Users Rage Against China's 'Great Firewall'

slugo writes with a CNN article about young professionals increasingly aware of the small part of the internet they're allowed to play in. Intelligent and internet-savvy, these users are frustrated by China's overactive concern for internet health. "Yang Zhou is no cyberdissident, but recent curbs on his Web surfing habits by China's censors have him fomenting discontent ... Yang's fury erupted a few days ago when he found he could not browse his friend's holiday snaps on Flickr.com, due to access restrictions by censors after images of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre were posted on the photo-sharing Web site. "Once you've complained all you can to your friends, what more can you do? What else is there but anger and disillusionment?" Yang said after venting his anger with friends at a hot-pot restaurant in Beijing. The blocking of Flickr is the latest casualty of China's ongoing battle to control its sprawling Internet. Wikipedia and a raft of other popular Web sites, discussion boards and blogs have already fallen victim to the country's censors."

Joke

Mr. Jintao, tear down this (fire)wall!

Well...

That's the last we'll ever hear of Yang Zhou. Pity, considering he had a good point.

Internet restrictions are only a symptom

Young professionals have the means to leave China, even if they don't have the means to change the government. I'd suggest they get out while the getting's good.

The real victims are the oppressed poor and working classes -- they aren't particularly concerned with trivialities like Flickr access, having to submit to what is essentially slave labor [google.com] due to extreme poverty.

The problem with China is the government and its political philosophy, not the predictable restrictions on information access that totalitarian governments always enact.

Counterproductive?

Aren't people in China going to ask the question "Why is Flickr not working for me?" and then discover it is due to "controversial imagery of the Tiananmen Square massacre". Hence interest and discussion of this topic the Chinese government is trying to censor is exponentially increased.

If they really wanted to censor what went on at Tiananmen Square, they shouldn't draw attention to it by blocking half the internet. Instead they'd just have to spread disinformation within their own country, while still allowing people to read the "outrageous remarks of terrorist conspiracy theorists on the other side of the world". Little attention would be drawn to the issue: it'd get forgotten about. Blocking half the internet in the name of erasing history is DEFINITELY counterproductive to the cause.

Re:Counterproductive?

Not really. A Chinese censor was recently investigated for allowing a newspaper ad dedicated to the victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre (just using the date). When questioned, the censor didn't know about the massacre so he didn't realize that the ad was a problem. He was cleared and the advertiser was arrested. Chinese censorship works better than they even intended.

Re:Counterproductive?

Actually the censor and two other journalists were fired [ifex.org].

King Canute springs to mind.

The Chinese people will be free, and probably sooner than any of us expect. The Tienanmen square uprising was crushed by troops who were brought in from far away, and had no idea what was happening in Beijing. Eventually, the power of the party to control communications will be overwhelmed, and they'll be made accountable for their crimes against China.

Today, most Chinese have no idea at all that Mao not only killed more Chinese than Tojo, he was the greatest mass-murderer in history.

-jcr

Raging Against?

Fuck you, I won't browse where you tell me!

Oh god that was lame.

You know what happens when people have anonymity?

They surf porn. No joke. I worked at of those dot-com anonymizer companies that marketed in China. When we looked at our logs, we saw that most outbound traffic went to porn sites. That's what people do with their "voice" and unrestricted access to information... they use their new power to look at naked chics. Knowledge be damned.

Re:You know what happens when people have anonymit

Sure, *most* people will surf porn, just as *most* people will watch American Idol, not PBS. Lowest common denominator and whatnot. That does not deprecate the importance of PBS, nor should it deprecate anonymity online.

This is a waiting game

The people that were angry at China, in China, at the official view of Hu Yaobang, went to protest against it, and by extension the way China was run, starting in May of 1989. This turned into the Tienanmen Square Massacre of June 4, 1989; it's safe to say that over 1,000 people were killed by fellow Chinamen during this event. Zhao Ziyang, for opposing the hardcore measures that his party would eventually take, was placed under house arrest until the day he died, and then allowed to nearly disappear from Chinese history with barely a mention.

