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How China Cracks Down On Internet Dissidents 143

Posted by Roblimo from the secret-police-have-modems-too dept.
skippywalker turned us on to a Washington Post article about how the People's Republic of China, instead of viewing the Internet as a means of liberation, sees it as a tool for maintaining political control.
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How China Cracks Down on Internet Dissidents More

How China Cracks Down on Internet Dissidents

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  • He has some good points.
  • i lived in china for between 90-95, and remain in contact with a number of friends i made during the time.
    ok, perhaps they have extremely unstable connections, but with IM programs like icq, as well as email there is little difference between chatting with a friend in england for example. and i have never heard from anyone i know there that their access was restricted in any way

    well thats my 1/50 of a buck on the matter

  • Your greatest enemy was never the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union served the same function in corporate media as China and (moreso) the Middle East does now. Immediate and short-lived political events abroad distract you from much slower changes that have greater impact. The invention and recent enforcement of intellectual property laws, the separation of society into consumers (>90%) and owners (

  • 2) How to move to a Democracy without falling into revolution or anarchy.

    Everyone who has played Civilization knows you can't change government form without a period of anarchy...

  • What's really ironic is that financial transactions will probably be safer with Chinese financial institutions because they're actually putting in place an Internet infrastructure that they can police. Rather than security being site-centric like it is in Western countries, security is being country-centric in China, meaning that while you may have less anonymity, so do the bad guys.

    Uh, not so. Sure, they can catch crooks easier - but if you take a second glance at China you'll see the authorities there ARE the crooks. They won't use this to safeguard innocent traders, they'll use it to guard their little fiefdoms and protection rackets - essentially, to crack down on the competition. Politically, AND financially.
  • Back doors into ISPs to aid surveillance and special government departments specifically to monitor internet access. Where have I heard that before recently? Now I know why our Glorious President and First Citizen Blair was so anxious to stay on the Chinese premier's good side when he visited London recently. He was hoping to pick up a few tips....
  • Actually, more people in China speak English, than people in America. Check the numbers and do the math and you'll see(If you are Chinese, you can do the math in your head now). Their accents might not be the best thoughRed flag Linux [eyep.net]
  • Hrmmm. I think you forgot option "c" they are little yellow bastards who never were consistant because they came from venus.
  • Well, Clinton and Gore seem like typical Southern Democrats -- really Republicans in disguise, and about as pro-business as you can get. Except for a failed attempt at introducing National Health (which would only bring US up to par with the rest of the developed world -- hardly radical), really the Clinton-Gore administration has done nothing a moderate Republican adminstration wouldn't have done -- including overlooking human rights when business interests say so.
  • So? They've also continued to gut labor laws, environmental regulation, they've continued to lower taxes on the top 10%... And who the hell have they INCREASED regulation on? They've simply continued the Bush policy of marginally tightening regulations while gutting the budgets of the regulatory agencies themselves. SOP for conservative administrations; provide the opportunity to go after people we don't like while ignoring the legal violations of the people we do. It's a classic pattern of conservative hypocrisy in the proud history of unequally applied drug laws, Hoover giving McCarthy morphine, tax loopholes for the people who need them least, etc..

    As I've said before, Clinton stands to the right of Nixon on practically any given issue except for a few such as gay rights and abortion rights. The man is most definitely a conservative, and Gore's not a hell of a lot better. (My favorite description of Gore is that no one gives better lip service to the environment than he does.) The corporate media's just managed to push the American view of liberal vs conservative massively to the right over the last 20 years or so. If Bob Dole is considered a moderate, then something's fucked up.

    --
  • > The U.S is the most immoral nation ever.

    Generalizations make for great rhetoric but very poor intelligent conversation. Please list all immoral acts by the United States (government, citezens, or both) and I will point out at least one country/empire that is as bad if not worse (pick your topic: slavery, forced relocation of indigenous peoples, environmental contamination, military intervention for economic reasons, censorship, oppression of religous expression, ect) The United States is not perfect; however, in no single topic, let alone the combination of all the topics (required for the title of most immoral), is the United States the world leader.

    > They used the A-bomb.
    Sure, the United States could have invaded Japan. Resulting in (if I remember the numbers correctly) 250,000 dead US and allied soldiers. Of course, the casualties on the Japanese side would have been far worse. They were prepared to fight to the death for every inch of ground. When U.S forces moved accross the Pacific, they would trap tens of thousands of Japanese troops. The only ones captured alive were those unable to commit suicide.

    > They imprison 1% of their population.....10 times more than China does.
    Interesting numbers ... of course since the Chinese execute people for offences that are protected by the Constitution and Bill of Rights, I would not be suprised if only a small number of convicts make it to a prison alive instead of being executed and having their organs harvested and sold abroad.

    > There is no denying the facts.
    You only stated one fact. That the United States used the A-Bomb is true. Other wise you make one blanket condemnation and one statement with no supporting evidence.

    > The U.S. is no better than China.
    Except that you can criticize the government, move about the country and abroad at will, peacefully assemble (tip: throwing rocks at nervous, undertrained, and armed soldiers is not peaceful. It is; however, very stupid). You have recourse to the law including the right to sue the government (state, local, and federal) to redress grievences. You have a great deal of control over your own future. You can have more then one child. I could go on but I believe I have made my point.

    > Face the facts silly little white boy.
    Nice to see the racists have the right to post.

  • Re:When will china be free? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I think the point is that a lot of people in the West (and particularly, in America) believe that our way of doing things is the Best Way, the Only Way, the Righteous Way, etc. and that anybody who deviates from our way is Evil. A good case in point is the whole Elian Gonzalez case. There, you saw conservatives and hardline anti-Communists protesting loudly. "Don't let him go back to Cuba! He'll be forced by law to attend a government-run school where they'll make him pledge allegiance to Castro in the morning and teach him that communism is good and capitalism is bad!"

    Hello?

    I don't know where everybody else went to school, but I certainly went to a government-operated school that made me recite the Pledge of Allegiance every morning and taught me that communism was evil. As a kindergartener, I had absolutely no idea what the Pledge of Allegiance meant; it was basically an exercise in rote memorization at that point in time. Now I understand what it means, and I understand the differences between the world's social and political systems. I believe that the system used by most Western nations is the best one, but I also understand that that belief was carefully cultivated by our culture.

    Have you ever corresponded with an average Chinese citizen? You'll find plenty of Chinese men-on-the-street who believe with every fiber of their being that capitalism is evil. They believe that not because they have some government agent standing behind them with a gun to their head, but because they have gone through the same type of careful cultivation that we have. People have a difficult time understanding this; for many folks, it is simply inconceivable that anybody, anywhere in the world could possibly disagree with Our Way of doing things. Just remember this: for every American who feels strong allegiance for Our Way, there are multiple Chinese who feel the same allegiance for Their Way.

