UK Universities Comply With China's Internet Restrictions (bbc.com) 78
UK universities are testing a new online teaching link for students in China -- which will require course materials to comply with Chinese restrictions on the internet. From a report: It enables students in China to keep studying UK degrees online, despite China's limits on internet access. But it means students can only reach material on an "allowed" list. Universities UK said it was "not aware of any instances when course content has been altered." And the universities' body rejected that this was accepting "censorship." A spokeswoman said the project would allow students in China to have better access to UK courses "while complying with local regulations." But in a separate essay published by the Higher Education Policy Institute, Professor Kerry Brown of King's College London cautioned of the risk of universities adopting "self-censorship" when engaging with China. MPs on the foreign affairs select committee have previously warned against universities avoiding "topics sensitive to China," such as pro-democracy protests or the treatment of Uighur Muslims. Chinese students have become an important source of revenue for UK universities, representing almost a quarter of all overseas students - and Queen's University Belfast is chartering a plane to bring students from China this autumn.
I hope those degrees have an asterisk on them (Score:5, Insightful)
* This degree was earned subject to information restrictions imposed by the People's Republic of China. Your mileage may vary.
Re:I hope those degrees have an asterisk on them (Score:4, Interesting)
Doubtful because UK universities are already in dire straights and are absolutely reliant on income from Chinese students to survive. They won't do anything that might risk that income.
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UK universities are already in dire straights
They should invite some gays, then.
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Do we do this for parochial schools today in the USA or UK? Because I'd kind of like to know if I'm hiring someone who things PI equals 3, the Earth is 6000 years old and the Flintstones are real.
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Do we do this for parochial schools today in the USA or UK? Because I'd kind of like to know if I'm hiring someone who things PI equals 3, the Earth is 6000 years old and the Flintstones are real.
Uh, I watched The Flintstones on MeTV just last night
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Re: I hope those degrees have an asterisk on them (Score:1)
trump is right we can't bow down to china and ther (Score:2)
trump is right we can't bow down to china and there students should be able to get on line degrees in the usa
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When is the world going to stop kissing the ass of the Chinese government?
When the Chinese market is no longer as lucrative.
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Thankfully in a command economy like China they bleed money like crazy, so it will just keep getting more and more expensive for China to do this
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When Zeng Li says he deserves better, the Chinese government denies that Zeng Li ever existed, neither did his town, nor his surname for that matter.
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He was quite the upgrade too. As you said, checkmate.
UK history degree via China firewall (Score:2)
Is there anything in that case that wouldn't be censored or altered by China?
NOT a UK degree.. (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is that a 'degree' from a specific country is SUPPOSED to mean you were exposed to their philosophy of information and education as well as politics etc. You have failed to give or be given a degree from the UK if all you are taught is information devoid of philosophical content.
degree's dont work that way... (Score:3)
thats certainly not how degree's work in the UK they might elsewhere but a degree is a specialized qualification and requires only that you study that subject not politics or philosophy HOWEVER they previously required attendance IN PERSON so you where subjected to the culture if you wanted to engage or not... DISTANCE learning is not a degree in my opinion.
Culture is very different and can be to a large extent taken or left but always observed.
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Same thing in the USA. You learn physics in a physics class. Of course, most degrees require that one take a certain number of credits in a core curriculum. Which might include history, humanities and other subjects. Here, it might be more difficult, although not impossible, to isolate students from 'taboo' subjects.
they previously required attendance IN PERSON so you where subjected to the culture if you wanted to engage or not
Maybe. I went through my university career with many classes consisting of 200 or more people (particularly these core subjects). After class, we would split off into informal study groups which
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I think @johnjones' point is that [to the best of my knowledge] a lot of schools in Europe don't have a "core curriculum" of arts/humanities in the same way that schools in the US do.
See: https://www.usnews.com/educati... [usnews.com]
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HOWEVER they previously required attendance IN PERSON so you where subjected to the culture
Are you yelling at the people that don't want immigrants in your country, to "protect your culture", or the universities trying to get paid? I don't understand how you can talk to the latter without going through the former.
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Sounds to me like they're saying that when students study in a foreign country they are exposed to the local culture [to the student's benefit].
The implication here is that with remote/distance learning that cultural exposure no longer occurs, and that benefit is lost.
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> DISTANCE learning is not a degree in my opinion
Fortunately, your opinion doesn't make (much) difference. They are degrees, and the 'culture' of universities makes little difference to real life. In fact, lately, the on-campus cultures are very much something to be avoided since they no longer allow or encourage open debate on controversial topics.
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The problem is that a 'degree' from a specific country is SUPPOSED to mean you were exposed to their philosophy
It's supposed to mean? Care to explain how that false logic applies to those "exposed" to any "culture" or "philosophy" doing their work in a remote classroom?
