China drops ridiculous ban for bloggers
It’s really hard to believe something like this can happen in the world. China has reversed a decision that would have forced all bloggers to register their real names with the government. Under plans to enforce a “clean and healthy internet”, the country’s internet police (gosh) proposed to allow online diarists to use pseudonyms only if real names had been logged with internet companies. They would then be available to police if offences, from peddling pornography to criticising the government on sensitive issues, were detected. But the government has now abandoned the plan after an unusually outspoken wave of protest from internet users. “The government looks set to back down from its long-held intention of imposing real-name registration,” announced the China Daily, the English-language government mouthpiece yesterday.
China now has 140 million internet users, and 20 million registered blogs, according to official figures. They have been, and will remain, subject to some of the tightest internet censorship in the world. This censorship is well-publicised. It depends not only on an army of policemen trained in internet surveillance and increasingly sophisticated “filtering” software but self-censorship by internet companies and even students, who volunteer to oversee university websites and chatrooms. The rules are advertised by a pair of friendly “cartoon cops”, Jing and Cha, named after the two Chinese characters that make up the word for police. When plans for the real-name registration system were leaked on the web in October, a storm of protest followed that even state media felt obliged to report. Scary, really scary…
Comments(19)
Why is this so surprising?
Did you people not realize that facism and totalitarianism was just as prevelant today as it’s ever been?
What’s REALLY scary and disturbing is how utterly uninformed and self absorbed western culture is (in particular it’s youth) to anything outside it’s borders.
The only thing that’s ‘news’ is that China actually opted against such an action, which for China is downright revolutionary.
Wake up kids, this is the norm, not the exception. Your myopic worldview is overrun by materialism and excess to the point that you’re now blind, being kept asleep by your own leaders to keep you in line and ignorant.
Once you open your eyes even a little, you’ll see that this story is about as interesting and important as tomorrow’s weather.
FB
Lol China RULES
Futtbucker, what you’re saying may be true to some extent, but there are lots of ‘kids’ out there that actually do care to find out about the world and about history and so on…your attitude towards the culture of western youth is not very nice, why generalise in such a way?
My opinion – This news is backwards. China is changing in a positive way, but this news report seems to be negative towards China. We should celebrate China’s changes.
I agree with fghfgh, everyone knows China censors the web for it’s citizens, I’m just grateful we have more liberalism here in the UK although it is slowly being taken away (we aren’t even allowed to protest to those whom we vote to represent us and if it goes through our house of lords we won’t even be able to scrutinize their work and see their spending and work etc under our freedom of information act) by a more and more corrupt government, problem us the people in the UK don’t care, so long as they get their new car every year and go on holiday at least once a year and petrol stays around £1/ltr then no one cares.
Won’t be long before America does this too. If Republicans have their way!
As long as I can still buy a giant sports utility vehicle, tons of guns and ammo, and go to work whenever the hell I want while eating tons of Mexican food and watching the latest Hollywood movie then China is alright with America.
THAT IS THE COUNTRY that WILL ORGANIZED OLYMPIAD GAMES AT 2008
no freedom of speach no human rights and don’t forget THIBET (tibet)
Should we really be that shocked?
Even in Malaysia which is pseudo-democratic the authorities were recently talking about making bloggers register.
Keep on rocking the boat bloggers!!
Every freedom should have it’s boundaries, in order to prevent anarchy, crime and mayhem, but this is simply idiotic.
I live in China and have done for the past 3yrs.
Half the time I can’t even log into MSN never mind any other sites that would be classed as normal in the West.
But T.I.C. (this is China) and this is what one expects, so what is the Wests excuse? What Futtbucker says is true:
“Your myopic worldview is overrun by materialism and excess to the point that you’re now blind, being kept asleep by your own leaders to keep you in line and ignorant.”
Most of you believe what you are told about the world is the truth without doubt and question.
Lee Ramsdale speaks the truth when he says that libralism is being taken away in the UK, that’s one of the reasons I decided to come to China. To be totally honest I have more freedom here than I did in England. Democracy is an illusion, you’re representatives don’t represent you they represent themselves and democracy is being ruled by political correctness. At least China is honest about what it is.
