China Allows Access to English Wikipedia

LinuxLefty writes "Reuters is reporting that Chinese authorities have lifted the ban on the English version of Wikipedia. The Chinese version of the site is still blocked, as are English-language versions of politically sensitive topics such as Tibet and Tiananmen Square. 'The move comes after International Olympic Committee (IOC) inspectors told Beijing organisers that the Internet must be open for the duration of the 2008 Olympics and that blocking it "would reflect very poorly" on the host country. China's government, keen to avoid sparking social discontent, keeps a tight watch over the media and often blocks or censors popular Web sites and forums where dissent may brew.'"

wikipedia?

[benburned (1091769)]

citation needed ;)

Information wants to be free!

[26199 (577806)]

...and all that stuff.

Since it seems incredibly fitting, here is the Wikipedia article on Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China [wikipedia.org].

Re:Information wants to be free!

[kesuki (321456)]

"Information wants to be free!"

What everybody forgets to mention is that 'Information' is the nickname of a convicted felon, of course he wants to be free, he's in prison and he hates being locked up.

Re:

[kyriosdelis (1100427)]

No, Free Hat!

It's not happening.

[gnutoo (1154137)]

Westerners in the Olympic Village will see something very open and free but it's all a put on. The Atlantic had a good article about this not long ago. The great firewall of China is extensive and fine grained enough to block individual page views at random. It's enough to eliminate public discussion on many topics and it's enough to round up potential subversives. Information in China is not free because people in China are not free.

Re:It's not happening.

[coaxial (28297)]

Obligatory Karma Whoring: The Atlantic article [theatlantic.com].

Not only is this a transparently empty gesture by the CPC, but I believe it has absolutely no downside for the CPC. It's English. The only people that are going to looking at it are foreigners and they're going to leave after two weeks. The indigenous population isn't going to bother, simply because they're much more focused on the simplified-chinese version. Also, don't discount how the population has been cowed into self censorship. No doubt thanks to Jingjing, Chacha, and the thousands of true believers [danwei.org]. (There's ALWAYS true believers.)

Honestly, I don't think the Chinese people want freedom and democracy. I think they're too busy making money and improving their lives. Don't rock the boat, we've got a good think going. Let it be. It's human nature. As Juvenal observed [wikipedia.org]:

Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man,
the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time
handed out military command, high civil office, legions - everything, now
restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things:
bread and circuses

Re:

[electrictroy (912290)]

>>>"Juvenal here makes reference to the Roman practice of providing free wheat to some poor Romans as well as costly circus games and other forms of entertainment as a means of gaining political power through popularity."

Gee.

That sounds extremely familiar. Of course the American Founders were well-versed with Roman politics, and they had designed the constitution specifically so politicians could NOT give away free food to the poor, in order to buy votes. (Too bad it didn't work.) Now we have a

Re:

[MopedJesus (1266412)]

You know, if 1.3 billion Chinese can't take control of their country away from government run amok, what chance do a few hundred million Americans stand?

Re:Information wants to be free!

[rtb61 (674572)]

There seems to be a real gap in your under standing of the broader values of humanity. For most people in free and democratic societies it is difficult to enjoy life when others are suffering around you. When they are starving, abused, oppressed and denied basic human values, it is and should be difficult to ignore.

There is also the self protection route, we know full well the arse holes that exploit people in some other country would have absolutely no qualms about exporting that exploitation to where ever they can. So quite simply it is safer to tackle the problem and endeavour to eliminate the autocratic scum, before they become a local problem, the last century was a major lesson in that regard.

Those mentally defective individuals who derive pleasure from controlling other peoples lives, lording it over the, making them suffer, do not take other countries boundaries at all seriously, ah yeah being emperor of the world whilst it is a joke for us, it is a seriously sick desire for them.

That silly stuff about the Chinese being incapable of running a free and democratic country, now that is nasty racist stuff, and would that be anything like the Germans (Ex-Nazis) being unable to have a democratic country or the Russians (ex-soviets) to have a democratic country or the rest of Europe (ex-monarchists), or dare I say it, the Taiwanese and the Tibetans from being able to run their own free and democratic societies.

That is nearly as bad as the lie, about there being a difference between western and eastern democracies, which in reality was all about hiding corrupt autocratic governments. So, no, you do not wait for your country to be perfect (it will never happen) before you start spreading freedom, democracy and knowledge around and, ensuring that is does grow and flourish in your neighbours. You never know, your own government might fuck up and become a bunch of sick neocon fascists, and those people you helped will be in a position to return the favour.

