85% of Chinese Citizens Like Internet Censorship

cynagh0st writes "A Pew Internet & American Life Project report indicates that of an overwhelming majority of Chinese people that believed the Internet should be 'managed or controlled,' 85% want the government to do this managing. This is resulting from surveys on Internet use over the last seven years in China. 'The survey findings discussed here, drawn from a broad-based sample of urban Chinese Internet users and non-users alike, indicate a degree of comfort and even approval of the notion that the government authorities should control and manage the content available on the Internet.' The report goes further into describing the divide in perspective between China and Western Nations on the matter and discusses the PRC's justifications for Internet control."

the other 15%

are in jail

Re:the other 15%

85% of Chinese Likes Censorship

That's not what they were asked because the Chinese government did not approve of the question. They were asked if they approved of government control. The two are very different, especially in a socialist state where the government controls everything.

Unless they are older than 65...

Unless the Chinese asked were older than 65, they are unlikely to even know what it's like without government "control". It's akin to asking a wild mustang if he likes horseshoes.

Re:the other 15%

"They are however responding very well to the electroshock therapy and strong drugs to help them adjust to society."

That's the news according to the Ministry of Love. However the Ministry of Truth has decided that in this case, 85% is the same as 100%. Therefore hence forth, all news needs to be written as 100% of Chinese Likes Censorship.

Your failure to recognise this has been reported to the Thought Police, and room 101 is being prepared for your arrival.

There's a very good joke in here..

Something like... "The chinese national news reports tonight that 85% of chinese citizens like censorship".

42.5% of statistics

are made up.

Accurate?

If I were living in China, I'd be wary (and probably afraid) of speaking out against gov't censorship and control of the Internet.

Its not always where you live

it also is the question your asked and who asks it.

Take voting in the DNC primary, by all accounts and polls one candidate should be getting even more votes than they are getting yet once behind the privacy of the voting booth they don't get them.

Some questions make people uncomfortable whether their freedom is in jeopardy or not. It is also instinctive in some people to give the answer that they believe the questioner wants regardless if its a true one.

While I do agree China is a special case I have seen friends answer complete strangers in what I knew wasn't what they believed but instead what they wanted the questioner to believe.

I'm sure

*Statistics compiled by the Ministry of Statistics.
*Ministry of Statistics Motto:We're here to make sure you're happy about your statistics.

Shocking~

You mean people that spend all their life being managed and controlled want the internet to be managed and controlled?

I'm shocked I tells ya, shocked~

Re:Shocking~

You mean people that spend all their life being managed and controlled want the internet to be managed and controlled?

This is one manifestation of a larger question: how realistic is it to assume that a society that is quickly growing richer wants to rock the boat that has raised their living conditions? It always seemed naive to assume that a richer China would necessarily demand more freedoms. When you consider the effort and sacrifices required to overcome the odds in securing a middle class lifestyle in China today it seems preposterous to assume that these very same people are somehow going to form the vanguard demanding change. Most of these people aren't going to give up their comfortable high rises or prized automobiles for anything or anyone. This may change in time but that time is a long ways away.

Skewed results

How did they perform this survey? I would have a feeling that the majority of people in China are in three or more similar categories:

1. Afraid to answer anything "anonymously" as they know better.

2. Afraid to answer anything other than what they think the State wants them to say (see #1).

3. Are so ingrained in the sheep mentality that they just don't know any better.

4. Are just like Americans and don't really care but don't lie about it.

If you gave the same survey in the US or UK...

...or another ostensible democracy, and asked the same question, I wonder what percentage would say "yes" here as well?

I think it might me much higher than most Slashdotters would believe.

Re:If you gave the same survey in the US or UK...

The response from most in the UK would be "What can I win if I take part?"

As for the current government judging if people like the amount of control in their lives, they don't need to do any surveys. They just look at all the CCTV cameras and say "Well, most people are smiling so we can assume they like what we're doing."

A simple solution... Test question, maybe?

Question 1. Do you believe that there should be a way for Law Enforcement officials to identify those on the internet who engage in illegal activities, for the sake of protecting the naive or easily prayed upon?

Question 2. Do you want us to have the power to know what you buy online, what your daughter looks like in a bikini, and read the email you sent to your working-away-from-home husband (Paul) with that photo of you(?) in the black and scarlet red corset (and not much else)?

If you answered differently to both of those questions, your opinion is not valid for this survey.

It isn't skewed voting... its skewed teaching.

When people are raised in a certain way, they think a certain way. Often, children in abusive households become abusive themselves...

so... what about children raised in a red china communism 'I love the government' household? ...

To add to that problem, how can 85% of chinese vote for an option they've never experienced - if they are living 'well' enough, by their standards, and don't know differently, then why would they change?