Eighteen years later, families of those that were directly affected by that dark day are given increased surveillance by China's version of the Secret Police; some are even put under a house arrest that's unlawful even by their own standards. Anyone that speaks out even remotely against the government is either put under surveillance, house arrest, or just arrested, sometimes never to be seen again. It's gotten to the point where younger people in China don't even KNOW what happened, or even that June 4 1989 was a significant day in Chinese history; remember, a person working for a newspaper was fired for letting through an obscurely worded advertisement mentioning the Mothers of 64 (64 = June 4), and she'd never even HEARD of the Tienanmen Square massacre; those that try to find it on search engines are either blocked/reported, or given China's "official" (read: lies) opinion on the days' events (essentially, that it was a public uprising that needed to be quelled). The common man in China lives in poverty, intentionally kept down by a government that uses them to further their own personal ambitions, with one or two token executions per year of "corrupt" officials. Essentially, China has become the modern day equivalent of Orwell's astute observations.

If China can effectively whitewash one of the most brutal subjugations of all time, and essentially wipe it from history, what the hell do you think it's thinking of what the article states? They're not worried one iota over what public perception is of how they handle Flickr, or any other website that doesn't play by China's rules. The people don't know any better; they just know that "oh, this can't be reached now :(", they let it ferment, and then they go about their lives, which are usually problematic enough as it is. They do this because they are kept stupid by their government, with almost no way to get real information, or at least no knowledge of how to obtain it, and also a lack of time and resources to obtain said information should it be known how to go about it. This is the reason China's ostensibly trying to build their own fucking internet, for God's sake!

Eventually, peoples' opinions will dull on this matter, because time fades all memories. This will not affect China in one way whatsoever. Everyone from around the world can decry their censorship all they want, but they're always going to be outsiders; China will never let them "pollute" their pool, so to speak. And when the Great Firewall of China filters out anything unpleasing, what will the people know of what the world feels about their country, and their leadership? Eventually, mention of what REALLY happened at Tienanmen will be regarded by the majority of the Chinese populace the way we in America regard anyone that feels the JFK killing was a massive CIA conspiracy; it will be regarded as a massive conspiracy theory to do nothing but get attention and revel against the Man, and the person saying it will be effectively ostracized by his peers, and be put under watch by the government (something that's unlike us here in the US).

Post the picture!

If all big sites would just post the famous picture of that tiananmen massacre on their website (just a microscopic link to the full picture), pretty soon China will have the option of either blocking internet altogether or loosening restrictions.

Re:And the Pope is Catholic..

I have no sympathy for them.

I have a rather more optimistic view of the Chinese. Most of them know that their government is rotten, and all they need to topple it is to realize that most of their fellow citizens feel the same way. That's why the party is so deathly afraid of improving communications. It's not traffic between China and the west that will free them, though. It's internal communications that will bring the commies down.

Personally, I'm thrilled to look forward to what China can do when they become free. They will make amazing contributions to the world.

-jcr

Re:And the Pope is Catholic..

Unfortunately, that is not my (very limited) experience. For example, an American-educated Chinese expatriate I knew who had been living in Virginia for several years still believed that Taiwan and Tibet both clearly belong to China, and that any talk otherwise was just insanity. Oppression can be pretty powerful if you don't know any different, and the ability and willingness to unlearn things that aren't true is not exactly mankind's greatest attribute.

Re:And the Pope is Catholic..

Please revise your comment unless you fully intended to troll.

The Chinese Government is Communist. All "Chinamen" are not.

Furthermore, Communism does not have to equate directly to censorship.

Re:And the Pope is Catholic..

Furthermore, Communism does not have to equate directly to censorship.

Technically true, but show me an example of a communist government that doesn't have serious issues with censorship. The idea of Communist government doesn't require censorship, but the reality is that sustaining a communist government generally does.

Re:And the Pope is Catholic..

Water's wet, the skies blue, and the Chinamen are rotten Commi's.

And you're a nerd teen living in his mom's basement, can't talk to girls, and run Linux on his MacBook!

At least that's what it says here in my "Absurd Stereotypes" guide book.

Re:lesson for those that bash USA

Thank you. As a former US Marine I so often get discouraged by the hatred so many Americans have fostered for their country.

When in reality, I think they have little to no appreciation for what we have here.

We're very much imperfect, and I greatly frustrated by some aspects of our culture, but we are very much a free nation. Perhaps sometime people should see what it is to live in nation without civil liberties.

Re:lesson for those that bash USA

Perhaps sometime people should see what it is to live in nation without civil liberties.

