China Blanks Nobel Peace Prize Searches 326
1 a bee writes "CNN is reporting that China is attempting to block all communication regarding Peace prize winner Liu Xiaobo. Even texting is affected: 'Text-messaging on mobile phones is not immune from censors, either. A Shanghai-based netizen, @littley, tweeted his unfortunate experience: "My SIM card just got de-activated, turning my iPhone to an iPod touch after I texted my dad about Liu Xiaobo winning the Nobel Peace Prize."' Might as well add Slashdot to the censored list."
Further coverage is available from NBC.
Re: Social stability or autocracy? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've heard it said that much of the Chinese government's restrictions on free speech, protest, etc. are to maintain social stability.
Is that an ideal that's especially resonant with the Chinese culture for some reason? If so, why?
Or is it a transparent attempt to maintain power (stability = keeping the same people/party in power)? Or is it both?
Kinda like announcing that a soldier who died by friendly fire actually died a heroic death? Or quietly putting a priest out to pasture so people won't figure out that he's been molesting children?
People in power do this kind of crap all the time. The only difference is the degree and the extremes they'll go to.
Re:Another Nobel Peace Prize dud (Score:4, Interesting)
Then why does North Korea still exist? Why is Tibet not free? Taiwan?
We may be trading with them. We may even be their main source of income and innovation. But we're also still each other's worst enemy, still armed to the teeth, and still targeting each other.
Trade will encourage Democracy. Sure it will. (Score:5, Interesting)
In 1989, we watched in horror as the Chinese government murdered 3,000 students [wikipedia.org] for the crime of asking for a Democratic government.
A lot of us tried to boycott China after that for fear of making those bloody monsters even more rich and powerful
We were shouted down. "We have to trade with China. As China grows wealthier, the wealth will trickle down to their middle class, who will then rise up and demand basic human rights and freedoms. As we trade with China, as we stregnthen their middle classes, China will be dragged into joining the civilized world."
It didn't quite work out that way. China still has no real middle class, though ours has been decimated. The Chinese government started executing prisoners and selling their organs for profit, [bbc.co.uk] but that uprising of the newly-empowered middle classes still didn't happen.
So where is this "Enlightenment Through Trade?" China took that money, and used it to build a military that they're now threatening Japan with. They're kidnapping Toyota executives and holding manufacturing hostage with the market corner they've got on rare earth elements.
We've sacrificed our manufacturing base to this idea that a richer China is a friendlier China.
Really? How do you explain this?
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/870490--chinese-dissident-tipped-for-nobel-peace-prize
"Last Dec. 25 her husband was sentenced to 11 years behind bars, after being found guilty of trying to incite others to subvert state power.
Liu was the lead author of a document called Charter '08, calling for multi-party elections in China, where the Communist Party keeps a lock grip on power."
Why are we still doing business with these monsters?
Re:Chinese people know... (Score:1, Interesting)
>Care to share your insight on why he lives in China?
for Chinese chicks.
Re:Chinese people know... (Score:4, Interesting)
Frankly, I smell a rat.
The poster is fluent in English, posting from China where this subject is banned, towing the party line, telling us how Chinese people think, and generally doing preemptive damage control.
I've lived in a communist country before, and I can guess how this works.
The communists in general spare no effort in propaganda - it's how they stay in power. When the engine of propaganda fails, historically, their power is in danger. I'd be shocked if there weren't a hundred Chinese communists in the ministry of state, paid to read foreign websites/press and reply spinning the pro-party line.
Seriously everyone: do you expect someone from China to publicly voice support for that dissident and his peace prize if it can land them in jail for 11 years (and there are no TVs and such in Chinese jails)? Use common sense. And when a poster is defending their totalitarian government for the indefensible and is currently on soil controlled by that government, do you really expect things to be on the level? If this guy wasn't a plant, he'd never be around to post a response, don't ya think?
If the dissident gets the award, it might be the first time in a long time it's gone to someone deserving, and may force the Chinese to let the guy out from jail (he might be exiled instead). Prizes and international recognition like this have saved lives of the receivers in communist countries before.