Boycott the Olympics

[by Anonymous Coward]

I'd be so happy if some protest group succeeds in stealing or putting out the torch. Giving the Chinese the Olympics is the worst awarding mistake since 1980.

Re:Boycott the Olympics

[SerpentMage (13390)]

The issue here is not that China was given the Olympics. But the issue here is that China is squandering their opportunity to show that they have come along...

No, instead what we see is a totalitarian state that pretends to be capitalistic... Yeah whatever... Though they never fooled me once, hence why I refuse to invest in any Chinese corporation.

Re:Boycott the Olympics

[KDR_11k (778916)]

Oh they look pretty capitalistic to me, that doesn't contradict the totalitarianism.

Yeah, but you already do.

[WindBourne (631190)]

America has exported large number of jobs to China. EU has started doing the same. That means that unless you live off this planet, that you are buying Chinese product. More importantly, you are supporting them, unless you are actively checking everything that you buy.

Re:Yeah, but you already do.

[das_magpie (1149995)]

Believe me, I do.

I have real problems buying ANYTHING with the famous and hopeless 'Made in China' label attached to it.

I spend extra time to seek out products made in the West.

Its my own stupid fault if I actually pay for a product thats made in China and expect it to work and last.

I even try to find western made electronic components if I can, German stuff I find superior and it is plentiful in certain fields.

Its getting frustrating here in Australia with quality tools, brands like Stanley and Makita have begun to sell out even more and it is becoming increasingly difficult to find tools that are made in the west, for some that might not sound like a problem but for me I frequently use drills etc and to have them pike out constantly is expensive and its a major waste of materials as they just end up in the bin constantly, poorly made products have a major impact on the environment, everything becomes so disposable its just ends up in a landfill.

What scares these days though is food that is "Made in China" here in Australia supermarkets have created there own brands ie "Woolworth's Select" and If you read the back of the packets a huge amount of their product comes from China and surrounding countries, fair enough if my new cordless drill does not work properly but when my Fruit and Veg has problems, I have problems.

I recommend trying to seek out quality products, most things I own now have been manufactured in the west I feel more relaxed going about my day to day activities knowing my chisels wont blunt or break whilst working on soft pine and my food is not going to contain MSG and my dogs toys aren't painted with toxic goo.

Lately NOTHING I have purchased in China has been good quality and lasted and I always end up regretting buying the product and feel guilty and ripped off when it ends up in a landfill after a week of use.

Off topic I know but I thought it was an important point to make.

Re:

[LingNoi (1066278)]

No, it's worse. Our governments are helping the Chinese take away our freedoms specifically for these games.

Re:Boycott the Olympics

[SL Baur (19540)]

The issue *is* with Beijing being given the Olympics. Beijing is a dirty, polluted city - far, far worse than the infamous LA smog. They had armies of people clearing the landscape of litter when I was there (a week before the Olympic Committee came).

I recall the ridiculous discussions about having the Marathon held in the LA area when the Olympics were held there in 1984 due to air pollution issues. Bah. Beijing is worse and LA has gotten better.

Re:

[MrKevvy (85565)]

re: "Giving the Chinese the Olympics is the worst awarding mistake since 1980."

Which was the worst awarding mistake since 1936. What is it with up-and-coming tyrannies getting the Olympics anyways?

Re:

[shutdown -p now (807394)]

Olympic Games were not originally supposed to be a "Free World"-only event, and the criteria for hosting the games do not include any specific form of government.

Whether it is good or not is another matter.

Re:

[SL Baur (19540)]

This was marked as a "Troll", but it's correct. Some day in the future, this Olympics will be regarded the same as the 1936 Olympics. Sometimes the truth hurts.

I was in Beijing the week before the Olympic Committee went there. You slashdot members grep my posting history, I've posted here what I saw at that time.

I won't be watching these Olympics on TV.

(The best part of my trip to Beijing was seeing the airplane on the tarmac ready to take me back home to Tokyo and Freedom).

Re:

[SL Baur (19540)]

You don't understand the history of China. I didn't (intend to) imply that it would be the "west" doing the evaluation. Regime change in China is always over the dead bloody body of the predecessor.

True story.

[VShael (62735)]

I shared a hospital room with a Chinese kid once, about 10 years ago. He had got sick while travelling in Europe. It came up in conversation that he thought China was fantastic in every way, and when I asked him about the massacre at Tienamen Square, he said "What massacre?"
That was the first time I really understood just how amazing the Chinese governments control of information is.

Re:True story.

[ShanghaiBill (739463)]

when I asked him about the massacre at Tienamen Square, he said "What massacre?"

