Microsoft Bans 'Democracy' for China's Web Users 430
Doc Ruby writes "As reported, paradoxically, on MSN, 'Microsoft's new Chinese internet portal has banned the words 'democracy' and 'freedom' from parts of its website in an apparent effort to avoid offending Beijing's political censors.' MSN China says it must comply with local laws, but there is no Chinese law against the use of these words."
link to the website? (Score:5, Interesting)
My quess is this [msn.com.cn] is what they are talking about.
Of course, I don't know how to spell "freedom" in Chinese, but if you compare these two searches:
US [msn.com]
China [3721.com]
You can get a pretty good idea of what they block. And to think, we have U.S. companies helping them to achieve this....
Ironic.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Clearly, the benefit for American citizens is cheap products. Benefit for American corporations: higher margins.
Yep, not a lot of long term thinking going on here in America. Buying everything on credit, spending money on high school football instead of advanced courses, etc. We're on the brink of getting our asses royally kicked.
That said, most Chinese I know really like America and Americans, just not our politics. As for me when I am there, I happen to like living in a god-less country, but I'm not so enamored with the totalitarian part. There isn't a perfect country to live in- when I live in China, I have simply traded one kind of stupidity for another.
Re:Democracy is Eurocentric idea. (Score:1, Interesting)
Reminds me of... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:RedHat (Score:5, Interesting)
This is where it gets good: During the discussion over one of the nominies a few days ago, just before the vote, the Republicans demanded the debate be shut down and the vote put off. And, the Democrats agreed. What had been so important for them to put a halt to what they had wanted for so many years?
Well, it was announced that 2 communist Chinese businessmen had arrived in the captal building. And, yes, in a show of bipartisan support, both the Republicans and the Democrats stopped the important work of running the nation to both go and meet the businessmen. Not even a vote on a motion taken, just simulatious agreement.
Re:In Communist China... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:RedHat (Score:3, Interesting)
corporations vs democracy (Score:5, Interesting)
Back about a decade ago, one shell executive was quoted as saying that what any corporation needs, is political stability, and a compliant, cheap workforce == and dictatorships are really good at providing that.
Capitalism does not embrace democracy. It simply tolerates it in the context of western societies. In other countries where there is no need to push for democracy, why should a company do so? The linkage between the two is pure political sugar-coating. This is part of the reason for the tension between capitalism and Free Software (and why 'Open Source' seems like a compelling compromise). Free Software is about Freedom, choice and equality -- none of which really serves the purposes of your average corporate meta-entity.
Re:Where's Pastor Ken when you *need* him? (Score:5, Interesting)
Censoring a website is small potatoes compared to anything the Third Reich did.
>> Anyone remember IBM and the Third Reich?
Not old enough to remember, but I've read about IBM and Ford and General Electric and more. "Wall street and the rise of Hitler" by Anthony Sutton is an interesting read if you can find a copy...
Re:Where's Pastor Ken when you *need* him? (Score:3, Interesting)
FUD & Ignorance (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Where's Pastor Ken when you *need* him? (Score:5, Interesting)
FWIW, I note that Bush's grandfather, Prescott, sold Nazi war bonds illegally, funding bullets and bombs killing American soldiers, until shut down by the US government under the "Trading With the Enemy" laws. And I further note that Prescott's financial parnership [guardian.co.uk] with the Nazis extended back into the early 1930s, as Bush backed Fritz Thyssen, who in turn backed Hitler in his early rise to power. This kind of corporate backing of nominal "enemies" is nothing new, and a greater threat today than ever.
Pointless (Score:2, Interesting)
On the site you can see examples, mostly in English and sometimes in Chinese, of pretty straightforward debate on most sensitive issues, and my impression is that anything goes as long as you are informed about the matter you are discussing.
Furthermore, I don't understand how you could ban words. It is easy to circumvent this, because you can just use similar-sounding characters to fool the system; people will still understand that ziyou means freedom, regardless of what characters are used. You could also write it backwards, or use latin letters. Or why not l33t.