    With regards to the Tienamen Square crackdown, you're correct that no reasonable person anywhere could possibly look upon that as a Good Thing. But our own government has blood on its hands as well; remember Kent State? Obviously, that particular situation was orders of magnitude less bloody than Tienamen Square, but you can't assert that Their Government performs oppressive crackdowns and nobody else does. It was a horrible, heart-wrenching crime against humanity, but at the heart of it, it really doesn't have much to do with the core beliefs of the average Chinese citizen. Government, society, and culture dictate beliefs everywhere .. not just in Communist countries.
  • I've never met a revolution that I didn't like.

    They rarely achieve the goals they set up an justify their action by. They most often simply trade one set of brutal power brokers for another.

    The only "revolution" I have any sympathy for is the so called American Revolution which was 1) really a war of independence rather than a revolution, and 2) more a "revolution" in the philosophies of law, politics, and government having power divided up with check and balances so that dictatorships became unlikely or impossible. So far it has worked. The advent of parlimentary systems in European countries, and many other countries is an extrapolation of that "revolution" of thought rather than an in-the-streets revolution.

    When China finally gives into a multi-party state they will be very close to achieving that revolution of thought. How that will occur is still being worked out by the Chinese.

    The big problem with Leninist government, such as in China, is that a one party government has no checks on its power and eventually becomes corrupt and self-serving. The other problem is that the people are seldom more than apathetic and even vainly hope to benefit from the corruption. You can expect that corruption will increase, not decrease, in China as the Communist Party there approaches the end of its rope. Unfortunately, as they control the press, you may hear less about it. Cuba is a good example of that process also. Fidel is smoking rope. He is not a "good father" but a brutal dictator. How many Cubans in Cuba have you had a chat with lately on the Internet who expressed other than the party line? When there is no disagreement at all you know that something is very wrong. They can't even tell you the real color now of Fidel's beard!

  • I don't know how long it was since you were in highschool, but I graduated a year ago, and I vivedly remeber hearing quite a bit about our propoganda and our exploits in Latin America a few decades ago. To compare the situation in America (or the West) for that matter to China is ridiculous. I visited there last year, and rest assured, the people there are not that pleased with their government. They might not admit it openly, but they you can quickly tell by their expressions that they are amazed with what openess we can talk about things such as our governemnt or theres. Anyway, Gore might only be denouncing China for political gains, but the reason people respond to his demagougery is because it resonates. There are people who do care about human rights. When PNTR was being voted on, the majority of the argument that I heard about was labor and human rights. The military aspect ran a distant third to those two issues.
  • yes, this is exactly what i meant by "safety net". Remember, we're talking about *their* safety, not ours. Some governments will do just about anything they want to further their own agendas, and then do anything it takes to save their asses from the fallout. China, Pakistan, India, Serbia, the list goes on and on. A handful of selfish people screwing the masses.

    I remember when i was living in the US people used to tell me that the police are given quotas on how many tickets they have to give out, so that the PD's can show that they're being effective. This was prolly BS, but still....

    BTW, someone else followed my post with a message about me being wrong about the Indian ISP thing. Apology extended. This was based on something I saw on the BBC, I don't even remember how long ago :)

  • You do want Chinese to be able to read Slasdot, don't you?

    And you thought the slashdot effect was bad already!

    -Earthling

  • There's a problem in that statement. Should the Chinese gov't discover someone
    sending a message encrypted *at all*, before even thinking of decrypting said
    message, an arrest is made. From what I remember, encryption without specific
    license is illegal.
  • ...people do.

    But their primary purpose still is to kill (or to credibly threaten to kill). Similarly, the Internet's primary use today is as a tool to disseminate information, and to "route around censorship". By this, it is a natural ennemy for all dictatorships, the MPAA and other unfriendly organizations: the Internet is not politically neutral. It's thus more than a mere tool. The Chinese now have implemented a way to muzzle this liberating force, and to keep their iron grip.

  • Interesting. You advocate the very tactics that the Chinese government uses. Very interesting. Hypocritical as well.
    Uh, he's not saying gun the guy down in the streets or drive over him in a tank, he's just saying to moderate the guy.

    Much like we can't ask the victims at Kent State, right? Yeah, they were doing the same thing. Conducting a peaceful protest when they were gunned down.
    Last I checked there were only a few people killed at Kent State. This was a horrible thing but no where near what happened in China.

  • I hear you, man.

    Most of my serious posts get moderated to Troll.
    My funny posts get moderated to Troll.
    My offtopic posts get moderated to Troll.
    My haiku get ignored.

    My lame, only excuse is caffine addiction, posts get moderated up.

    wtf?!? i blame the fascist pigs, and there are plenty of them here.

    (Score:0, Troll) coming right up. Maybe -1.
  • Ok, so here I am a white guy living in Hong Kong, and up pop the moderation points while I am reading this article on China. Whats the chance of that? Maybe roblimo has a sense of humor or something...

    Well, I decided I would post instead.

    China is a very complicated place. They recently received HK from the Brits and Macau from the Portugese, and of course would like to resolve Taiwan as well.

    Every public bus references some web site, and the internet is everywhere just like the states. Cable modems and 1Mbps phone lines are dirt cheap.

    Hongkongers enjoy the freedom to protest in the street, complain in the newspaper, and otherwise make all the noise one could make in any western country. Well, except burnin the flag. Two 20somethings found out you can't do that. But they werent executed or anything. I suspect a fine and a suspended sentence, but I dont remember. But then, my home state of TN had a rumored law on the books reducing, for verterans, the fine for assault and battery on a flag burner to just $1. Go figure.

    CNN is here, McDonalds, KFC, Wendy's, Ford, Ruth's Chris Steak House. Get the picture? You could almost believe you are in San Francisco's Chinatown were it not for the warm, moist humid weather.

    Across the border (yes, there is an internal border between hk, china and mainland china) sometimes sounds like another world. For instance the death penalty is quite common in China but not HK. The HK Press is still fairly free, you might try reading the South China morning post [scmp.com], one of 3 english language papers. They have quite a bit on china [some +, some -], too, which helps me to gauge it's capacity for free reporting.

    Enjoy.
    Paul

  • My reply addressed ONLY the "paranoia" issue. I did not address and DO NOT agree with the sweeping xenophobic comments that were made. I understand that just because other nations' governments are evil does not mean that their citizens are too.

    And btw, that last statement you made was awfully prejudiced. I thought liberals were supposed to be understanding and non-discriminatory. (I did not realize there was a stigma related to unemployed forklift drivers.) I agree that the anti-Jew, anti-black contingent is a minority of America.

