China Anti-Corruption Web Site Crashes On First Day 169
An anonymous reader tips us to news out of China that the Web site of the National Bureau of Corruption Prevention crashed on Tuesday, just hours after its launch, as droves of people logged on to complain about corruption among officials. "The number of visitors was very large and beyond our expectations," an anonymous NBCP official said.
Re:China and Technology (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:The USA should get one of these...Alive Citizen (Score:3, Insightful)
Do I have a blog? No, I don't have any extra time in my day to talk to myself. I've better things to do.
Re:China and Technology (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh no! (Score:5, Insightful)
/dev/null (Score:3, Insightful)
If anything, the corrupt Chinese government officials were just going to use the information to decide which citizens to throw in prison next.
A good sign (Score:3, Insightful)
Assuming that the complaints are actually investigated, that the investigations are fair, and that most people don't make false accusations of corruption, that is.
Who would be brave enough? (Score:5, Insightful)
With that government, i know i wouldn't. Hell, I'm almost afraid to complain about mine these days..
Re:URL? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:A good sign (Score:4, Insightful)
And in the UK, were such a thing to happen the Government would make promises to tackle the issue. They'd appoint some sort of quasi-governmental commission that was essentially accountable to no-one and "investigate". They'd then generate large and frequent reports that hid problems in obscure language deep into the report to ensure no-one ever read them, and occasionally set targets that no-one would ever reach. No-one would be held accountable or punished for those charges not being reached. This, despite vast amounts of tax payers money being used in the whole fiasco. The logo for the new commission alone would cost a few million just to start with.
The "free" press (the government owned) BBC and the more than 50% that's owned by New Corps International wouldn't report much as usual.
No, this is not unique to China -- but on the bright side, in China the people don't have 5 million security cameras following their every move.
Absolute power... (Score:4, Insightful)
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The bureau has been entrusted to collect and analyze
information from the banking, land use, medicine and
telecommunications sectors, among others, and to share
it with prosecuting organs, courts and the police.
Share the information with police, who might actually come after the people making the most complaints?The cynic in me says that this is probably merely an initiative by the government to see where the problems are, rather than a true attempt to end corruption. A few high profile cases will be dealt with, but the rest will be window dressing. I wouldn't be surprised if a few of the loudest complainers are quietly dealt with.
I think the Chinese authorities are realistic enough to know that they face an impossible task. Witness the first 'death penalty for corruption' laws enacted, with great fanfare, well over ten years ago. In spite of much PR and many executions, corruption remains as widespread as ever. The death penalty certainly doesn't seem to be a deterrent against corruption.
One of biggest problems facing China's government is ensuring its own long-term survival, and corruption is a big danger to the government's survival. They should know. The communist revolution itself was a reaction against corruption.
As they say: Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
tagged "humor"? (Score:4, Insightful)
corrupt public servants are being executed in china,
so we are talking about a webinterface to a death-list here!
Re:The USA should get one of these...Alive Citizen (Score:2, Insightful)
Wow. I'm reading this comment at -1. W00T for the Slashdot groupthink. Apparently, AC, you should have mentioned what the civic duties are. If you live in a democracy, as this poster (though not TFA) is referring to, and you don't like the people in charge, you VOTE FOR THE OTHER GUY in the next election.
Whine about things on the internet is +3 Insightful and this is -1?
Re:A good sign (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Reactions to be expected (Score:5, Insightful)
Or perhaps they actually want to do something about corruption, but hadn't counted on just how many would try access the site. Corruption is widespread in China, and very unpopular. The only people who want is the people - the criminals - who benefit from it. This is the people, nor is it the national government, because it causes unrest, which the national government has to deal with; and I don't think they want that.
The chinese government are like most governments in most modern nations - they by and large want to do what is best for the people, or what they think is best. They are not monsters that enjoy making the population as unhappy as possible, despite the picture that gets painted in the more reactionary media in the west. The big problem they have is that they have an incredibly vast country to control and simply not enough resources; that and the fact that corruption has been part of the Chinese society for well over 5000 years. It will probably take at least a generation of modernisation to change this.
Every time there are news from China, it is interpreted in the worst possible light - if they put a man on the moon, it must be because they starve their poor and want to rain death on America, if they tighten copyright laws, it is 'repression', if they don't, they are 'thieves'. Try to be fair - criticize where there is genuinely something to criticize, praise where that is due. That's what we expect for ourselves, isn't it?
Re:URL? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nice to know that, no matter what part of the world you're in, people are willing to listen to "my brother's little kid, he's great with this world wide web stuff!" and actually pay them to do some work.
