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.'"

Re:Boycott the Olympics

[KDR_11k]

Oh they look pretty capitalistic to me, that doesn't contradict the totalitarianism.

It's not happening.

[gnutoo]

Westerners in the Olympic Village will see something very open and free but it's all a put on. The Atlantic had a good article about this not long ago. The great firewall of China is extensive and fine grained enough to block individual page views at random. It's enough to eliminate public discussion on many topics and it's enough to round up potential subversives. Information in China is not free because people in China are not free.

China Olympics

[backslashdot]

If the Chinese government keeps up this bullshit, people are going to call for boycotts of companies that advertise during the olympics, and that will reduce their revenue (because it will diminish the value of advertsising during hte olympics).

Even the Dalai Lama himself has firmly said that the Olympics should not be boycotted.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/03/18/2193461.htm [abc.net.au]

He has the most to lose if China's government gets more powerful.

I agree with him, I personally don't believe a boycott of the current olympics or advertisers is warranted in this case. The olympics is the one time every four years when athletes of all nations can come together. That serves more for global peace and understanding than petty quarreling, protests, and boycotts. Note, if there was serious shit going on I'll be the at the front of the protest line.

We need China to open, isolating them further will not be helpful. It's better the Chinese (people not govt.) be exposed to how people of other cultures are and vice versa.

Re:bad idea

[wizardforce]

First, you're thinking exactly like the Chinese government and that is rather disturbing. Second, it doesn't really matter what people try to edit Wikipedia, you're supposed to check facts not just blindly obey Wikipedia or SLashdot for that matter. Third, even if they did vandalize these pages it is quite likely that someone somewhere is going to notice and revert the page back.

Re:Information wants to be free!

[Anonymous Coward]

Free Hans Reiser!

IOC say internet must be open for the Olympics

[badfish99]

So: allow access to websites in a foreign language that most Chinese can't understand, for a period of - what - two weeks? And presumably keep a list of everyone who reads those websites? And then back to normal afterwards? Wow, the IOC is really helping to open up China to new ideas about freedom and democracy, isn't it?

Yeah, but you already do.

[WindBourne]

America has exported large number of jobs to China. EU has started doing the same. That means that unless you live off this planet, that you are buying Chinese product. More importantly, you are supporting them, unless you are actively checking everything that you buy.

Brainwashed

[coresnake]

Yep, I have a Chinese friend who always speaks up for the government and everything as if it 'cannot be helped'. Once I asked them about Tiananmen square and they only knew that some students protested there, they didn't even know that anyone was killed! This is the kind of brainwashing and history erasing going on in China and it sickens me. If you control history you control the present..

Re:bad idea

[LingNoi]

They don't understand because the Chinese people are ignorant. They reject all contradications because they've been taught from birth that "this is the truth". Just like how a christian would reject evolution if they had be taught from birth that the earth is 6000 years old, they are no different.

You can't understand nonsense.

Re:China Olympics

[Dutch Gun]

An evil man can occasionally speak the truth, even without holding the spirit of those words dear to his heart.

Re:China Olympics

[Hannah E. Davis]

Hey, even Hitler was right from time to time. As insane and misguided as he may have been, he was occasionally insightful, and the Olympics of 1936 may well have helped to postpone hostilities.

Besides, it would be awfully nice if the Olympics actually did stand for peace and understanding in this day and age -- the politicians barely even pretend anymore.

Re:bad idea

[atamagabakkaomae]

However as a fact most Westerners do not understand very much about the, I think, quite complex structure of Chinese society. Even if you lived there it is not easy to get a feeling for what people ranging from the very poor countryside worker to the super rich entrepeneur really thinks about the government. Chinese people are not stupid, the have the same thoughts about their government as we have. Most people in China (except the very poor people) have access to the net and know how get past the firewall. Most people's English is much better then most people's Chinese in Europe or the states. They are able to read the news and follow the ongoing controversy.

