How to Dodge the Chinese Internet Censor 119
eweekhickins writes "A report written by a tech worker in China describes the pervasive censorship, abetted by ample manpower and funding estimated at $27 billion in US dollars. The author, who calls himself Mr. Tao, also writes that plenty of Chinese are finding ways to resist censorship, and offers tips on how to keep evading Big GeGe (that's Older Brother). Not surprisingly, self-censorship is very prevalent. Also not surprisingly, the authorities are starting to catch on to things like RSS feeds. It's another race for survival between the tiny mammals and the lumbering dinosaurs." Here's Mr. Tao's report (PDF), written under the auspices of Reporters Without Borders.
Where are all the English teachers? (Score:5, Insightful)
It makes me wonder who those people are who are complaining the loudest (you know: the ones who aren't getting heard). While I have no doubt that there is a significant amount of pro-government propaganda, I wonder if all this bellowing isn't just a bit overly melodramatic.
Sure hope they're not using Google (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Where are all the English teachers? (Score:4, Insightful)
Eluding censorship (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's tell the powers that be all the ways in which we bypass their censorship so they can close the loopholes.
What was he thinking?
an anarchist's cookbook of internet techniques? (Score:5, Insightful)
but seriously, an easy to use, serially updated very small text only guide in every language that would allow your average computer idiot to avoid censorship as quickly and as painlessly as possible. no software, just a simple set of swiss army knife style techniques, everything from as obvious as "safe" sites to visit to low grade OS manipulations to keep yourself anonymous and keep yourself connected to noncensored news
of course, governments would get their hands on this guide too. it would need to be serially updated. but the old problem of the enemy knowing what you know still leaves a niche of techniques that need to remain common knowledge in heavily censored countries, regardless of governmental knowledge that you know those techniques. some techniques and basic network knowledge are just useful to know no matter what
the internet anarchist's cookbook?
Re:Where are all the English teachers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Most English teachers probably end up in the well populated large cities, where life is a whole lot more westernized whereas I'd imagine a lot of the oppression, human rights violations and such occur more in the outer regions where the sweat shops are and where the Chinese goverment isn't willing to invest in learning English as it is in the major business centres. As you quite rightly point out, plenty of people go to China and come back as English teacher but not only that, think of all the business people and tourists that also go and come back without these tails.
I could be completely wrong, but again I'd guess it's because the China Westerners see and experience isn't the China that the majority of the Chinese population experience. Beijing is probably the most commonly visited and heard of part of China for Westerners yet it only holds around 13 million of China's 1.3 billion people.
Re:Where are all the English teachers? (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyway, in the excitement of visiting a whole new country for the first time, censorship issues may well appear unimportant to most of these teachers.
Re:Eluding censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Where are all the English teachers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Where are all the English teachers? (Score:5, Insightful)
But really, most Chinese are pretty much politically apathetic. The common worker has no time to even think about politics, having to work 14 hours a day just to feed their family. The bloggers are a minority, and the democracy movement here is just too small and unorganized to do anything. But people are in fact scared of saying anything bad about the CCP - every time I try to bring politics up with a taxi driver or whoever they just stop speaking to me. This lack of freedom of speech contributes to make people more complacent, as they don't even know about the Tiananmen protests or the truth of China's role in Tibet.
But hey, it's damn fun being here as a student!
Re:Web Proxies FTW (Score:2, Insightful)