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Linux Use in China - a View From Beijing
Warning from RM: be careful following the links in this story. They all seem valid (tested) but some of them are extremely slow and others are "China only." Netscape in Linux may either crash or hang on many of them.
Linux in China
-by Xiong Jiang
I just read the GraphOn press release on yahoo and found out it is still a very early step into China market. The "initial use of GraphOn Bridges is expected to begin in November 1999 at the Beijing Concord College of Sino-Canada, a 1500-student Beijing-based private school serving grades 10 through college". And "if successful, Chinese private enterprise and government sectors may be expected to follow..." So, it is obviously a PR from GraphOn, instead of a substantial explanation of fact. Not to mention that the China cooperators with GraphOn mentioned in the PR are even unheard to me. Maybe their English names are too different from their Chinese names ? :) OK, I just read the web of Sundiro, maybe it is a great start-up, but I really didn't hear any former success business case, and the counter on its web is 4690 this moment.
Leaving further investigation of this event to other more professional guys (I have some friends more deeply engaged in China IT industry but I am not), I would share my Linux experience as a Chinese graduate students with you, and hope you could have a better vision of Linux in China, and China itself. :)
My first touch of Linux dates back to April, 1996, when I was a graduate student in the EE department at University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), one of the top five universities in China. At that time, our campus network has just been built up, and the campus network center was helping every department set up Linux email servers. I had an account on our department email server, so, I began to use it. :) Soon, there was a campus BBS. From BBS, I got to know there was already Linux on our campus network, downloaded by our network center staff through the new-born CERnet (China Education and Research network) from the Internet. Just as most of you in the beginning era of the Internet, I am very curious about Linux, and Internet, and even email. I had never heard it before. We only had Windows, 3.1 mostly, and a few very old VAX, Sun3, and Sun4, in a lab not always open to all.
So I began to look at it. From BBS, I got to know the ftp site on campus where I can get it. We have 100M FDDI campus backbone and 10M LAN for each department, so I easily download the necessary files: INSTALLATION documents and image files. After sitting in front of a 486 66 (16M RAM) for nearly a half day diving into the document, I installed my first Linux system with slackware, kernel 1.2.13.
The learning process was very pleasant. I found out that I can almost find anything I want to know about Linux, from README, man pages, and BBS. As most of the programmers of you, "Undocumented DOS Interrupts" and "Undocumented Windows" had been my top-secret reference books in DOS/Windows era. But on Linux, everything is open. Terrific! I've got to use it. :)
Few months later, I set up a Linux masquerading gateway on a 486 100 (32M RAM) for our lab colleagues, so we only need one IP to connect the lab LAN to the campus network. We have tens of PCs but my advisor didn't have so much money for so many IPs, though it was very cheap, maybe $20 per year for each IP. Linux desktop was quite ugly at that time, no KDE or GNOME still, but we saw its power ! Many campus email servers are set up with Linux on PC. In our network center, even Sun Sparc is running Linux.
I should talk about more country-wide Linux activities instead of my own experiense. Addition to our USTC BBS, we have several other hot Linux BBS or forums. The most prestigious are freesoft newsgroup (if you can't access it, here is the mirror on linux.net.cn, the SMTH BBS (domestic access only) at Tsinghua University (top 1 in China), and ihep BBS, where the main developers of TurboLinux (China) took off.
There are several GNU software archive: freesoft, wormwang's new silk road, and Tucows Linuxberg mirror at Quanzhou, Fujian Province.
There are three main Chinese Linux distributions now: TurboLinux, XteamLinux (with win98-alike GUI installation), and BluePoint Linux (with console Chinese support employing framebuffer in kernel). They are all real free software programmers that respect GPL. They are making more and more efforts to merge their work into global Linux developemnt.
There are several individual projects that cooperate tightly with the global developers, such as KDE i18n by Lark Wang, Linux Virtual Server project by Wensong Zhang(English page). There are also some GNU/Linux related web forum, such as China Linux Forum, China DigiTribe, and our LinuxNet Forum. We have a fascinating report on Richard Stallman's recent visit to China (English page) with photos taken by myself. You may have read it on LinuxToday.
Inevitably, most of the above mentioned web pages are in Chinese. As more and more Chinese now can read English on web, either via some dictionary tools or they could speak English themselves, I hope in the coming 21th century, more and more Chinese web can be read by English-speaking people, via some dictionary tools (for example, KingSoft PowerWord) or not. :)
And thanks Robin "roblimo" Miller for give me this chance of writing on Slashdot. Though he told me to write on SOFTWARE, but not politics, I still want to point out only one thing: as American people don't necessarily think in the same way with their governments, Chinese people also enjoy this freedom. Please update your vision of China from the horrible "10 Red Years", on which we have also introspected with great regret and overcome it more open-minded since the reformation brought by Mr. Xiaoping Deng. (I speak for myself, not the government, though you may feel there is some similarity. :)
1 billion user base at least. monopoly games.
samo.at.xype.com
It's good to hear something to dispel the illusion of the Reds in China coming to take over the world; Xiong sounds exactly like I do, as a beginner in appreciating Linux's power. I guess people all over the world are the same inside, no matter what their governments say.
Fighting the War on the War on Drugs.
http://smokedot.org/
The only thing I am interested about in China is how they violate the basic human rights of it's citizens and neighboring countries (ie, Tibet).
I can only hope that with the proliferation of the internet that the chinese people will finally get an unsanitized view of the world and hopefully one day choose for themselves the way the want to live... Peace....
Some of my closest friends hail from Yugoslavia and Russia. Those with justifiable animosity towards Communism, generally have valid critism of Capitalism as well. Those who like either, tend to like both. It is more a sign of the person, than what they speak of, when expressing opinion without investigation.
Not to go biblical on you :), but it is true: judge not, lest ye be judged.
Something good about China on slashdot... ;-) /. but, there's enough good stuff here and some honest, cool opinions, so I keep coming back, every day. This here article just made my day. Cool! A glimpse of China.
not that the guys on top have done anything wrong, quite the contrary
But the recent story that mentioned China and Linux brought a swarm of very negative anti-chinese comments. Get a clue people. Westerners (particularly us United Statesens) could learn a lot from the rest of the world. Get over the whole Communist / Government / Propoganda thing and learn about the people!!!
Sheesh.
I am disgusted sometimes by what I read on
okay. nuff ranting.
"I want peace on earth and good will toward men." "We're the U.S. government. We don't do that sort of thing!!"
Don't get too happy, 1 billion user base is far-fetched. You'd be lucky if you even get a 100,000 user base in China... Still that's improvement...
SLASHDOT! LINUX!
I Kiss You!
Okay, sure, like YOU weren't secretly thinking it, too.
It's fine to be concerned about China and their admittedly bad record on the matter, but please don't act like the U.S. is some sort of shining example.
Now, I believe the man was talking about Linux use in his country. Do you have anything constructive to add to the conversation with regards to that?
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
In the eighties C checked an enormous growth of the reputation. Something its growth was the result of the systems of UNIX, which achieved, in order to be more popular, but one divides the large era because of the flag of the advantages of C like the language. But on the UNIX Side, was carried out it, as good UNIX was. Now that UNIX is, the people in China can from it profit also freely. I think that Linux enables this.
I've met many people from behind the Iron Curtain (e.g.: Russia, Romania, etc), not ONE would rather live in communism--most hated it. Futhermore, the problems with the USSR were about a lot more than just their economic system, it was their political and military ideology. Living under constant threat from the secret police is not just a minor difference in opinion, it violates human rights. Capitalism, despite its flaws, has many supporters. So please don't give me this moral relativism crap.
So, the only thing that interests you about the US is our continuing mistreatment of Native Americans? What are your views on East Timor?
This narrow view expresses nothing useful (except the adoption of some fasionable political causes). China is a complex place and as the author of this article points out, China is hardly a monolithic ground of official gov't opinions. There's no need to then fart in his face because his government has stomped on a medieval, theocratic mountain kingdom.(no matter how cool the DL is, and he is)
I'd also point out that since Taiwan is officially part of China, and they make about half the world's computer chips, you have other interests as well. ;-)
Good luck in your future Linux endeavors. I hope that we may one day meet, as citizens of free, democratic states.
Vovida, OS VoIP
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
It's somewhat strange talking about Linux "becoming" international--we're talking about an OS with core kernel developers both coming from and living in almost every corner of the globe. (Mysteriously, although a Pengiun is our mascot, we have no Antarctic representation. ;-)
;-)
;-)
However, I still wonder if there will be a time when Linux development will be so decentralized that consensus on a development language could become difficult to achieve.
No, not C, C++, Java, Basic, Etc. I mean English.
After all, while English is rather standard as a second language throughout most of the world(for better or worse--damn picky language!), and the kernel is *now* written in the language(variable names, comments, keywords, etc.), the high density of immense programming talent in countries such as India and China that do not primarily speak English could create an altogether new kind of code fork.
Is code obfuscated if it's rewritten in an unfamiliar, maybe even two-byte language?
What if I so obfuscate some GPL code? Do I have the legal obligation to release a non-obfuscated(read: translated) version?
I actually honestly doubt anything onerous would come between the Tower of Babel.h and the GPL. But I could see some confusion sooner or later--I've gone through more than my fair share of code written in french, and it ain't too fun
Other stuff:
Only Stallman Could Go To China. (After ESR's well-intentioned but rather brutal slapdown of China's ethical policies, one actually has to pause and notice the irony--RMS The Diplomat, ESR the Firebrand?!)
as American people don't necessarily think in the same way with their governments, Chinese people also enjoy this freedom. Please update your vision of China from the horrible "10 Red Years", on which we have also introspected with great regret and overcome it more open-minded since the reformation brought by Mr. Xiaoping Deng.
An interesting way to look at things. However, Americans are pretty used to hearing stories about people getting jailed for being in the kind of small, powerless political parties that Americans have a long history of mocking without mercy for being ineffectual and unprofessional.
The thought of people going to jail we prefer to laugh at is rather alien to Americans
Of course, your point is extremely well taken--You Are Not Your Government. It's stupid thinking like that which gets civilians killed in wars for no other reason but that they obviously support The Enemy. (Then again, it's relatively easy for citizens to unify under their government in times like, say, when an embassy or a federal building gets bombed.)
Keep us posted--political issues aside, I'm extremely interested in those small, university level projects to add genuinely new and cool stuff to Linux.
Thanks for the update!
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
I am so tired of people ranting about the human rights abuses of the chinese. Have any of you ever even opened a history book? Your high and mighty stand on human rights can't be supported no matter from what country you hail. Embrace the attempts of the oppressed people of the world to better their condition. Linux represents the freedom to innovate, to think, to take responsibility - in short, to live! Anyone who fails to support the efforts of any group of people to improve their lot is nothing more than a bigot and a hippocrit. May you drown in the freedom you deny to others.