Re: NOT a UK degree.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes.
Every topic is political. For example in physics we had laws named after Russians which in the rest of the world are known by the name of the real discoverer. Or sometimes they'd give us the proper name but say that a Russian discovered it too and so we used both names.
In chemistry there were two periodic tables. 'Ours' was the one where all transuranium elements were named after russians.
In biology....oh dear! Lisenkovism and calling genetics 'priests science' because of (apparently) Mendel who was a priest.
And don't get me started on history, philosophy, law, politics, economy or any branch of social science.
BTW, if you did not know Genghis Khan was Chinese (just one little example).
Have a chat sometime with an actual chinese person who trusts you enough to really talk. Your mind will explode!
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Yes.
Every topic is political.
Seems your education was lacking. That is common knowledge. Look in any actual accredited source.
I actually thought my American education was lacking, seems it was pretty on point.
Also, no, lol, not every topic is political. You might want to make it that way, you might be attracted to them, but, anyone who uses hyperbole to start an answer, maybe you do need to keep reading.
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Also, no, lol, not every topic is political.
Every topic overlaps with politics in some way. They either influence it, or are influenced by it. GP gave plenty of examples.
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Mendel was a monk, not a priest AFAIK.
Missed the worst Implication (Score:4, Interesting)
The result is going to be that UK students will have a degree that is now subject to whatever restrictions the Chinese government wants to impose and this is what I find utterly unacceptable. As a British ex-pat who is now Canadian, I'm concerned that this is going to bite us in Canada as well. Fortunately, as a physics prof, it's unlikely such censorship would affect me but it will certainly impact colleagues, especially in Arts...although the mischievous side of me does want to change one of my intro physics examples to be "Given the acceleration as a function of time for a tank in Tiananmen Square how long does a protestor 50m in front of it have to live before it runs over them?".
Western Education System (Score:4, Insightful)
I have found that Chinese culture pushes a winning at all cost value system in its education. Vs the Western Education System that puts more values in learning and doing.
This is often why Western College degrees are worth so much around the world vs getting them from other areas, (with perhaps an exception of Japan, which is somewhat westernized in its culture wither they admit it or not).
Having China push this restriction is probably doing more harm than good for them, because it will either have student traveling abroad (often not coming back). Or have their students educated in a less than optimal style.
To explain this difference, I will go back to my undergrad days. There was a Chinese student he was a curve breaker in all our exams. He tested very well, however he was useless for the practical projects. In his senior year, he was trying to figure out how to program a non-integer number (float). Also working on group assignments with him I had to do the bulk of the lift to keep my grade up. He often complained how Americans don't read, as he would study for the test all the time, however while he picked up information I wouldn't with my American culture say that he had learned much. I had this issue with other Chinese national students and fellow employees as well. Overtime I have learned how to work around this different culture to get a good partnership with them.
The problem with Western Universities bowing to China demand, means the Chinese students will get less of an education. As well the University will have less of a status, as its Chinese grads will be less capable then before.
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Chinese culture around education is based on the assumption that everyone is capable. Japan is quite similar in that regard. The result is that children are expected to get an A and if they didn't it's not because their natural level or talent is only B grade in that subject, it's because they didn't work hard enough.
Of course that creates huge pressure. It's also very bad for people with any kind of disability that affects their ability to learn.
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That is pretty horrible. For one thing it puts inhumane pressure on students. But for another, there cannot be high requirements either and the whole system becomes bad and does not produce actually educated people anymore. In the class I currently teach with 30 students, I expect 1...3 to score the top mark each year, but not more. And that is a reflection of actual talent and potential. An average passing grade is not _bad_. In a sane system it means you are fully qualified.
So what about essays on 1989 Tiananmen Square? (Score:3)
So if a student is taking a History or Writing course and asked to written about an event in modern history, chooses the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre [history.com], what happens?
--
A man cutting his balls off doesn't make him a smart woman -- it makes him a dumb man for focusing on an external "symptom" instead of addressing the internal problem of insecurity.
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That's fairly simple to answer--he finds he cannot submit his completed assignment over the Internet, as the Great Firewall blocks him. If it slips past the firewall (or maybe even if doesn't), all access to the University's internet presence is cut off for accepting such assignments, and a heated compaint from the authorities will be sent. If he's particularly unlucky, he might get a call from the local police.
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I'm not sure if you're being sincere or not, but that's not how the 'firewall' works.
It's an obfuscation of internet functionality and works on the other end of the user's connection to the ISPs. It's not like a company firewall, or a proxy or whatever. It's is essentially a set of variable rules that break the internet for specific sites/etc.