    However, people like myself, on the contrary, are not in the minority. You are clearly out of touch with the conservative mindset. We are not a bunch of uneducated hayseeds. The same way that you (and myself) don't want the "kook contingent" speaking for America, I don't want the "kook contingent" speaking for conservatives either.

    I suppose I am a relatively typical slashdotter: college-educated (CIS degree), dual-boot Linux/Win98, middle-class... never once driven a forklift...not that there's anything wrong with that. :-)

    Why don't you open your mind?

  • Pure wibble. Anarchy rejects the notion of authority, both in the Capitalist sense of having a boss and in the socialist sense of "A meets with B to decide what C gives to D".

    Does it reject the notion of property? If so then what if I want to drive a car somewhere? How is the limited supply of cars allocated? Or does no-one have a car?

    If Anarchism does not reject proerty then who enforces property laws? What if I want to make a contract exchanging my labour for property? Am I prevented from doing so? If I am prevented then I have lost freedom rather than gained it, and if I am allowed to make such a contract then we arrive at untrammeled free market capitalism in one short jump.

    Paul.

  • Re:doh! (Score:1)

    by lari ( 96750 )

    has anyone noticed that the specific abuses that the article goes into that the chinise gvmt is getting into have been present in the US for a long time?

    The United States hasn't been on the sunny side of human rights for quite a while. I'm not just talking about historical treatment of Native Americans, Japanese-Americans during WWII, slavery, and whatever else our illustrious President has been apologizing for lately. The death penalty, police brutality cases, the prison system, the School of the Americas... there's a pretty sizable list.

    How*ever*, it's much easier to put human rights attention on China. I mean, they're across the world, they're Communist, they look different from GenericWaspAmerican in Anytown, USA, and there are always new things to call attention to.

    At the same time, there's a largely untapped market of 1.2 billion people over there, who should be drinking more Coke, eating more McDonalds fries, and keeping track of their lives using Microsoft products. The logical conclusion to draw from all of this, of course, is that by allowing the Chinese to have access to the flower of our democratic, capitalist society, they'll acquire a Western mindset along with the aspartame and start allowing political dissidence free reign.

    Or at least it makes a good story for public consumption.

    How things really work out in the end, of course, is irrelevant.

    Lari

    Advocate global taxation! Piss off the U.S. Congress!

  • But since they have a billion potential consumers we can overlook that fact. Cuba's only problem is they are a piddling nation. They should come back when they reach 500 million in population.
  • Why don't they have a clue about cooperating with each other? Every other regime has made its own concessions...

    When will they be free?

    And was it linux that was named its offical OS?

    Thats a shame.

    -Sleen

  • "I don't know how long it was since you were in highschool"

    I don't live in the US, as I said, my country imports a lot of American TV/movies, and as far I can tell, it's packed with propaganda. I based my opinions on that, and the opinions on the school system also from TV/movies. As far as I can tell, from a very young age Americans are told repeatedly how great their country is.

    I agree with you though, with regard to human rights and oppression, the situation in the West is not comparable to China, and I'm not arguing against that. I just wish more US citizens could see (as I'm sure the intelligent ones can) that government propaganda isn't something that "happens in other corrupt countries" only - that their opinions are also manipulated by the press.

  • All media has at one point or another been used for propaganda. TV right now is the biggest way of keeping people under control, with government screenings etc. That's what corrupt governments do.

    But the internet is just another medium for this sort of control. I for one am not surprised by this news.
  • Yeah, I do... If you spent any time in Tawan, Korea or Chinese coastal cities in the 80's and then came back in the nineties you'd probably know what I mean... It all looks totally Japanese.

    What I was thinking about specifically was the way girls and young women have gotten more and more babyish and cutsey in Japan and how it's spreading all over. They're all carrying fluffy bunnies to work nowadays.

    Also the way fashion and consumerism are dominated by those same women.

    Check out the Japanese Yahoo for zillions of examples of personal web pages full of anime fluffy bunnies etc.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • it seems that perhaps with time things will change. more communication can only encourage freedom, even if it temporarily makes it easier for the gov't to spy on people. if the dissidents can get their hands on, say, pgp, then it will make it much easier for them to avoid the spying, at least within email communications.

    perhaps more important, the chinese gov't can't lay their hands on web sites located overseas. although they very carefully prevent access to foreign sites, greater access to the internet for more chinese people can only lead to a higher rate at which people are able to view dissident sites hosted in, say, taiwan or the u.s.

  • ok, according to our law, you can't use encryption, your email and stuff is readable by the govt, what you say can be held against you etc. but on the other hand, none of these laws are actually implemented. my former college, which is owned by the navy, teaches RSA, for example. So the deal is that they want to keep the economy open to whatever benefits CS and IT can bring, but they want a saftey net, "just in case".

    Yes, but that safety net might not be for what you think. What that "safety net" does is gives them legal justification for prosecuting a select portion of a large number of people, without just cause.

    I wouldn't be surprised to see the effect turn out similar to freeways in the United States: the speed limits are low enough that everyone on the road does 5 miles over, which gives the traffic cops justification to pull over anyone who "looks suspicious", who is of a race that the cop is bigoted against, or who has speeding ticket money to pay into the coffers of whatever city they happen to be passing by.
  • 20% "God damn commies/God damn human-rights violators."

    20% "China is a great country, and the fact they ran this story just shows Slashdot's xenophobia."

    30% "FUX0R CHINA! AMERIKKKA R00LZ!"

    10% "I have hot grits down my pants RIGHT NOW."

    20% "What's this got to do with Linux?"

    - A.P.
    --


    "One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad

  • Ok people, I can't believe I have to ask this, but are any of you SURPRISED? Comeon...China has always had a bug up its'... butt... for thousands of years. They have always believed in 1 'entity' controlling all else. Look at what they do if you have 1 too many children? It is not a surprise that they are thinking this way at all. We, I speak on behalf of the population of the United States, can stand atop of Mt. Olympus as gods looking down and judging ONLY because we have 5x more internet users then our closest country (which I believe is England). We are far more advanced then China in ALL meanings of the word. The internet comes along and spooks the fried rice out of the Chinese and we are surprised that they do not welcome it with open arms? Camaann....We are all intelligent enough to see that no one wants change. The chinese are just one of the best are not HAVING change ;c) Nostradms "well, that's just like, your opinion...man"

  • Just A Tool (Score:4)

    by Hrunting ( 2191 ) on Saturday June 17, 2000 @11:09AM (#995994) Homepage
    You've probably heard it many many times. The Internet is just a tool. I've heard people talk about how the Internet revolutionized commerce, how it revolutionized our understanding of information.

    The Internet doesn't do jack. The Internet is a tool. Hammers are tools, too. A hammer can be used to pound a nail into a wall. A hammer can also be used, ironically, to pull a nail out of a wall. A hammer can be used to kill someone. A hammer can be used to save someone.