Mr. Xiaoping Deng was the man who ordered the massacre of hundreds of unarmed protesters, and that's the man you point to for reform?
Americans' views of China are heavily influenced by the Tiananmen Square massacre, and I just can't see how someone who murders, and then vilifies political protesters was a very reform-minded individual.
-- "God, Root, what is difference?" - Pitr, "User Friendly"
Is it possible that Linux, the Open Source Movement, and the Internet could change a country? I hope that China opens up more but I worry about the government's tight control over ISPs and general information exchange. I think it is great that Linux is alive and well in China and all over the world but I wonder what it will take for more than just the source to be open in China? A free and open exchange of information is one of the most important freemdoms that every man, women, and child should have. These are the ideas that helped make Linux what it is today and allow sites like /. to host all the peoples opinions, not just the privileged few. What can those of us that have this freedom do to help those that do not?
Good luck to all those fighting the good fight over in China and everywhere else!
-- soldack
I have had a conversation with a chinese PhD students on the subject of software in China. Basically the situation is, the govn't has no mean of protecting copyright simply because, well, as the guy told me, "you can take my life but i ain't got no money," You see, it's quite useless to prosecute anyone who has no money to pay for the copyright. Copyright violation is so wide spread that it is taken for granted.
The universities started using Linux purely because of budget constraint. Unlike US colleges, big name unix workstations like Sun and HP are rare, but they do have PCs. (after all, Shipping those Pc stuffs from Taiwan isn't that expensive is it? :)
One peculiar thing about China is, that since there are so many people and so little resources, those who get to go to college are usually extremely bright... If you went to some of the top engineering schools you know what i mean. And those students are so damn good at Math and Science, it's amazing that they are completely clueless about computers. I even have to show them how to install MS Office on thier computers (not to mention linux) They have very little exposure to PCs, if any. But gosh, thier good coders are very damn good.
I expect a lot of good coders starting to pop out from China in the next decade. and it's a VERY good news that Linux seems to get ahead in China.
One thing i'm concern about, tho, is that Chinese govn't have a very big thing against freedom of speech, needless to say, that means internet blockages. I havn't had any info on that matter, maybe someone can tell me?
one side note: one of the thing that we can do to help unix market share is to stuff those students' computer with unix. They never had thier own box before, and you seems to be such a geek they would just do what you tell them to. I have "force fed" a Kanyan friend of mine a Sparcstation LX, only a few weeks after he came to me and said he wanted to buy a PC with microsoft on it. He's happy cuz he only paid 1/3 of what he expected.
Thank you very much for writing! It's refreshing to finally hear from a native about what's really going on with Linux in China without ignorant off-topic knee-jerk righteous political commentary.
But they are arguably the country with the worst track record today.
"arguably" is the key world there. I would say that in terms of impact on human lives, the US might be considered far worse.
Why? Because our corporations do some pretty godawful things in third world countries (up to and including indirectly killing people), and our government not only does nothing to stop them, but it rather supports them merely to better our economy.
Combine that with our regular non-U.N.-sanctioned bombings of other countries, and we have violated the basic human rights of just as many people as the Chinese government, if not more.
Hey Roblimo, what would you (and the rest of the readership) say to an interview with Xiong Jiang? I'm very interested in China, it's culture and its current political/human rights climate. I would like to know if human rights have in any way improved recently and has the addition of Honk Kong done anything toward making China a more "open" country?
----------------
"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." - Albert Einstein
Co-founder and designer at Music Nearby: http://musicnearby.com
Hogwash indeed. Why is it so difficult for most Americans to distinguish the theory of communism from the dictatorships run under the name of communism? North Korea calls itself a People's Democratic Republic, is this a valid basis for critizing democracy?
Repeat after me: capitalism and communism are different economic models. Democracy and dictatorship are different political models.
There are dictatorial capitalist states, eg. Singapore, but there has never been a democratic communist state, and due to flaws in the otherwise admirable* theory it seems unlikely there will never be one. There have been some bona fide attempts, most notably Cuba, but of course the United States did (and continues to do) all it can to hamper this challenge to capitalism -- and these days Cuba has mostly abandoned its ideals.
* Yes, communism is an admirable theory. From each according to ability, to each according to need is a wonderful principle, it's just a shame that making it work on a large scale appears to be impossible. Capitalism works on the opposite principle: from each according to need, to each according to ability. Wonderful? Not if your need exceeds your ability.
Cheers,
-j.
I think a language forking problem like that probably would not happen until we had a computer langauge that actually had keywords in a different language.
They way it works now, there are so many resources for something like Linux written in English, that anyone using Linux for long would almost be force to learn english. Any forked version by people who didn't speak english would probably fall behind rather rapidly.
In a new project you'd have more opportunity to start in a different language, but then again whatever language you use you'll end up learning some english just because your language of choice and all support material for that is probably in English as well. That combined with a desire to share with "everyone else" means that you'll probably make an effort at some english documentation.
Even if such a project would not choose to create english documentation, it would be very easy (because the source is in english) to just run the comments through a translator and wind up with an english version. In fact I had to do that very thing with some code I obtained from someone in France, which now has the comments in English.
That's not to say a new project could not arise in the future written in a different language, I'm just not sure it could happen to a well established one.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Read this.
inhumane prison conditions
Yes, Why I've even heard that some of our prisons only have BASIC cable!!! How do they live like that.
Seriously, I don't think THAT is one of our problems, I'm way more concerned withconditions in our schools and cities.
I'm not saying all prisons have inhumane conditions, just that some do, and prison abuse (by both guard and other inmates) is a definite problem and there are many documented cases (and certainly many more undocumented cases).
The reason I bring this up is because it's a situation where a government institution is directly violating human rights.
In case you haven't noticed, $17,000 is a huge amount of money for most of the world. Per-capita annual income in many sub-Saharan countries and the likes of Bangladesh is under $100 per year. That is true, grinding poverty.
In the USA, most people under the official poverty line have televisions. A lot of them have VCR's. Quite a few of them have cars. Almost none of them go hungry except from mis-spending the money they have; this is poverty of life-skills rather than means, and there is no subsidy program which can cure that. There are some people who have to make a choice between buying food or medicine, but just to have the option of buying the medicine at all... that is fabulous wealth by the standards of most of the world.
Even the "poor" among us are rich, both by world and historical standards. I think it's very ironic that your wonderful perspective-enhancing experience in Vietnam, and the news about people fleeing the government and poverty in that land for the opportunity of ours over twenty years later, has somehow all been lost on you.
--
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Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
WOW is this flaimbait? /.'s rating system is completely useless now.
What are the chances that this letter originates from the Communist Party PR dept. ? Just curious...
The main problem with capitalism is that it's rarely followed. Ironic that the nation closest to unadultered capitalism is Hong Kong. The economic freedom and prosperity invading from HK and Taiwan will eventually overrun the ChiCom dictatorship, so long as the PLA doesn't do anything particularly antisocial in the meantime (like invade Taiwan, which in MacArthur's words is "an unsinkable aircraft carrier").
Since when is your country's treatment of native populations any better?
Even this thing in Tien Amen Square was completely overblown. There was some pushing and shoving, some students tripped and fell, may a few got a bloody nose. Bill Clinton even sent the Chinese general in charge there to explain to a West Point graduating class (1996, IIRC) to let everyone know the truth. Please get the message.
Now get off your hate campaign, and help the people help themselves. God only knows what MS will do to them, otherwise.
One wonders what could happen when the generation of people living with open source development and Internet (i.e. open) communcations start filtering into political positions of power (and corporate for that matter). We may start to see a slow change from the traditional closed business model to a more open and flexible one, and also a similar change in the political views of all the world's countries.
Now, us Americans generally think of China as a more closed country, whether this is true or not. Us Americans are also known to make comments without being very informed beforehand! But it is not only the 'traditionally' closed countries that would benefit from being a little more open; all of them would. Do you think America would up and give away military secrets for the good of the world or open development? I don't think so. And I'm also not saying we should right now.
What I'm getting at is the slow change in the world that will be brought about by all this wonderful technology. Corporations have seen the potential for this (and seen it as a threat to the corporate way of life), and have already moved to squish it quickly, with little success. Ditto with the government, although we have to be a little more concerned there with an entity that can make laws. It seems that this technology has the potential to forge change towards an open world, and it seems to be in many ways unstoppable.
I love hearing from people in other countries that have taken on a love for all this technology, and that are in their own small way a part of changing the world! With enough effort aroun the globe, some good shit is gonna happen!
--forgive me if this sounds weird in any way; i wrote it as i just woke up and my brain is still booting... =)
Learn how a CPU works before you learn to program. Seriously.
if a is greater than b, then do something. => if (a>b) do_something()
In another language, say Japanese, the same concept might be specified:
b yori a ookii ka nanika suru => (b<a)oo ka nani_o_suru();
While this may seem insignificant and dismissed as simple syntax shuffling, it becomes profound when you realize that we all think in language. And the structure of our own language influences how we perceive problems and design solutions. Anyone who has learned a sufficiently different second language can attest to this. Learning a new language is learning a new way to think and to see things; and that a concept difficult to specify and grasp in one language might be easily stated and understood in another and vice versa.
So far, though, computer languages remain an English only derivation. Much benefit could come from a new non-english computer language with a fresh POV.
There is no way that I see that China or any other poor country is going to pay an operating system tax so I see a good future for free operating systems like Linux. The best thing that Microsoft could possibly do to fight this is to encourage piracy of Windows in China.
I guess the truth hurts. Maybe you should get your head out of your ass and take a look around once in a while.
You know, I sometimes wonder what the current generation would have done if it had come of age in WWII... would they have considered it worthwhile to fight the German and Japanese (who were committing atrocities in Europe and China) or would they have gone into some sort of "We don't have the right to criticize" funk because the US (horrors) had the death penalty too, "just like Germany and Japan, so really, why be on your high horse about it?"
It may be a dictatorship, but I fail to see how a country with significant private enterprise can be a 'Communist' country. The government does not own all the industry, so therefore the Chinese system has not got a huge amount in common with the philosophies of Marx.
I hope slashdot gets rid of the stupid moderators who moderated this post. Only this this post did was to annoy a moderator (probably an american) who has been brainwashed to believe that his country is the greatest and infallible. Rishi
i guess those millions of political criminals working on laogai slave labor farms would agree with you? the chinese government is a bunch of cocksuckers. they are worse than the american government. www.laogai.org
the american government hates political dissidents just as much as the chinese government. i see a war within 100 years.
Usually when different people are separated they don't get along to well when together. Us people in the United States don't think to highly of China and that is mostly because we don't know or see any Chinese a lot. And I would hate think of what the Chinese have to think about us.