So, if it is possible to connect to a university's intranet, then you can submit a document, and it'd surely be over https.
Also, they're not especially interested in s
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That's silly.
The student wouldn't know about it to begin with, so how would they choose something they know not about?
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Because everyone in China magically forgot about this historic event. /s
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There wasn't much problem with the students...they camped out for a few weeks and largely dispersed peacefully before any trouble occurred.
The violence wasn't even in the square, but some way west, and mostly between disgruntled Beijing residents and the army (there was no armed police force back then, unlike now). It certainly wasn't quite so 'one sided' as reported/implied the west, either. It is easy to imagine a time line of events that would explain the authorities cracking down - like the public getti
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Actually, most Chinese citizens are at least vaguely aware of it. And that they "shouldn't" ever talk about it.
There's a sad/terrifying video from 2005 that's worth watching: https://vimeo.com/44078865 [vimeo.com]
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This is not correct. People in China know that something happened and also know that the subject is taboo. Every year near the anniversary of what westerners call the Tienanmen protest or massacre, the machinery of monitoring and censoring ramps up in China to squash any discussion of or effort to memorialize the June 4th incident (as it is called). People use code names to discuss it in a cat and mouse game with censors. You can read about this in wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Some of my colle
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Why not?
This site works in China. Why wouldn't people know about it?
https://worldaffairs.blog/2019... [worldaffairs.blog]
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I might also point out that slashdot is also not blocked in China...so they can all read this story, and all the other China-demonising nonsense written on here.
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Yeah? Why don't you try asking some Chinese, on camera, about the incident. You can report back with their full explanation of what happened.
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On camera? That would be rude. Report back? Why? I have no responsibility to you, or anyone for that matter. It doesn't and wouldn't prove anything anyway.
I've talked to people about it. People who were in Beijing at the time. They have stuff to share about what happened. They know what the west says about it too. They, also, don't really know what happened - no one knows *everything*. Also, no one doubts that 'bad things happened', but people seriously doubt the account pushed by most westerners.
Actually,
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Yeah, we wouldn't want to talk about ancient history in public. That's too dangerous.
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LOL, seriously.
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Frankly, with all the rubbish on the internet about that, they'd have their work cut out for them anyway.
If anyone is interested in considering some more balanced viewpoints of what happened, while still not being 'white washed', there's some good reading material here - follow the references since there are pieces written by people from the Washington Post, CBS News, BBC, NY TIMES, REUTERS, Latin American diplomat and his wife :
https://worldaffairs.blog/2019... [worldaffairs.blog]
BTW, you might be surprised to know that the a
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For those who don't want to read the article, here is a summary:
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Very disingenuous and misleading. How surprising.
I mean, the blog even links to complete memoirs and news reports, but you call them 'single-sentence quotes'.
However little evidence there is for the claims on that page, there's even less for anything more nefarious.
Some people just aren't open to being wrong. It's obscene.
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I read the full articles linked from that post. If the writer had wanted to be less disingenuous he could have chosen this quote from the BBC "We got the story generally right, but on one detail I and others conveyed the wrong impression. There was no massacre on Tiananmen Square." Or perhaps they could have chosen this one from the CBS article: "But there's no question many people were killed by the army that night around Tiananmen Square, and on the way to it ...". The fact remains that those single-sente
Follow... (Score:1)
... the money.
Intersectionalism naturally aligned with CCP (Score:4, Insightful)
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I won't argue that the importance placed on intersectionality ideology isn't bad... but... How exactly is intersectionalism a type of Marxism?
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I won't argue that the importance placed on intersectionality ideology isn't bad... but... How exactly is intersectionalism a type of Marxism?
At the core of Marxism is the idea of class struggle [wikipedia.org]. Classical Marxism defines two classes - proletariat (workers) and bourgeoisie (capital) and creates a zero-sum struggle between the two. Intersectionalist take the idea of class struggle and apply it to critical race theory - where instead of proletariat and bourgeoisie you have various groups defined according to hierarchy of negative privilege (i.e. higher privileged groups are the oppressor).
They key commonality, and the most harmful part of Marxism
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That's an interesting parallel to draw. I see what you're getting at.
I'm not sure that means it's a form of Marxism, but I agree there are similarities and that their "key commonality" is a Bad Thing.
Thanks for explaining.
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Mises Institute has an interesting article to expands on this, suggesting that the original rich-v-poor class struggle stopped being so relevant (I guess because even the poorest person now has an iphone and TV, and even expensive shoes compared to the old days where shoes might be a luxury)
they suggest the socilaist morphed the concept to "identities" so men oppressed women instead, and whites oppressed blacks etc.
Marxism only survives if there is an "exploited class", and if there isn't one any more, one
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I like your explanation.
