China Starts Censoring Phone Calls Mid Sentence 366
bhagwad writes "Several reports have emerged that China is cutting off phone calls mid-sentence when contentious words like 'protest' are used. Seems like China's draconian censorship regime is going into overdrive with even more sophisticated censoring. Of course, this comes on the heels of Google accusing them of mucking around with Gmail as well."
That irony can be so ironic sometimes (Score:5, Funny)
The New York Times publishes an article about China's great firewall, and puts it behind a firewall.
[The rest of this post is censored, to make it truly meta]
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HBO publishes it's programming schedule, then it puts the programs behind a firewall, what is up with that?
Censoring phone calls while they are underway is not the same as a pay wall.
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Neither is *eavesdropping* on said phone calls for the purpose of determining whether or not to censor.
Oddly enough, arbitrary cutoffs aren't the scariest implication in this.
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My guess? They don't. People get cut off sometimes. They do not remember the thousands of times they weren't cut off while saying "protest" but the one time it does happen sticks out. They tell a friend, who starts watching for it as well. It doesn't happen, but the friend is cut off while saying "democracy." Or, well, actually, they continued talking for several minutes after that, but when they did get cut off, of course it was because they said "democracy." And that's how myths are born.
hmm (Score:5, Interesting)
Though you might want to get used to the sound of knocking on your door if you carry out extensive trials.....
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First, that's not ironic at all.
Second, the article is about censoring phone calls mid sentence, so to truly CmdrTaco is a right and just leader and editor of Slashdot, and he knows what is best for us all. Slashcode is stable and strong. I am glad we had this talk or comment thread.
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Clearly, in not supporting me, you're worse than Hitler.
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Godwin? Is that you?
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Godwin is worse than a dunptruck full of Hitlers being driven by The Hulk... with Pol Pot riding shotgun. /does I win?
Re:That irony can be so ironic sometimes (Score:5, Funny)
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a dumptruck full of Hitlers being driven by the Hulk.
Wait, what are we talking about?
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My word, I wish I hadn't wasted my modpoints on insightful posts. You, my good sir, firmly deserve your +1 Interesting.
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"It's not TV, it's HBO."
"Have you ever watched Sunday night programming on HBO? It's spectacular."
I mean a person could give up tickets to Rush for this.
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Some guy the other day told me that irony is actually the use of a term in a way that's the opposite of its literal meaning. Deciding to take the high ground, I retorted by calling him a pussy and spitting on him. I've got tiger blood, you see.
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I like the Socratic form of irony, which may be familiar to many Internet trolls: feigning ignorance to provoke an opponent. I also like the Blackadder definition: "It's like goldy or bronzy, only with iron."
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I can't remember the paragraph in "The Communist Manifesto" where Marx discusses the correct method of suppressing dissidents - could you cite it for me?
Or is it in "Capital"?
Or is it simply that you're confused about a few things?
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Man, speaking of tantrums - you really fly off the handle when your beloved communism is insulted, don't you? But do I get the core of your argument? "No True Communism would ever oppress its people"?
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oWlPoRk or whatever the poster's name is, is a known troll, continually posting inflammatory shit, and I have no respect for them. You, on the other hand, are kind of a dick, but not so much that I will automatically insult you any time you post.
My argument is so simple, even oWlPoRk should be able to understand it.
First, calling something by a certain name does not make it that thing. Is it a "No True Scotsman" fallacy to say that the DPRK is not really a Republic, or a Democracy, despite it's name?
Second,
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Well, China has stopped being communist a few dozen years ago - now it's more capitalist than the US. Of course, under Maoist rule it wasn't any better in terms of civil liberties.
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I've got tiger blood, you see.
Irony again?
Re:Don't ya think? (Score:4, Funny)
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There is no spoon.
In the USA ... (Score:5, Funny)
... dropping calls in mid-sentence is simply known as "using AT&T wireless service". Zing!