Now reading the above comments I notice that there are many respectful comments posted here. Virtually all respectful comments. Good. This means the internet is doing its job.
Because the internet is an international medium we talk to foreign people on a daily basis. My history teachers says the best way to do away with prejudice is bring these people together. That is exactly what is happening.
Oh! What a great world we live in!
I just wanted to point this out.
***Beginning*of*Signiture***
Linux? That's GNU/Linux to you mister!
maybe we could have nazix, where you kill off all processes that have the number '6' in their pid.
I hope slashdot gets rid of the stupid moderators who moderated this post. Only this this post did was to annoy a moderator (probably an american) who has been brainwashed to believe that his country is the greatest and infallible.
As an american, I take offense to the stereotype.. It's more or less true, but instead of complaining, take action! Find a redneck and educate him.. Ok, scratch that, find a redneck and ask him to refrain from mindless patriotism.. Hmm.. Now that I think about it I guess the only thing we can do is kill them. Which is a pity since they're the ones with guns..
Nevermind.
one side note: one of the thing that we can do to help unix market share is to stuff those students' computer with unix. They never had thier own box before, and
you seems to be such a geek they would just do what you tell them to. I have "force fed" a Kanyan friend of mine a Sparcstation LX, only a few weeks after he
came to me and said he wanted to buy a PC with microsoft on it. He's happy cuz he only paid 1/3 of what he expected.
I think that things like that are good... we should expose people to the alternatives to begin with, instead of allowing them to stumble through something like microsoft (though yes, I still use it often, tsk-tsk on me..) and because it's free, open, and wonderful. What I think would be neat is to have some sort of big conference thing over in a place like, say, China (hey, we're on the topic aren't we) whereby a great deal of the big names in OSS go over there (to whatever country it's held in.. and this is also assuming that many of these folks haven't already been over there, otherwise, it's no big deal so the thrill is lost) and work with the people and have their own "Comdex" of OSS, hang out, demonstrate, get sponsors and give out free stuff!
Is that a good idea, or am I just rambling on again?
Insert mind here.
I'm a 3 years Linux user from Hong Kong. I start to install my first Slackware Linux 3.2 package from Walnut Creek 3 years ago.
I really do not want to stay in Hong Kong anymore. It's true that to a certain extent, university students in HK can do some protests. But noticably after the handover, the government is biased to Beijing. Some eggheads of the top government officials do not like to admit the fact of June 4th. Worst probably is the Democracy Party is always seemed to be minorities and unfairly represented in the government. Hong Kong is not the place for geeks anymore. That's what I feel.
Personally I hope the opensource movement can creat more bright programmers and inspire more people about democracy. Linux OS is the best option for most China industry. At least it is no long need to pay to Redmond anymore should there is a truly great Chinese End-user Linux distribution.
One more thing, do you know that making a Chinese search engine is much more difficult than a simple PERL search engine scripts you saw at www.cgi-resources.com ? Chinese Big-5 and GB codings are much more complicated and there's still not a standard way to sort Chinese words !
Welcome to comment on my words. Thank you.
But note: Engineers who try to apply engineering concepts to public life/human nature can be mistaken. And engineers aren't as politically involved as, say, writers, in general. There are exceptions, especially in OS/FS, but changes in engineering practices don't always affect politics.
There are exceptions, of course. The Progressives at the (last) turn of the century were Taylorists, believing in "scientific management" by professionals; note the "city manager" position, previously nonexistent. But overall, only really big movements in science/engineering have affected public life -- and that's IN THE US.
From what I know of China, economic freedom increases as political freedom stays low. But hey. Tiananmen students faxed out their protests. Xiang here can write us sorta freely. There's no way for the Chinese gov't to suppress EVERYTHING on the net....unless those top-notch Chinese coders help them...hmmmm...
Which means it IS important to get some alternative modes of thinking into their realms of possibility. GPL respect in "Red China"? I'm all for it.
Ceterum censeo Microsoftam esse delendam.
Thanks!
The American media is conditioning us for a war against China. Their xenophobic fear-mongering isn't too subtle.
The people who're responding with "China is so awful" remind me of the people who somehow can make a distinction between capitalist rulers controlling everything and communists controlling everything. Why bother?
Both countries should be destroyed.
Only the elite have a voice in China.
The elite are responsible for the
atrocities.
Do you honestly think the benficiaries of
the Chinese system will acknowledge anything
bad about that system?
Chinese people who say bad things about
their governmentt dissapear. That's all there is to it.
If there is no free expression in a country,
any complimentary discourse coming from within
that country *must* be viewed as propaganda.
After all, if the people cannot speak freely,
where else would the words be coming from?
Sorry to rain down on your idealism with
my distopian essay. The world is far too
primative for an idealistic strategy to
be effective. Human race in two words:
Brutally greedy.
Have a nice day!
While I agree that people should stop bashing China so much, I have to point out that the Tiananmen Square massacre WAS as bad as it was portrayed.
If you don't believe that people were killed, just take a look at these pictures, especially the page with photos of the massacre.
Warning: These pictures can be quite graphic and disturbing.
Democracy and dictatorship are simply different types of tyranny.
The US was organized as a republic.
What the hell do they teach in schools these days, anyhow?
The object of a preposition is always WHOM. I love /., but I am sick of poor grammar! If you want to talk about getting your head out of your ass, take step one and learn how to express yourself properly.
Me think dat you art unnessesary hard at him. Not everyone have english as their first language and I hope that it is the _content_ that is the most important thing in these discussions.
--
If noone rtfa, then what's the slashdot effect?
The simple fact that millions try every year to immigrate to America (and over a million per year succeed), many of them fleeing China, says enough as it is.
Actually, fewer people have been leaving every year, most importantly because people have started to realize that the people who moved to the US often led worse lives here (as waitresses and whatnot due to lack of ability to communicate well and so forth) than they would have back home.
Take a trip to China some time. The conditions are not that bad. My middle-class cousins spend their summers in air-conditioned rooms watching cable, playing Nintendo, etc., when they're not outside. The business opportunities are increasing and many people invest in the stock market.
In many ways, China is more capitalist than the US already. Try actually seeing the place or talking to someone who's been there before bashing it.
Oh, right.. you did.. Harry Wu. I'm not going to say that nothing he says has merit, becuase some of it does, but I would like to point out that he is a man of incredibly questionable integrity. I know at least one of his documentaries was faked by sneaking into OR and filming a heart operation, then calling it an illegal liver transplant.
Yes, China are not terribly good, but are they the worst ? Hell, no.
And I would hate think of what the Chinese have to think about us.
I can tell you from experience (I was just back in Shanghai a few years ago) that people do two things to the US in China:
1) Bash the US politically for being pompous self-appointed world police who think everything they do is right.
2) Mimick the US as much as possible in terms of everything else, from stock market to television shows to fashion to nightclubs to more casual sex (and thus more STDs).
Occasionally, bad moderators moderate stuff down unfairly, but it seems that usually gets compensated with some upward moderation.
Hey, where did you learn those mean words?
Didn't your mommie teach you right?
-- Boris.
Pardon my frank comment, but I know most of
the chinese exchange students on this campus
(this is in Germany).
I know for a fact that you don't go to the top-5
chinese universities if your family isn't in
the party or if your family has a huge amount
of money, which also means party-friendliness
implicitly (otherwise, you do no business).
China already has capitalism, only with 5% of
the population controlling 95% of the goods. All
that talk about "stop viewing us poor chinese
this or that way" is coming from a conditioned
mind of a Chinese party member. Consult the CIA
world factbook on China.
Please don't reply to this, thanks.
Thanks for posting that. There seem to be an awful lot of moral relativists in denial.
Funny thing is, although I posted that, and you're thanking me for it, I AM a moral relativist. But being a moral relativist hardly means you have no morals. I think the Tiananmen Square massacre was a horrendous thing, but even so, I don't think any issue is that clear-cut.
I mean, the party-line.. that it was for "stability".. DOES have some merit. If you look at Russia, you see what happens when a country makes big changes too quickly. Stability IS definitely important.
Now, I happen to think that in this case, it was utterly wrong to kill those students.. especially since they posed (imho) no really significant threat of revolution. But what if they did? What if they could have cause massive nationwide chaos? Imagine what would happen if 1.3 billion people were thrown into anarchy. It would NOT be pretty. And in that case, I think the decision would be less clear-cut. Would it be right to kill a few hundred to save the lives of the thousands of lives which would be lost in such anarchy? I'm don't know.
Nothing in the real world is pure black and white, and that's why we need moral relativism. The danger, of course, is to doubt TOO much. We should contemplate what we do, but we have to draw the line somewhere so we can go out and DO something. And that's why we have simplified morality.
The hard part is deciding where to draw that line.
I would like to know if human rights have in any way improved recently and has the addition of Honk Kong done anything toward making China a more "open" country?
I'd like to tell you what happened is that Hong Kong has become less and less open each day due to the influence of china. They've already passed law that took away the freedom to speech and protest from us.
No, not just people who have moved here. My experiences include students (exchange programs, college, etc) , athletes (traveling here to compete in tournaments) , businessmen, engineers who are working on a visa, and my own travel to eastern europe. Futhermore, if you talk to virtually anyone who has traveled to these communist states in their hayday (even today), they'll describe just how depressing they are...it is a certain joyless/dead existence. This is particularly true for those who've had the pleasure of traveling through berlin, they're polar opposites. It is more than just poverty too, Mexico and much of Latin America is equally poor, yet you don't see the same behavior.
The arts, religion, fairs, and other social activities are all crushed in the name of the "people". These observations are decidely one way too. (e.g.: Western travelers are sickened by communisms effect on the people, while Easterners invariably are impressed by capitalism)
.....is the currency of the Chinese elite.
Can you erase this "bloody nose" from the pages
of history?
http://www.christusrex.org/www1/sdc/ps59a.jpg
No.
How about this "pushing accident"?
http://www.christusrex.org/www1/sdc/ps57b.jpg
No.
The truth?
http://www.christusrex.org/www1/sdc/ps57a.jpg
No.
You can lie to your people, their acceptance
based on threats of violence. Getting lies
accepted by the rest of the world will require
a little more effort.
Maybe your opinions would change if these:
http://www.christusrex.org/www1/sdc/ps58c.jpg
were produced by someone you loved.
"Bloody noses" indeed. Shameless bullshit,
nothing more.
If you read Mr. Jiang's article closely, you can feel his excitement over the fact that all the information in order to run Linux was right at his fingertips. Imagine his frustration at the fact that this freedom may not be mirrored in the real world, either caused by his government (which I see has already been argued to death here) or some other entity. Whenever there is enough discontent, there will be a breaking point. Keep in mind that the Berlin Wall came down because a phone call was made by mistake. A seemingly insignificant event triggered something much larger with global ramifications.
