Protesting China's Required Censorship Software

dinoyum writes "Censorship in China is nothing new, but the level of action taken to force Chinese citizens to comply has garnered global recognition. China marked the date July 1st, 2009 as the day manufacturers will be forced to install filtering software on all new PCs. While many have resorted to digitally lashing out against Green Dam, Chinese artist and designer of the famous Bird's Nest at the Beijing Olympics, Ai Weiwei has decided upon a different approach. '[He wants] a general internet strike — no work, no games, no email or anything else online — for 24 hours on the date the government plans to require censorship software on all new computers, he says, will be a quiet act of rebellion. Not coincidentally, July 1 is the 88th anniversary of the Communist Party of China. Though he posted the idea, Ai wants to leave the meaning to those who participate. "I gave almost no explanation about why I'm doing it," Ai said. "I just give the structure and people will fill in their own meaning. I don't want to be political first. I wanted to set up an act that everyone can easily accept, and then realize the power later. I want people to see their own power," he said.'"

The Unfortunate Hurtles Ai Faces

[eldavojohn]

Artist, government critic, blogger, Twitter pioneer. Now Ai Weiwei wants to shut down the internet for a day.

I wonder if his disappearance will be covered up as "performance art?"

It's certainly a valiant idea, I wish him the best of luck. It seems he'll need it:

... and news about the strike call has been scrubbed by censors from the most widely read sites.

I doubt it can but hopefully Twitter and word of mouth make this possible. I would probably have to take the day off and walk around town in order to avoid internet usage all day ... then again, I live under a less invasive government.

I'm not clued into Chinese culture at all so all I know is that globally other news sources in other countries are criticizing this ... but what is the majority feeling of the general Chinese populace? Honestly there have been other things where I know at least some of the populace supported the Chinese government's actions to "watch out for them." Ai needs to overcome those people, I have no idea if he's a lone voice or the voice of everyone's repressed thoughts.

It won't work

[Anonymous Coward]

It's been tried before [xkcd.com].

Re:The Unfortunate Hurtles Ai Faces

[Opportunist]

I fear the general sentiment towards censorship isn't much different than it is here. All too readily people accepted that there are "bad ideas" and "bad thoughts" that should be banned. Look around yourself. We have, all over the "free world", from Europe to the US, parties that call for tougher reglementations of internet use, that want to ban "killer games" and "addictive games" and "terrorist education pages", we have Germany that created governmental censorship under the guise of child protection (how you protect kids by looking away when they get abused is beyond me, but maybe I'm just dumb...), we have the EU mandating month to year long logging of internet connections...

Either parties don't talk about it at all and people don't care about it. Or they even laud it as a good step against those terrorists/pedophiles/boogiemenoftheweek. You think it's much different in China? I can well imagine a wide acceptance, ignorance or even appreciation of censorship, after all, it's for the good of the people...

Re:Green Damn Exploit

[Sir_Lewk]

Or how about you search it for us and not cite a search engine as a source in the future?

Re:Green Damn Exploit

[L4t3r4lu5]

Perhaps he's from China and doesn't want to be "disappeared."

Oh boy

[Comatose51]

The Chinese government is not a government that takes well to public protests (Tiananmen Square massacre or the June 4th incident as the Chinese call it). I'm not saying these people should back down but I wonder if a better approach might yield better result. You have to take culture into consideration when dealing with politics. Culturally, the Chinese react very, very poorly to public confrontations, especially if one party will be humiliated by backing down. (Before anyone asks, I come from a Chinese family. This is experience from dealing with other Chinese, especially parents.) There's this concept of "face" and the Chinese will practically do anything to save it. Generally, to get compromises or change someone's declared public position you have to do it in a subtle way that doesn't threaten anyone's public image if he changes his position. Best of luck to him because he might actually succeed in changing the government's mind by showing them public anger, but the government will punish him simply for his public confrontation. This is actually quite heroic of him. He might be surprised by how many Chinese would care, despite his own blog post to the contrary, because of the very practical impact the Internet has on their day to day lives. The Chinese tend to be practical rather than idealistic.

Re:scared old men in power

[castironpigeon]

The same can be said for every national government. You don't rise to power without a lifetime of struggle and by the time you get there you'd hardly be considered connected to anything or anyone but the people who got you there. Just because the Chinese power class lets it all hang out while Western powers play the cloak and dagger game [wikipedia.org] doesn't make them any different underneath all the bullshit. Remember that the media is part of this game too. Don't let yourself be distracted by troubles in one part of the world when there is plenty of trouble brewing elsewhere.

Green Dam as Botnet?

[jayme0227]

Now I'm not advocating cyber-terrorism in any way, but how long will it be until someone turns all of these computers against the Chinese government?

Also, for conspiracy theorists out there, the North Koreans are planning a ballistic missile "test" shortly after the July 1st date. They have also forbidden foreign ships in their waters because of a naval "test." With the possibility that China is converting its entire nation into a botnet, this is slightly alarming. Could they be gearing up for war against the US?