China - We Don't Censor the Internet

kaufmanmoore writes "A Chinese government official at a United Nations summit in Athens on internet governance has claimed that no Net censorship exists at all in China. The article includes an exchange by a Chinese government official and a BBC reporter over the blocking of the BBC in China." From the article: "I don't think we should be using different standards to judge China. In China, we don't have software blocking Internet sites. Sometimes we have trouble accessing them. But that's a different problem. I know that some colleagues listen to the BBC in their offices from the Webcast. And I've heard people say that the BBC is not available in China or that it's blocked. I'm sure I don't know why people say this kind of thing. We do not have restrictions at all."

the audience?

[victorl19 (879236)]

Despite the fact that many outside of China know that it indeed does exist, this piece of news is more likely intended for those within China.

Inspiration to us all.

[Kadin2048 (468275)]

Thank you, China. Because every day, when I get up and read the U.S. news, and think "goddamn, our country is going into the toilet," all I have to do is turn to the International section to realize that it could always be worse.

Re:

[Khuffie (818093)]

And the fact that you do that will only lead to the US go further down the toilet. Just because other countries have it worse means that allowing the US to get even more screwed up is ok.

Re:Inspiration to us all.

[Firehed (942385)]

The best can still suck, and I think we've long since lost that title (assuming anyone outside the country ever thought we had it). It's rather stupid to think how much worse we could have things because it results in us thinking that we have it so great - it just lowers the standard. Think of how much better we could have things and *raise* the standard we're looking to achieve.

Re:

[fireman sam (662213)]

"If to please the people, we offer what we ourselves disapprove, how can we afterward defend our work? Let us raise a standard to which the wise and the honest can repair." - George Washington

"I know human beings and fish can coexist peacefully" - George W Bush

Gotta love the comparison.

Re:Inspiration to us all.

[justasecond (789358)]

"China has a political situation much the same as that in the U.S.". What a load of relativistic crap!

Are you saying that the U.S. has forced abortions, political executions (with the executee's family being billed for the fucking bullet), wholesale cultural genocide (Do you know the chinese are hauling ethnic chinese by the trainload into tibet to overrun the place? Look up "tibetan spaniel" sometime to see how the fucking chinese have clubbed to death the entire population of tibet's beautiful native dogs), wholesale censorship of the press and Internet, massive "reeducation" (read: concentration) camps, support for mass-murderer dictators (Pol Pot, "Our Dear Leader", etc.).

Why don't you grow up, pull your head out of your ass and stop spouting "bush=hitler" puke. If you weren't such a skull-full-of-mush parrot for the bullshit your teachers fed you you'd understand that, while the USA is not doing so great now (bush *is* dangerous), there's much worse to be found out there in the rest of the world.

Re:

[Virgil Tibbs (999791)]

no i'm saying china has a SIMILAR situation. which country is it which has lots of its infra structure run by immigrants some of them illeagal yet refuses to give them citizenship? no on no account am i sayin the u.s. implements the single child policy and i totally agree with your views on tibet and i just go mad when i here about these dogs but is the US MUCH better? while the us is one of the most politically free countrys, that doesnt mean that the elections are nesscessarily fair OR free with a 2 par

For Internal Consumption Only

[ackthpt (218170)]

Despite the fact that many outside of China know that it indeed does exist, this piece of news is more likely intended for those within China.

No kidding. I've met people recently from China and they don't know where we all get off on these things. They claim there are any number of small newspapers and such all over the place. They also think we tend to make a bigger deal of things than we ought and their country is just fine thank you very much.

Of course, if you grew up never knowing otherwise or thinking outside the box someone has constructed around you, you may be so indoctrinated. Same way Brits appear indoctrinated that they must read in the Sun or News of the World what trollop David Beckham is frollicking around Spain with or Americans feel the overwhelming urge to tell others how they ought to live and behave.

Those friends and colleagues listening to the BBC webcast, since we don't know otherwise, may be checking for new words or topics they need to add to their filters.

However you shake it up, China is in for a bit of adjustment when the 2008 Olympics bring people from all over the world into China where they will be expecting access to news and media as they had at home. Perhaps China has already thought of this and is constructing exclusion zones...