These are just my opinions, and whatever impact Linux REALLY has, I'm interested to see how it will all play out.
Oversoul
The fact is that the vast majority of prisoners in the U.S. do not work at all. They are simply a burden on the taxpayers. Of course, you can argue that the REAL reason is that a lot of people are making a lot of money building and staffing prisons, but that would be sensible.
Its more interesting for a liberal to champion the cause of rapists, murders and other pieces of shit that live here.
"In American Holocaust, Stannard estimates the total cost of the near-extermination of the American Indians as 100,000,000."
Sit down you FREAK, your "great" country is far more guilty of mass atrocities than nearly any modern day communist led country.
"Source List and Detailed Death Tolls for the Man-made Megadeaths of the Twentieth Century"
There is a link for pre-20th century atrocities too, including some interesting numbers on how many natives were massacred by American settlers. Read up guys, BEFORE you go spouting on about who did what and which was worse.
The freedom in Hong Kong turns worse, that's truth. But Hong Kong is still affecting China, with idea of capitalism, freedom and Democracy.
100m my ass, there we were never 100m indians in America, they simply couldn't sustain populations that size.
The PRC is among those huge institutions that have signed up for Windows 2000. It is a done deal.
Yes, Saro-wiwa was protesting against Shell, but the people killed in the incident the article was talking about were not.. they were protesting against Chevron. The article was using Shell as background information and for comparison. The article was NOT about Saro-wiwa. It was about people who were protesting against Chevron on a barge who were shot at by Chevron-paid (see below) troops.
Please read the article before bashing its inaccuracy next time.
Pacifica even interviewed Chevron officials and a Chevron contractor (from ETPM Services, a UK company), who said some pretty disturbing things ON RECORD.
My favorite (from Bill Spencer of ETPM): "Life is tough here. And people you often hear it said that life is cheap here. I guess it is . It's looked at a little differently. I think that that's something that doesn't happen in our society. Life is a little more maybe precious or something. I think here or any of these developing countries it tends to be a little cheaper."
So when the Nigerian dictator put to death a half-dozen folks for criticizing Shell, was it an American who was responsible for ordering their deaths? No; it was a Nigerian. That is, it was Nigerians killing Nigerians over money.
Well, I don't know the details about the Shell case, but in this Chevron case, the Mobile Police forces (who killed two protestors) were paid by Chevron and flown in to the barge via a Chevron helicopter. I think that makes Chevron rather liable.
As for the multinational thing, sure, all big countries do this sort of thing. I know that. If you'll notice, in one of my other posts, I even bothered to mention other Western European countries.
The reason I was talking about the US in particular was because most of the people bashing China are American, and because this Chevron case involves an American company.
In general, people often criticize Western European countries and the US because we have this tendency to take a moral high ground with other countries, telling them what's right and wrong when we don't even care when you look at our actions.
As a final note, I should mention that I know Pacifica's reports are made with definite agendas, but that article in particular has sufficient direct quotes of people from both sides that its integrity seems pretty good in general.
I'd say the relationship between politics & software/Linux this brings up is important and relevant as "News for Nerds".
I visited China's westernmost central Asian Xinjiang province recently. The intellectual oppression of local Asian population was sad to see.
China is an interesting case because I believe it is clear to many of us that the PRC violates human rights. At the same time, my (very uniformed) feeling is that the Chinese government (and probably people too) are unclear about what direction their country should take. There is a lacking ideological leadership after Mao Tsetung and Deng Xiaoping.
In such a volatile state of affairs, memes such as the open source movement, and the principles of openness of the internet might possibly have some influence on the developing future.
Internet access is springing up even in remote areas, and the governmental censorship of the Internet is futile (amnesty.org was blocked, but viewing the site from for exampel google's cache was no problem. Trying to find and censor encrypted/access controlled websites must be difficult). So if nothing else, the Internet has created a channel for independent information.
Speaking of languages... the direct translation of your sig would be... "Care about yourself - join the A-Team"
;-)
I would love for Xiong Jiang or someone else from China to address the issue of why so many cracks come from China.
And now for the most predictable comment in the letter (note that he would probably be JAILED or forced into psychological counseling if he said anything publicly against Red China):
* **
* **
"You people need to update your views of China".
Right, pal. Here's a list of what YOU PEOPLE need to do:
1) Get a democracy.
2) Recognize Taiwan's independence.
3) Stop murdering citizens.
After those three, you can start working on the organized crime and corruption issues (for example, the Red Chinese military police own and operate a large number of brothels) and finally talk about what cool Linux users you are.
Now, read the following carefully:
***********************************************
"Clinton Sucks. His left wing policies are creating a huge generation of dependent idots that have no idea what sacrifice is, all demanding a never-ending handout.
"Clinton's personal behavior is ludicrous, and (in reality) illegal. IE, sexual conduct with a subordinate, as leader of the military.
***********************************************
Now, echelon or not, CIA/NSA or not, no one is going to come arrest me of send me off to counseling for saying those things. I'm sure you're just as willing to criticize Clinton, but you'll never say a peep against your home regime.
---
Just another AC with friends in Taiwan, fearing the murderous hand of Red China.
Us people in the United States don't think to highly of China and that is mostly because we don't know or see any Chinese a lot.
Man, where do you live? The Chinese are all over the US! They heavily populate American IT departments, they heavily populate American graduate schools, and they must be second to Indians as top programmers/developers at American software companies like Oracle and Microsoft. The Chinese have invaded not just the United States but Canada, too!
Hi, I'm a taiwanese, i know you guys don't care about what my opinion is, but i'm going to give it anyway.
+&x
I am afraid that I have to agree more with the first poster; it has been my experience that regardless of the government someone is blessed with, a geek is a geek the world around...I have many friends in communist and former communist block countries that I have met thru the interenet and programming and while they may have other challenges, we are truly all cut from the same bit of cloth and we all seem to count in binary...;)
are pretty good on this issue.
like Russia, China's technical excellence is expanding rapidly. From a purely academic point of view, China and Russia both have created (and continue to create) technological wonders.
but, as long as "that system" is in place, a shadow will hang over China. It really doesn't matter how many of China's technologists or citizens scold the west for "having an outdated view" of china".
until some form of democracy and self-criticism comes into play, China will be feared, and their strength respected, but can never truly a leader.
By the way, some of the posts regarding the crimes of communism are very factual. I wasn't expecting that. My neighbors lived in Rumania, under communist rule, and had many friends "disappear" or get shot trying to swim the river to freedom. So it's not all books.
My criticism of America is that it treats people like machines of the economy. Everything is "consumer this, consumer that". I hope someday there will be a closer knit "community outlook" in the US. Too many people are lonely, and socialization is not really reinforced. We probably rebel too much. For example, teens were drinking, puking, cussing, doing burnouts in my apt. parking lot till early this morning. Welcome to America.
Actually, I dislike communism so much, I'd love to see a (post, interview, article) from someone involved with one of the great Soviet/Russian schools -- how the economic transition is going, how the school is, what their projects are.
The Chinese point of view is interesting, but I'd love to hear a Russian talk about...anything. We spent a significant amount of time on Russia in my Western Civ class, and the professor visits the more remote areas regularly (not so much now cuz he's older and the crime is up).
I think the various Free Software projects and their cousins are a natural for China and any other country with a GNP-per-capita under $10K/yr.
It doesn't matter a bit to my company that BSD runs a great firewall on an old 486; to our colleague, it matters a lot.
And tight resources have a way of devaluing human time - everybody is used to thinking of labour as cheap in the Orient, and this applies to white-collar labour as well. That's a very natural fit with free software, which will probably be perenially more effort to learn and set up than packaged commerical offerings. It's one of that main things still scaring off companies from Free Software.
Then there's the language issue. Yes, MS and Apple could produce Chinese versions of their products - but can even MS compel Chinese versions of 70,000 applications? So the sense of "lock-in" is much reduced for the Chinese.
Lastly is one that touches on political, but predates communism by centuries: the Chinese in particular (I mean, more than the rest of us) are famously suspicious of foreigners (something to do with repeated invasion and abuse since 1100.) You've gotta be less suspicious of a product with open code than a closed product, whose owner licenses every copy - and might change his mind some day. Open Source is the new equivalent of Open Hands.
I think that's four good reasons. I'd happily bet on a vastly expanded presence of Linux, BSD, and other Open Source and Free Software products in China and the rest of the Orient in the next few years.
Lots of prisoners in the US are where they are because they have directly violated the human rights of others.
The challenge for the next century is probably less to achieve a good relationship with other countries but rather how we treat the people within our own country. Just look at this thread, I mean. Or think of your personal safety. How comes people get used to no-go-areas?
I can understand the Chinese if they say they don't want to have capitalism right away. I mean, you don't want a second russian chaos just 5 times as big. And besides, I am not sure if the earth can bear another 1 billion people with the average US per citizen energy consumption.
Less exciting than a commitment to Linux would be the government's support of free speech. Does one come with the other? Let's hope so.
Yes, I'm sure your mother felt that way when she changed your dirty diapers. Would we be better off if she had pinched her nose and dumped your little, stinky, abilityless self in the trashcan?
A functional communist system requires that all its members participate willingly. This is why Israeli kibbutzim work and why your nappies got changed. Stalin, Mao & company tried to implement communism through armed coercion, with predictable results.
Cheers,
-j.
I'm stuck in Chicago, conversant in Mandarin Chinese and a developer/sysadmin with lots of Linux experience. Has anyone got a line on consulting work in China using Linux? I know such opportunities exist but don't know where to look. Thanks.
Free Tibet! Free Taiwan! Free all of China.
---
I am a currently student of Japanese, and I work with double-byte systems daily. I have a question:
There is talk about different distributions being customized for different languages - rather, I for one would love to work on a distribution that supports all languages simultaneously, perhaps it should have all the resources stored in unicode. As it stands, I cannot at present even find a single free unicode font that implements most of the major character sets of the world.
Would such a "Unicode Linux" distribution be technically possible now? Would it have too heavy of a footprint to be of any use? Is there an IME and text editor out there that could support this properly?
BTW: I listen to CRI and RTI almost every night, and Zhongwen is the next language on my list to learn, so I'm a bit biased.
