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.'"

Information wants to be free!

[26199]

...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:Boycott the Olympics

[LingNoi]

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

Re:Again?

[fondacio]

Not sure if you're being serious, sarcastic or ironic, but: last week the news was that the English versin of the BBC News website was unblocked, this week it's Wikipedia. And in case you still feel like you're suffering from deja vu, yes, we've been here before. I remember that last year, when I lived in China for three months, Wikipedia was blocked. However, soon after I left in June or maybe even a few days before my departure, the English version was unblocked. Apparently, it got blocked again in the intervening period. I am not sure whether the blocking and the unblocking of Wikipedia in China counts as news, but the unblocking of the BBC certainly was. Unfortunately, there's no telling how long access will continue to exist and as has been noted in many places, Chinese blocking software is by now sophisticated enough to block certain pages or reset the connection if certain words are found in the packets.

BTW

[WindBourne]

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:True story.

[niktemadur]

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.