mostly advisory or a rubberstamp. The Causer usually had the last word.

You don't have to be rich to be a democracy. See Costa Rica.

Germany was Capitalist. Hitler's biggest supporters were the industrialist, bankers, and conservative Christians. He called the party "Socialist" as it was a trendy word at the time. By no means was he Socialist. It was the industrials who wet themselves over the cheap slave labor the Nazis provided and the Nazis also broke the union for the industrialists. This resembles a certain right win US party in some ways.

Centralized power and dehumanization is a natural consequence of Capitalism.

So, essentially,

[Opportunist]

It's the same kind of self-censorship going on that we have here. With the difference that here you're just being inconvenienced 'til you go out of business or bend over instead of being shot, of course. So, yes, we're still "more free" than them.

But it's also a reminder that "more" is not necessarily more than "much"...

China isn't communist

[Theovon]

Technically, China is a capitalist dictatorship. People often conflate the economic system with the system of government, because in our experience, most capitalist counties are also democratic (although typically republics), while most communist countries are also dictatorships. China has a heavily regulated economy, but the government doesn't own all wealth and resources, so it's not communist. That being said, I'm sure there are aspects that are heavily socialist, but no country is completely polar in these regards. I mean, the US isn't totally capitalist; there are high taxes, and there are a lot of centralized resources in the government.

Re:Let's not judge others

[Shakrai]

Stockholm syndrome got its name from a bank robbery that occurred in Stockholm; it has no real or perceived reference to Swedish soceity. Incidentally, that society is a social democracy and there's a huge difference between that and socialism by most definitions. Despite what you may have "learned" from cable news there's plenty of capitalism going on in Sweden....