Depending on who you believe, between 30 and 300 people died during the Tiananmen Square incident. About a million were killed during the Cultural Revolution. The "Great Leap Forward" killed more than 30 million. People in the West think Tiananmen was a big deal because they saw it on TV, but they are ignorant of earlier events that killed a million times as many people. This past summer, there were riots over land rights in several Chinese provinces that probably killed more people than died at Tiananmen. How many people in the West know (or care) about that? In the context of Chinese history, the Tiananmen Square incident was a blip.

Re:True story.

[niktemadur (793971)]

The "Great Leap Forward" killed more than 30 million.

Since many people probably don't know about it, I believe it's worthwhile to expand on that incredible humanitarian catastrophe a bit more. Mao's government put several key factors into play in the late 1950's:

1. The Great Sparrow Campaign, in which the population was summoned to act as human scarecrows, to keep seed-eating sparrows in flight until they fell dead from exhaustion. The result was that locust populations, with their main predator virtually gone, ballooned in size.
2. The Chinese government's adoption of Soviet charlatan TD Lysenko's "ideas" of agriculture innovation, which included planting more densely than normal and plowing up to 2 meters in depth.
3. Mao's campaign to dramatically increase China's production of steel. A mobilized Chinese population proudly tossed their pots and pans into village foundries, in turn creating sub-standard alloys that could not be exported nor even used locally for industry. While the population was involved in this misguided activity, many of the nation's crops were left unattended. In a nutshell, complete failure on both fronts.
4. Unusual drought and floods for two full two years, with the locusts swarms kicking into full gear.
5. General incompetence by the Chinese authorities, along with an attitude of suppression and ass-covering.

The result was that between 20 and 42 million people (some put the accurate number closer to 38 million) died of starvation, some areas of China sliding into cannibalism. One final astonishing fact is that not a single photograph of the famine's onslaught exists, every one of these people died in complete and utter obscurity, a massive yet faceless famine the second half of the twentieth century. For some reason, I visualize George Orwell's ghost hovering over all of this.

It's a truly sobering lesson to think that even as these people cheered the flocks of agonizing sparrows falling from the sky, they were summoning imminent, untold suffering upon themselves.

Re:

[MightyMartian (840721)]

Well, the Great Leap Forward showed the mastery of propaganda that Mao had mastered, though to be fair, he lost considerable influence afterwards, basically having to create a second revolution to gain back his position. I think a good many Chinese know something fairly bad happened, though it's not even clear that the Communists knew how many people died, because so many lower level functionaries lied to their superiors about the number of deaths. At the end of the day, no one knows how many people died,

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

Whereas Millions of American adults have no idea that around 1 million Iraqis are lying dead for large international corporations to profit. Tieneman square? 7000 Deaths according to NATO (One of the higher estimates).That they are living in "The Land of the Free" Despite having no large party representing anything other than fascist interests, having no independant press, infact the only right they have, is to sue anyone for anything essentially.

Again?

[WK2 (1072560)]

China is unblocking the English version of Wikipedia again? And they're still not allowing the Chinese version? And they did it silently, because they never admitted to blocking it in the first place? Didn't this happen last week?

dupe

It's OK

[jez9999 (618189)]

None of the dissenters speak English anyway.

China Olympics

[backslashdot (95548)]

If the Chinese government keeps up this bullshit, people are going to call for boycotts of companies that advertise during the olympics, and that will reduce their revenue (because it will diminish the value of advertsising during hte olympics).

Even the Dalai Lama himself has firmly said that the Olympics should not be boycotted.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/03/18/2193461.htm [abc.net.au]

He has the most to lose if China's government gets more powerful.

I agree with him, I personally don't believe a boycott of the current olympics or advertisers is warranted in this case. The olympics is the one time every four years when athletes of all nations can come together. That serves more for global peace and understanding than petty quarreling, protests, and boycotts. Note, if there was serious shit going on I'll be the at the front of the protest line.

We need China to open, isolating them further will not be helpful. It's better the Chinese (people not govt.) be exposed to how people of other cultures are and vice versa.

Re:China Olympics

[no-body (127863)]

Wasn't in the Greek origin of the Olympics that it could not happen if there was war going on? So, the warriors had to stop fighting so the contests could happen.

I miss that kind of integrity....

Re:China Olympics

[LingNoi (1066278)]

. The olympics is the one time every four years when athletes of all nations can come together. That serves more for global peace and understanding than petty quarreling, protests, and boycotts. Note, if there was serious shit going on I'll be the at the front of the protest line.