Four Words

[Yvanhoe (564877)]

Tien Anmen Google Images

Re:For Internal Consumption Only

[steve_ellis (586756)]

Based on my experience in hotels in China aimed at foreign tourists (so-called 5-star hotels--certified 5-star by the Chinese government), all of them appeared to have unfiltered internet access available. Since many of them are affiliated with big western hotel chains, I'm guessing they get their feeds from their corporate parent, although the government itself may provide unfiltered feeds to hotels targeted at foreigners. I observed this in several major cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Xian & Guangzhou). On the other hand, the great firewall is in place and working very nicely on residential dial-up, DSL, and in internet cafes (my nephew has at times had both dial-up and DSL service).

Want to know what it is like for real Chinese?

[juuri (7678)]

After 9/11 I was dating a girl from the Mainland. She had been in the states for a few years and still had a really positive view of her homeland. One night we were watching one of the tributes to the heroes of that day (she was really into that stuff) and they showed a quick summary of history for the last 25 years. As it was going on they showed the protest in Tienamen square and the student confronting the tank and then being... well you know.

She had never seen it.

She had no idea that had ever happened.

It's hard to put into words how sad she became and the rage that immediately followed towards her homeland. There's a lot governments are good at repressing things in most any country from public knowledge, but the ability to completely hide something from your people that the rest of the world knows about? That's just criminal.

Re:

[14CharUsername (972311)]

There are two great books on dystopias: 1984 and Brave New World. In 1984 the government controlled all information. People weren't allowed to know what was going on.

In Brave New World the government was much more subtle. With the use of drugs, orgies, and entertainment the government made it so nobody cared about what was going on.

To control a population you use fear and apathy. Now the fact that the West uses apathy to control its population more than the Chinese who use fear more, doesn't mean we ar

Re:

[jfb3 (25523)]

Almost everyone will be in Beijing for the Olympics and only in Beijing. Any number of visitors you think are "LARGE" (I assume you're a US citizen, CAlifornia?) are not really large for them. The margin of error in their population count is about the same as the entire population of the US. Even 200,000 new visitors at any one time to Beijing is only about a 1.3% increase in population, not such a big deal. Most of the city wouldn't even notice because these visitors won't be using the same facilities a

Re:

[dinther (738910)]

Do yourself a big favor. Turn off the TV, cancel the news papers and stay away from those kind of news sites. News is depressing, and depressing news sells. You can't fix bad news but you can agonize over it. The only result is that you are lining the pockets of entertainment news agencies by watching their adds and what's worse, throwing you into a depression causing you to think your country is going down the toilet. Try a two week self imposed news ban. Your spirits will lift, your productivity goes up

Wow

[Facekhan (445017)]

I think this guy has never had one of his lies pointed out in his face.

Re:

[timeOday (582209)]

I know somebody who took a tour of Tiananmen Square [wikipedia.org] just a couple years ago. She asked the tour guide about the brutal supression of the demonstrations in 1989, and how many people died. (The Chinese Red Cross said they'd counted over 2600 dead). The tour guide said that of course he knew about the protests, but nobody had died at all.

Acutally in revisiting the link I just posted, it says: "The Chinese government has maintained that there were no deaths within the square itself, which appears to outsid

Re:

[Hitch (1361)]

that impressive...I've never seen plague transmitted by fortification before.

Re:Wow

[mctk (840035)]

That's not tr^[NO CARRIER]

Other great one-liners

[AKAImBatman (238306)]

In China, we don't have software blocking Internet sites. Sometimes we have trouble accessing them.

I didn't lose it, I just don't remember where I put it.

I'm not lost, I just don't know where I am.

I'm not paranoid, everyone IS out to get me!

I'm not sleeping, I'm just resting my eyes.

Are we really going to trust a nation that doesn't even follow its own constitution [intelligentblogger.com]*? Oh, that's right. There's an escape clause in there that says, "the government can steamroll the people, no matter what the Constitution says.

Hmmm

[geoffspear (692508)]

Well, if his high-ranking government official collegues are able to get an uncensored Internet feed, that must mean they don't have any censorship, right?

These are not the droids you're looking for...

[the_skywise (189793)]

Technically... in Chinese legalspeek(tm) he's probably right.

It's not "censorship" it's "protection of the people from incorrect thoughts".

Re:

[Tackhead (54550)]

> Technically... in Chinese legalspeek(tm) he's probably right.
>
> It's not "censorship" it's "protection of the people from incorrect thoughts".

I can buy that. My country's lawyers say it's not torture unless there's major organ failure or death.

The USSR was the failed alpha release. The PRC is the live beta site.