Re:/dev/null (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't share your cynicism. Feel free to criticize China for being authoritarian and for opposing what the Western world considers to be fundamental human rights, but don't assume that everything about China is bad. Corruption will cause the top of China's "Communist" party to lose power and money; they will fight it out of self-interest, not altruism. Government leaders acting out of any other motivation is a rarity in human history.
Re:2007 is ten years ago? (Score:3, Insightful)
No. 2007 is now. And yes, in 2007 another public official was executed for corruption in China. Zheng Xiaoyu was probably not the only, nor will he be the last, government official to be executed in China for corruption. Believe it or not, I am aware that China still executes govenment officials (and also the occasional businessman) for corruption.
Please re-read what I wrote:
- A few high profile cases will be dealt with, but
the rest will be window dressing.
The death penalty for corruption was enacted over a decade ago, and, as you correctly imply, remains in force to this day. I didn't mean to imply that executions for corruption have stopped, my point was, that in spite of the the death penalty, corruption is still widespread in China.I further believe that, as one of the other replies also stated, the fix for corruption is transparency. Unfortunately, barring a major shake up in China, massive transparency is not likely to happen in China anytime soon (think about the Great Firewall).
I don't believe that the death penalty for corruption is being applied consistently or fairly (in the sense of all people being equal under the law), and consequently it loses its deterrent effect.
This doesn't invalidate my points:
Re:Reactions to be expected (Score:4, Insightful)
No, they are not. They want to stay in power, and keeping to people from starving is necessary to do that. Everything they do for their people is to keep them from rebellion.
"The big problem they have is that they have an incredibly vast country to control and simply not enough resources;"
If they wanted to help the people, they wouldn't spend huge sums of money on monitoring their population, torturing dissidents, and building the world's most advanced censorship regime. India has a billion people too, but they seem to run their country without wide scale torture.
Their big "problem", is that their people are only being kept from rebellion because of unsustainable economic growth, which the Chinese government is pursuing by inflationary monetary policy and environmental degradation on a scale unseen since the industrial revolution.
At some point, the growth will stop, and China's ethnically fractured population, made insane by generations of propaganda, will assert their power. I don't imagine it will be pretty.
"Try to be fair - criticize where there is genuinely something to criticize, praise where that is due. That's what we expect for ourselves, isn't it?"
Hitler did an amazing job building Germany's Autobahn network, Pinochet lead Chile to a path of economic prosperity, and China has build a great deal of infrastructure. We don't talk about these things, because they are far outweighed by the overall evil of the perpetrators.
Re:Reactions to be expected (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:China and Technology (Score:5, Insightful)
No. As Opportunist said, "Racism is in the intention, not the word". Someone noticed that a double entendre existed. The fact that the word the word has a history of racist usage is entirely incidental to unique linguistic coincidence arranging that double entendre. The poster noticed a funny twist of language, and the linguistic facts pretty much precluded any freedom in how to construct the joke.
The poster was anonymous, so it is certainly possible he's a flaming racist, however I see nothing in his post indicating the presence of any ill will intent to disparage Chinese.
I just got through with a post raking someone over the racism coals for objecting to "interbreeding". I am disgusted by racists and people who actively use racist language. However I am also sick of politically correct epileptic fits treating words themselves as radioactively infectious. I am sick and tired of hearing TV reporters say "the N-word". If some racist yahoo calls a black congresswoman a Nigger Bitch, then the news reporter should damn well SAY a racist yahoo called a congress woman a Nigger Bitch. A news reporter using a word in accurate factual reporting of a literal quotation does not make the reporter a racist. And if someone viewing that news show finds it offensive - good. But their anger should be at the racist yahoo, NOT at the reporter or the news show.
A reporter going on TV and saying someone called the congress woman an "N-word B-word" sounds like an absolute moron. What are we, little kids in 6th grade? Is the reporter going to "catch cooties" if he says more than the first letter?
The word is "nigger".
The word is "bitch".
Someone who hates a congresswoman and goes ranting niggerbitch-this and niggerbitch-that desperately needs a brainwipe, but I am not going to put up with the notion that there is anything wrong or racist about the way I used the word nigger the six times I used it in this post.
Grow up people.
Hate racists, but get over the childish idea that a word itself "gives you cooties".
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Re:URL? (Score:4, Insightful)
It sends a 3504 pixel by 2336 pixel JPEG with quality level 97(excessively high), and the page directs the browser to scale it down to generate the final 200 by 142 image.
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