"It doesn't separate, but unites the combatants in understanding and respect. It also helps to connect the countries in the spirit of peace. That's why the Olympic Flame should never die." -Adolf Hitler

Re:China Olympics

[Dutch Gun (899105)]

An evil man can occasionally speak the truth, even without holding the spirit of those words dear to his heart.

Re:China Olympics

[Hannah E. Davis (870669)]

Hey, even Hitler was right from time to time. As insane and misguided as he may have been, he was occasionally insightful, and the Olympics of 1936 may well have helped to postpone hostilities.

Besides, it would be awfully nice if the Olympics actually did stand for peace and understanding in this day and age -- the politicians barely even pretend anymore.

IOC say internet must be open for the Olympics

[badfish99 (826052)]

So: allow access to websites in a foreign language that most Chinese can't understand, for a period of - what - two weeks? And presumably keep a list of everyone who reads those websites? And then back to normal afterwards? Wow, the IOC is really helping to open up China to new ideas about freedom and democracy, isn't it?

IOC hypocrites

[saskboy (600063)]

The IOC is a bunch of hypocrites. They ought to tell VANOC the same thing for the 2010 games in Vancouver.

Look what VANOC told me about the "openness" of the Internet:
http://www.abandonedstuff.com/2008/03/03/a-pre-emptive-no-from-vanoc/ [abandonedstuff.com]

They also aren't letting athletes blog openly about the Games, they can't talk about many things.

And?

[beefsprocket (1152865)]

I was in Beijing and Guangjou as a Westerner visiting those cities laster January (2007). I made a point of checking wikipedia and had no trouble viewing pages like the English Tiananamen square page. I'm not sure what the big deal is.

From what I hear censorship is more or less being policed socially with less and less DNS interference. Instead of blocking a domain, the police or party representative goes to the internet cafe where activity is taking place (that's easy to trace to an IP etc.) and just ask

Wikipedia is still blocked in Guangzhou, China

[PFAK (524350)]

It appears that Wikipedia is in fact, still blocked in China. I was talking to a friend in Guangzhou and she is unable to access Wikipedia.

Can anyone else verify that it is still blocked?

Re:

[hayagriva (1260388)]

Just opened it now, in Beijing. Seems to be working fine. But of course, the Tiananmen Square Protest page is blocked, still. That's the keyword filter, still chugging along as usual.

Brainwashed

[coresnake (1215632)]

Yep, I have a Chinese friend who always speaks up for the government and everything as if it 'cannot be helped'. Once I asked them about Tiananmen square and they only knew that some students protested there, they didn't even know that anyone was killed! This is the kind of brainwashing and history erasing going on in China and it sickens me. If you control history you control the present..

Wikipedia Entry on Tiananmen Square protests 1

[Nova Express (100383)]

Since you said they were banned (Slashdot's editing system keeps choking on this; let's see if pulling the ideograms out and splitting it into two helps...)

Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Tiananmen Square protests of 1989

The Unknown Rebel - This famous photo, taken on 5 June 1989 by photographer Jeff Widener, depicts a lone protester who tried to stop the PLA's advancing tanks.
Literal meaning: June Fourth Incident
[show]Transliterations
Mand

Re:Wikipedia Entry on Tiananmen Square protests 2

[Nova Express (100383)]

[edit] EU-US arms embargo

The European Union and United States embargo on weapons sales to the PRC, put in place as a result of the violent suppression of the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests, still remains in place. The PRC has been calling for a lifting of the ban for many years and has had a varying amount of support from members of the Council of the European Union. In early 2004, France spearheaded a movement within the EU to lift the ban. Former German Chancellor Gerhard SchrÃder publicly a

Olympic wristed threats

[Cathoderoytube (1088737)]

"inspectors told Beijing organisers that the Internet must be open for the duration of the 2008 Olympics and that blocking it "would reflect very poorly" on the host country"

Good to know the Olympic committee is all for standing up for human rights provided they're in town, and they're being paid lots of money, and those human rights only apply to people who are used to such freedoms in the first place. But seriously, if the Olympic committee gave a flying fuck about human rights they wouldn't have chosen China to host the Olympics.

Some feeling as a Chinese

[electronixtar (1042742)]

Well, from a Chinese perspective of view like me, Chinese themself sometimes benifit from blocking. So, let's image the U.S. government oneday blocks some enemy website. What methods could you ever think of doing to bypass that? Now in China nearly everyone of experianced Internet users knows at least 3 ways of bypassing GFW, that's a good skill, I think. Yes, my government is not perfect, they are doing insant things, but it makes people to be critical & skillful. On contract, I heard that Germany government & media is lying & blocking the major Chinese website sina.com.cn during the Tibet riot, and some German even Convinced that shit. I guess they have no idea how to bypass a Content-filter system. Hmm, everything has two sides. Wise people always learn from that.