    China's just using the Internet as a tool. Everything's a political tool in China. What's really ironic is that financial transactions will probably be safer with Chinese financial institutions because they're actually putting in place an Internet infrastructure that they can police. Rather than security being site-centric like it is in Western countries, security is being country-centric in China, meaning that while you may have less anonymity, so do the bad guys.

    But again, it's just a tool. China's not abusing the Internet. They're just defining the way in which they're going to use their tool, and it just happens to be different from the Western ideology.
  • Alright I'll grant that if they have PGP then their email won't be read. But by the very reason of it being encrypted will be enough for them to get jailed. This isn't a democratic government, they don't need a reason to lock them away.

  • The person who said that is Neal Stephenson. It was a interview with him on Salon.

  • Not quite every other regime.

    Read about what's happening in Burma/Myanmar.

    www.freeburma.org

    The SLORC make the CPC look like kindergarten teachers by comparision.

  • Another point of view.... (Score:4)

    by kashifq ( 156996 ) on Saturday June 17, 2000 @11:49AM (#995998)
    I live in Pakistan, which is also a pretty authoritarian state. What's interesting to me is our governments' policies regarding the net and IT in general. The reason i mention this here is because i some parallels...
    ok, according to our law, you can't use encryption, your email and stuff is readable by the govt, what you say can be held against you etc. but on the other hand, none of these laws are actually implemented. my former college, which is owned by the navy, teaches RSA, for example. So the deal is that they want to keep the economy open to whatever benefits CS and IT can bring, but they want a saftey net, "just in case". I think China is leaning more towards the saftey net mentality. And since they are pretty much the closest thing to facism you're gonna find today, i guess they have a need to be paraniod. My government is making this tech very open and accessable cuz they feel our economy needs it. How accessable? well the only national backbone provider is a govt-owned and protected monopoly. But my city has like 10 or 15 ISP's and i get flat modem access for around $20/mo. Compare against our neighbour India, which has only one state-owned ISP (legally protected monoploy, last i heard), and you'll see that this is a pretty big deal for this reigon.

    China, with all the trade deals they keep getting (from the US, and the thaw with the WTO), don't feel that economic need. Ultimately, the govt's who supress their people are the one's that can *afford* to.
    Think about it. If people in china have less of a voice, who's paying to make that happen? the IMF? the WTO? Uncle Sam? You?

  • There are all kinds of strange techniques you can use to hide encryption. There are various methods of hiding the words or charecters making up the message inside another, completly innocent method. Then there's stegnography (sp?), which changes a file in order to hide another one inside of it, like adding extra spaces to the end of lines, or adding snow to an image.

  • I totally agree, our worst enemy has gone from being the soviet union to being ourselves. Copyrights are a more effective tool for censorship and controll of information than anything the soviet union ever came up with. It not only "fines" people who try to dissapate usefull information, but also disproportionately rewards people who produce a lot of noise and hype. (hollywood)

    I think if people here in the states work to maximize their own personal liberties, that that in itself will create economic and political pressures for china to get with it or get out. Don't get me wrong. I despize what they're doing, and I think that the consequences are deadly, but we certinly can't help the people of china if we can't help ourselves.

  • ***************
    State Information
    ***************

    Yes, Citizens, rejoice-
    Another propogandist plot to infect your pure spirits has been
    eliminated

    The Police are your friends
    - or neighbours

    --
    Marce1

  • Much like we can't ask the victims at Kent State, right? Yeah, they were doing the same thing. Conducting a peaceful protest when they were gunned down. wrong. The people killed at Kent State weren't conducting anything - the US killed innocent bystanders ;).

  • Damn it, bitch, how many times I gotta tell you not to be waggin yo stupid-ass tongue? Damn! I told you, you gonna whore you do it my way!

    It be bad enough when a crack head hoe start rattin out her own johns, but then you just waltz yo fat ass into the street and tell the whole damn world [slashdot.org] that you a hoe?

    Damn. You one silly-ass bitch. Get yo ass in the caddy. Looks like I need to teach you a lesson, girl.


    You wanna be a karma whore?
    Fine, but don't forget...
  • :) Who ever said the US was an exception?

    Dyolf Knip

    --

  • Clinton and Gore...about as pro-business as you can get

    You're kidding, right? This is the clique going after tobacco producers, gun manufacturers, and Microsoft, and are gearing up to drop the hammer on oil companies. They've raised the minimum wage more times than I can count, increased regulation on many business sectors, and are proposing legislation giving new mothers 3 months of paid leave. (Just examples.)

    Yeah, this is a real pro-business group.

    --

  • One of the big arguments in favor of continued trade with China, instead of a Cuba-style [cubapolidata.com] embargo, is that increased trade will translate to increased contact with the west, leading to increased information about Good Western Things (tm) which will lead, ienvitably, to greater human rights and democratization for the people of China.

    It's an excellent counter-argument. The government set up 'special police units' to patrol bulletin boards and what not. But with usage in China increasing all the time, how long until the watchers and the watchers' watchers and so forth begins to outnumber the rest? I'd say the problem here is the revolution-junkies who expect installing a bunch of fiber lines into China to cause a major overnight change. It's gonna take a while, and we probably won't see any big sudden changes unless the government tries to do something stupid (like outlaw net access).

    For some reason, this picture I saw of a Power That Be in China, complete with military uniform, sitting in front of a PC was the funniest damn thing...

    Dyolf Knip

    --

  • I just wish more US citizens could see (as I'm sure the intelligent ones can) that government propaganda isn't something that "happens in other corrupt countries" only - that their opinions are also manipulated by the press.
    I don't know a single individual in the US who likes or respects the US federal govt. Problem is, there's nothing anyone can do. The national elections are a joke, and anybody who speaks out too loudly gets killed or just disapeared.

    Many of the citizens are ready to fight, but being fundamentally good people, they don't know who to go after. The govt knows that the citizenry is hostile, that's why they are picking up speed on the trying to get guns out of the hands of the populace. They are afraid. Ignore the hype about in the national media about why they are doing it. It's propaganda. I don't know of any citizens who actually think the way CNN claims they do... The media is a tool of the govt. The govt uses the media to make the population feel isolated and powerless. That's why they are attacking the internet.... etc, etc. I'm sure you've heard all this before.

    The Chinese are no more against the internet than the US, they are just more open about it. Their population is already disarmed, and the Chinese govt actually has broader popular support in their population than the US does, percentage-wise. The US continues to work very hard to keep US citizens from knowing this, but it's fairly obvious if you talk to the people, instead of depending on the media for information.

    The younger people, in general, are not aware of the scope of the problem. Did you note that the previous poster, even while he was claiming he had been taught about US propaganda in school, still seemed to think of it as something that was done to other countries (e.g. Latin America, etc)?