I do not believe that all these countries are the same today. Though most still bear witness to communist occupation, some of the greyness has lessed (more so in countries with shorter/weaker soviet rule). I believe that it will take a generation or two before things are back in shape. For capitalism to thrive it requires more than laws which allow for it, it requires: a people who are willing and believe in it, a government which is stable, a system of courts which support it, vital learning institutions, etc. I know some people who are (or who have tried) to conduct business in Russia, and other places, the majority of the people simply lack the necessary work ethic. It is very difficult to conduct business when you can't trust your own employees, let alone your suppliers (et. al).
should not be allowed to be carried on from the dark human history into the modern times. The Chinese governmnet should not be given any exemptions to the United Nations' Human Rights Declaration in the name of keeping an oppressive one-party system in place, or even in the name of Yet Another Thousand Years of Ethnically Unified China.
Everyone with any knowledge of the history of China - ancient or contemporary - knows about the deeply ingrained desire of the ethnically Chinese to live in a strong and unified China. Historians - and teachers - quote the eras without a single centralized leadership as times of absolute lawlessness and chaos. You can figure out the suggested cure yourselves.
But are the chinese people really better off under a single ethno-centric state? Their collective memory conveniently forgets that the chinese have never in their glorious past have actually had the personal freedoms to choose for themselves what is best for them. The precious few who dare to display free thinking that goes contrary to the Central Government's policy du-jour are imprisoned, executed or, if they're "lucky", exiled. Until recently the ordinary chinese had no knowledge whatsoever about the developments in rest of the world, or often even within China itself, outside their villages or counties.
Now such information is slowly trickling in; most of it twisted to suit the ends of the Central Government but even they can't prevent "unwanted information" from spreading. E.g. innocent stuff about workers' right to establish labor unions that is "enshrined" in PRC constitution but which noone is allowed to know about.
Anyway, the questionable end that justifies every means here is "(ethnic) unity at any cost". Now what is democracy? I recall a definition in a political science book that defines it simply as "how people decide their fate". There are no provisions for governments to kill their innocent citizens in the name of "continued stability" for the current regime. Real, deserved unity is only found through the ballot box. If you wish to live in oppressive past, give it your vote. But allow others to seek freedoms more in line with humanity's present and future.
Should invading one's peaceful neighbours be opposed, or rewarded with trade deals?
Is America responsible for some people in Sierra Leone cutting off the arms of children and old ladies?
Since Sierra Leone is in Africa,
and Africa==Third World
and Third World==Peaceful, oppressed people
and America==evil
Therefore it must be Americans running around with the machetes doing it. Then, of course, using a multinational corporate conspiracy, they are doctoring the news footage, replacing the Americans with machetes with old footage from Tarzan movies.
Give me a break. Some third world dictator makes a deal with a european company and pockets the cash, so what else is new. But that dictator, even if he is part of a repressed ethnic minority, is the criminal.
While I don't know what politcal persuation the Nigerian Dictator is, one fact remains: In the twentieth century, Communism has killed more people than any other political system. Witness Stalin, Lenin, Ceausescu, Tito, Mao, and Kim, along with the Kmer Rouge, and the myriad of minor communist dictators.
Their population wasn't anywhere even approaching 100million. Ignoring logistics, do your math. There is no way that many could have been killed over a period of so many generations. Furthermore, even if you assume they had populations that size which would enable it, it is still highly highly improbable.
Consider these:
a) Their populations were highly distributed--no cities. Makes for a difficult target.
b) A figure this size, over a period of a couple generations requires near holocaust devotion and efficiency. Remember, we lacked automatic rifles and what not at the time. Why would our relatively small populations want to eliminate them with such determination? Consider these facts, you would have to assume that it was the sole objective of the settlers, which is nonsense.
c) Western diseases and habits would have, and did, kill them far swifter than any group at that time could have hoped.
d) Because their mortality rates were too high, a small population could not have procreated that swiftly enough. Especially considering the fact that they're presumably being uprooted.
...I wish people would CHALLENGE what they hear, instead of just swallowing it whole and without inspection. 100million is a LOAD and a half.
Rinux!
Um, I thought that Mao Zetsung was the guy in charge of the Tiananmen Square massacre?
I have heard that you can't go to the top US universities
unless you have $30000 to spend on tuition fees.
The comment about distribution of wealth is off-topic, and
applies in the US as well.
If you don't want replies, it would be better not to
post a comment in the first place.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
The internet users in China doubled from 2 million to 4 million in only half a year(1/1999-6/1999), according to CNNIC(Chinese NIC). The largest computer company Legend Group(Mind you, not IBM, though a distant NO. 2)shipped about 1.4 million PCs and Servers and Notebooks. And yet here people are talking about 100,000 users of computers... People in America are really out of touch with MODERN CHINA.
I wasn't the one who said Tien Amen wasn't a massacre - it's the Clinton administration who says this. And they really did send the Chinese general to West Point to lie to the future leaders of our Army. Not that they believed a word of it, but you did.
Either you're sooooooooooo clueless you didn't pick up on the dripping sarcasm, or you're another see-no-evil Clinton voter, in which case I wish you'd do the country a favor and stop voting.
...something more intelligent to say?
Pretty pathetic.
-- Boris.
I agree, the goverment are bastards, but that's not the subject of this article, is it?! It's about a university student who tells about his Linux-adventures on his campus. And to the guy who wrote the comment under this one ("too little bullets..."), you're not one of us Slackwarriors and don't pretend to be.
The young man from China posted an excellent article about Linux and it's uses in his country. I applaud his efforts. I am glad to have heard his voice. I have never heard a oice from China before :)
:)
;)
:)
:)
The thing I do not understand is this:
Where do the agressive people get the right to slag him for living in China. Do these people know anything about China other than what propagana has been spoon-fed to them? Somehow I doubt it.
Since I moved to NY from Moncton, NB, Canada, I have seen this kind of ignorance and fear from many of the people I have met. I see it in many things that are done in this country. I thought this was supposed to be the 'home of the brave', I guess I was wrong. As opposed to sticking their necks out and learning something, many people would rather sit cowering in fear and point their fingers, jeering "Red Commie Bastard". Wow, that's brave.
The people talking about all of the bad things China has done in human rights. Do they know? Were they there? I doubt it. Here's the reason for my doubt:
Most of the people I have met here think Canada is a small insignificant country north of them somewhere. It has 2 or 3 major cities: Toronto, Montreal and some of them have heard of Vancouver.(note: there are professional BIG LEAGUE sports teams in these cities and they are therefore televised a lot.) I have had people from this country ask me if I see the sun in the winter! I explain to them that I lived just north-east of Maine and they still think that there's NO SUN for the winter months there. Yet there is in Maine. I guess the sun stops at the american border just like rational thought and good government.
Unbelievable.
If these people are so un-informed about a country that borders them to the north... How could they have _ANY_ grasp of what occurs in China?
They know what they have been told by the media for the most part. Not much more.
From my studies in school I found China to be a 'mysterious' country filled with some beautiful art, music and an interesting history. It's probably over-crowded and I am sure there is a lot of poverty. But I don't hate them for it. They have a completely different set of beliefs than I and their system of government is so vastly different from mine that I cannot fathom how it would operate. So what? I _REFUSE_ to subscribe to the propaganda jammed down my throat about 'commies' and 'reds' from american television throughout the late 70's and 80's. I really don't think anyone who lives in a country who's leader is a manipulative 'playboy' has any right to go on about matters of good government. I will not hate these people until I know them myself and find reasons of my own. I don't believe that communism is any worse than 'American capitalism'.
Some people don't have the presence of mind to believe there's more than one way to live.
I hate to generalize and I hate stereotypes. These are just the things I have seen.
Many thanks to Slashdot for trying to bring stories like these to view. It's an excellen idea hosted by some very fine and humourous folks
Onward and forward with the free software movement! I hope it opens more eyes and gives me more opportunities to see and learn about my foreign planet-mates
It truly is an interesting time to be alive isn't it?
- Chris
You've just heard about Linux and then you come here drawing negative attention? I'm very sorry for you, you need help man!
Dutch guy.
its not about a fight between americans and chinese, its about the fight between dictators and people. alot of stupid americans think china is a free country because they meet rich sons and daughters of the chinese leadership who come to the USA to study. too bad there are not more normal people like yourself to get rid of the ignorance.
the CIA loves to beat down democracy just as much as the communist party. get a less biased source.
they are scattered around and hard to find/use and i doubt they would run on my 486/33 so i havent tried. the guy mentions a chinese console using the linux framebuffer, well linux framebuffer requires a modern graphics card (VESA) which is also not nearly as cheap as my old 1991 trident card. but keep looking there are people working on it. within 5 years there will be some sort of standard.
alot of the Chinese who became 'commies' spent 1945 pullinga B-29 air crews out of the boiling waters of the sea before Tojo could get them and shove bamboo poles up their ass for his amusement. normal people hate politics on both sides of the water, the 'big men' are the ones to blame for murdering us.
International news-reports are always about politics. That's why people don't see other things that happen in daily life in a country. Everyday life goes on, just like the computer industry. My parents were small children before the communists took control, they've experienced Word War II. My grandfather fought the Japanese army in WWII alongside the American army. But there are more things in life than politics. I guess you don't do political protest when you wake up every morning, do you? That's the same for students and programmers. They get up, go to college and then go home to hack some source and try new sourcecode, like Rob, you and me. Everyone is an individual, in case people didn't know, with different interests and all.
This article is about computer-news, Slashdot is about computers and geekstuff. It's okay to have an opinion, but that's not what this article is about. alt.politics is a newsgroup. People with political statements should go there.
Cheers.
u so stupid!
I shouldn't even reply to this crap.
Sure. Some "free software" people are what you have described. Equally as sure. Most aren't.
And guess what? It's in the same proportion as normal!!!
Yeah! Believe it or not, there are anti democratic elitist eugenicist racist and sexist people who AREN'T 'free software' people. In an equal proportion.
And what about the free software USERS, who are the majority of the population and are more likely to enact global change than the CODERS....
Wake up. It's people like you that promote racism, by drawing distinctions.
-Shane Stephens
bloody eyes, bloody liver, bloody sucking chest wound, and you are a bloody arse
The way I see it, concerning Hong Kong, nothing has changed. There's still a border between HK and China and the same rules are being enforced as before. HK (to me) is effectively a seperate state.
China on the other hand is a funny place (I just came back from a short visit to China this week, it's very beautifull out there).
China has it's government, and the people. I see them as 2 different things. The people where (unfortunately??) born there, and have to live with the circumstances of their environment. They are friendly and smart people, and just want the best for their family and themselves. Most of them are not interested in politics.
Politics and the government concerning: They have (used to have --> it's rapidly changeing) a "different" system than the US, or ours (the Dutch). That doesn't mean that they're WRONG. They're just DIFFERENT. We need to accept that other governments do things in a DIFFERENT way. We have no right to push our opinion uppon them (something that even Clinton needs to learn). Eventhough they may not have ellegant sollutions to all of their problems. Let's just hope that they're learning from their mistakes.