Re:Chinese people know... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Hacktivism (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't think this is only in China. I had a chance to interview people after the civil war in El Salvador, and a lot of them also saw the rebels as troublemakers. And not completely without reason. They say that when elephants fight, the grass always suffers.
If you want to make a difference, the best way isn't to attack the government, which makes them see you as their enemy. The best way is to approach them as friends, and talk about all the good things of democracy, etc. Because democracy, free speech and all that really is better. And in a friendly environment, they will see it. Remember we don't hate the government, we aren't trying to depose them; we just want the government to treat the people right, and if they can do that without being deposed, it's MUCH better.
Re:Chinese people know... (Score:4, Interesting)
Interesting. In this thread you claim to be chinese. Yet elsewhere on Slashdot you're writing about your life in America. Chinese American? By your own standards clearly you're lowly scum trying to be somebody in a foreign country.
Re:Social stability or autocracy? (Score:5, Interesting)
Is that an ideal that's especially resonant with the Chinese culture for some reason?
No, it's something that is resonant with people that want to suppress speech. Look at recent articles and you will see similar lame excuses (ie. stopping terror, child porn, copyright protection) for allowing the NSA/FBI/etc to spy on citizens or try to take down their computers.
Actually, the idea DOES resonante with the Chinese, for cultural reasons that go back centuries. Confucianism held sway in China throughout much of their history, and that philosophy puts a high value on deference to the authorities, be it the Emporor or your local official. And what replaced it in the 20th century... Maoist communism... went from deference of authority to virtual enslavement of it. Chinese culture has never known an ethos of personal freedom the way the West understands it. And lest you think that improved living conditions and the presence of a market has changed anything, keep in mind that when Jackie Chan gave a speech to a major business group in Hong Kong, he got a standing ovation when he said that too much freedom in China was a bad thing [independent.co.uk], and that the government needed to maintain order and tranquility. One of the reasons that NY Times pundit Thomas Friedman admires the Chinese so much [reason.com] is that they have the benefits of a market economy, while having a government with total authority... easier to "get things done" that way, you see.
Re:Trade will encourage Democracy. Sure it will. (Score:3, Interesting)
Xenophobia and bigotry: (Score:5, Interesting)
Every foreigner who's in China is a loser who's there for Chinese women? Uh huh. Suuuure...
Might it be that you're pissed that one or more Chinese gals paid you no mind? Or, are you one of those who derides any Chinese female who goes out with a non-Chinese as a "yellow cab"?
Or is it that there's a shortage of them?
China's made its own problem of being 2 million female children short because of "one child" and the cultural emphasis on sons. Better start working on opening your own minds before trying to change minds here.
Oh, wait. You're here in the West according to your comments. Then how is it that you aren't just the same sort of loser leaving your own failures in the country you left behind? Oh. I got it. Different standard for you and others. You're inherently superior somehow. I've heard that philosophy somewhere before.
Or, maybe you were born here, and became embittered all on your own. Good to know to know that bullshit xeno attitude of yours can spring up anywhere.
Here in America (and across the world) we know your kind. We despise you.
Almost as much as we despise a totalitarian government censoring.
(Hopefully, you just wrote something silly because you were ticked off at the previous poster. Very few here sympathize with the Chinese government, but your comment came across just as alienating and biased as how I tried to wrote the above.)
Re:Chinese people know... (Score:0, Interesting)
Having been there for some time as a visiting "westerner" a few years ago, the Expat culture in at least Beijing was truly sick. The level of prostitute-ass searching MacDonalds/Pizza eating psychos was beyond belief. z-j-y's comment was maybe out of place, because he can't be 100% sure about this particular guy, but I definitely know where he's coming from. We knew a few locals from work, had a great time and managed to find a few of the expats who seemed to have some clue how to live there, and quite a number of places where you could mix with locals without too much feeling of being seen as wierd but the majority of the Expats just weren't interested.
I often wondered why this was. It may be that the kind of people who are willing to go there for money are fundamentally amoral and very few people go there because they like the place. I may also have been unlucky (though we spent some effort to look around and see).
Re:But, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
We already have terrorist porn.
Didn't we have a case recently about someone who pissed off the wrong person and got kiddie porn hacked onto his computer?