Some of us would rather never get there in the first place ;)

When you see the President daily working to concentrate more and more power into his office at his personal control, when you see an eight-hundred-year-old institution like habeas corpus thrown down and spit upon, when you see our constitutional protection against unreasonable searches thrown out because getting a warrant is just too darned inconvenient, when Congress feels the need to pass a law clarifying the fact that the United States should not torture people (and the President attaches a signing statement saying he'll disregard that if he feels like it), when you see the White House arguing that it should have the power to detain any American citizen indefinitely, without charges or legal due process...

Well, when you see all that you start wondering how much further we really have to go. And you want to stand up and fight it while you still can.

Re:lesson for those that bash USA

Let me be clear to avoid an argument. I agree that we should fight to protect the Constitution and civil liberties.

However, I feel the need to make some clarifications.

First off, the Constitution can only be altered through a clearly defined Amendment process. It has not been Ammended. Thusly, the rights guaranteed in the Constitution are valid. Any lawyer or judge with any sense of decency shouldn't have trouble upholding basic Constitutional rights.

Secondly, both the office of the President and Congress under many different administrations have failed to uphold the liberties the Constitution is supposed to protect. The failures lie both with the President and Congress. These should be brought to light, but not as a means of partisan politics, but rather as a means of upholding civil liberties.

One such minor example was the Telecommunications Decency Act of (94 or 96?) that clearly trampled on free speech. The then Speaker of the House even publicly said it violated the Constitution, yet the House passed it.

Thirdly, the Constitution could use a good Amendment clarifying our rights to privacy. Currently, they aren't really defined. The Constitution states that we can't be forced to self-incriminate, and that is where unlawful searches and such come from. But there have always been exceptions. For instance, if you have reason to suggest that evidence is time sensitive, or will be destroyed, you can search without a warrant. If you have probable cause, you can search without a warrant. Warrant-less searches have occurred for ages, and should not be made to be appear as a recent or partisan issue. Again, this is an issue that should be more clearly defined in legislation and hasn't been.

Fourthly, the second our security is in question, people panic and demand that the government know everything that is going on, and be omniscient in their ability to defend us. This conflicts with our personal desires to not have the government look over our shoulder. Again, this line should be more clearly defined, but it is not.

Lastly, I have not seen a single statement from the White House or any US government official requesting the ability to detail American citizens indefinitely without either charges or due process. There was a controversial provision about detaining immigrants deemed terrorists basically without due process, but it made several clear provisions against applying to American citizens. If you have clear factual evidence that any government official intends to detain American citizens indefinitely without charges or legal due process, that would be very clear grounds for impeachment.

Re:lesson for those that bash USA

Lastly, I have not seen a single statement from the White House or any US government official requesting the ability to detail American citizens indefinitely without either charges or due process.

Jose Padilla is an American citizen who was first detained as a material witness, then deemed -- by administrative fiat, not by any due process of legal action -- an enemy combatant and transferred to military custody; when his attorney filed a habeas corpus petition, the administration fought it all the way to the Supreme Court, finally winning at that level, and was then challenged again in a different jurisdiction, where a an appeals court deemed Padilla's indefinite detention lawful. Just to be extra safe, last year's Military Commisions Act, helpfully passed just before the Republican party lost its control of Congress, then proceeded to explicitly and absolutely strip away the power of civil courts to hear habeas corpus petitions pertaining to "enemy combatant" detainees, and further stripped the jurisdiction of any civil courts to hear appeals of a military comission's decisions or constitutional challenges of the use of such commissions.

There is no bloody way that's constitutional, but Bush and the former Republican Congress did everything they could to ensure that challenges will take years at the least. Any effective challenge to a detainment would have to begin with the arduous task of getting the Military Commissions act struck down (habeas corpus is guaranteed by the Constitution, and power to hear cases arising under the Constitution is granted to the courts directly by the Constitution with no ability for Congress to take that away), a process which would likely take the rest of this decade and might not even succeed, given the current makeup of the Supreme Court.

Re:lesson for those that bash USA

The fact that China is far worse than the US does not forgive the crimes of the US government and does not mean that we should sit down and shut up about the violations of civil liberties here.

Re:This sort of thing is healthy

It would be nice if that were automatically true. But historically there have been lots of examples of societies that have made no progress toward democracy for thousands of years including China pre revolution. But unlike the Middle East, there's lots of evidence that Chinese people in the 21st century are ready for democracy. E.g. look at Taiwan. Even Singapore seems to me to be likely to turn into a real democracy given time and a lack of strong leaders. Same with Hong Kong.