The government has had it's ups and downs. They've made their mistakes, and we can punnish them for that forever. But where will that get us? My point is, every government makes mistakes, the US government, my government (the Dutch), and also the Chinese. I'm not saying that it's right to crack down on people, but sometimes it makes sense in their system. (I'm going to get flamed for this). I beleive the chinese gov. has chosen for a more controled & relaxed way to freedom. They don't want to make the same mistakes the russians made and get the chaos that that caused. They want to do things in a controlled way. The Special Economic Zones in the south, and more relaxed regulations are part of this plan. HK is also evendence of it. China is keeping HK the way it is, to learn from the way it works, and to slowly copy it to it's own cities. ShangHai is a good example.
It's also the reason why internet is restricted / censored in China. The government wants to keep things under control. They beleive that it's the best way to to things, and we have to respect that opninion. Eventually time will tell.
Let's help the chinese by embraceing them in the world of Linux. Give them the ability to use computers (without paying M$ $$$). Help them open their eyes. There are so many bright people out there that could benifit alot from Linux.
Please don't punnish the Chinese people just because they live in that country. They deserve better.
In the mean time, learn more about China and it's rich history. Go visit the place, there are some very beautifull places to visit (I've just been up to the WuJi Mountains, very very nice).
And stop spitting out the typical yankee "we are right, and whoever's different is wrong" opinion.
That's my $0.02
Stefan
The communist government in China committed a number of atrocities in the past, which people in China accepted as facts, just like the American government systemetically exploited the African slaves in 18 century. Now all those people who used to inflict pain on Chinese people are dead and all my friends in China throw those stuff into garbage bin. They care more about how the current government runs the country. True. It's an totalitarian government. And there is little (but not "NO") democracy. But all my friends know that. However, contrary to the missionary-like preaching of American government and media, most Chinese, including educated ones, don't want democracy at this moment. Most of them spend more time wondering about how can he or she buy a new car, a new house or a new computer than about how to have an American-style general election. No, thank you, China has been doing fine for 5000 years without the preaching of Americans. It certainly knows how to handle its own business. And look at Russia. See how it is like after listening to America's advice. Sure, it has a congress and all the other bells and whistles of a modern democracy, but its people are starved. Fortunately, the collapse of USSR taught the Chinese a lesson. If that is the democracy America has been preaching about, I firmly believe 99.9% of Chinese will say, "No, thank you. we would rather have new houses and cars and TVs and air conditioners and computers and don't have democracy, than have all the democracy we could imagine and yet don't have the money to buy the next dinner." One of my friend participated the protest in Tiananmen Square in 1989.In retrospect, he admitted that it's a wise thing for government to crack down the protest. Otherwise, China will be Russia #2. However, Chinese don't want democracy now doesn't mean that they don't want it in the future. 20 years later, Chinese will want to have democratic government. Right now, all the conditions are simply not right. And things are much much much better than what used to be 20 years ago. And things will continue to improve.
One thing amazes and also amuses me(this view is shared by all my Chinese friends in America)how out of touch some Americans are with current China. Even though they have never set feet on China, they always have tons of opinions about China. They always view China in a "red, communist, barbarian, etc, light" I got an American friend asking me if my family had a TV. Gee, my family has 3 TVs, not that my family is particularly rich or something. Most of my friends have more than one TV. The truth is: almost 9.8 out 10 people genuinely like Ameica and American people. They drink Coke, eat McDonald, watch Bruce Willis movie, listen to Doors and Bob Dylan, play Quake and Starcraft...The list could go on and on. They have no hard feelings about America at all. On the contrary, some Americans seem to have this innate fear of China, especially communist China, without knowing anything about it at all. The funny thing is that only after I have extensive access to American media did I realize how much the stereotype and fear is ingrained in American collective mind and thus all my idea of the so-called "objectivity" of American media is smashed. It seems to me that to some people the only "right" or "real" or "objective" comments about China should be only those that are negative. I just don't understand these people. And I guess all the Chinese students coming to America share my experience.
All in all, most Chinese want to be friends rather than enemies of Americans. But they want to be equal friends without being critized every day. All my Chinese friends, especially the educated ones, are sick and tired of the human right craps. They just want to live their lives unbothered. Could America take good care of its own problems(racial discrimination, drug, guns, crime...)before it preaches others? Personally, I would like to see Americans advocate Linux as fiercely as they advocate democracy. :=)
This is off-topic, I know, but I feel I have to respond...
This is entirely true. The Chinese government is rarely representative of the Chinese people, and Chinese people's love of their country rarely translates into love of their current government.
Now this I disagree with. I think Tibet is a really good example of the terrible acts of the Chinese government. Re: your points:
Now this is just silly. By this reasoning anyone who doesn't love the Chinese occupation of Tibet is not Tibet, but is rather a Tibetan seperatist or sympathiser.
Enough of this. I've had enough conversations with people about Tibet to know that the only thing that makes most people understand what happened and is still happening there is to go there.
Aelfric Sorensen
So either the police there are really, really, good, and never make mistakes, or everyone gets railroaded.
And they still have the death penalty.
Put the two together, and how many people are getting executed for crimes they did not commit?
By the way, this is Japan today. It's not exactly a monument of democracy. For example, the Koreans who live in Japan have almost no rights, and those born there are stateless persons (no citizenship).
The only legitimate reason I can see that we would support Japan is for something to use against N. Korea and China.
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat0.htm#Ameri ca
you throw people in jail for being democrats or christians and then harvest their organs against their will. or run over your own people with tanks, machine gun them down. Or tie up baby girls in sacks and drown them in rivers so you can get a boy child in under the child quotas. or the hundreds of thousands of illegal chinese that poor into our country and work in sweat shops. Your country is evil. I could give a shit about what operating system you use. I just wish you'd stay the hell out of MY country. But I know, as pathetic and stupid as your government is, you'll end up blowing yourselves up soon enough. I just hope its sooner than later, so that we don't have to get involved.
Hi, I'm curious, where do you live now? =)
...small world?
These acts were not committed by modern America. Furthermore, most of these deaths occurred as a result of DISEASE, which is NOT the same at all. Cultural Revolution on the other hand targeted huge sectors of the population in RECENT history.
I'm not going to claim that America is perfect, but to compare us to a bunch of thugs is a load of bullshit. America has simply never, as a country, executed whole groups of people (the Japanese internment is as close as you can get--entirely different). If you don't appreciate the difference you don't deserve to live in the US.
I do not claim to be an expert on this country but I have lived here this past year and I have read quite a lot about its history. The cultural revolution from 1966 to 1968 was about the worst period in history I can imagine any where, but it followed other horrific events such as the Japanese invasion and the agricultural failures, and modern China did not really get over the mess created by its leaders until the present leader succeded Mao and the gang of four. Since that time the policy has been extremely liberal for enterprises, to the point where it seems more capitalist than communist.
There are still a few in power who believe in the old ways, and the psychological terror that resulted from worst excesses of the cultural revolution makes many think that it is safer not to criticise.
The english language state sponsored news is considered quite funny since it presents the opposite viewpoint to the western media, but it also serves as a reminder that the truth probably lies somewhere between the two. Its hardly surprising the Chinese government banned CNN during the Tiananmen anniversary since it was so predictable that there would be hours of self righteous lecturing about human rights together with a certain shadenfreud.
What they don't seem to understand or appreciate is that it is not possible to govern a country with such massive demographics while students are trying to undermine the existing regime. I expect the police reaction would be very similar to that sort of protest in London, Paris or Washington. In any case what is so sacred about democracy where you can only choose who makes your choices on your behalf every few years. Hopefully one day the net will make these politicians redundant, but until then we can hardly make decisions ourselves if we cannot get the right information.
"By nature men are alike. Through practice they have become far apart."
I'm pretty sure it wasn't the Chinese that kidnapped Mulder's sister. What about the virus they put in him? It doesn't sound like something the Russians would do on their own. I suspect the British are behind it. It really sounds like something monarchists would do, if you ask me.
And talking about world domination, why did Alan Cox come over here? Was it to make Linux better, or did the Queen order it for as part of some Byzantine plot?
I'm pretty sure it wasn't the Chinese that kidnapped Mulder's sister. What about the virus they put in him? It doesn't sound like something the Russians would do on their own. I suspect the British are behind it. It really sounds like something monarchists would do, if you ask me.
And talking about world domination, why did Alan Cox come over here? Was it to make Linux better, or did the Queen order it as part of some Byzantine plot?
I'm pretty sure it wasn't the Chinese that kidnapped Mulder's sister. What about the virus they put in him? It doesn't sound like something the Russians would do on their own. I suspect the British are behind it. It really sounds like something monarchists would do, if you ask me.
And talking about world domination, why did Alan Cox come over here? Was it to make Linux better, or did the Queen order it as part of some Byzantine plot? You guys really got to start looking below the surface.
Okay, here's a thought: No matter what language you're programming in, it all ends up in binary anyway when compiled, correct? So, if/when non-English based programming languages get developed, we would need a tool that could take binary and reconvert it into code we can read. I thought there was something that did this already - I seem to think it's Borland Disassembler, you now, their disassembler product to go along with Turbo C and Turbo Pascal - but it does it in "English"-like code. Ultimately, the program should be able to interpret it into the programming language of your choice, but that's a whole different ball of wax. Interpreted languages would be a problem, yes.
Disclaimer: I'm taiwanese too, and have been in the states almost all my life. My understanding is from talking to someone from China and working for a global communications company which would like to provide network access in China.
I believe that all internet access in China is filtered through an array of censorship servers (what's worse is users get billed per meg for the priviledge of using these censorship servers).
I'm a Korean, and surely I'm not chinese. but I think that
:)
:)
I can write my personal opinion more objectively than any Chinese
or Western people.
Think about it: 10 billion people are under one government in China.
I don't object to the spirit of Human Rights, but it has initially
evolved in Europe. It's recently that Asian people get accustomed
to the concept of western Human Rights, since Americans began to
emphasize it after the collapse of Soviet Union.
For eastern asia countries, all of which were under the large
tradition and influence of Confucianism, Human right is a slightly
different concept than Confucianic virtues. It's a little difficult
for me to describe it exactly, and my english is not so good enough,
but I can tell you one: Confucianism shows respects for
well-organized hierachy of social status. And it defines clearly
who should do what.
It's amazing that 10 billion people are under one government. For
chinese unicifaction, a government with high prestige or political
power is a must. And conficianian traditions help support the
righteousness of the government.
Chinese political leaders killed so many people. Japanese killed
0.1M people in Nanjing during the 2nd World War. Chian Kai-sek
killed almost the same number of people while he was in
Kuomintang party, and the leader Mao killed more people. Even
Deng Xiaoping spread blood of thousands on the Tianamen square.