Re:Microsoft & Chinese Bigotry (Score:4, Interesting)
Since it decided to open up, its people have been "getting used to" newer technologies - and how to make them for themselves. The textile industry is already ripe and just-opened - and not a month after Europe's quota on Chinese textile product imports was lifted, its market was flooded with a 200% increase of low-cost products, sparking a drop in the sales of more "local" companies. To compete, the local companies claim they have to relocate their factories to developing countries.
But here's the thing - even here the Europeans can't compete because China already has all the low-cost hands it needs, and to boot, it already has most of the machines and technology too. Its economy isn't one where everyone in a product's production chain, from raw material to store shelf, is aiming to make a 100% (or more) profit - which makes everything cheaper for them. What's more, since they're a bit 'behind' for the time being, they don't feel the 'need' to create new ideas when they can just dip into the existing market's and make them at a cheaper price. Bill Gates is only adding to this - just wait until the above hits the computer/software industry.
Unfortunately with the floodgates of trade already opening it will be soon too late to protest the Beijing Government's treatment of the Chinese people - the only to protest this is to refuse to have anything to do with its function, meaning cutting them off and not dealing with them - but already it's too late for that. The Bush administration is drooling at the aspect of billions of petrol-consuming new cars and they won't be turning back at any price. Not until the damage is (already) done, anyway. Beijing is full today of "western" businessmen wanting to sell planes, weapons and other technologies - but don't ask me what any of this has to do with "government" - the government's freinds won't want you to. But I digress.
The market eventually will "balance" itself, but before then, in the first decade (at least) after the Chinese floodgates open, we're gonna be in for a helluva ride.
Re:Where's Pastor Ken when you *need* him? (Score:1, Interesting)
But isn't a company's 'moral responsibility' supposed to be filled through laws? Ie., your government should pass an order that says doing business in country x is not allowed, because of ethical issues.
Let's examine a couple of cases:
IKEA, if I remember correctly, got accused of child labor being used in their products - the public opinion forced them to polish their shield and make an attempt to deal with the issue.
Lufthansa, like 10 years ago, plain and simple publicly stated that they were concerned about rise of neo-nazis in Germany, as it could harm their imago (LH being a German company) and thus hurt their business. It may have slipped off from a PR droid, but it shows how far the social responsibility goes in real life.
Re:Speaking truth to power? (Score:2, Interesting)
China: a corporate dream (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Where's Pastor Ken when you *need* him? (Score:3, Interesting)
I believe that's known as fascism - "the perfect marriage between capitalism and government..." (to paraphrase Mussolini, I believe). Of course, the second part should go "...for the purpose of subjugation and control of the populace."
It's no different from what happens in the US or anywhere else. We're surprised that aspects of our value-systems are censored over in China, but there are plenty of other (more logical, rational and understandable) value-systems that are censored to such a degree in the west that few are even aware they exist. Even more ludicrous is that these 'censored' value systems are extremely popular amongst the general populace, but there is no name, no investigation and no attempt to integrate these systems into the societal discourse.
In the absence of a philosophy with which to understand these values, people have called them 'common sense' for generations. Which, of course, leads to inevitable disagreement. Nonetheless, it is possible to connect almost everyone's idea of common sense into an integrated philosophy. In fact, over the past 4000 years, many people have done such a thing and humanity has ignored these people time and time again (though we learn about them in philosophy, classical history and latin).
Evidently, people do not want to be free. People do not want democracy. If people wanted those things, we'd be living in a far better world. However, most people don't even understand these concepts.
JH.
Microsoft Did Good (Score:3, Interesting)
The paper said that attempts to input words in Chinese such as "democracy" prompted an error message from the site: "This item contains forbidden speech. Please delete the forbidden speech from this item." Other phrases banned included the Chinese for "demonstration," "democratic movement" and "Taiwan independence."
I personally think that this is an awesome compromise. Blatently reporting to a user that they are being censored is probably the most damning thing they could possibly do. Chinese censorship gets by because most of the time the people don't know that it is happening. They know that they are censored, but the when and where is what is in question. So, is it right that MSN is dealing with that government? No, but at least it is doing some less then subtle poking at it by blatently telling people they are being censored and writing articles about it.