Re:Some feeling as a Chinese

[Kopiok (898028)]

While it may make internet users in China more skillful at getting around website blocks, it's not exactly a good thing that you need that skill in the first place. By creating the Great Firewall, they are blocking all inexperienced internet users from accessing this damning information. I assume in China that the vast majority of people are inexperienced internet users (same in the States too. :/). They are controlling the flow of this information to control the actions of their people, and it's causing more harm to Human Rights than it is helping computer literate Chinese to become inventive. You seem to have twisted this horrible violation of the freedom of peoples into a good thing by saying "at least some people know how to get around a firewall now!". Not exactly comparable subjects.

China, democracy and freedom

[jandersen (462034)]

I know this is probably futile, but what the hell...

We in the West enjoy democracy and freedom. Well, "enjoy" may be an exaggeration, but we have it, sort of. Does anybody on /. know how long it took for us to get these things? I don't know for certain, but I'm pretty sure it took generations. Part of the explanation is that those in power didn't always want it to happen, but another part is that democracy and political freedom are things that people need to learn, and it takes time. Just look to history to see how many times people have fought for freedom in a revolution, only to throw it away as soon as they've won. We in the West held on to it because of another revolution: the Enlightenment.

So how can we imagine that any country can just slap democracy and freedom down in the middle of society and say "Here you go, chaps, have fun"? China and the Chinese go through that phase now, what we went through 100+ years ago, and they are doing it a lot faster than we did, not least because of modern technology, but a lot of things can go wrong if the government just let it loose. Thankfully the Chinese government aren't about to let foreign pressure push them around.

What would happen if they did suddenly try to introduce full democracy and all the freedoms the Americans still only dream about? Just look at what happened in Russia: organised criminal gangs (the Russian mafia) grew very strong and tried take over, certain big companies grew extremely strong and tried to take over, the people in general suffered great need, and the government went in circles. Now they are returning to something closer to Soviet style strong-man government, because this is what the people seems to prefer.

Re:

[CRCulver (715279)]

That's already happening. Chinese living in the West, though they can see its freedoms, sometimes feel that the authoritarian model of their home country is the right way to do things. I've met plenty of Chinese immigrants in various countries who claim that China would fall apart if it weren't ruled with a strong hand, and Westerners just don't understand their society.

Re:

[LingNoi (1066278)]

They don't understand because the Chinese people are ignorant. They reject all contradications because they've been taught from birth that "this is the truth". Just like how a christian would reject evolution if they had be taught from birth that the earth is 6000 years old, they are no different.

You can't understand nonsense.

Re:

[sakdoctor (1087155)]

I hate this logically fallacious special pleading argument. Hate it you hear!

How can the chinese communist party be so completely corrupt and evil? It work's in mysterious ways, you just can't understand it.

(Usually used in the context of god)

Re:

[wizardforce (1005805)]

First, you're thinking exactly like the Chinese government and that is rather disturbing. Second, it doesn't really matter what people try to edit Wikipedia, you're supposed to check facts not just blindly obey Wikipedia or SLashdot for that matter. Third, even if they did vandalize these pages it is quite likely that someone somewhere is going to notice and revert the page back.

BTW

[WindBourne (631190)]

china is still playing all sorts of games. A quick example is CNSA claims that they are spending little money on their efforts. Yet, what is quietly missing in their reports is how many are currently employed in the space program. From quiet reports, USA is finding that they employee more ppl than NASA did in the late 60's (their pinnacle), and certainly more than RSA has. IOW, they try to downplay their space capabilities while at the same time, they are growing it. Fast.

Add on that, their military capability. It is very obvious that it is growing MUCH faster than china gov. claims. How much remains to be seen. The real problem is that China keeps their real funds secrets. If they reported how much in/out on taxes, as well as how much per department, then it would be easy to verify this. But that is kept secret (though they do report what some of the depts. use, but now way to balance or test this).

Based on your posting, I am guessing that you are married to a chinese, or are from china, but their actions speak louder than words. Look at W. Would you trust him? Hell no. Anybody that would trust him, cheney, or rove could only be an absolute idiot. But the same is true of Chinese Gov. They play more games with contracts and wording than even W. does. But what does that have to do with the chinese ppl? Absolutely nothing. These are seperate groups; ppl vs. their gov. And the reason is that their gov is foisted on them. Here in America, we the citizens are responsible for our gov, so sadly, they somewhat mirror us.

Re:

[electronixtar (1042742)]

You don't know shit about what's like in China 40 years ago.