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Remember our morning shortage of Ts [slashdot.org] on /.? People have had to replace 'em with plus signs. Wireless is a poor fix, because even someone using an old modem on a landline operated by A+++
NO CARRIER
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Re:In the USA ... (Score:4, Funny)
They failed to mention that the code word for protest in Chinese is now "Candlejack". It stands to reason tha
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$7 dialup provides 14GB/month
If that's regular 56k you can only download about 590 MB a day if you download at full speed 24 hours.
56,000 kb/s = 7 kB/s*3600*24=604,800 kB per day/1024=590.625 MB or 18.3 GB in a 31 day month. I'm not even sure what putting a limit of 14 GB/month is supposed to accomplish with dialup.
People will start talking in code (Score:3, Funny)
etslay tartsay ay rotestpay
I was going to complain about censorship in China, (Score:3, Funny)
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I prefer the hypnotoad meme, because when peoplALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOTOAD!
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Foolish? (Score:2)
A group of minds working together (like a government) should be far more capable than a single mind by itself, but this seems to indicate that the opposite may be true for sufficiently large groups of minds.
I assume that as much as we hear about the "great firewall of China" and the censorship they have there, the average Chinese citizen probably doesn't run up against it very much. Something like this seems so abrupt and obviously intrusive that the general populace must surely take notice. I wonder how
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Bad thing is that the next step up from having the conversation ended is having a knock on the door with the special black van pull up, with the next of kin being notified they owe the Chinese government the cash for the lethal injection chemicals before they get the body back (sans usable organs for transplants, of course.)
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Lethal injection ruins those organs.
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As a side note, I'd hate to live under this regime, but I'd have a blast playing with this system if I had access to it. What Sesame Street quotes would set off the filter, etc.
Right up until you were "detained" indefinitely (at what I'm sure would be a first-class Chinese prison) for "suspicious activity".
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"I'd be willing to bet that only phones that are already under surveillance for "subversive behavior" (activists, journalists, etc.) are subject to this technology. If not, I'd seriously question the wisdom of the government."
Gotta agree with that one, with only 10,000,000 English speakers in the country; .77%, why would you bother to censor English unless you were interested in censoring that particular group.
I can't help but wonder what the official line on this is. "Government places restrictions on acti
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Another report on a separate incident said the conversation that was cut off was being done in Chinese, so it's not just the English speakers that are being targeted.
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Saw that, but the fact that they are even bothering to censor English seems to raise a flag that there is a very specific paranoia of outside influence.
I can't help but wonder how much of that is justifiable. You always hear of some shady think-tank or puppet "activist" who is obviously just spewing pro-Chinese propaganda or even the occasional intrusion and when I hear something like this, I can't help but wonder how much the US is doing over there.
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The Great Firewall of China is not that much of an issue for most Chinese internet users because (a) they're not, mostly, looking for sensitive political material online; (b) most people don't speak English, so overseas sites are automatically less attractive, and (c) there are native Chinese equivalents -- okay, clones -- of blocked foreign sites. Facebook is blocked, but there's still Renren and Xiaonei. Twitter is blocked, but there's Sina Weibo - which is in many respects a better product. Youtube is bl
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A group of minds working together (like a government) should be far more capable than a single mind by itself
Because everybody knows that the best horses are designed by committee.
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As much as I hate to quote a Will Smith comedy about aliens:
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals."
Or, to quote a better source:
"The IQ of a mob is the IQ of its dumbest member divided by the number of mobsters."
Sometimes governments and corporations are little more than large, organized mobs,
Re:Foolish? (Score:5, Insightful)
When an injustice is introduced to you as child, it doesn't seem to you like an injustice, it just seems like business as usual. After all, it's not like there aren't significant injustices right here in the US that most of us just ignore while going about our lives...
The point of censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
From what I've read, the Chinese people generally support their country's censorship
Yes, effective censorship assures that what you read from the people subject to it is consistent with the viewpoint the censoring entity wishes to hace expressed, while contrary messages are suppressed.That's the whole point of censorship.
Schoolchildren have the solution (Score:2)
Aybemay issidentsday couldcay eakspay in igpay atinlay?
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In China, they speak Pig Mongolian, not Pig Latin.