    That's how bad it is. People here don't want to admit how far from their control their govt really is, or how totalitarian it has become. A friend of mine in the legal system recently refered to it as a "Velvet Lined Police State". I thought that was apt. They give you what they think should be enough to keep you quiet. If that doesn't work, they erase you.

    I'm quite certain the percentage of Chinese citizens who are unhappy with their govt is no greater than the percentage of Amerikan citizens who are unhappy with the US govt. They stand about the same chance of changing it, too.

  • Yes we are. McCarthy is widely recognized as a paranoid fool. The Asian concentration camps were bad but no were close to the Nazi camps. At least you can speak your mind in America and publish just about anything you can think of. You can own weapons (to a extent) and gather peacefully. We are much better then China.

  • do you really think... (Score:3)

    by fluxrad ( 125130 ) on Saturday June 17, 2000 @11:53AM (#996009)
    the PROC want's everyone in china to read headlines about how much the chinese government sucks? "Hey....we should really do more to promote people hearing about how much we've done to totally fuck up the lives of people living in this country!"

    If only....but the one thing people forget about china is that the vast majority of it's population really doesn't give a shit about what form of government they live in. The farmers on the mongolian border don't care. And they sure as shit don't care about what people are saying the chinese government is doing about the "internet" either.

    the internet is information, but what most people fail to realize is that the vast majority of the chinese populous KNOW how much Communist China licks goat ass, they just don't care because, with a country of more than one billion people, the government and the internet aren't priorities. They'll just live their lives and deal...and they're not going to die for freedom, and certainly not freedom of speech, when the government isn't bugging them. It's called political apathy, and everyone's got it...even the U.S.


    FluX
    After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
  • Never said they were expendable. Simply said that this is no where near as bad as what happened in China. Read again, This was a horrible thing...

  • if the dissidents can get their hands on, say, pgp, then it will make it much easier for them to avoid the spying, at least within email communications.

    PGP doesn't help if the Chinese state security agency views encrypted email as evidence of subversion.

    During World War II, the use of codes and ciphers in telegrams and snail mail by civilians in the United States was banned and would result in a visit from the FBI. There was a huge censorship operation that screened mail for war secrets, codes, ciphers and secret writing (invisible ink).

  • Yeah, but the average person is too stupid to look at more than one variable. Free trade with China must be good; the billions of people will be able to buy our products with the 20 cents an hour they're making, but since Ted Kopel says its OK then it must be true. So when the TV is telling you to how communist countries are so decent places just remember they shoot kill people for speaking democratic views then charge the bullet to the family of the deceased. Look at Tianamen Square for a good reference. Liberals are stupid.
  • China has the following difficult problems to solve: 1) Its population, 2) How to move to a Democracy without falling into revolution or anarchy. Everything else is minor by comparison.

    When you say China it implies that their communist goverment itself is faced with these problems. A communist government will hardly lean towards anything resembling freedom. They can call themselves a republic all they want but if goverment mandated communism (even it if isn't blatant) it is still oppresive. The "rational" person would preach the sanctity of UN based conferences while subjectively crucifying the "irrational" men like Douglas McArthur who wanted to nuke the communists.

  • The US is much more communist than one might think. WE are being exposed to them and told just how great their Utopia is. Plus the average person is a waste of life who just consumes what they are told by TV.
  • Raising the minimum wage to a livable level and giving US mothers the same rights as mothers in other first world nations? Not exactly radical there. Going after Microsoft and other companies? I seem to remember that it was the Republican Teddy Roosevelt who went after Standard Oil, and the Republican Richard Nixon who went after IBM. So again hardly radical actions if conservative Republicans could do them decades ago.
  • This may be just my dilusional opinion, but the internet sure isn't what it used to be. Corporate influence, and the absurdity that that inevitably brings to us, is playing a big role in the Net's development. Remember the etoys.com fiasco this winter, the sickening patent claims, and especially the browser wars?

    In the capitalist world, money is power - in the Maoist world, the government is power; so when you get right down to it, is there much of a difference? Sure, there are still places like slashdot where we can voice our opinions, but that "we" is a minority. Sure, there are always going to be free-thinkers, even in China, but they're terribly few and terribly vulnerable even with their ideas on the net. Before their ideas can affect change, they have to get the hits, which is a whole other matter entirely.

    Likewise, in America, even with tens of millions on the net, how many are looking for an enriching, mind-expanding, liberating experience? Theirs can easily become corporate sterility, between links picked up from the TV (which all have the firm goal of selling you something), and big-name news sites that feed you the same watered-down garbage you get on the damn TV! Then, making it even harder to find something meaningful, you have the porn, and the sheer, gargantuan quantities of utter nonsense and crap.

    I am, of course, exaggerating, but judging by the times it's headed that way. Somehow, after pondering all of that, content control in China doesn't seem as bad, though the inevitable use of the net to track down aspiring dissentents is somewhat disconcerting. There are still ways to avoid detection, and a good hacker will always find them, but the free-thinkers remain a minority. One begins to wonder if it would make a difference if there were no government restrictions at all in China.

    EvilSoloman
  • If Chinese people used encrypted email, what would the government do? Come over and shoot them? Come over and demand the key and then shoot them? Or, possibly, nothing (like if they were using keyword searches)?

    I'm going to pull out an old arguement: if EVERYONE used encryption, whether or not they have 'something to hide', it would be impossible to monitor them. I'd like to see this done in the U.S. but in China, echelon is very, very real.

    It is 1984 in China RIGHT NOW.

    Perhaps the U.S. of A. finally has a good reason for export of strong encryption, eh? Democracy, anyone?

    --
    grappler
  • The funny part is that it's actually quite a simple task to nail Jell-O to a wall.

    It works.

    Try it.
  • That has always struck me as the most ironic of positions -- the people arguing for improved trade relations with the only Communist power left in the world worth considering are the arch-capitalists out for a buck who don't give a damn about human rights. The people arguing that China violates human rights and shouldn't be accepted by the world community until they clean up their act are for the most part liberal people who also question the motives behind capitalism.

  • We are not far away! (Score:5)

    by www.sorehands.com ( 142825 ) on Saturday June 17, 2000 @12:00PM (#996020) Homepage
    How can we comment on China using the internet to crack down on Freedom?

    You have the MPAA getting police to kick down doors and drag 16 y/o to jail.

    You have the CPHack case [robinlionheart.com].

    We have corporations use lawsuits to shut people up instead of throwing them in jail. Or judges that give vague orders and threaten jail.

  • Its almost a cliche to say that tech is not good, or evil in and of itself. Obviously how tech is used has a great effect on what whether it helps or hurts people. But tech can also push people toward certain uses, because it offers potentialities that people will want to exploit.

