That is correct. It so happens that this blog is, indeed, blocked by the Chinese government. This is not a surprise, though. Don't worry, Mom, I didn't do anything to make the Big Chairman mad at me. All of this site is blocked in China (i.e. any and all blogs from blogspot.com).
It is comforting on one hand (I can't get kicked out of the country), yet what about the other side of this matter? What about media controls in China? As insignificant as this blog is in the grand scheme of the world, isn't it everyone's right to read my petty thoughts if they want to?
Here's a small explanation of the media controls present in China now:
Social Networking: The average person cannot access YouTube, Facebook, Blogspot. What does that mean exactly? For a lot of us younger people, that's basically the equivalent of living in a room with no windows where you're allowed to call 2 people per day but only allowed to talk for 5 mins each. Not exactly inconvenient as it is frightening.
News & Information: Everything from the New York Times, Wikipedia, Wall Street Journal, CNN, etc are all censored. That means that everything you see on those sights have been checked, sent to 'the boss', then rechecked to make sure there is not a single iota of information that might incite worry among the 1.3 billion people who live in China. That's quite a big force you don't want to upset.
This was the issue that Google had with China. They refused to censor the sites that showed up when someone searched the internet. Thus, they were kicked out of China for a bit, pulled their www.google.cn site off the Chinese market. Yet, for some reason right now the google.cn is up and running in China again. Did they reach an agreement? I dont know. Then again of course we wouldn't hear about it over here.
Well, haha, that's all I have patience to explain now. Media controls in China: a lot of people know they exist, but are not sure of what media veins are affected or what it means for us on the ground.
In all honesty, we aren't affected by these laws too much on the ground. There are no officers standing behind our laptops, wondering what we're accessing. These come into play when we turn on the foreign news, CCP (Chinese Communist Party) News, or look at a newspaper.
It's then that we think about what is real, what is not, what is being said to assuage the public, and what we're missing from home.
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Well I guess I'll chime in on this one. Being in the advertising industry we're pretty familiar with media law and the idea of censorship. We are becoming increasingly familiar with China's style of mass media blocking. The issue with Google either started or was ratcheted up by the cyber attacks that came from Chinese IP addresses. If you haven't heard about this, systematic attacks were carried out targeting companies such as Sun Micosystems, Symantec (the largest manufacturer of anti-virus and computer security software), Adobe Systems (maker of extremely popular software including the software used to view YouTube videos), the US Department of Defense and other "strategic" targets. Now while I'm sure you already know about these companies and what they do, I specifically mention it because when you look at who and what kind of information they were after, you really have to wonder who is up to what. I have referred to this as "playing dirty in a free-market global economy." It was almost as if someone was out to steal a bunch of other people's ideas rather than come up with a better product on their own.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, having mentioned that, the idea of censorship obviously isn't a new one. From what I remember about Marx, his way of making everyone equal was to seal off the ability to think independently. Additionally, this is a great way for those in power to stay in power, since they can easily convince people that all of their needs are met by their father/mother government. With no outside information, they have no reason to believe otherwise and the old saying "ignorance is bliss" couldn't be more true.
In a more direct example, Iran made the mistake of letting their people use Twitter. Suddenly, before and after the sham election that occurred in that country, reformer protests were being organized through Twitter. Then, they were given a martyr of a hero in the images of a beautiful 20 something girl who had been shot by riot police, bled out and died all in the lens of a cell phone camera. Her image was flashed around the world and energized those fighting to reform Iran. Obviously, the Iranian government had a major problem on their hands before they could even say the word Twitter in English.
Point being, they pull the wool over everyone's eyes to keep control over them and are afraid (for good reason) of the effect social networking might have on people.
I'd be concerned about you for this blog post and my reply if I didn't know you were accessing this through a proxy server :)
Stay safe Nat!
A small technical nitpick: Websites like NYT, Wikipedia, etc. aren't really consciously checked by the Chinese government. Rather, all of the text on the website is compared against a list of keywords every time that someone visits the site. This type of blocking is automatic, not purposeful. Full site blocks, such as twitter, blogspot, and youtube, are purposeful. In fact, the main reason for the full site block against youtube is probably because keyword based blocking doesn't work there - you can't keyword block a video file.
ReplyDeleteThings like this make me hug our United States Constitution and all of it's amendments.
ReplyDeleteHi...just found your blog, which is great by the way. I hope you will be returning soon.
ReplyDeleteCheers