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Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
90% of our stuff here in the US is from China. It's cheap. That's all that matters. Mass censorship, brutal putdowns of dissent, etc. - none of that matters. Real Konsumerism Politik, don't cha know.
There will be no riots, a la Tunisia. Well, maybe for about 5 minutes. Who cares? As long as we get our cheap stuff from China.
Re:Who cares? (Score:4, Interesting)
Typical ignorant American viewpoint. Here's an idea: why don't you try asking some, you know, actual Chinese people if they want to overthrow their government? The New York Times article linked carefully avoids asking this question, as you'll notice. The article's all about prissy Beijing expats having a hissy fit because they can't get to facebook and twitter any more because their VPNs were blocked. The answer is assumed as the Chinese people want to overthrow their government. It's called "reciting the narrative", and it's a common way that journalists get to make shit up.
Surprise! Chinese people don't want to overthrow their government. *cough* (awkward silence) Things are better now in China than they ever have been in history. Things are only getting better every day. The worst thing that could happen is an attempt to overthrow the government. Nobody knows China's last 150 years of history, which was basically one disaster after another. The nation was divided and without a common language, and Mao united the people under one flag, stopped the wars of province against province, and gave the people the gift of a common language that could unite their diverse cultures.
But no, the only reason that China should keep its government has zippo to do with Chinese, and everything to do with America. Because whatever it is, all over the world, it always comes back to how America thinks. The navel-gazing makes me sick. So fucking parochial and ignorant of outside. +5 Insightful, eh, Slashdot?
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But no, the only reason that China should keep its government has zippo to do with Chinese, and everything to do with America. Because whatever it is, all over the world, it always comes back to how America thinks. The navel-gazing makes me sick. So fucking parochial and ignorant of outside. +5 Insightful, eh, Slashdot?
Knowing what you know about both countries, China and the USA, which country do you want to live in for the next 50 years?
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody knows China's last 150 years of history, which was basically one disaster after another. The nation was divided and without a common language, and Mao united the people under one flag, stopped the wars of province against province, and gave the people the gift of a common language that could unite their diverse cultures.
And then promptly enacted economic reforms that caused tens of millions of deaths! [wikipedia.org] Besides, it's not like some cultures want to not be part of China (*cough* Tibet. *cough* Uyghurs.).
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No, its not 90% from China.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_trading_partners_of_the_United_States [wikipedia.org]
Less than 25% of US imports from from China, and China is the third largest importer of US goods.
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China is still in the year 1984. The censoring of the word "freedom" is very telling. It perfectly sums up what the Communist Party in China is all about; suppressing individual liberty. They are the boot stamping on a human face. I hope China is able to move out from under the shadow of Big Brother in the coming decades
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Interesting)
It does for the Chinese. It strengthens them and weakens the West. There will be a point where they won't need to continue exporting cheap stuff, where they have not just resources and wealth, but technology.
Then, expect to see some really nasty things happen:
First, there is the low hanging fruit, Taiwan. This little island has been a prize just out of reach, and it is only a matter of time before China gets bold enough to annex them. Think the US would start a nuclear conflict over an island? Won't happen. It is only a matter of time before this becomes just as part of China as Hong Kong did.
South Korea is also a prize, and having their puppet to the north start a protracted conflict in order to cripple the Western economy by a thorough shelling of Seoul would be a major military coup. China wouldn't even be faulted if state of the art weaponry (both conventional and nuclear) managed to appear in the DPRK. The US involved in North Korea also means another theater of war that the West has to fight but China doesn't.
It would almost be trivial for China to cripple the Western economy in just 24 hours by a two pronged attack (overrunning Taiwan and getting Kim to shell his southern neighbor), with little to no threat of retaliation from the US. China knows this, and the only thing stopping them from this is because they still have intelligence to gain from Western businesses and a benefit from one-sided trade practices.
North Korea will just take 1 nuke to wipe out and (Score:2)
North Korea will just take 1 nuke to wipe out and the UN will not let china give nukes to NK.
and without the western economy who will buy the china stuff?