Looks censored to me

[by Anonymous Coward]

http://images.google.com/images?svnum=10&hs=B4b&hl =en&q=tiananmen+square&btnG=Search [google.com]

VS:

http://images.google.cn/images?hl=zh-CN&q=tiananme n+square&btnG=%E6%90%9C%E7%B4%A2%E5%9B%BE%E7%89%87 [google.cn]

Mod up!

[nacturation (646836)]

Awesome example. However, I suspect some Chinese official would come back with a response of how Google wishes to promote only peaceful images of Tiananmen Square and they had nothing to do with the image results of an American-based company.
 

Re:

[radtea (464814)]

Three pages of images for China, 10+ pages for the rest of the world.

So I guess it looks censored because it is censored, and the only question that remains is: why do news organizations allowed themselves to be co-opted by the Big Lie so easily?

If the government of China announces that 2+2=5, would that be reported too? I guess in a way it is news, that a major world power is governed by a bunch of lying bastards, and that they get away with it because they will torture, kill or incarcerate anyone who po

At least Google is marking it now...

[patio11 (857072)]

The bottom of the page says something to the effect of "We are limiting the results of this search to comply with local laws" (apologies for inexact translation -- I can only read Chinese by way of Japanese).

no filters

[yakumo.unr (833476)]

tiananmen square [slashdot.org] didn't happen either, why would we need such a thing as a filter. And no idea what google is talking about [slashdot.org] at all

If it were only that easy...

[binaryspiral (784263)]

"A Chinese government official at a United Nations summit in Athens on internet governance has claimed that no Net censorship exists at all in China.

If truth was that easy.

I'm a millionaire. I own a mansion and a yacht.

Re:If it were only that easy...

[bbernard (930130)]

So, now that Google, Yahoo, etc. have documented proof that there is no Internet censorship in China, doesn't that mean they can turn their "voluntary" filters off?

There are no tanks in Baghdad!

[Jonsey (593310)]

I think I've found Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf's [wikipedia.org] new job.

Spin for one government is the same as a spin for another government, right?

Trust The Computer, The Computer is your Friend. Happiness is Mandatory! (I'm dressed as a troubleshooter [wikipedia.org] this Halloween, but an Iraqi Information Minister would have worked as well)

Uh, slight correction

[repvik (96666)]

I think this:

In China, we don't have software blocking Internet sites. Sometimes we have trouble accessing them. But that's a different problem.

should've read:

In China, we don't have software blocking Internet sites. Sometimes we have trouble accessing them. But that's because the hardware filters doesn't work most of the time.

O RLY?

[focitrixilous P (690813)]

So, searching for any topic on google in china would give the same results, correct?

US Image Search for Tiananmen Square [google.com]

China Image Search for the same [google.cn]

Who doesn't censor the internet, now?

Re:O RLY?

[cdrudge (68377)]

Well it's obvious that Google.cn just hasn't had the opportunity to index the entire internet. You know that the internet is a pretty big place and Google.cn is still fairly new. Give it 10-15 years and check again.

New job

[rlp (11898)]

Glad to see 'Baghdad Bob' was able to find employment working for the Chinese government.

Like we didnt do this

[Ancient_Hacker (751168)]

Sometimes when you buy an old radio in Wisconsin, where lots of German immigrants settled, you'll find all the shortwave radio coils have been snipped out. In WW2 the govt censored SW reception by going into people's houses and doctoring their radios so they couldnt puick up far-away radio stations. Not one of the highpoints of the bill of rights.

Re:Like we didnt do this

[Ancient_Hacker (751168)]

I found a source on Google News:

  I worked in a repair shop with some old timers during the early 80's. One day,
a customer brought in a set that didn't work on the SW bands. The old-timer in
the shop found a snipped coil and had the set fixed in a matter of minutes.

I asked him how he found the problem so fast. He told me he had disabled the SW
bands in that same set 40 years earlier! He further explained that all the
repair shops had been under government directive to disable SW reception in any
set brought in (by a foreign national) for repair. Our government apparently
thought it could minimize espionage in this manner.

In the following couple of years, I fixed no less than a dozen sets that had
been disabled in the same manner. Several of those still had the "serviced by"
sticker from the same shop on the back. And I have a few in my collection that
have been fixed for the same ailment.

Terry

Searching different in China

[PoconoPCDoctor (912001)]

I think just using the CN in a google search must not be returning the same results, but there's no way for me to test this.

