China Blocks YouTube Over Tibet Videos 343
Screaming Cactus writes "Internet users in China were blocked from seeing YouTube.com on Sunday after dozens of videos about protests in Tibet appeared on the site. 'Chinese leaders encourage Internet use for education and business but use online filters to block access to material considered subversive or pornographic. Foreign Web sites run by news organizations and human rights groups are regularly blocked if they carry sensitive information. Operators of China-based online bulletin boards are required to monitor their content and enforce censorship.' The blocking added to the communist government's efforts to control what the public saw and heard about protests that erupted Friday in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, against Chinese rule."
How long... (Score:2, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Is blocking even necessary? (Score:4, Interesting)
Take the example of Russia: the elections were cheated (some small towns were 105% pro government...), but even perfectly fair elections would probably show that a majority (like 55%) think Putin was a good leader. But thinking that 95%, of the country agrees with the government will make you more prone to agree yourself, whereas at 55% you'll start beleiving that alternatives exist.
I could also speak about Fox in the US, and the necessity for antiterrorist laws.
Va China (Score:1, Interesting)
urgh (Score:4, Interesting)
Read all three parts of it, the author summarizes both sides of the issue in order for people to see that the Tibet issue is much more than just a communist regime bullying an occupied region, for example:
I know I might be modded offtopic but the discussion of Chinese censorship of Tibet videos will no doubt lead to the discussion of Tibet vs China itself. I'm just asking everyone to please form their opinion after looking at both sides of the issue, and how each side feels about it. Try not to base your opinion solely on just what you hear news.
Re:Is blocking even necessary? (Score:0, Interesting)
Is blocking necessary to satisfy human rights? No.
Is blocking necessary to keep the country together? Maybe.
Is blocking necessary to maintain a hard line? Yes.
Re:Is blocking even necessary? (Score:5, Interesting)
China is barking huge, and its population is equally on the large side (Ha! Fear my accurate numerical statements...). They can't just be mostly sheep with a few wolves running things.
I've known quite a few Chinese students, courtesy of the US making it harder for Chinese students to study there. This is great, it's brought vast, vast amounts of cash in from China to universities in the UK, thanks for that one guys..
Anyhoo, these Chinese people, while here, have just the same net access as anyone else, and they are for the most part, belonging to the middle to upper classes in China. Just the sort of people you'd think they'd want to keep ignorant (middle class people have started all revolutions in modern times), and yet they make no effort to do so.
Doesn't quite map, does it...
It seems to me we have a large amount of 'we don't really understand what the fuck is going on in China', that frequently gets combined with a bunch of preconceptions which are probably quite inaccurate.
Store and forward peer to peer over bluetooth (Score:5, Interesting)
Walk past someone in the street and your phone syncs it's "newsgroups" with the other phone. The smartphones around these days are coming with 2Gb of storage and 300MHz processors. More than 100,000 are being purchased per day in China.
Re:How long... (Score:3, Interesting)
any chinese comments? (Score:4, Interesting)
("if we get some chinese comments, perhaps people here can translate them")
Then think about it more (Score:4, Interesting)
Why only Tibet? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:any chinese comments? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Is blocking even necessary? (Score:3, Interesting)
This story from the International Herald Tribune [iht.com], while specifically about Hong Kong, seems to illustrate the concept:
Re:any chinese comments? (Score:5, Interesting)
Being a chinese , the life is very tough.
,
the fact i can still get on the internet is something gratefully granted by the gov. i wouldn't dare to raise a trouble.
in china, any public voice that does not sound "harmonious" will be "harmonized". everything is for building a "harmonious society".
,
many websites has been "harmonized", which have become a common practice..
youtube,
through some technical means the youtube site can still be reached, but that's only to geeks like me.
Re:craziness (Score:2, Interesting)
That is like people saying they cannot comment on American government or policies if they aren't American. We know that doesn't happen. Plus the fact is Tibet is as far as many in the world are concerned Tibet isn't a part of China it has simply been occupied for 50+ years now.
I can also definitely see the Chinese government or hardliners going on YouTube and other sites to mod these videos down so no one sees them not just their people.
Re:Why only Tibet? (Score:3, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribal_sovereignty_in_the_United_States [wikipedia.org]
Native American tribes have their own land, and can make/enforce their own laws.
I am not sure if other countries you mentioned have similar setups, and of course the deal is not as good as some of the Natives would like it to be, but there is nothing like this in Tibet. China denies that Tibetans even want to be free. Even now they are blocking CNN and Youtube, along with countless other news sources. The goal is not to hide the protests from the Chinese people. The goal seems to be to retain the ability to paint the Tibetans as rebel separatists bent on destroying the Chinese empire.
Re:craziness (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the reasons I am wary of this whole Tibet issue is that China happens to be the West's main economic rival, and now it is convenient for Western governments to support the Dalai Lama's cause. The Dalai Lama is not a democratically elected leader, and pre-1949 Tibet was not exactly the merry free independent country you see in Hollywood depictions. Most of the Tibetans were serfs and enslaved in all but name, serving the religious aristocracy of the Lamas.
As long as China was an ally of the US against the Soviet Union, you did not hear much about Tibet or the Dalai Lama. Gone the Soviet Union, grown the Chinese economy, and hey presto! Here is a flurry of Hollywood movies designed to show just how ugly and mean the Estasians are, since Eurasia has always been our ally—right?
See, one of the downsides of reading "Manufacturing consent" by Chomsky is that I start to see unsettling patterns like this one: a piece of news is convenient for the government, that piece is spun in the best possible way for the government by the same press that should be the government's watchdog. Of course it happens as well in China: I read some CCTV Web pages with the predictable pro-China spin.
Now, where is the truth anyway? Well, obviously some Tibetans are quite angry. Some Tibetans have been assaulting Han Chinese [guardian.co.uk] (so much for the Buddhists who never raise a finger in violence), because of the rivalry between ethnic groups. So, as far as I can see, this is an issue of a group of people not liking another group of people, spun by every external party in their favour: the US say the Chinese are evil and the Tibetans are peaceful protesters, the Chinese say they are only criminals, and everyone else says whatever is most convenient for them.
China has encouraged immigration of Han Chinese into Tibet for a long time, and the privileged Han are an obvious target for racial hatred for the underprivileged Tibetans. What the Chinese should have done is to follow the good old way to deal with separatism: throw money at the problem. Tibet has a ludicrously small population compared to China (not even three millions), and China could afford to subsidize separatism to death. That's what Italy did to fix the terrorism problem in South Tyrol, and, guess what, it worked just fine.
Re:Store and forward peer to peer over bluetooth (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Is blocking even necessary? (Score:4, Interesting)
As I talked to people in China while I lived there 2003-06, most people know about democracy of the Western world; they do complain their country's lack of democracy, but at the same time, they believe it does not necessary make things better and it is only something good to have in the future when the country gets prosperous. Think about it, they do have a point. Which of the following democratic countries (at least more so than China) are much better off than China: India, Mexico, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, and many easter European countries? These countries are not doing better in terms of corruption, equality, development, environment protection, education, health care, etc.. How do they fare comparing to Singapore and Hong Kong, both of which have little democracy to speak of?
Their belief is that democracy won't work unless the country has reached higher level of prosperity -- i.e. massive middle class, otherwise democracy could be damaging.