    Seems to me the internet has two big potentialities:

    One is disseminating and sharing information-- political, musical, cultural, technological. Since we trade via the exchange of information, this includes e-commerce.

    The other is gathering information about what information people are accessing/transmitting. In the US, the second potentiality means spyware, selling user info, and the NSA. In china this means the government tracking down disidents by their IP.

  • As if. Totalitarianism and capitalism get along just fine, as the history of the third world shows. Making a buck has nothing to do with free speech.

  • control harder than before, but not by much (Score:3)

    by MillMan ( 85400 ) on Saturday June 17, 2000 @12:06PM (#996023)
    Well, they might see it as a tool, but if I were a Ruthless Dictator I'd still rather be using TV and radio, for pretty obvious reasons.

    While it might be easy to publish on the internet, it's basically impossible for sites to be anonymous. I'm sure the chinese government knows exactly where every IP address is being used. Besides, the internet doesn't grant freedom, people can only use it in the fight to gain it.
    It's more than just a tool unlike someone else said, but frankly it can't help at all if the entire population lives in fear, which any good Ruthless Dictator is able to acheive. You won't need some facility with thousands of people surfing the web for violations if the society lives in fear. Or even better, you can get the population to beleive that personal freedom isn't a big deal, that things like money and entreprenurial spirit are more important, which they seem to be doing with some success.

    China would ban internet technologies outright I'm sure, but the Chinese government isn't dumb. If they want to be an economic player in this century, they have to be part of the information based economy, of which the internet is central. Russia failed because it couldn't (and/or wouldn't) do the same, generally speaking. Whether or not expanded internet access will allow China to keep strict control and apathy over it's population remains to be seen, but I'll bet they can do it. They can just take a lesson from the US, where the illusion of freedom is just about the best form of control there is.
  • I heard yo momz was there too.. G'd up since '94
  • dude, I'm with you... check the next story.. I got 3rd niggas!

    G'd up since '94
  • In a voter-controlled nation such as the United States (or Canada), the powerful must control the minds of the populace in order to maintain power. This is done through propaganda.

    In totalitarian nations such as China (or the former Soviet Union) a strong propaganda machine is not needed because it is not necessary to have the approval of the people.

  • The only link beween China and Linux is they couldn't make a profit by pirating Linux software and selling it. Linux is free! Duh! Even though China isn't the only nation of people that is known to pirate software, they are the majority of the USA's losses. Microsoft is hit hardest by software piracy. I live next to Little Saigon and I know of two piracy outfits that were cracked by the local police. One was ran by some Koreans and they had themselves a nice CDROM duplication machine and the trust of some friends in a document copying center(Kinko's, I think). Anyhow, they were caught making something like 5,000 Microsoft titles in a week and reselling the stuff. Microsoft busted their asses and I was stoked at how well they handled the situation. I was rooting for Microsoft! Why? Not because they had some sort of monopoly, but because they had the time and money to prosecute those damn fools. From what I have seen, everyone is pirating Microsoft software. Microsoft software is somewhat in demand by countries that aren't allowed to purchase it legally. The list goes on... Basically, right down to the rice they grow, I HATE China's guts. At the close of World War 2, General Patton had the chance to invade Russia and beat their mongoloid asses, but that euro-bitch Eeisenflower denied Patton of the permission and dismissed him of command! Patton may actually have been alive for many more years because he would have never had that fatal car accident after being dismissed. He would have been in Russia with the new German alliance, kicking the yogurt out of those communist beasts. China was next on the agenda and we Americans got the shaft. Now we have this socialist United States president giving Chinese spyes access to our technology archives. Now, he took a trip to Russia and is giving them information on our anti-missile technology. In Russia, they have a linux distribution known as RedStorm Linux. What the fuck is up with that? It makes me want to reinstall Microsoft Windows 98 just so I can say that I payed $130 to a United States private company for an operating system that runs the majority of computer software ever made. Sure, Bill Gates voted Democratically, but in his eyes, I think He learned something.

  • I'm sure that in China there is much bad press about the US of A. And in the USA there is much bad press about evil imperialistic and totalitarian countries like Iraq and China.

    Why should we believe either one? Remember, the majority of Chinese citizens feel just as strongly about the US whenever their government places an anti-US propaganda piece in their media, as the US citizens do when it's government does the same.

    There is no government in the world that does not produce significant amounts of propaganda in the press (and specifically in the schooling system, children are far more impressionable). There never has been one, and I doubt there ever will be. The USA is not an exception.

    In my country we get quite a lot of American TV shows and movies, and quite frankly, I cannot bring myself to believe that a completely free press can produce so many movies and TV shows that are so blindly adoring of the US government. Almost every single TV show/movie makes some reference to how wonderfully great the US of A is, and how wonderfully "free" it is, and depicts anyone from any other country as just feeling that life has no meaning because they aren't US citizens. (If you don't believe me, start watching out for it next time you go the movies or watch telly. You might be surprised. Check your schooling system as well.)

    The only movie I can think of that didn't do this is Bulworth. I'm sure there are more, but they are very few and far between.

    I can't believe that a truely free press can produce so much patriotic propaganda. A free press normally produces material that is far more critical of its government's practices.

    A country needs to define some sort of enemy in order to (a) maintain a sense of patriotism, and (b) to justify pouring ever more money into expanding its military power. The US press goes out of its way to make it's citizens feel like they are just "the good guys", morally superior to others - but there needs to be a "bad guy" in order to maintain that. During the Cold War Russia was "the enemy", but now that the Cold War is over, the US needs a new "bad guy" to rally its people against, and it seems to me that China is the candidate.

    Now, I'm not trying to argue that China isn't imperialistic, or that they don't engage in many human rights violations - they probably are, but that isn't my point. My point is that when Vice President Gore steps up there denouncing China, he isn't doing it because he happens to feel strongly about human rights violations. He is doing it because the issue is a handy "political pawn" with which he can rally up the support and patriotism of US citizens.

  • I think we pretty much knew that a lot of nations (notably China) don't allow much online freedom. It's still better than Myanmar though, where the unlicensed ownership of a modem usually results in a several year stay in prison.
  • when it's true. I bet you believe everything Tom Brokaw [msnbc.com] says. Sucker. Most people here in America are blind fools by not questioning anything the media tells them. Remember: All news is biased, even in a free country.

    Please educate yourself while you still can. See my sig. (12-3PM US Eastern)

  • If Chinese people used encrypted email, what would the government do? Come over and shoot them? Come over and demand the key and then shoot them? Or, possibly, nothing (like if they were using keyword searches)?

    Yes, that's exactly what they would do, what they have done, and what they do now.

    It's one thing to say you support freedom. It's another thing to say it when you're looking into the barrel of a gun.

