Let me chime in here with a little more perspective.
First, China is not a homogeneous communist lockstep gulag. If you think of China of analogous to the EU with more languages and a lot more people, it might make more sense to outside observers.
Second, Chinese Universities are government organizations. As one would expect, the drums of propaganda sound much lounder there than say in the Google China offices.
Third, nice link on the fenqing. China is full of youthful rebels without a cause. Especially in non-tier 1 Universities. The Tier 1 University kids worry about getting great jobs. Tier 2 lower worry about getting jobs period. All universities are full of students who have done little but study from day until night in a highly regimented environment that does not foster critical thinking their entire lives. At university they generally live crammed into a dorm. They’ve never done anything wild and crazy in their entire lives. So, when the government propoganda machine cranks up and encourages them to “demonstrate” and be “active” they take to it like a duck to water.
The fenqing is definately a double edged sword. No one forgets the Red Guards, nor how they were cannibalized and rat fucked after they tipped over the political battles there at the beginning. Funny how the fenqing spontaneously boarded buses in the suburbs that spontaneously went to the US embassy where the students spontaneously lined up to throw rocks that spontaneously appeared. Also ironically during the Hainan plane incident that those same spontaneous students were locked down in a New York minute. The fenqing are real but they are pawns.
Even Sven, what you’re experiencing in the backwater University in the backwater town (that still probably has a population of 5M) is probably valid for that area. It may or may not be valid for that demographic around China. It really is a case of YMMV. It is not valid for the east coast and Tier 1 and probably Tier 2 cities. The countryside could care less.
I think a lesson from Iraq is that change for a country has to come from within.
Human rights are universal, but who sets the bar? I would argue that the bar is different for a country trying to feed 1.3 billion people than it is for a country managing 300 million. And furthermore that sound bites from well intentioned (or not) outsiders with no context or understanding of the reality on the ground is not really solid grounds for making a call on what constitutes a universal human right in China. Take the one child policy as a simple example.
BTW, a cyber attack was launched from China on Google. I believe it is far from a proven case that the attack was actually instigated from China. And far from proven that it was the “Chinese government” however you define it, that was behind it.
This is a cop out of the highest proportions. Why the hell should it matter if it’s your biggest complaint? Just because you have other things to worry about doesn’t really mean a thing.
I have to worry about the same things you have to worry about. I’m technically homeless. That doesn’t stop me from caring about any number of things I think are unfair, and doing what little I can to deal with it. It may not be much (as it pretty much amounts to getting other people fired up about it), but it’s something.
As for the topic: Google has one thing no other company that has tried this has–an extra weapon. Google can easily start ranking all Chinese results down in the rest of the world. This can seriously hurt Internet profits, because, in a lot of other places in the world, Google is the number one search engine.
I was watching a report on CNBC on the business aspects of this move today and they pulled out the old saw that China is the world’s largest marketplace. None of the talking heads could figure out why Google would give that up (while agreeing that the country only accounts for 1% of all of Google’s revenue), so they all agreed it must be a principled stand based on Google’s “Don’t Be Evil” philosophy.
What I don’t get is the belief that China is so special from a business perspective. OK, they have a billion people. How many of them actually have a computer?
There is about 300 or so million people in North America, which breaks down to bout 110 million or so that are actively employed or have some sort of way to pay the bills. Any company that can capture part of the chinese or indian markets, will be very wealthy, as long as they can get the cash out of the country.
It’s more than just a cop-out; it betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what is at stake. It’s not just an inconvenience (‘Oh, boo hoo; I can’t Tweet!’). Access to information is always a threat to institutions that are authoritarian, which is why such institutions (whether it’s a fundamentalist church or an authoritarian government) are always worried about the possibility that people can go find out stuff for themselves. They can only control people as long as they can control the flow of information. It’s precisely China’s understanding of this that makes them censor stuff. I don’t understand why **kf **is getting all defensive about this stuff.
Fair enough; like I said, my understanding of the chronology and details of the cyberattack and Google’s counter-move is limited.
Good for you. You worry about your priorities in your way and I’ll worry about mine in my way. I personally don’t care about Facebook and Twitter being blocked or Google leaving China. None of that even comes close to being important enough in my life for me to care about it as much as some people seem to. When the wife gets a serious illness I’m not going to be thinking, “Y’know what? I can’t believe the government is violating my right to Tweet!” If you feel the need to be so outraged about the trials and tribulations of search engine in a foreign country then, well, be outraged. I have better things to do, though, and I get called a “shill” for it.
Not even a majority. It was somewhere in the ballpark of 250 million netizens in China, last I heard.
I don’t understand why kf is getting all defensive about this stuff.
Because someone called me a “shill” just because I’m not getting sufficiently outraged about what I see as a non-issue. Not everyone thinks this is all that big of a deal, you know.
If your wife gets sick from cancer caused by a factory that is bribing it’s way out of having to follow environmental regulations, then you might be a little more concerned about your ability to discuss and gather information in a public forum.
The didn’t ban Twitter for no reason. It’s these reasons- not the actual blocking itself- that has people concerned.
I just spoke with a friend in Beijing, and she says that google.cn now goes to google.com.hk, but a search for "“tiananmen square protests in 1989” returned “page not found”. So maybe Google is not censoring it, but China still might be.
Yeah, you’re right. Free access to information is only an essential element to human autonomy. But who cares about that?
BTW, has it ever occurred to you that suppression of information is a necessary adjunct to the human rights violations that you *do *claim to care about?
You know, it is possible to care about your family and about censorship issues at the same time. The two aren’t mutually exclusive. Sometimes I find myself worrying about three or four different things at once. It’s exhausting, but somehow I manage.
If you don’t care about it, that’s fine. That doesn’t make the whole thing a non-issue to all and sundry. The motives behind the goverment censoring something like a Google search for Tiananman Square are something that should concern somebody at least.
It’s easy for anyone that really wants to get around the Great Firewall of China to do so.
Unblocked I can read MSN, YAHOO, bloomberg, reuters, ny times, sdmb, the BBC (I think this is now accessabe but I’m not at my PC).
I can watch YouTube at work because we have a dedicated line and a fat pipe.
I personally don’t find the Great Wall of China as being more than a minor irritant. I’m not in the camp of give me Twitter or give me death. The fact that about 1/3 of the ‘free’ porn sites are blocked also doesn’t seem a great infringement of basic human rights.
Do a search on the Chinese PC market. If it’s not the world’s largest it will be in 2-3 years. The number of netizens is about that of the US population. Converting that to profit is challenging but it is a significant market and growing.
FWIW. If it’s true, I was still wrong about the timeline above–Google’s move wasn’t in response to the establishment of the Chinese government’s culpability for the attacks. But, like, whatever, man.