After WWII we hung Nazi warcriminals for their running of concentration camps. Who will hang Bush and Blair for Guantanamo Bay and Belmarsh? They are nothing more than modern day concentration camps, no rule of law, people held without trial or even charges brought against them. And what do we do? we use the exact same excuses as the Germans did back then, so how much better are we? have we even learnt anything?
But I digress so back to China.
China hasn’t changed for hundreds of years. The only reason the government gave in is because of the Olympics next year… they don’t want to loose all that money that tourism will bring with extremely bad publicity. The people over here haven’t a clue what is going on in their own country nevermind the outside world. All newspapers and TV shows are censored and as the article said even The China Daily is run by the government albeit an English language newspaper. The schools censor the internet more strongly than the internet cafes, which there are loads of as most Chinese cannot afford their own PCs. The only way for the Chinese to access outside sources is through a proxy, though many don’t even do that as they have no idea that what they are told is not reality (sound familiar?). The lies that the West are told about the Middle East and other places are the same sort of lies that the Chinese are told about the West, you can call it propagander if you like. Political activists are still being put to death over here and mass genocide is still going on in Tibet while the West sits back and watches.
China is not a stable country and AIDS, HIV, hepatitis and various other diseases are rampant. I met a Canadian doctor last year who had come over here to educate the head government aswell as local governments on the seriousness of these diseases and the extent at which they are increasing. Unfortunately it is a bit of a lost case. People infected with HIV and AIDS are denied access to hospitals and live in fear of being disowned by their friends and families, loosing their homes, etc if found out. So the government statistics are nowhere near accurate when it comes to these things as most people live with these diseases quietly without even their own husbands and wives. I read recently that it is estimated that by 2010 there would be around 1 million orphans in one province alone due to AIDS. When you times this by 23 (the number of provinces in China) and then take into account the one child policy it makes you wonder just how many Chinese will actually be left.
Think you might find this interesting.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/article2578479.ece
Ishtar has it right
“The only reason the government gave in is because of the Olympics next year… they don’t want to loose all that money that tourism will bring with extremely bad publicity.”
nuff said
This is great, we need some controversy in the world. It would be fucking boring if every state was a flawless democracy.
1:
(“Your myopic worldview is overrun by materialism and excess to the point that you’re now blind, being kept asleep by your own leaders to keep you in line and ignorant.”
Most of you believe what you are told about the world is the truth without doubt and question.’)
-While a hell of a lot of people over here are happy with their ignorance, like fghfgh said, you are generalizing. This is the first generation here in the UK to have been bought up with virtually no poverty. Even the most meaningless lobs are more than enough to pay for food, clothing, etc leaving more disposable income than ever before. People have become complaisant with the status quo and have all but forgotten what it means to have the right to freedom of speech or to vote. Again, this is a generalization and there a are still a hardcore of people who do still care.
2.
(Lee Ramsdale speaks the truth when he says that liberalism is being taken away in the UK, that’s one of the reasons I decided to come to China. To be totally honest I have more freedom here than I did in England. Democracy is an illusion, you’re representatives don’t represent you they represent themselves and democracy is being ruled by political correctness. At least China is honest about what it is.)
-I don’t see what that has to do with freedom. You defeated your own argument for freedom by just telling us that china is what it says it is. A country where journalists are put in jail, the internet is censored and anyone who speaks out against the government is labeled as a criminal. While the UK’s and the US’ “Democracy” may be far from perfect, at least you have the right to protest against the system and just about anyone, from any background can run for a political position. On top of that, you have uncensored access to any news medium you want. If you can show me how the Chinese Government allows more freedom than A western democratic government, then I’m all ears.
The rest of your argument continues to defeat your original point, but I will go as far as saying that I feel lucky to live in the UK where I can say pretty much whatever the hell I want without the thought police knocking on my door.
I didn’t know that china was in such a bad state with diseases, you never here anything of it, How long do you think it’ll take til china will eventually turn democratic? It has so much potential to become a world power, it just needs to get its act together with a few things.(personally i really like the culture how it is, though and it might change if it changes its ways.)
As soon as you leave the tourist areas in China the cities are the most over-populated crime ridden places on earth. 80% of the rest of the population live in poverty in the country on less than 1$ a day.
To that other moron, england is not even a real country(it’s just a province and represented as Britain/UK along with Scoltand/Wales in international law(otherwise in england would be a member of the EU/Worldbank/Nato) it’s not, but it has a FREE PRESS. China does not and treats humans like disposable material.