But overall, Chinese government is not a murderer. The entire
population is 10 billion. It's a shame that United States,
a model democracy republic, has more prisoners per 100 people.
and most of the prisoners are black or hispanic.
China is a different country with different tradition. There
is no country with the 10 billion people in Western culture.
Human rights can be applied on any occasions, but Chinese,
including many of Korean and even japanese, have slightly
different viewpoint on Human rights. Give them a chance
to fully understand the *Western* concept. and wait for them
while they're contemplating on it. Don't blame the Chinese
government and especially innocent Chinese people.
Luckily, the chinese government steadily lowers the barriers
to foreign people. I think it's enough.
In the long term, I agree that free economic system is not
compatible with dictatorship. Free economic system will
eventually build free democracy. But it's up to chinese
and they should find their own ways of life.
Thanks for reading. Sorry my english is a bit poor.
Now, I'll admit right now that I am not very familiar with Linux. I installed it on my system and, am still in a learning process. Part of my interest in Linux is from reading ESR writings on the open-source community http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/homesteading/h omesteading.html. His writtings seemed to describe a world-wide community that worked on the best code (and that gift culture stuff). Now, the people that have contributed to Linux are from many countries. If I understand properly the emphasis should be on the code. Myself, I have been inspired to learn about open source code, and to try and contribute either though bug reports or through later knowledge of coding. The point here would be to get the greatest user base in an attempt to get the best coders (myself at this point not an option). The issue with China endorsing Linux is a moot issue. It appears to be a over-reaction to a press release. The question is offically how the community deals with endorsement. This has become a kinda PR game. From what ESR describes (that of the making the OS that works indepentant of the PR game) it should not be a PR issue. Admittedly maybe an issue today. But as I understand it the GLP makes Linux aviable to all (no politcs).
Now, I'll admit right now that I am not very familiar with Linux. I installed it on my system and, am still in a learning process. Part of my interest in Linux is from reading ESR's writings on the open-source community. His writtings seemed to describe a world-wide community that worked on the best code (and that gift culture stuff). Now, the people that have contributed to Linux are from many countries. If I understand properly the emphasis should be on the code. Myself, I have been inspired to learn about open source code, and to try and contribute either though bug reports or through later knowledge of coding. The point would be to get the greatest user base in an attempt to get the best coders (myself at this point not an option). The issue with China endorsing Linux is a moot issue. It appears to be a over-reaction to a press release. The question is offically how the community deals with endorsement. This has become a kinda PR game. From what ESR describes (that of the making the OS that works independant of the PR game) it should not be a PR issue. Admittedly this maybe an issue today. But as I understand it the GLP makes Linux aviable to all (no politcs). The politics that ESR describes in Homesteading the Noosphree are between coders and not countries. It becomes a bit different when placed within a world political view. If ESR was only working within the politics he describes online then there would be no issue with China. It would be an issue with an coder in China at best. The culture that he describes is working for the best code. Personally my ploltics difer with ESR (but seem to agree my many issues), but it shouldn't be about politics. I don't know. The PR and politics seem both popular and interesting to me, but it is not the model described by ESR in his analysis. Maybe I should have been there back in the day. The public (of which I maybe a victum) exposure of Linux seems to have moved on beyond the open source community that he describes.
One language which actually is translated depending on which language version you run is Visual Basic for Applications. If you have the English Office package, the command for opening a file is FileOpen(), but if you have the Swedish Office package, it is called FilÖppna() or something (I'm not really sure here, I don't use it myself).
This internationalization of the language might have seemed like a good idea at the time, but it makes it hopeless to create macros that will run on any version of Micros~1 Office. Incidentally, it also prevents some macro virii, which will crash when the functions aren't named the same... :-)
I have tried some Swedishified languages, and I really hate them. Your'e just too used to writing "if x goto y" instead of "om x gå till y". The fact that you sometimes use Swedish identifiers is another story altogether, though...
Going to China makes perfect sense for the man who invented the GPL. After all,RMS' most famous creation embodies the idea that Freedom is a Virus...
I want to work in China when I finish my PhD. I am a reasonably able unix admin with experience in sunOS, solaris, win (NT 95 98), HPUX and of course Linux. Do you think there is demand large enough to require foreign workers?
wo hui shuo yidian putonghua.
Graeme McCaffery (Mai kai ri)
screw china! until slashdot interview him here on slashdot.. come on.. weve got questions here.. forget jp.. hes a moron. -a dude from asia.. but definetely not from china.
Hmm; relocating them to reservations, carving the faces of our presidents in one of their most sacred religious symbols (Mt. Rushmore)... and of course the list goes on.
I heard a rumour several days ago that Linux was being adopted as the de facto stanadard OS in /.less the first thing that I did on getting
/. I
* ***************************************
China. As I was in the countryside at the time and
back to my computer was log on to slashdot to check it out - and so I found this debate raging.
I first went to China from the UK in 1994 to study Chinese for a year, and I have been there ever
since. I have run a business from Beijing for the last four years which has given me the chance
to travel to the far corners of the country. I have wined and dined with party members in
expensice hotels and bars, and done the same in little hovels with truck drivers. Over the years
I have had the opportunity to meet and befriend people from the whole gamut of professions and
all sides of the political fence, including both those that were near to the centres of power in
the Nationalists and in the Communists and students from '89.
China is a very complex place and any comments that I make here can only touch very shallowly on
a few limited issues. I am a normally lazy person and wouldn't make the effort to port on
can't not reply to some of the comments that I have read here today. I feel that there is a huge
gulf in peoples' perceptions of China and the reality that there is. To be perfectly honest I lay
most of the blame for this at the feet of the world's media. Time and time again over the last
few years I have either watched news reports or read news articles that were misleading. To give
you an example I remember being in HK in '97 for the hand over; on CNN in the days and weeks
prior to the hand over the impending event was always referred to as the "Hong Kong problem".
This was a deliberate choice by the media in the US [I am not making an attack on the US media,
just using this as one example of biased reporting in the west] to frame the event of the hand
over as a problem. The European press, unusually for them, took a quite contrary view to the
reporting of the event and showed it as a jolly end to colonial rule. What this did was create in
those people that watched the CNN coverage an anxiety and uneasiness about the impending hang
over, oops sorry - hand over. In the end, as far as the actual event went at the time everything
was very peaceful and orderly. Although I and my friends (a mixture of young westerners, Hong
Kongers, and Chinese) did have a hangover. Seen in this context the framing of the hand over as
the "Hong Kong problem" was unnecessary and inaccurate. However it probably made much more
watchable and nail-biting news in the US than it would if they had merely 'sold' it [because that
is what the media is about - selling news] as the build up to a big party.
I am not saying that the changing of Hong Kong from a British Territory to a Special
Administrative Region of China was or is a *good* thing. The issue is too complex to make such a
sweeping statement.
I have read articles over the years in the washington post, the UK Times, even the Economist
which I consider to be misleading and inaccurate. When I see them it makes my blood boil. It is
not the importance of one article but rather the continued long-term bias that enrges me. What
happens over time is that a common knowledge about China (and I'm sure the same happens on a
broad range of topics) is woven together from threads of biased information. Over time this bias
is what gives the threads of information their colour. To make a member of joe public "buy" a
piece of new China news then that news has to fit with the wider 'cloth' of conventional wisdom
that already exists. If it doesn't, joe public won't buy it. (s)he may do in time, if there is
enough collective movement in the bias that gives the cloth it's colour.
***********************************************
A lot of nasty things do happen in China; things that if they occurred in our coutries in the
west would not be tolerated for long. I don't believe that we in the west live in societies that
have significantly less evil than there is in China, but we do have more protection against them.
In this light I think it is important for us to try and understand China and what happens there
within the context of China, the Chinese people and its history. I would like to give you all a
few examples.
Several of the posts above refer to Deng Xiaoping. A man who I believe history will paint as a
great man. He spent his entire adult life living in a climate of intrigue and power strugles.
When he finally made it to the top he dared to open the tap which let the waters of development
flow. And to this day those waters are still flowing. Not everyone has yet to benefit from these
changes - but a lot of people have. And with this economic development has come a lot of freedom,
not nearly as much freedom as we are used to in the west, but an awful lot more than they had
before. And the important thing these freedoms are still improving every year. What is
underpinning these freedoms is a continual strengthening of the rule of law. I am a lot happier
doing business in China now than I was 5 years ago because the contracts I can write now are
backed up by laws which I am confident can and will be enforced. The same holds for the average
Chinese consumer who is getting powers of accountability in everything from the services he
recieves to the product's he buys. This is all primarily due to one man, Deng Xiaoping, who dared
to think the unthinkable, to protect and encourage a group of people in the government to act
with him and who stood by it until he died.
This is also the man who ordered the tanks into Tiananmen square and massacred thousands of
students. One slashdotter said:
"Mr. Xiaoping Deng was the man who ordered the massacre of hundreds of unarmed protesters, and
that's the man you point to for reform?
Americans' views of China are heavily influenced by the Tiananmen Square massacre, and I just
can't see how someone who murders, and then vilifies political protesters was a very
reform-minded individual."
Before you can understand how Deng Xiaoping can be both a reformer and a murderer of defenceless
students you have to understand what his back ground and what his motivations were. To be brief
(because I have already written far more than I intended to) Deng Xiaoping saw the protests in
Tiananmen square and he and his advisors equated this with the start of the break down of order
at the beginning of the cultural revolution. A movement which had set China back 10-20 years in
its development and had caused great suffering both personally to Deng Xiaoping and to the whole
Chinese nation. Sitting in Zhong Nanhai and (literally) hearing the hundreds of thousands of
students protesting outside; seeing the political front fracturing with some politicians coming
out in support of the students; it is not hard to see how over a period of days and weeks Deng
Xiaoping came to make the decisions he did. He probably believed that by acting decisively he was
saving China from 10 more years of turmoil.
Was he right? I don't think so. Does this mean that everything else he did was wrong? No.
The consequences of 'liu-si' [the Chinese way of referring to June 4th 1989] were horrendous for
China and for the Chinese people. One of the reasons that the out burst in China against the NATO
bombing of the Chinese embassy was as much as anything else an excuse to deflect the attention of
the Chinese people away from the 10th anniversary of the massacre. It was also an internal power
struggle to discredit the reform minded Zhu Rongji. I have seen the Chinese media machine used by
the state for a number of occassions in the past. Particularly memorable was the passing away of
Deng Xiaoping and the Taiwan crisis. All this paled into insignifcance in comparison with the
instant villification of the bombing and the manipulation of the public's opinion. My office was
in the vicinity of both the British and US embassies and was able to see close hand what was
going on. But everything that I saw and was reported in the west has to be understood within the
context of diverting public opion and discrediting Zhu Rongji to remove his power. Nothing else,
the public tears, the smashing up of the US embassy, is of any signifcance.