    And, as I note in the title, your family gets to pay for the bullet that shot you. Or they go to prison to make consumer goods for the US.

  • Stating that Roosevelt went after Standard Oil and that Nixon went after IBM in the hope that I will conclude that, because Clinton is going after everybody, he is just like them does little to convince me that he is pro-business.

    In short, I deny the major and minor of your attempted syllogism.

    --

  • My talent, on loan from God, is boosting my ego to the point where I am going to write a book. It is titled, "The fagets who respond to my posts on Slashodot, and how I conquered them." It wil be written by me and me only. AND it will contain all of MY typografical errors. Unlike other pseudo book-writers/jornalists, I will not get the MTV Music award for writing a book.
  • Do not extend your cowardice to your children. God's children shouldn't be misled and lyed to by a person who extends false testimony. You must be among the actual god-fearing people to know why they think the way they do. The FOUNDING FATHERS of the original 13 colonies are the best examples of true, patriotic American citizens. Their legacy will live on. Only in the USA is there allowed a Communist and Socialist party for election. I bet dog shit to human shit that you are among them. You may lick your wounds behind China's twisted gates. Go sell crazy, irresponsible, athiest beliefs to person who is not educated. As long as I have my 2nd ammendment, you'll be too afraid because in your mind YOU know that YOU are the target and YOU will be hunted down when the time is evident, and shall I say, appropriate. Until then, please, by all means, have a nice day. :o)

  • If it suppresses too much it will eventually face a revolution. If it has too much freedom of expression it will (it believes) disintegrate into anarchy

    Would that be such a bad thing? [infoshop.org]

    Michael Chisari
    mchisari@usa.net
  • i am a very lame troll, due to the fact that i don't troll.
    i leave that to the insecure people too lazy to get a login.
    i pity you, and your ilk.

    good luck with your first posts.
  • I like you, if it makes you feel better :)

    G'd up since '94

  • Re:do you really think... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    yeah, that's true, especially when they come and force you to have an abortion.
  • I'll agree that the primary use of the Internet is to 'disseminate information', but I disagree that it's primary use is to 'route around censorship'. That's a use invented by the more freedom minded of the Internet culture. People didn't get together when they were building the Internet and say, "Hey, man, let's design this thing so that we can never be censored!" In fact, given that the Internet grew out of the old DARPAnet projects, I'd say the goal was anything but routing around censorship. In fact, I think the the reason it's so easy to track people down on the Internet (and the reason that China's having such an easy time cracking down on Internet dissidents) is because the military wanted to make sure that it could manage and track its own information.

    So yes, the Internet's use is to move around information, but I would never say that the goal of the Internet is to route around censorship. That's just one of the many things you can do when you move information, and it's one that's particularly attractive to Western-minded people.
  • People didn't get together when they were building the Internet and say, "Hey, man, let's design this thing so that we can never be censored!"

    No, but they *did* design it so that the transfer of information from one point to another could not be easily blocked. The idea was to make sure that an enemy attack (or a hungry gopher, for that matter) couldn't bring down the whole network by destroying parts of it. This does lend itself well to routing around censorship (barriers).

    When you add in software that replicates information accross mutiple servers (like Usenet) and anonymous access (either through remailers or internet cafes) you can very effective go around any controls that may be in place.

    - Isaac =)
  • Thanks.
  • Did you forget your happy pills this morning?
  • Actually one of those people who were in those camps went on to be in Congress. Others went on to be successful. If we were as bad as the Chinesse then I doubt we would have allowed one of these people to be elected to one of the higher offices in our government.

  • And I'm surprised you haven't brought up the famous Uummm UUHmmm incident of the Cave Revolt in 16,035 B.C.
  • One of the big arguments in favor of continued trade with China, instead of a <a href="http://www.cubapolidata.com/gpc/gpc.html">Cu ba-style</a> embargo, is that increased trade will translate to increased contact with the west, leading to increased information about Good Western Things (tm) which will lead, ienvitably, to greater human rights and democratization for the people of China.
    <p>
    This kind of thing seems to be a good counter-argument.
  • A very large part of the problem is that we citizens and our institutions like to say "China" this, or "United States" that. Really, all we are saying is some minor bureaucrat somwhere got access to some gullible reporters and informed everyone of his current emotional problems thereby setting "Chinese" and "United States" official policy. Do you get it? Do you? Stop being part of the herd. If some idiot says (or you get the info second or third hand - monkey boy) that today the official policy of the whole country is to cook and eat Kathy Lee Gifford then just tell him - tomorrow the official policy of the one and only United States will be to beat jehovas witnesses on sight. Don't think this policy is official? Trust me its as official for me as all the other policies you keep on talking about. I give them the same weight.

  • Consequences (Score:5)

    by David Wong ( 199703 ) on Saturday June 17, 2000 @11:11AM (#996051) Homepage
    "...the Ministry of State Security "has been able to track individual e-mail accounts through monitoring devices on Internet Service Providers. Internet bulletin boards were subject to round-the-clock monitoring..."

    Dude, I'll bet over there if you go to a message board topic just to write "Woohoo!! First Post!!" the cops come and shoot you in the head. Cool.

  • Hacking China (Score:3)

    by muldrake ( 171275 ) on Saturday June 17, 2000 @10:34PM (#996052) Homepage Journal

    Does anyone have any wild-ass guesstimates as to the likelihood of being prosecuted for guerilla infowar on China's Internet, hacking their government's web sites, stealing and publishing their government secrets, etc.?

    I'm fairly sure this would be illegal under international law, but hey, they don't uphold our copyrights, I wonder if the government would tacitly condone such action, or at least not do anything about it.

    I am certain it would be popular and would attract attention to this issue.

    The funny thing is most of their sites are on US ISPs and even on user sites on fucking AOL and thus governed directly by US law, and thus a bad idea to mess with.

    Their Ministry of Foreign Affairs [fmprc.gov.cn] appears to be based in China if the traceroute is any indication. Hits an OC3 off sprintlink, and at that point I presume a cable uplink, as the ping goes up to 1669.641 ms (from about 80 ms).

    Also, their China Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation [moftec.gov.cn] appears to be in China.

    There are other such sites [yahoo.com] on Yahoo! [yahoo.com], but the interesting stuff is probably elsewhere.

    I'd best not touch it, and bad bad me for even thinking such thoughts. In China it would be illegal to think that way.

    All the sites [yahoo.com] listed under "Military" are in the US. ROFL.

    telnet www.moftec.gov.cn
    HP-UX www B.10.20 A 9000/861 (ttyp1)

    login:

    Naaaaaaah, best not go there ;-) The idea is fascinating, but I'd best stop there before I start an international incident.

    What's the deal, is getting ugly with those totalitarian scum a good idea likely to make one an international hero lionized by the world, or is it more likely to get you shanghai'ed to Shanghai by goons, disappeared in the middle of the night with nothing left behind but a fortune cookie for the authorities to discover?