2 billion or so population, and only 140million have internet? jesus, i ddint know it was so bad there. i bet half of those 140mil are farmers for MMO’s lmfao.
MellowHexogan first of all I did not generalize I said “most people” not all people.
Secondly I didn’t say the Chinese have freedom I said I, as a foreigner over here, have more freedom.
Thirdly, if there is no poverty in England why was it reported that a large number of children are living in poverty: “Recent figures show that a staggering 330,000 children in Yorkshire are classed as living in poverty, that’s one third of the region’s children.” Try reading the news from time to time MellowHexogan.
Poor people in the UK cannot afford to buy fresh fruit, meat, juice, yogurt, etc, over here in China everyone can afford to buy these things, even the beggars.
Fourthly, if you have freedom of speech in the UK and can say whatever you want then stand outside your house and scream ‘all foreigners go home’ and when the police turn up within minutes and arrest you for being racist come back here and post that you have freedom of speech. You can do this in other European countries eg. a Dutch politician in the Netherlands said that Islam was a backward religion and a Muslim cleric said that homosexuality is a disease and that gay people should be thrown off buildings head first. You either have or you do not have freedom of speech and you can either say or you cannot say whatever you want without retribution. I’m not agreeing with what was said, however it shows that other countries allow full freedom of speech whereas in the UK it is determined by political correctness which inturn is determined by the government.
As for the freedom of protest there were 70,000 protests in China last year alone. Of course the government responds harshly, however I seem to remember the protests against the war in Iraq which the police tried to prevent from taking place by setting up as many restrictions as they could and nearly going as far as arresting protesters claiming they were ‘breaching the peace’ even though the protest was entirely peaceful.
Then you have the protesters that stood outside Parliament, of which some were war veterans, they were arrested numerous times because their placards had pictures of dead British soldiers on them and could be seen and heard from Blairs office. Then a bill was introduced prohibiting all protests within a certain radius of Parliament. Protests are permitted aslong as MPs do not have to see or hear them.
As I said before China does not pretend to be something that it is not but the UK does.
bilky4: the Chinese are not ready for democracy and the government knows it. The Chinese people do not care about democracy they would only vote for the person who gives them the most money anyway as that is all they care about.
They need to be told what to do. They have no concept of business and all Western businesses are run by Westerners, even the joint-venture businesses.
I met a German a couple of years ago who had come over here to build a factory for his company. He said that it was impossible to get the Chinese to do anything correctly and most of the time all they did was sleep. There were weeks when the workers simply refused to work and there was no way they could force them to work.
I’m an English teacher here and my students half the time don’t even bother to come to class, they would rather stay in their dormitories and sleep. But it doesn’t matter because everyone in China passes their exams whether they deserve to or not. I was told that if I failed them, even those who cannot speak a word of English or never came to a single lesson, then it would reflect badly on me and I would be seen as a bad teacher. So now you have to wonder just how many of the Chinese doctors should actually be practicing medicine or engineers building bridges and buildings… that’s scary! But this is the way the government likes it… keep the people ignorant and let the rich and powerful families run the country.
Most of my students are farmers children. I even had one that had 3 brothers and sisters, no mother and was the first from her village to go to college, so how well she did would determine the future of the other children in that village. The parents have to borrow the money off the school as most can’t afford the fees. They want to get a job in the city but competition is extremely high. Most end up working commission jobs or in hotels and restaurants as waitresses and chambermaids regardless of degree.
The only people who are deluded about China are those that have never lived here. I came here thinking I would find the old China, the one we see in the films. I had my rose coloured glasses on. I soon learnt to take them off and open my eyes.
Don’t get me wrong… I like living here. The people are friendly (even when charging you 5x the price of something just because you’re a Westerner). I get paid well (compared to the Chinese) and can therefore afford to live in an exceedingly comfortable lifestyle. My 9yr old daughter has no worries of malnutrition as fresh food is in abundance. She can speak fluent Chinese aswell as Dutch, Farsi and English so she is well on her way to doing something good with her life. But the most important thing is that she is seeing how all people live, rich and poor. She sees the squalor, the beggars, the farmers, etc aswell as the other teachers, business owners and us. She knows she has a better life here than she would have in England. But more importantly she is learning tolerance and understanding.