20 Years After Tiananmen, China Stifles Online Dissent 235
alphadogg writes with this snippet from Network World: "The Internet has brought new hope to reformists in China since the country crushed pro-democracy protests in the capital 20 years ago. But as dissidents have gone high-tech, the government in turn has worked to restrict free speech on the Internet, stifling threats to its rule that could grow online. China has stepped up monitoring of dissidents and Internet censorship ahead of June 4, when hundreds were killed in 1989 after Beijing sent soldiers to its central Tiananmen Square to disperse protestors. The authoritarian government wants to ensure that date and other sensitive anniversaries this year pass without public disturbances, observers say. In recent months, China has blocked YouTube and closed two blog hosting sites, bullog.cn and fatianxia.com, known for their liberal content."
Klein's article on BigBrotherChina is excellent. (Score:4, Informative)
Not as epic as her book Shock Doctrine but it is a must read for any tech with a conscience.
http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2008/05/chinas-all-seeing-eye [naomiklein.org]
http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine [naomiklein.org]
Re:Like this not happens in America (Score:5, Informative)
The scale of censorship is much smaller. The US has minor problems with censorship. The US has not, for example, blocked major news sites. Nor has it blocked Wikipedia and made its own version that the government likes. The comparison is simply not accurate.
Internet censorship is becoming more severe in much of the Western world. Great Britain and Australia are both engaging in serious, active censorship. However, even then the level is tiny compared to that of China.
Re:Some surprising results searching google.cn (Score:5, Informative)
Yes. Do not use a Chinese proxy, even if you are curious. You could get someone killed or thrown in jail.
If you are really curious, try putting some banned keywords [wikipedia.org] into some Chinese websites from your own internet connection.
Many [alexa.com] Chinese web searches are accessible from $your_country.
Re:China is the product of Chinese culture. (Score:4, Informative)
In the late 1980s, what was the strength of desire for creating Western democracies in Eastern Europe? Consider Czechoslovakia. In one day of 1989 November, about 800,000 people gathered in Prague and rallied for the creation of a Western democracy. 800,000 people is about 5% of the population. By contrast, in one day of 1989 June, about 1 million people gathered in Tiananmen Square to demand the creation of a Western democracy. 1 million people is only 0.1 % of the Chinese population.
1. The entire country is the size of South Carolina (#40 US) so gathering all the people in easier, unlike China which is same size as the United States.
2. That was by far the first mass demonstration, if left in peace the Chinese mass demonstration would probably have grown a lot too.
3. The Soviet Union was gone, the Communist Party was failing. It's easy to get out on the streets when you don't fear tanks running you over much.
You say 50:1. On the monday prior to the 800,000 demonstrating, 100,000 was demonstrating. That is more like 6:1. Add in the fact that 90% live too far away to possibly go to Beijing just for a demonstration and you start to realize the Tiananmen Square demonstrations were probably as big as any in Eastern Europe, maybe even bigger. But they were struck down with hard military force just like the Soviet Union did, exactly in Czechoslovakia in 1968. On the saturday you speak of the Communist Party had more or less already admitted defeat, so you're really comparing apples and oranges here.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:It's still inconvenient? (Score:1, Informative)
... country who may [have] lied in front of the world, twice (the moon,...
The Americans, without doubt, sent men to the moon and returned them. Advocates of that event being hoaxed are usually unbelievably ignorant about all matter of subjects.
This site provides info if you go along with any of the ideas moon landing hoaxers may have:
http://www.redzero.demon.co.uk/moonhoax/ [demon.co.uk]
Re:Fat and Happy (Score:5, Informative)
An explosion of discontent is unlikely in China because the 20 years since Tiananmen have been dominated by incredible economic growth. It is hard to complain when your walette is getting fat. I realize the global economic downturn hit China somewhat, but it certainly didn't roll them back 20 years. (Not that this is specific to China; Americans never minded the Iraq war enough to do anything about it, even after they learned it was a sham, it was high gas prices and finally the economic collapse that made people revile the Bush presidency.) One implication of this is that the notion of political liberalization as a necessary byproduct of capitalism is not yet dead. The next time China's growth slows or reverses for a sustained period, then we will see if its new middle class has power to go with their wealth.
Unfortunately, I think you are wrong and that the West basically missed its opportunity to promote reform in China 30 years ago or more. One of the most effective ways of promoting liberalisation in formerly restrictive regimes has been the EU -- a large trigger for the democratisation of Eastern Europe was access to the EU free market, and pots of money. Not to belittle the Cold War, but a big factor in the Berlin Wall falling was poor East Germans knowing the West Germans were doing it much better and that the only way to join in the wealth was to liberalise. Since then, eastern European countries have been falling over backwards to reform themselves and get themselves on that EU gravy train. Hardly surprising -- the same trick worked just as efficiently way back in the 70s with Spain. With China, meanwhile, we've effectively let them join in the riches without any hint of reform -- the EU and US has happily outsourced all its production to China without much regard to reform or political, religious, or personal freedom. We no longer have a juicy economic carrot to wave in front of them, because we've long since given it to them. They can't get "better access to our markets" because they've pretty much already got complete access to our markets.
Re:It's still inconvenient? (Score:2, Informative)