20th anniversary of Tiananmen Square aka Chinese Internet Maintenance Day
Dracil
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Registered User regular
And it looks like the Chinese censors are going into overdrive.
Specifically these two things:
http://www.danwei.org/net_nanny_follies/twitter_domain_blocked_in_chin.php
http://www.danwei.org/net_nanny_follies/chinese_websites_under_mainten.php
I'm on one of the sites (Xiaonei, aka Chinese facebook), which says their update is complete but not fully operational yet. But I'm noticing some pretty heavy censorship there. I can't link to the second article, nor the spreadsheet there, nor tinyurl redirections to them. The words "tiananmen," "June 4, "20th", "中国网站维护日" (Chinese Internet Maintenance Day) all cause an error if I try to type that in my status update: "请不要发布政治敏感内容、色情内容、商业广告或其他不恰当内容" which basically says don't post politics, porn, or ads.
The thing is, from talking to my Chinese friends (who are all in the US from China for school or work), most of them don't really think the government censorship is a big deal normally. So it feels like the government is the only one overreacting, which ironically, generates a lot of attention, at least outside China. The streisand effect?
Wondering if there are PAers who're currently living in China that could shed more insight as to how it looks over there? Or just any other views on the reaction of the Chinese government/the population.
Specifically these two things:
http://www.danwei.org/net_nanny_follies/twitter_domain_blocked_in_chin.php
http://www.danwei.org/net_nanny_follies/chinese_websites_under_mainten.php
I'm on one of the sites (Xiaonei, aka Chinese facebook), which says their update is complete but not fully operational yet. But I'm noticing some pretty heavy censorship there. I can't link to the second article, nor the spreadsheet there, nor tinyurl redirections to them. The words "tiananmen," "June 4, "20th", "中国网站维护日" (Chinese Internet Maintenance Day) all cause an error if I try to type that in my status update: "请不要发布政治敏感内容、色情内容、商业广告或其他不恰当内容" which basically says don't post politics, porn, or ads.
The thing is, from talking to my Chinese friends (who are all in the US from China for school or work), most of them don't really think the government censorship is a big deal normally. So it feels like the government is the only one overreacting, which ironically, generates a lot of attention, at least outside China. The streisand effect?
Wondering if there are PAers who're currently living in China that could shed more insight as to how it looks over there? Or just any other views on the reaction of the Chinese government/the population.
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Throughout my travels in China, the level of censorship and the attitude toward it varies significantly depending on location. In areas like Beijing, it's relatively light but people will complain about it a lot. In places like Hunan, censorship is so heavy that I was not able to access any websites located outside of China outside of a half-hour window that seemed to change every night; but the people there assured me that the Chinese government would never censor its people -- they simply filter out excess information so that the people do not become too confused by conflicting reports of events.
|EDIT| Interesting... http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/14503d04-4f8f-11de-a692-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1
Censorship through the power of umbrellas!
That is both sad and incredibly amusing.
My word. It amazes me that people will readily buy in to rubbish like that.
Edit: That umbrella thing is bafflingly hilarious.
It was like he was being attacked by an aggressive mushroom or something.
Also, the umbrellas made my day.
Also, this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8jbuIx6cR0
It's part of a scholarship that's at least partly based on hits.
I'm going to say they've claimed it was enforcement of jaywalking laws.
Also, I'm surprised they didn't get a lot of young people to gang up on the camera, as people tend to do spontaneously in the US. All the footage would be of idiots screaming the praises of their local sports teams and favorite communist party officials.
hitting hot metal with hammers
Of particular interest is the beginning of part six with the university students. It's telling, and from what I understand it's not unheard of at all for the younger generation to just be completely oblivious what the hell happened on June 3rd, 1989.
It does make me want to ensure that that reporter's shot is obscured by a dude with an umbrella wherever he goes. I'm a bit of a dick.
I've seen that Frontline. Really great episode.
I don't live in the PRC.
I do, however, live in a country with substantial media control. I assure you that it's not amazing or even difficult to popularize such a view of censorship (it doesn't even have to follow the PRC model, which tends to favor openly promoting the belief that political activity is 'troublesome').
Take for example the umbrella video... I daresay a common view would be that the local police are being extraordinarily creative and patient with silly troublemakers. Go, police!
People react negatively, everywhere, when the state locks up and beats up dissidents. But this approach to domestic security is somewhat passé; the level of state control required to prevent this negative reaction from formenting further dissent is not conducive to economic growth.
Furthermore, there's usually no real reason to lock up dissidents unless they're really popular. Obscure local activists are just wild-eyed local activists until you jail them - then they become celebrities. Even then there's usually no benefit to beating them up (when Chinese dissidents are beaten up, be assured that Beijing views it as regrettable misbehavior on the part of local subagencies. Not that they'll apologise for it, but nobody really wants to provoke people).
So this Soviet-era approach to censorship has been largely abandoned - instead you get persistent soft media and cultural management. Activism is troublesome. Demonstrations, however peaceful, interrupt the business of us normal working people (it goes without saying that un-peaceful demonstrations are even worse). There are normal bureaucratic channels through which to resolve issues, please use them; occasionally members of the politburo will heroically growl at the bureaucracy and abruptly shorten all those waiting times.
With this mindset, the state will loudly leap at potential sparks of dissent (and can fully expect to be praised by its supporters for doing so). Hence Tiananmen presently; it's not really plausible that Beijing expects all this to be secret. It isn't.
It's very easy to internalise this view: to see the results in action, watch for how people respond when the occasional demonstration does turn up. "I wish the government would do more to prevent these incidents" is a surprisingly common complaint.
Apparently "subtlety" doesn't translate well into Chinese.
Why bother with plainclothes when you're being that absurdly obvious?
What makes you think they don't want to be obvious?
edit: it might not be obvious how this works, so here goes. 6/4 isn't usually viewed (as it is often viewed in the US) as The Government Suppressing The People, it's more of... The Government Heroically Halting A Regrettable Demonstration In A Mostly Peaceful Manner Before It Turned Us All Into The Russian Federation. Or so I read the popular sentiment. My PRC friends don't really like this topic of conversation.
So potential protestors now are not viewed as One Of Us, but One Of Those Troublemakers. Beijing doesn't think an actual mass demonstration is plausible; if it did you'd see soldiers with live weapons, not unarmed policemen with umbrellas. So this parading around is for the benefit of local bystanders - look how much we're protecting you from yet another Incident! Those with cameras are clearly out to foment trouble, after all. Same for the local social networks, etc. - if you operate a popular site and you don't shut down over 6/4, you're clearly out to provoke trouble, what's wrong with you? We Censor Because We Care.
It's a terrifyingly coherent worldview, really...
06041989 apparently is ok.
So is writing the dates in binary and roman numerals. But putting the former with the latter is NOT ok. My guess is that as long as 06041989 don't appear in the same string as "month" "year" and "date" it misses the censors.
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That's surprising. I'm absolutely certain 六四 won't work; you'd think that a censor would blanket block 0604 too.
That does sort of match up with what I've heard about Iraq under Hussein: You stay out of politics, and it's a great place to live. Most people were more than willing to.
Nor did anything ever happen, Citizen. Move along.
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