It is so easy for us to say: ok we see that our system works in our country, so please do the same in China. But I think one also has to notice that the Chinese government does make efforts to steer the country in the right direction. The country is just so big and hard to control due to its extremly diverse ethnicity and the big gap between rich and poor. If things change from one day to the next, there will be a civil war and a lot of people will die and suffer. More than do right now because of the oppression by the government.

Chinese people know that they are oppressed and they are sick of it. The country is gonna change. But not tomorrow and not the day after. Not even because of the Olympic games. It takes time.

Re:It's not happening.

[coaxial]

Obligatory Karma Whoring: The Atlantic article [theatlantic.com].

Not only is this a transparently empty gesture by the CPC, but I believe it has absolutely no downside for the CPC. It's English. The only people that are going to looking at it are foreigners and they're going to leave after two weeks. The indigenous population isn't going to bother, simply because they're much more focused on the simplified-chinese version. Also, don't discount how the population has been cowed into self censorship. No doubt thanks to Jingjing, Chacha, and the thousands of true believers [danwei.org]. (There's ALWAYS true believers.)

Honestly, I don't think the Chinese people want freedom and democracy. I think they're too busy making money and improving their lives. Don't rock the boat, we've got a good think going. Let it be. It's human nature. As Juvenal observed [wikipedia.org]:

Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man,
the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time
handed out military command, high civil office, legions - everything, now
restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things:
bread and circuses

Re:True story.

[Anonymous Coward]

Whereas Millions of American adults have no idea that around 1 million Iraqis are lying dead for large international corporations to profit. Tieneman square? 7000 Deaths according to NATO (One of the higher estimates).That they are living in "The Land of the Free" Despite having no large party representing anything other than fascist interests, having no independant press, infact the only right they have, is to sue anyone for anything essentially.

Olympic wristed threats

[Cathoderoytube]

"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"

Good to know the Olympic committee is all for standing up for human rights provided they're in town, and they're being paid lots of money, and those human rights only apply to people who are used to such freedoms in the first place. But seriously, if the Olympic committee gave a flying fuck about human rights they wouldn't have chosen China to host the Olympics.

Re:Freedom is NOT coming to China

[electronixtar]

You don't know shit about what's like in China 40 years ago.

Re:Wikipedia is still blocked in Guangzhou, China

[hayagriva]

Just opened it now, in Beijing. Seems to be working fine. But of course, the Tiananmen Square Protest page is blocked, still. That's the keyword filter, still chugging along as usual.

Re:True story.

[MightyMartian]

Well, the Great Leap Forward showed the mastery of propaganda that Mao had mastered, though to be fair, he lost considerable influence afterwards, basically having to create a second revolution to gain back his position. I think a good many Chinese know something fairly bad happened, though it's not even clear that the Communists knew how many people died, because so many lower level functionaries lied to their superiors about the number of deaths. At the end of the day, no one knows how many people died, but what we can say is that Mao's ludicrous economic programs make him, directly or indirectly, one of the greatest mass killers in the history of our species. You have to look to Stalin, whose own idiotic economic and agricultural programs caused millions of Russian deaths, for someone who comes close.

And that's why, at the end of the day, no matter how ridiculous and hypocritical the West is, we do have it better. No Western government, no matter how hard it tried, could hide that many deaths. The press loves only one thing, and that's sales, and nothing sells better than scandal, and the ultimate scandal is an inept government. Why do you think Bush has the lowest ratings of just about any President in US history? For all his attempts to control the media, it hasn't done him a damned bit of good.

The Chinese government ultimately destroys itself with its attempting to hide information. The wonder of freedom of the press and freedom of speech is that the people can speak directly, the politicians cannot hide behind walls of information. When you see people on TV with the freedom to say "You suck", it makes it impossible to live in a vacuum, exercising power with no comprehension of what that is doing to the greater society.