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And who will by the cheap Chines crap, then? Anything the Chinese do to cripple the West will come back on them. Unless their own people are granted liberty and upward mobility, they will not be able to sustain their economy through domestic purchasing. And if that does happens, their own producer prices will go through the roof, which opens up opportunity for production around the rest of the world.
Unless the Chinese government sees fit to raise the status of its own people, none of what you say shall come
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Interesting)
It is only a matter of time before this becomes just as part of China as Hong Kong did.
You mean a peaceful transition that leaves them with some autonomy? Yeah, I think you are correct.
South Korea is also a prize
No, it's a threat. It is the US on their doorstep. They would drop support for North Korea in a heartbeat if the US wasn't so cuddly with South Korea. (Well, there's a bit of an issue about dealing with a refugee flood...)
and the only thing stopping them from this is because they still have intelligence to gain from Western businesses and a benefit from one-sided trade practices.
In other words, we have mutual economic interests. I suspect we will have these mutual interests for a very long time.
You understand that China is not being totally paranoid? They have a huge Russian border, an Indian border, a coastline right across from Japan, and they are physically attached to the Korean Peninsula. The Russians don't exactly love the Chinese, nor do the Indians, and they were sacked and raped by Japan. The US is cozy with Japan, Taiwan, and has a major presence in Korea. I think it is important that we keep all of this in mind when dealing with the Chinese.
Also, your analysis is a bit one-sided. Any military effort on China's part - and it would be a significant effort to invade Taiwan - would pull troops away that could otherwise be used to defend the other borders. It would also reduce their ability to quell internal unrest. I'm pretty sure that terrifies Chinese leaders.
Re:Who cares? (Score:4, Interesting)
Think the US would start a nuclear conflict over an island?
China was a nuclear power during the Vietnam War, why no nukes then, eh? Developed nuclear powers, including China, have a lot more restraint than you probably want to admit to yourself. The United States has proven several times already that, nuclear weapons or no, it is not afraid to get into a proxy war with China. There is even an official DoD plan for US military assistance to ROC/Taiwan: OPlan 5077-04. Whether or not the DoD follows through is up to the political climate at that time and the personality and priorities of the C-in-C.
Korea is not a one dimensional subject, especially for the Chinese. Chinese and Koreans are very close to each other culturally and have been allies several times against Japan. North Korea is a burden to the PRC, not nearly enough of a puppet for the CCP's liking, and quite frankly I think it's a more likely scenario that when DPRK implodes, China will swoop in and use the excuse of reinstating order to make North Korea a protectorate. It will probably be a lot smoother overall than their western AR's.
China would have to suffer a massive economic setback before it would consider starting World War 3. Right now China is about business, and as much as everybody wants to navel gaze and imagine the US is so, so important, much of China's trade is closer to home. The economic and political fallout of striking against all the local partners it has would be immense, and the whole endeavor would be foolish. The Chinese are too wise to do it.
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Well, the system is already crumbling and falling apart. Just wait for a little longer and both, China and "we", will see mass riots.
Why? Because even to buy the cheapest crap you need money. To have money, you have to have a job. And the jobs are in China. You might see the problem this leads to.
Producing in one area of the planet and selling in the other one does not work in the long run.
[The US economy] has been the world's largest national economy since the 1870s and remains the world's largest manufacturer, representing 19% of the world's manufacturing output.
from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_United_States [wikipedia.org]
Additional support: additional http://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-the-top-manufacturing-countries.htm [wisegeek.com]
http://www.unido.org/index.php?id=7881&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=455&cHash=09cad462f0 [unido.org]
http://www.articlealley.com/article_1483022_22.html [articlealley.com]
China may be getting close, but
code words (Score:3)
How hard is it to use different code words. If I were the govt listening on my people, I'd rather listen to them in full without trying to hide it. That seems easier to know who to track and beat down. If you drive the protestors underground, then it makes it harder to tell who is behind the rebellion and quash teh organizers. Lots of people talk, few can organize. Silence the organizers and you are 99% there.