Re: Intersectionalism naturally aligned with CCP (Score:2)
But the Chinese detest the SWJs. See what happened with Star Wars, particularly the second movie.
I mean, in the Chinese posters Fin is smaller and more in the background. That should tell you everything.
They hated the sexual harassment of the chinese woman on Fin. Hated it very much (the Chinese are more racist towards blacks than the whites. By a long mile).
So China considers the soft headed western liberals 'useful idiots', first to be discarded when the revolution comes. They detest them on the quiet.
The
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Sounds like you've spent time with the people instead of getting your talking points from memes. I don't think informed opinions are allowed around here anymore, you'll get mod-bombed sooner than later if you keep that going.
Just wait until the progs find out about the colonization of Africa going on right now. Imagine if they when they find out about the sanctioned treatment of blacks in Africa that's going on today. Probably shouldn't tell them about the concentration camps housing a few million people ri
Course content "not altered (Score:2)
Universities UK said it was "not aware of any instances when course content has been altered."
Did you spot the weaseling?
Part I. when course content has been altered Its been thought of as "new materials"; because its for online programs - its all essentially going to be new. Nothing altered, because conflicting materials are just being "not admitted" into new course offerings in the first place. Compliance suppresses the materials most likely from coming into play in the first place for all s
China continues to export fascism (Score:2)
Re: China continues to export fascism (Score:3)
Except they're not exporting fascism... that's our choice. Our imposition of democracy on them, however, is largely by force, and unwanted by the vast majority of the population.
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Except they're not exporting fascism... that's our choice.
Yeah, I guess we could choose not to engage in business with them. That's the only choice they're providing, though. Speak only nicely of China, or take your business elsewhere. Not really a free choice.
Our imposition of democracy on them, however, is largely by force
In what way are we imposing democracy on them?
Last time I checked, we'd prefer them to be democratic, but we only really care that they allow their citizens to have a voice without fearing for their lives (and don't put them in internment/re-education camps for any reason).
That's not democracy. These are est
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> Speak only nicely of China, or take your business elsewhere. Not really a free choice.
Of course that's a free choice.
That is an entirely reasonable position to take. I wouldn't do business with someone who is constantly rubbishing or demonising me, either.
> In what way are we imposing democracy on them?
Because you want them to change. They don't want you to change...they'll just not have anything to do with you if you don't.
No, it's not 'prefer'...the west actively attempts to force China into 'demo
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someone who is constantly rubbishing or demonising
With the exception of the past few months, there have been only very rare incidents of the West actively criticizing China.
Most of what we've criticized them for in the past year (excepting covid nonsense) is their stifling of public opinion about Hong Kong. You know, that whole human rights thing.
Because you want them to change.
Not even remotely the same as imposition.
Their citizens don't want it
That is a 100% unverifiable statement. They don't not want it (double negative), and they are afraid to voice their real opinion on anything political, so we don't really k
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Your response is laughable.
Try arguing the opposite side and you'll see my point.
> Have you had close relationships with many Chinese?
Of course. I am married to a Chinese women, and live in China, and have lived here for over a decade.
I am British, so was brought up in Britain, lived in the USA for several years, and Finland too.
Do you think *my* first-hand account is the result of brainwashing?
> What is your defense(sic) of China's censorship and silencing of dissent within their population? (HK, for
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Of course. I am married to a Chinese women, and live in China, and have lived here for over a decade.
::clap clap clap::
We chose not to live there anymore, for obvious reasons. Most of the expats I knew from there have also left with their families, citing similar issues. You are in the minority of Westerners (even among expats) for not seeing the issues there, my friend.
Do I think you're brainwashed? Yes. I've seen it happen with students that went there to study, and less often as a direct result of marriage.
It's okay to think that life there is generally pretty alright. (It is.) It's okay to acknowledge
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OK, so I'm brainwashed....lol. Fool.
> That's why they passed a law that actually makes it illegal to do criticize the government in HK, right?
You mean the Law of the People's Republic of China on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region?
Where does it say it is illegal to 'do criticize'(sic) the government in HK? I've read (the translations of) the law a few times, and I've not seen anything quite so sweeping.
There are mechanisms for criticising the government, and it
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Well, I'm glad you're living where you're happy.
I honestly hope you never see the error of your understanding first hand [as I've seen once].
Cheers.
Do you guys know what you're talking about? (Score:2)
The Great Firewall of China is not great and it's not a firewall - well not in the usually understood way.
It's more like a broken network connection - or lots of them. What works and what doesn't, and how they don't work, totally depends on your network connection. You can have a mobile connection and travel across the city and it'll vary...so, not even the same set of brokenness on the same ISP.
Also, foreigners in China and Chinese students studying abroad but in China can easily sign up to an authorised s