Re:Some feeling as a Chinese

[Kopiok]

While it may make internet users in China more skillful at getting around website blocks, it's not exactly a good thing that you need that skill in the first place. By creating the Great Firewall, they are blocking all inexperienced internet users from accessing this damning information. I assume in China that the vast majority of people are inexperienced internet users (same in the States too. :/). They are controlling the flow of this information to control the actions of their people, and it's causing more harm to Human Rights than it is helping computer literate Chinese to become inventive. You seem to have twisted this horrible violation of the freedom of peoples into a good thing by saying "at least some people know how to get around a firewall now!". Not exactly comparable subjects.

Re:Boycott the Olympics

[Iamthecheese]

There [angelfire.com] are [wordpress.com] other [ittoolbox.com] examples [commondreams.org] of [wikipedia.org] totalitarian [theregister.co.uk] capitalist [csmonitor.com] countries [wikipedia.org].

capitalist!=free

Re:Yeah, but you already do.

[das_magpie]

Believe me, I do.

I have real problems buying ANYTHING with the famous and hopeless 'Made in China' label attached to it.

I spend extra time to seek out products made in the West.

Its my own stupid fault if I actually pay for a product thats made in China and expect it to work and last.

I even try to find western made electronic components if I can, German stuff I find superior and it is plentiful in certain fields.

Its getting frustrating here in Australia with quality tools, brands like Stanley and Makita have begun to sell out even more and it is becoming increasingly difficult to find tools that are made in the west, for some that might not sound like a problem but for me I frequently use drills etc and to have them pike out constantly is expensive and its a major waste of materials as they just end up in the bin constantly, poorly made products have a major impact on the environment, everything becomes so disposable its just ends up in a landfill.

What scares these days though is food that is "Made in China" here in Australia supermarkets have created there own brands ie "Woolworth's Select" and If you read the back of the packets a huge amount of their product comes from China and surrounding countries, fair enough if my new cordless drill does not work properly but when my Fruit and Veg has problems, I have problems.

I recommend trying to seek out quality products, most things I own now have been manufactured in the west I feel more relaxed going about my day to day activities knowing my chisels wont blunt or break whilst working on soft pine and my food is not going to contain MSG and my dogs toys aren't painted with toxic goo.

Lately NOTHING I have purchased in China has been good quality and lasted and I always end up regretting buying the product and feel guilty and ripped off when it ends up in a landfill after a week of use.

Off topic I know but I thought it was an important point to make.

Re:wikipedia?

[hukado]

China will lose this battle. I cannot understand how they hope to contain information. Do they hope that their people just won't speak English. Its insane and hopeless, better to live in a free society, warts and all. Peace.

hukado at Products [personafile.com]

China, democracy and freedom

[jandersen]

I know this is probably futile, but what the hell...

We in the West enjoy democracy and freedom. Well, "enjoy" may be an exaggeration, but we have it, sort of. Does anybody on /. know how long it took for us to get these things? I don't know for certain, but I'm pretty sure it took generations. Part of the explanation is that those in power didn't always want it to happen, but another part is that democracy and political freedom are things that people need to learn, and it takes time. Just look to history to see how many times people have fought for freedom in a revolution, only to throw it away as soon as they've won. We in the West held on to it because of another revolution: the Enlightenment.

So how can we imagine that any country can just slap democracy and freedom down in the middle of society and say "Here you go, chaps, have fun"? China and the Chinese go through that phase now, what we went through 100+ years ago, and they are doing it a lot faster than we did, not least because of modern technology, but a lot of things can go wrong if the government just let it loose. Thankfully the Chinese government aren't about to let foreign pressure push them around.

What would happen if they did suddenly try to introduce full democracy and all the freedoms the Americans still only dream about? Just look at what happened in Russia: organised criminal gangs (the Russian mafia) grew very strong and tried take over, certain big companies grew extremely strong and tried to take over, the people in general suffered great need, and the government went in circles. Now they are returning to something closer to Soviet style strong-man government, because this is what the people seems to prefer.