Hmm,

I'd go as far to say that 99.99% of humanity thinks that censorship is a good thing as long as they get to pick what is censored from the rest.

Everyone wants the government to be their censorship tool. The government will happily censor stuff. It's just various groups want different things censored and want to be allowed to view their chosen content.

Unless it's a unanimous 100%,

it's not enough to justify the infringement of a human right.

There is no majority large enough that stripping even one person of their rights against their will is justified.

Is it really that big of a divide?

If there was a poll among Americans asking if they felt that terrorism needed to be "managed or controlled" and if they wanted the government to do this managing, I bet the numbers would be similarly high. People aren't magically different across the globe. As long as the average individual isn't too badly off, they tend towards maintaining the status quo. In China this apparently gets translated to "I'm happy now. An influx of radical new ideas may upset this happiness. I'd rather things stay the way they are. The government needs to protect me from this." In the US this is "I'm happy now. An influx of radical terrorists may upset this happiness. I'd rather things stay the way they are. The government needs to protect me from this." You can substitute the fear du jour from almost any point in modern history with similar results.

How different are we?

How many people in Europe and the US want the net to be censored?

Including child pornography, illegal material, the anarchist cookbook, DeCSS, Nazi propaganda sites, etc?

The level of censorship in China is obviously leaps and bounds beyond anything else in the world, and I'm not suggesting otherwise. but I think that people overestimate the meaning of free speech to the average citizen. As long as it doesn't bother them, most people don't have any problems whatsoever when extremists, deviants, weirdos, and the like are censored, as long as it doesn't directly concern them and the stuff they're interested.

The majority of people in China are not interested in politics, both traditionally, and because it's been a bad idea to be involved in politics for the last 50 years. So if they don't read Dalai Lama's speeches, Japanese version of history, or Germany's take on political freedom in China, they don't particularly care, as they're not interested in it in the first place.

Even here, people clap happily as the FBI and similar agencies in Europe freely read our emails, search our computers, confiscate hardware, all in the name of counter-terrorism. Make a Pew poll in Europe and let's see how many average people have a problem with this?

The situation in China is obviously far worse, but instead of patting ourselves on the back and going on about evil Chinese and how much better we are, it would be wise to draw some parallels.

I do not believe polls from communist countries

I live in a post-communist country and I remember the communism very well. Most people in the Czech Republic, before the fall of communism, would probably answer "yes, we agree with the goverment" in any poll, regardless of the question, if they just weren't absolutely sure that the authorities wouldn't know their answer. Because free expression of opinion, in such a country, may mean anything from financial loss to death.

Read the report.

Read the report. It isn't as black-and-white as the summary makes it out to be.

The findings for one type of online content -- politics -- may seem more puzzling. Since 2005, the percentage of users who say that online content about "politics" should be controlled or managed jumped from 8% to 41%, by far the biggest increase of any items tested.

Guo said that the explanation for this increase probably lies in the spate of widely publicized incidents of fraud, blackmail, sensationalism, and other abuse of Chinese citizens via the internet. The Chinese word used for "politics" in this survey, zhengzhi, is not confined simply to political rights or competition for political control but may be understood to include larger questions of public morality and social values.

While I love bashing Communists, the report simply doesn't allow it. It appears to be more of a cultural, rather than political, difference.

Pretty damn interesting, actually.

Re:Look!

Yeah, I opened the .pdf and ended up going straight to the references which were overwhelmingly chinese. I noticed a reuters reference in there and that was in regards to a little nugget of information regarding rising popularity of videogames...

A report about the reliability of it's own references? This report would have to be taken with a block of salt.

Re:Censor child porn, please

And the question we all have to ask is whether we believe that anybody can be trusted to say that they know best when it comes to what is and isn't allowable for us to access. I believe that even if we did come up with a theoretical list of content that we all found abhorrent and agreed should be blocked, it would still be a mistake to do so because at that moment we would be placing the infrastructure for anybody in power to take it further, 'for our own good'. Nobody can be trusted with that power, especially because it is exactly the power needed to cover up ones own abuses.

Re:Real News

It's not that simple. There are a fair amount of Chinese - both inside China and outside of China - who do not share my belief in the necessity of free speech. That's part of the reason why the Chinese government is still in place: according to a good chunk of the population, it's doing a good job. There are significant philosophical differences between China and the West (as nebulous a region as that is). This is one of them. Belittling them, dismissing them or otherwise ignoring them will not help in dealing with them. One of the biggest strength of the Chinese government right now is that it can leverage a massive and widespread feeling in the population that the West is treating China unfairly and more like a stupid dog than an equal nation. Then again, another useful item to keep in mind is that 0.1% of the population amounts to 1 million people. In other words, Chinese crackpots are about as big a group as certain European nations.