I'm very agree with you.
Mention the dark side, you may heard of the book "A Survey to Chinese Peasants", People Literature Press. Yellow cover. Is there an English edition? This book can be found in China imported book stores in Hong Kong, a best seller some moments ago. I heard that it is forbidded in China, and I never found in China book stores (An anology book is call "China Food Survey" in very similar packaging but red cover, is top seller in many China book stores. It's about the dark side of fake food products.)
Reading the whole thread to know that there are much deep mis-understanding to China from US people that cannot be washed away by any means.
There are free speech and press in China with exception to a few "forbidden" topics. For example, "taiwan independence", "fa-xx-gong" and "tibet".
You can talk and write whatever about forbidden topics in China, unless you do it publicly and in high-profile. You cannot host a web page about "taiwan indepdence", and you cannot demonstrate a banner of "fa-xxx-gong" in Tian'anmen square.
Otherwise it is complete free to write, to shout, whatever you want.
At work I met a lot of people living in China. Many people even hold more extreme views than official views, sometimes I consider as nationalism. For example, they support the government to take back Taiwan by force. In general there is not much deriviation of view between people, society, "Party" and government. Possibly because many citizens are also members of the Party since their primary school age.
China people in general opt for efficient government that can bring growth in economy and wealth to people. Able to vote for party chairman by public vote is a minor issue (national and party leader is, claim officially, democratically voted, by a group of people)
Speaking of a grey area is about corruption. Even public channel and press are criticizing so the topic is generally allowed to express and discussed publicly as free as possible, if not too extreme.
Currently hot concern amoung Chinese is the problem of fake goods and fake food.
There are monitoring and sensorship of internet. This is done by licensing of ISP and ICP.
The largest blog service in china is http://blog.blogchina.com/ . According to traffic statistics is second to the largest portal and search engines in China like "sina" "sohu" and "baidu".
According to statistics in http://blog.blogchina.com/ (if you can read Chinese, at page bottom): there are 471923 blog hosted, 1515814 blog articles and 725726 reply entries. How's it compare to slashdot? Not much if you consider China net population.
The following comments may not sound good: How much do you know China? From what channel? Personally as a Hong Kong citizen I think US media are highly political influenced. Seeing yourself to believe.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm very agree with you. Mention the dark side, you may heard of the book "A Survey to Chinese Peasants", People Literature Press. Yellow cover. Is there an English edition? This book can be found in China imported book stores in Hong Kong, a best seller some moments ago. I heard that it is forbidded in China, and I never found in China book stores (An anology book is call "China Food Survey" in very similar packaging but red cover, is top seller in many China book stores. It's about the dark side of fake food products.)
Reading the whole thread to know that there are much deep mis-understanding to China from US people that cannot be washed away by any means.
There are free speech and press in China with exception to a few "forbidden" topics. For example, "taiwan independence", "fa-xx-gong" and "tibet".
You can talk and write whatever about forbidden topics in China, unless you do it publicly and in high-profile. You cannot host a web page about "taiwan indepdence", and you cannot demonstrate a banner of "fa-xxx-gong" in Tian'anmen square.
Otherwise it is complete free to write, to shout, whatever you want.
At work I met a lot of people living in China. Many people even hold more extreme views than official views, sometimes I consider as nationalism. For example, they support the government to take back Taiwan by force. In general there is not much deriviation of view between people, society, "Party" and government. Possibly because many citizens are also members of the Party since their primary school age.
China people in general opt for efficient government that can bring growth in economy and wealth to people. Able to vote for party chairman by public vote is a minor issue (national and party leader is, claim officially, democratically voted, by a group of people)
Speaking of a grey area is about corruption. Even public channel and press are criticizing so the topic is generally allowed to express and discussed publicly as free as possible, if not too extreme.
Currently hot concern amoung Chinese is the problem of fake goods and fake food.
There are monitoring and sensorship of internet. This is done by licensing of ISP and ICP.
The largest blog service in china is http://blog.blogchina.com/ . According to traffic statistics is second to the largest portal and search engines in China like "sina" "sohu" and "baidu".
According to statistics in http://blog.blogchina.com/ (if you can read Chinese, at page bottom): there are 471923 blog hosted, 1515814 blog articles and 725726 reply entries. How's it compare to slashdot? Not much if you consider China net population.
The following comments may not sound good: How much do you know China? From what channel? Personally as a Hong Kong citizen I think US media are highly political influenced. Seeing yourself to believe.
--zzzhong, Hong Kong