Another post above says that all students at the top 5 universities are either from wealthy
families or from families of party members. This is a very unfair statement. My business partner
grew up in rural Fujian and endended up reading Economics at Renmin Daxue (The People's
Univeristy) one of the top institutions in China. I know lots of people like him who come from
normal back grounds and through hard work and brains make it to the top. Of course in any system
power and wealth will help you get to the top, it's just as true for our society as for theirs.
This post is far longer than I intended, but having read through it I feel that I have said far
less than I wanted to. The message that I hope people get is that China is not what our media says it is and that we all need to understand it better. If anybody wants to discuss anything in particular related to China or has
any questions please mail me: jsc@zoo.co.uk
PS I learnt everything I know about computers in China, in Chinese with a wonderful Chinese
friend called Wei Feng.
they are one in the same! $$ & democracy. why do you think they are fleeing? because the living conditions and the way of life a overwhelmingly poor...democracy=freedom=opportunity=money...perio d!
-dpk
I suspect 1m is a lot closer to the truth.
The majority of Indians were still very much in the hunter-gatherer stage at the time. Agriculture was very primitive and rare, they lacked domesticated animals to plow the land. Where is the evidence of vast arrable fields and what not? Most of the land had to be cleared of trees by the settlers, and they didn't have to support 20m people on it even. Are you going to tell me that Western methods were less efficient? These claims go against more than just the statistics themselves, they go against everything we know about the development of agriculture.
The simple fact of the matter is that you can attribute the vast majority of these deaths to inadvertant spreading of diseases. A few cases of bounties (who paid out 100m X $bounty?), or doctors helping the spread of diseases does not justify these numbers. They are simply unnecessary. The Indians lacked simple sanitary and medicinal practices--any exposure could wipe out pockets relatively quickly. It is not that I believe that Europeans were totally benign, but rather there are far more probable reasons and conditions here--which exclude extreme malice as a cause.
but this time its the language.
I can see why the Quebecois (French Candians) are so scared about loosing their language. Every one has to learn English because every one speaks it (reminds me of a certain company's products).
be multilingual and help import the ideas of other cultures
be monolingual and most of the world is hidden.
Arcys (English is my first language, but not my last)
The formation of "modern America" was basically finished shortly after the end of the civil war. Modern China was created fifty years ago and historical claims for a Chinese rule over places like Tibet make a lot more sense then American rule over places like California or Hawaii. Setting up concentration camps for Japanese Americans was certainly not a high point in US history but the relocation of American Indians to resevervations had a clear genocidal aspect to it. It is rather amusing hearing white Americans complaining about the illegal immigration from Mexico considering the fact that most of those "illegals" are actually descendant of American Indians.
You "suspect"? That's exactly how the 1m figure came about in the first place - people working just from intuition.
When you say "closer", do you mean on linear or logarithmic scale? On linear scale, of course 1m is probably closer than 20m. 20m is maximum supportable number. But on logarithmic scale - more appropriate for such wildly different numbers - I'm sure you're wrong. Even neglecting the agricultural interpolations, just look at the earliest estimates from colonizers. You get numbers that would multiply out to over 5m.
Your arguments about bounties and doctors definitely hold some water numerically. It's very plausible that a majority of Indians would have died anyway. However, I would not believe any number much less than 1m for killed-by-malice. And regardless of numbers, a universal bounty shows genocidal intent. Malicious genocide is more repugnant than can ever be excused; we can't ever let anyone off the hook for condoning it.
Oh, but I did make a big mistake. I was trying to give my source and I mentioned Wade Davis (wrong) rather than Ward Churchill.
Preferential Voting: easy as 1-2-3
What does my email have to do with anything? What do you mean?
When I say "closer", I mean it follows with what I've studied (been a couple years--but it was supported), while your numbers have little support in anything other than certain liberal organizations with political objectives. However, knowing what I know about their general agricultral methods and having a grasp of history (just look at European populations at the same stage in agriculture) can lend itself to some reasonable approximations. Ignoring your so called mathematical models for a second, you mind telling me how they supported 20m people? The earliest settlers simply never did full population counts, it was largely guess work. Previous studies, the world around, have showed just how difficult it was to support populations on next to non-existant agricultural methods (there is no significant evidence to indicate otherwise).
Furthermore, It is a mistake to judge people so many years earlier on today's value system. Yes, I think genocide is a tragedy and wrong, but to say these people are "evil" across the board is a bit of a stretch, particularly when nothing more than a handfull of these murders can be confirmed. The Indians killed people too. That does not mean i'm going to write them off as "bad", no more than I'm going to say "dead white men" are evil. To further stretch this "moral shadow" across to modern generations is an excercise in futility, not to mention it's harmful side-effects. The fact of the matter is that its hard to look at any group and NOT see some huge human rights abuses in its past; holding it to people achieves no good end. We, Americans, do not extoll the virtues of our genetic or cultural makeup (we are not genetically any more benign than anyone else), in our laws and courts we hope to maintain a just society. In contrast, when I attack China, I am attacking their system of law (or lack thereof) and specific individuals that are still very much in power (e.g.: Tieneman square, Mao Tse Tung, Falung Gung (sic^3), etc). I have no problem with similar attacks on our justice system.
What I meant is, this seems to have become a personal discussion on the issue of pre-columbian demographics, not a discussion on China. Any sane slashdot reader besides the two of us is not reading this. There is nothing to be afraid of from emailing me. Karma's honor: I will use your email for no more than one reply per message recieved and probably less than that. If you do feel the need to talk on slashdot, please, at least check the "No score +1 bonus" box; I do.
Let me get this straight: I do NOT believe that there were 20m native americans at the time of Columbus. I have said that. I am simply quoting, from memory, the source that I have cited (Ward Churchill). He said 3 things, IIRC: 1) The Smithsonian said that there were 1m; 2) if you look at the derivation of that number, it had been revised downwards by a factor of close to 2 at least 3 separate times; 3) some person who I forget the name of estimated 20m as maximum supportable nutritionally given archeological evidence of agricultural methods. I put far more credence in 1) and 2) than in 3, which is why my own estimate would be in the 5-8m range.
You say your numbers are "supported" by something you read several years ago, yet you cite no source. Meanwhile, you say my numbers have no support "other than certain liberal organizations with political objectives". That's a pretty ill-considered way to talk. It's true, as I realize, that Ward Churchill is not always the most credible source in the world (although I'm not sure whether you had any specific knowledge of that fact). However, he is a scholar, not an "organization" - in context, that's just a smear-word. And for cryin' out loud, everyone has political objectives, that has nothing to do with whether you're a good scholar. No more ad hominem arguments, please.
I agree that you can't judge people from many years ago on today's value system. However, my arguement was that there are certain moral universals which do transcend time and place. If anything belongs on that list, genocide does. No, it doesn't make people "evil" across the board, but the action and attude themselves are evil wherever and whenever they occur.
As to the relevancy to today, and specifically to whether the US or Chinese government is morally superior - well, there you are (almost [1]) 100% right. I'm sorry, I popped into this discussion merely because someone had come up with the 100m number and you had countered by saying that was orders of magnitude too high (ie, 1m). I felt I could add something by actually citing a source, rather than arguing from intuition.
[1]The only way this would be relevant to today would be if specific current-day official practices wrt native americans were morally wrong (for non-genocidal reasons) and historically outgrowths of genocidal attitudes. Which I would argue is true, but it is a tiny nitpick compared to a lot of what the Chinese government does and has done in the current era.
Preferential Voting: easy as 1-2-3
The idea of communism (or socialism) isn't that everybody should have the same, but that everybody should have according to his or her needs. In computer terms, not everybody would own a sparkling athlon, but computer nerds, programmers etc. would get one for free, or would be able to share one with others. If this doesn't sound like your ideal reign, then what does?!
However, the limitation lies of course in us people. (Who wouldn't want that spanking athlon?). As long as we can't control ourselves, but gather material wealth like the apocalypse is coming tomorrow, all communist economies will eventually degrade with corruption. This is one of the main arguments against communism. But we have all (?) been raised in a capitalist society, and it is possible, that if we really tried to teach our children
- righteousnes
and- working together
, then maybe in the future this could be possible. Communism believes in the good in man, whereas capitalism, in true Machiavellian fashion, works pretty good with self-centered people who only think of themselves.There have been a lot of violence associated with comunist revolutions in the past, for instance in China and Cambodia. However, it has been proven by history that peasants and other civilians, when organizing themselves as an militia, can be crueler, bloodthirstier and more violent than any normal army could be (there are a lot of examples, for instance every civil war in history, and the Vietnam war). These revolutions have often gotten out of hands, when the militia, who have newly gained ideas and weapons but lack any order, decide to make the world "righteous" at once. However, this shouldn't be blamed on communism.
Everybody should read Marx, but one shouldn't consider his works to be the ultimate truth. They have been written a hundred years ago, and some things have changed. For instance, with the multi-nationalitation of corporations, we no longer have the "bourgoise" and the "proletariat" in a traditional meaning. Instead, there are countries, which are entirely filled with poor workers, and countries, where even the working class reap the benefits of these poor countries injustice.
It is pretty popular today (at least in europe) to critisize the US, regarding communism as "great theory, but in practic..." and pointing fingers at the former and current socialist countries, namely the Sovjet Union, China, North Korea, Cambodia etc. However, at the same time we live in a very capitalist society, but gain benefit from many traditional socialist things, like free medical help, social security etc. In the "neo-socialist" camp, however, it is popular to regard the Sovjet Union, China, North Vietnam, Cambodia, Cuba etc. as "not really socialist states". However, this is a little past the point. While I consider myself to be left-wing, I try to accept the fact that all the aforementioned countries really tried to move to socialism. We shouldn't bash at them, or deny them, but learn from them. Really, what went wrong? What would Cuba had become if the US wouldn't have broken all contacts with them (in the beginning, Castro tried to get help from the US governement. He was denied a meeting with the president, and the vice president labeled him a commie, who was to be dealt with by the CIA). I do not believe in a bloody revolution, and I definetly will check twice before ever calling myself "Leninist", "Maoist", "Trotskist" or any other old dogma. I believe that we should all have equal rights and equal chanses in life, the richness or poorness of our parents not drawing boundaries for our lives. And I am ready to give help the weaker and the poorer, even if it means that I will not get as much as I could get othervise. I think many other are too, and I hope that in the future, more and more will be. The capitalist anarchy many of us live in now is only fun as long as you have a job, are young, and are healthy. After all, the grade of civilisation in a culture is best determined by it's ability and willingness to help the weaker inviduals.