And in Gorbachev's memoirs he quoted Zhao Ziyang as saying that there should be free elections for the head of the Chinese Communist Party in the short term, and a multiparty system in the long term. Given that he was General Secretary at the time, that's breathtaking. But if you look at Chinese history, lots of people have tried to introduce democracy and most of them ended up either imprisoned, or under house arrest or executed. Incidentally most reactionary movements in China have been strongly nationalist too and it is possible that they will lash out at America, Japan or Taiwan to distract the Chinese people's attention away from their loss of freedom.

So I'd say that it is likely that China will democratise, and there are certainly signs that it is happening. But it's also likely that reactionary politicians will attempt to roll back the process and it's in everyone's interests that the US tries to stop them.

Free societies shouldn't fall for the telelogical fallacy that history has a direction, or be so arrogant as to assume that all societies will end up being like them automagically. Lots of non free societies would still exist if they had been able to isolate themselves from the outside world and achieve a measure of self sufficiency, and China is big enough to do just that.

Re:This sort of thing is healthy

China will democratise, when the conditions are riped, and one of them especially, would be when there are more city population than rural population, which is currently not the case. The other condition would be that there is a huge internal force (e.g. from a whole generation) that demands it. Think of the baby boom generation which had catalyzed a whole chain of changes in the western hemisphere in the 1960s, with a 1968 Paris manif.

And that is only personal opinions.

Unfortunately for China right now, the two conditions are not met. The first one is obvious. The second one is a little problematic. There are three segments of population, and I would call them "three generations" to make things simpler.

1) The old generations, those participated in the long march and the cultural revolution, are currently either afraid of changes, or too busy to hold on to their power, and make as much money as they can, while they still can. This is the generation which has the most to lose in case of too much sudden changes. Most of them will not be able to adapt.

2) The second generation, those who were born during the cultural revolution, and that's the generation involved in the 1989 event. But this generation is currently too fragmented to form a noticeable force. Those who are doing well are joining the first generation, they don't want sudden change. Gradual change is good for them, they are making to the elite group. Those who are not doing well (the majority) are too busy making a living, with a family to feed, etc, the ambition for a better world has kinda subsided with age too. And they are sandwiched between two generations that do not want change, more or less.

3) The third generation, those who were born in the 1980s and 1990s, this is the generation of little "emperors" and little "empresses". No big dream, not much ambition, life is good as it is, they will inherit everything from their parents and grand-parents anyway, so why bother? This is what I call the "Life is good" generation.

Changes are coming gradually, but don't expect a sudden movement to tear down the wall or anything. A model for gradual change, or a model for sudden change a la Berlin Wall which ripped through the whole Eastern Europe? Which one is better is debatable for now. What is good for Eastern Europe is necessarily good for China? Again, debatable.

But the gradual change model is so far, so good. So, let's cross the finger, and let's work together toward a better world, as a whole. I am optimistic.

Re:So this is how tyranny dies!

I used to think that would happen when Hong Kong went back actually - that if they allowed it to stay relatively free the freedom would spread and destroy them, but if they clamped down the money would leave and then they would be ruined by popular discontent. But HK is a special case like the treaty ports in imperial times. The Emperors managed to keep foreign influences confined to them before and the CCP could do the same. But they can't do that inside China as this story seems to tell you.

I think people tend to underestimate just how rapidly China is changing, just because it didn't turn into a western-style capitalist democracy at the flick of a switch when Hong Kong (or Macau) was handed over. A few years ago when my wife went to Beijing the first thing that met her as she left the arrivals gate was a huge poster of Mao; now it's a Kentucky Fried Chicken. On that visit she was issued with tourist food vouchers; now one just draws cash from a cashpoint with an ordinary bank card and spends it in an ordinary shop or cafe. My mother-in-law hadn't seen her sister for over 35 years, even though they lived just a few miles apart, because the borders were closed. The borders opened and they had an emotional reunion a couple of years before the HK handover. Just after the handover, my wife brought back some dried lychee from HK; it turned out that they were from a tree in her aunt's garden in Mainland China, and that these were from the first crop she had ever been allowed to keep: previous years the crop had belonged to the state. We ate them like a sacrament.

Yes, those changes are social and economic, not political, and there is still a lot of change needed, but the pace of change is breathtaking.