I'm a western man living in Beijing. Westerners are often used here as foreign experts in TV commercials to lend some additional semblance of credibility to the product pitch. I have played a doctor, an Australian scientist, and suit & tie businessmen. Products have included breast enlargement kits, hi-tech underwear, and chinese herbal medicine (the Strong Bones Particles of Six Flavors). Usually I just have to mouth some words because they'll do a voiceover in Chinese later, but occasionally I have to speak - and translate very bad English into something a real person might actually say. Its not very lucrative but it is diverting.
No.
Yes, if you had a home system.
Do you know of any? How would you tell the Chinese? and once enough people were doing it, it would be blocked.
There are anonymous proxies which can access blocked sites. The Chinese government seems to know about some of them, and will block those on occasion.
The argument or view attributed to Dyson is completely wrong. China's internet-using population is not merely elites, and enough of them are interested in issues that the government is scrambling to put in place even more censorship capability.
Chinese internet cafes charge as little as $0.25/hour, they are commonplace in all cities, and they are packed full of students - mostly playing online games, but apparently there is enough unbridled curiosity that the government ordered private cafes to sell out to a handful of government run cafe companies, so the Chinese internet experience could be more carefully monitored.
Now DSL into the home is being offered for free in Beijing, and even those of us who pay for it only pay 120 RMB/mo (about $14.60).
Are these people invested in the status quo? Sure, nobody wants to upset the apple cart while they have the chance to make enough money to buy a car. But privately, criticism of and disbelief in the government is widespread, and the government is fearful that people will find a way to share ideas.
China is also now censoring private SMS messages according to newspaper reports.
Search google.com for "falun gong" - result Mozilla MessageBox says "this document contains no data" Search yahoo.com and there are many documents. Search google for "tienanmen" - result 317,000 documents Search google after anonymizing - result 317,000 documents Search yahoo - result 411,000 documents Search google for "hu jintao" - result 107,000 documents Search anonimized google - result 108,000 documents Search yahoo - result 185,000 documents No time to investigate more deeply than that. But Google is not the only source of information. China isn't so interested in (or is incapable of) blocking everything - just those ways used by the average non-geek uninformed citizen. Most of the time. But they can tighten down when they want. Around the anniversary of Tiananmen, for a week or so I found many more websites blocked, including anonymization proxys that are now open. IMO its shameful for google to filter their web results for china. It doesnt give us the best experience (whatever that means); it helps to give us the experience the censors want us to have. And that is certainly evil. My insight from this: the world needs competition in search engines, in order to maintain choice and freedom in more ways than you might think. If google were the only choice, here we'd be in the dark.
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I'm a western man living in Beijing. Westerners are often used here as foreign experts in TV commercials to lend some additional semblance of credibility to the product pitch. I have played a doctor, an Australian scientist, and suit & tie businessmen. Products have included breast enlargement kits, hi-tech underwear, and chinese herbal medicine (the Strong Bones Particles of Six Flavors). Usually I just have to mouth some words because they'll do a voiceover in Chinese later, but occasionally I have to speak - and translate very bad English into something a real person might actually say. Its not very lucrative but it is diverting.
No. Yes, if you had a home system. Do you know of any? How would you tell the Chinese? and once enough people were doing it, it would be blocked. There are anonymous proxies which can access blocked sites. The Chinese government seems to know about some of them, and will block those on occasion.
The argument or view attributed to Dyson is completely wrong. China's internet-using population is not merely elites, and enough of them are interested in issues that the government is scrambling to put in place even more censorship capability. Chinese internet cafes charge as little as $0.25/hour, they are commonplace in all cities, and they are packed full of students - mostly playing online games, but apparently there is enough unbridled curiosity that the government ordered private cafes to sell out to a handful of government run cafe companies, so the Chinese internet experience could be more carefully monitored. Now DSL into the home is being offered for free in Beijing, and even those of us who pay for it only pay 120 RMB/mo (about $14.60). Are these people invested in the status quo? Sure, nobody wants to upset the apple cart while they have the chance to make enough money to buy a car. But privately, criticism of and disbelief in the government is widespread, and the government is fearful that people will find a way to share ideas. China is also now censoring private SMS messages according to newspaper reports.
Search google.com for "falun gong" - result Mozilla MessageBox says "this document contains no data"
Search yahoo.com and there are many documents.
Search google for "tienanmen" - result 317,000 documents
Search google after anonymizing - result 317,000 documents
Search yahoo - result 411,000 documents
Search google for "hu jintao" - result 107,000 documents
Search anonimized google - result 108,000 documents
Search yahoo - result 185,000 documents
No time to investigate more deeply than that.
But Google is not the only source of information.
China isn't so interested in (or is incapable of) blocking everything - just those ways used by the average non-geek uninformed citizen. Most of the time. But they can tighten down when they want. Around the anniversary of Tiananmen, for a week or so I found many more websites blocked, including anonymization proxys that are now open.
IMO its shameful for google to filter their web results for china. It doesnt give us the best experience (whatever that means); it helps to give us the experience the censors want us to have. And that is certainly evil.
My insight from this: the world needs competition in search engines, in order to maintain choice and freedom in more ways than you might think. If google were the only choice, here we'd be in the dark.