    Or would our own goons in our own respective liberty-loving nations drag us off themselves?

  • And was it linux that was named its offical OS?

    If that's true then why did I get this?

    telnet www.moftec.gov.cn
    HP-UX www B.10.20 A 9000/861 (ttyp1)

    login:

    Lying commies.

  • The Internet is just a tool. I've heard people talk about how the Internet revolutionized commerce, how it revolutionized our understanding of information.

    Fire, the wheel, and the condom are just tools too.

    But if you think they didn't have profound affects on society, you're engaging in convenient semantics instead of rational discourse.

    --

  • People, don't become this moron's hatchet man and do his dirty-work for him. If you wan to do it muldrake, do it yourself. YOU face jail time and YOU get hanged!

    I'm OBVIOUSLY not suggesting hacking a site I just posted to slashdot. Duh. For all I know they're already freaking out about it.

    Go find your own site if that's what you're going to do. (Incidentally that's as far as I went or will go.) Or better yet, actually discuss the issue rather than getting all hysterical and raving. If I were actually going to incite such an action, I'd flat-out say "D0 17 N0W D00DZ."

    I'm more interested in the legal ramifications than actually experiencing them personally.

    (Incidentally the idiot-simple thing to do would be to take out the satellite link the whole country seems it may rely on--but that would just be *stupid* and not interesting. DOS attacks are lame.)

  • Notwithstanding the fact that I wish the Chinese wouldn't abuse freedom in this way, it does serve a very useful purpose: it shows us what could happen if the essential freedoms of the internet are eroded in freer countries. It doesn't hurt to be able to counter some of the misguided "law an order" propositions we are seeing so much of with "and you want to make our internet more like China's, do you?".

    I sure hope this isn't preceived as a troll :-/
    --

  • A Challenge to You (Score:5)

    by crypto_creek ( 149032 ) on Saturday June 17, 2000 @12:30PM (#996073)
    How many people have you chatted with from China?

    Last year, when my son graduated from high school, I wanted to take him on a trip around the world to celebrate his achievements. (He also was awarded his Eagle Scout rank. And was a leader of his Sea Scout group.) My plans were to fly to Beijing and take the Trans Mongolian rail to Irkutsk, Russia, and then the Trans Siberian rail to Moscow and points west. But the Yugoslavian war came along and we had to do a tour of Europe instead. It had become too dangerous for Americans to travel in Russia and China may have ignored our visas when we stepped off the plane.

    But during the process of getting ready before we had to call that trip off, I got familiar with the Chinese people on the Internet in both Hong Kong, Beijing, and Shanghai. I exchanged email with a few people in those cities. One guy in Shanghai was interested in getting a new digital camera and so was I so we compared notes.

    One woman I exchanged email with worked in Beijing for the government monitoring the Internet for sites that were "anti-Chinese" (meaning any criticism of the government's policies, whether they were political, sexual, or religious). I didn't want to put her on the spot by raising the moral and ethical issues that her job implied. And she was helpful on getting an inexpensive place to stay.

    But I was reminded of similar censoring responsibilities our own civilization assigned to the religious establishments up until the mid-1950s. We mostly think of them as being anti-ponorgaphic but even earlier they and the governments of Europe (the USA wasn't around yet) were quite active in suppressing any anti-government sentiment until it boiled over into revolutions.

    Look back on our own history and discover how we moved to a more open society. Basically, the truth is that a centralized government is the most inefficient form of government and slowly falls apart by its own centripital forces. Intelligent people in China will become astute in using that to their advantage. It is a dangerous game but the demon that allowed the cultural revolution to start is dead and slowly being turned into a beneign shadow of his former SOB self.

    That is the threat that China is faced with. If it suppresses too much it will eventually face a revolution. If it has too much freedom of expression it will (it believes) disintegrate into anarchy. And its people have the dangerous game of teasing this mad beast into doing what it would not do itself.

    China has the following difficult problems to solve: 1) Its population, 2) How to move to a Democracy without falling into revolution or anarchy. Everything else is minor by comparison.

    Bypassing the government censors will happen. Our job is to help it happen. You do want Chinese to be able to read Slasdot, don't you?

    So China must open up whether it wants to or not a little bit at a time. I have this visual image of a person timidly and slowly getting wet at the edge of an ocean. Yes, it is silly and tragic. But it is their choice (so far). And at least there is email communication, even if it is somewhat limited. And there are Internet cafes in Beijing and other large Cities (almost every city in China is a large city by our standards).

    So I challenge you out there to come up with clever ways to help the Chinese citizens to bypass their government censors! It is really not that difficult a problem if you think about it. Have fun.
  • Sorry guys, I for one would mod this up as +1 Insightful if I had my mod points today.

    Beacuse of the massive flow of free information in the Western Internet, we tend to view the internet itself as a vector for free speech, democracy, what have you.

    The poster is right, it could have quite easily have gone the other way, using the Internet to monitor all the traffic going over it. Security. Control.

    The 'net is as free or as controlled as the people who forward the packets around want them to be. Fortunately we have the right to protest legally or to choose an alternative when things aren't done the way we like.

    Given this, the Internet is the technology itself, nothing more, nothing less. Not how it's used. Ergo, a tool.

    You may choose to exclude "non-free" segments of the network from your definition of "The Internet" as you see fit...

  • Until we get a porn free net... (Score:3)

    by epcraig ( 102626 ) on Saturday June 17, 2000 @11:25AM (#996087)
    While we have porn and drug sites in the USA, we can expect that censorship in China will be futile.
    When porn and drugs (and copyright violations) are successfully policed in the US, the Chinese will succeed in their censorship. It's the same technology.
  • Now that I re-read that, it does seem someone might take it the wrong way. . .so if it strikes any of the admins that way go ahead and zap it. Or mod it "Inciteful." And in either case, DO NOT DO DUMB SHIT.

  • Here you go again...

    No, I do not, you hard-of-hearing moron. I specifically said that DOS attacks are stupid and lame.

  • Free as defined by Western Civilization? The problem, my friend, is China has its own history. They reject our ideals. Who is to say we're right and they're wrong. I suspect that if you were born in Beijing you might have a different perspective.

    Naaah. China's problem is that the government consists of a bunch of backward, totalitarian, despots.

    Take a look at what Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore have been doing, and you will see what the Chinese can do in a free nation.

    You should probably save your condescension for another venue. China finds a lot of things that Western Civilization has given us (homelessness, high crime, etc.) "shameful". The only difference is they don't try to condemn us for it.

    Naaah, they condemn us quite regularly in their propagandist publications like the PLA newspaper. At least the homeless guy is free to say whatever he wants about the government.

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