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Depends... if you make people realize that retribution is swift and certain, they are not going to attempt another organized protest chain on a wide scale. Of course, there will be the firebrand or two, but after those are dealt with in a public manner, there won't be many who will step up to the plate.
Harsh regimes do keep control, and keep control for a long time, and China's is definitely not going anywhere.
you forget you're dealing with PRC government... (Score:2)
PRC government has 50 cent party [wikimedia.org] members, and lots and lots of them.
Code Talker time? (Score:2)
Talk about chilling, you don't even get a notice on your door the next morning; this means someone is listening realtime.
Do they have to start talking in dynamic codes?
"Yes, I have a nice farm. The grass I planted in the mud is doing just fine. Maybe I will get a horse."
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Way ahead of you! (Score:5, Funny)
Our modern western cellphones are way ahead of this. They're able to drop communication mid sentence WITHOUT the need for a certain keyword.
Freaky! (Score:2)
I had a dream where the government was doing this the night before last. (But they took it a step further, using speech synthesis to replace censored phrases with less objectionable phrases.)
Isn't it great when your dreams become reality?
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"Isn't it great when your dreams become reality?"
Did you actually write "I hope my nightmares don't become reality?"
Censorware 1.0 is not irony capable yet.
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Yes it isn't! That's exactly not what I wrote. God bless America!
First-hand testimony: (Score:5, Interesting)
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My Hobby (Score:2, Funny)
Sometimes I randomly announce to empty rooms "I know you're listening...". It only has pros: if I'm wrong, nobody knows, but me; if I'm right, I just freaked someone out real bad.
Randall? Is that you? (Score:3)
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"Basically it's Pascal's Wager for the paranoid prankster."
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That argument works for religion as well.
Skeptical, as a phone-using China resident (Score:4, Informative)
I'm not so sure about the reports of people's phones cutting out. There's definitely been a radical increase in filtering and censorship here over the past month, but I'm pretty sure I've said "protest" multiple times in both English and Chinese on my (Beijing Mobile) phone without having anything happen. Speech recognition just isn't that good, unless the technology has gotten a lot better in secret -- particularly for dealing with a language like Mandarin, which is much richer in homophones than English is, and also has plenty of regional accents that would be even harder for computers to deal with.
That's not to say it's impossible -- I have no reason to believe the NYT is lying, though their China journalism is not always good -- but if it's happening, my guess is that it's limited to a small number of people whose phones are being monitored by human beings.
efeatedDay ithWay igPay atinLay (Score:2)
IvaVay EvelutionRay.
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Alternatives? (Score:2)
Handy feature! (Score:2)
So you can conveniently hang up the phone just by ending your conversation "protest, protest"!
Eavesdropping (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure cutting the calls short isn't the ONLY thing they're doing if they're listening to the conversation closely enough to decide to cut it off in the first place.
This happened to me recently on Skype (Score:4, Interesting)
I was talking to my mother from Beijing over Skype and mentioned that I went to the Mao mausoleum, and said to her that the Communist party likes to keep Mao around to bolster their image.
It seems like those keywords must have triggered something because right after that, the call became inaudible. I tried calling her back, but it was the same.
I then called her cell phone (a different number) which was fine until we restarted that topic. Then the same thing happened.
Finally I had to call my dad and asked him to tell her I couldn't call back.
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Stopping that sort of thing was likely the purpose of the censorship. As usual:
Technocratic, autocratic, systematic, hydromatic, grease lightning government - 1.
The people - 0.
The relationship between China and America is like a horse and carriage. The regular Americans are riding in the carriage, unable to see much of what's actually going on outside. The regular Chinese people are the horses. The guy holding the reins is in the CCP.
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Tunisia - population 10M, size 67K square miles
China - population 1.3B, size 3.7M square miles
It's a lot harder to get a revolution started in a country that size - especially with the communications infrastructure so tightly controlled (far more than Tunisia, Libya, and Eqypt were).
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Revolution in China is fa
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Sadly, this will never happen, no matter how much we wish it would occur.