For instance - plug in the term censorship in the same link that the AC used -

http://www.google.cn/search?hl=zh-CN&q=censorship& btnG=%E6%90%9C%E7%B4%A2%E5%9B%BE%E7%89%87&ie=UTF-8 &oe=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=iw [google.cn]

I saw links to Wiki with full articles on censorship in the ROC. Would this work if searched while located in Bejing or anywhere else in the ROC? My guess is no. Other hardware filters are in place.

New nickname for this guy...

[AceCaseOR (594637)]

I hereby dub this clown Bejing Bob.

Right, Long Live The Revolution, Comrade

[Phat_Tony (661117)]

Just like Tibet has always been a part of China, but was momentarily mislead by the dangerous oppression of the Dalai Lama, until the people of Tibet rose up with the welcomed support of their Chinese brothers in a glorious revolution to overthrow their Buddhist oppressors and rejoin their traditional homeland.

I was just in China

[todesengel (722281)]

and I tested this out. Searching for "Tiananmen square" yields plenty of results, but 90% of them weren't accessible. I never had any other "connection problems" other times I was on the web.

google knows all

[by Anonymous Coward]

1. go to http://images.google.cn/images?q=tiananmen [google.cn]
2. look at the bottom left of the page, there's a string of chinese characters
3. use google language tools to translate that string.
4. it says: "According to local laws, regulations, and policies, some search results are not shown."
5. indeed, search for "tiananmen" in http://images.google.com/images?q=tiananmen [google.com] and compare

no censorship! just local laws, regulations, and policies. some results are not shown, big deal.

He is technically correct...

[Lead Butthead (321013)]

The PRoC government doesn't censor the internet. The private sector companies does it for them, "voluntary."

Yes yes...

[spiritraveller (641174)]

I'm sure I don't know why people say this kind of thing.

If I were from China, I would probably be sure that I didn't know too.

Does anyone else see CN as Choatic Neutral?

[sckeener (137243)]

Offtopic> Does anyone else see CN and think 'Choatic Neutral?'

China's not evil.

They play Chaotic Neutral so the paladin in the party with detect evil won't beat them up.

Ok...I'm a geek.

And I'm single.

Proof if anyone needs it

[erikdalen (99500)]

Here's some proof that it exists:

First open Baidupedia ( a Chinese wikipedia clone): http://baike.baidu.com/ [baidu.com]

Then try to search on some censored word like: (falun gong)

You should now get a "Connection reset by peer" message

Now you won't be able to access any page on that server for at least 30 minutes.

Lying Chinese bastards

[pestilence669 (823950)]

I happened to work at a company who's primary mission was to liberate the Chinese from their firewall. I believe the motivation was to encourage promote democracy through free speech. It was backed by some pretty influential agencies. Our products worked using a special blend of encryption and peer-to-peer redirection to provide anonymous Internet access.

Using our software: every site in China works as expected. Without our software: all censored sites are blocked.

To say the great firewall doesn't exist is an outright lie.

Re:

[inviolet (797804)]

Sure, Chavez's the one with a mega army going around invading countries and killing people. Oh, wait...nevermind

True enough. Perhaps the original poster's point was that Chavez would go around invading countries and killing people, if he only had access to a mega army. He and Bush being kindred spirits and all.

In any case, take care not to equate 'invasion' with 'immoral'. An invasion can be moral, depending on who the target is and what the invader's goals and methods are.

Re:

[deinol (210478)]

In any case, take care not to equate 'invasion' with 'immoral'. An invasion can be moral, depending on who the target is and what the invader's goals and methods are.

I must tactfully disagree. The only wars I believe have moral justification were nations coming to the defense of another nation being invaded. Example, liberating France during WWII. If only we'd started earlier before they got to France, but that's another matter.

In every case I can think of, an invading army is just a misuse of power.

Re:

[smbarbour (893880)]

Additionally, the United States isn't "technically" a democracy either... It's a republic. (In a true democracy, the citizens vote on everything. In a republic, representatives are elected to vote on the issues.)

Communism and democracy (and even republics) are NOT mutually exclusive. Communism and capitalism should be mutually exclusive however. Communism will never properly work while money exists. The aberrations that exist today that are referred to as communist are actually far from it.

The form of g

Re:

[bnenning (58349)]

Just as Bush/Cheney "don't torture" ?

The difference is we know that's a lie, and pointing out that it's a lie won't get you thrown in prison.