The last time China had protests in support of Democracy, they ran over protestors with tanks. The US response was to award them with most favored trading partner status, and now they make all our tennis shoes.
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China's Most Favored Trading Partner or as it's known now Permanent normal trade relations was in effect from the mid 1800s until 1951, renewed in 1980, dropped in 1989 and renewed in 2000. It wasn't an "award" its simply a status to allow bilateral trade.
Only two countries don't have NTR with the United States, the DPRK and Cuba.
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I thought Iran was another. I know there is a huge list of things you are not allowed to sell to Iran as a US company.
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Taking bets, when to see the first riots "A la Tunisia" starting?
The class was learning about some revolt in which some peasants had wanted to stop being peasants and, since the nobles had won, had stopped being peasants really quickly.
- Terry Pratchett, Soul Music
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Won't happen, not after Tienanmen. But the thing is, it doesn't have to. China has a growing middle class with burgeoning economic clout. And regardless of what Mao thought, power comes from the strings of a purse not the end of a gun. Eventually, the ruling elite are going to have to give up some control or the wealthier Chinese will just start leaving and taking their wealth with them (and in this age of digital currency, good luck trying to stop that).
Re:Alright guys... (Score:4, Interesting)
The differences between China and Tunisia/Egypt/Yemen/even-Libya are pretty dramatic. If those governments are dominoes toppling each other, China's is a brick.
Re:Why would tha happen? Entirely different situat (Score:5, Informative)
Even after the ROC was consolidated after the warlord years and more-or-less stabilized after the evacuation to Taiwan, it was as democratic as any single party 3rd world country could be for another few decades, which is to say practically not at all. The ROC demonstrates that in order for the Chinese to ever actually achieve democracy, they'll first have to pretend to be democratic for several generations. (A perspective which I think is borne out by analogues in Hong Kong and Singapore.)
People don't understand how at a very, very deep level the whole of Chinese society is used to this as normal. From the burning books and burying scholars of the Qin dynasty and the destruction of the hundred schools of thought through to the literary purges of the Qing, censorship by no less than immediate death was completely normal in dynastic China. Qianlong was held in high regard by many as a model Confucian emperor even though he killed many in literary purges. Even in the republic, both before and after the Chinese Civil war there was brutal quashing of dissent by the KMT including many executions, and I don't even need to talk about the PRC's heinous history.
It's hard to explain to Westerner who have not studied Chinese history that to the average Chinese adult, public dissenters are perceived not as underdog heroes but as people who are abnormal bordering on insane. There is a reason why the CCP is always going on about 'harmony'. It is a direct appeal to Confucian ideals of social harmony and balance between the people and state which is achieved essentially without resorting to dissent but rather through long suffering.
Re:Why would tha happen? Entirely different situat (Score:4, Insightful)
ROC could end up handing itself over considering all the secret negotiations that 'one China' KMT party members keep having with PRC representatives. And as relatively successful as the SAR system has been in HK, I don't know if PRC can apply it to Taiwan without significant losses for Taiwan's society. It's such a different scale, and unless the US plays the same sort of part for Taiwan that the UK did with HK, there simply won't be enough leverage for KMT to make any good arrangement.
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If you've actually read any of the various Chinese historical accounts (which I doubt), you'll see the writers excoriating the emperors that executed scholars and tried to influence the writing of the histories.
The scholarly class negatively perceived maltreatment of the scholarly class? Holy shit! That's a revelation. Sarcasm aside, if all the great academics were summarily executed and all the great books burned in America, the people would rise up against that authority which perpetrated it. That did not happen in Qin society, so how can you say it was as great or greater an outrage? Either the Chinese people were/are thus more deficient in character, or their social values and priorities are different. I sugge
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I wouldn't go that far against China, because for the most part living conditions are improving. People are moving from the rice paddies to their equivalent of Suburbia.
However, the ability to say what one wills is completely different. If I wanted to arrange a protest march where I live, other than some paperwork (so the police can clear traffic and announce to people to find another route), I can pretty much have any message (even unpopular) walked to the state capitol building. Someone does this in Ch