And you dorks learned all your expert Chinese knowledge where (and sitting in your parents basement surfing the net doesn’t count)?

uh… theorycraft much? where did you get all these expert knowledge about China? have you actually been to China or are you just a natural hater?

HIDE BEHIND ANONYMOUS

Oh please, spare me the “we have billion people so we need communism and censorship!” argument. Is there some scientifically established threshold number of people allowed for a population before brutal oppression and censorship becomes necessary?

Your argument is an utter fallacy. It can not be verified or measured in any way.

The mere mention of China seems to stir up a lot of mixed feelings. For every example of China as the rising new economic power, there are stories like this drag us back into reality. But let’s not forget even though we are the richest country in the world, we are still haunted by thos horrible images of Katrina. No country is without its own problems. Truth my friends, is some in the middle.

From where I can see, this new proposed regulation is motivated more by territory grabbing than ideology. There are two main ministries in China with regulatory power over internet: the Ministry of Information Industry (MII), which covers mostly telecommunications, and the Ministry of Radio, Film and Television (MRFT), which oversee the media industry. Guess what guys, the transition of old media onto Internet everyone is raving about has created a bit of tug of war between these two ministries. Last year MRFT shut down several IPTV trials conducted by telcos owned by MII. Sounds familiar? RIAA suing ISPs and down loaders?

To read events in China, I always keep one thing in mind: since so much of the economy is still state owned, many of the activities conducted by private enterprises or organizations in this country are carried out by the government in China. So we constantly encounter stories like these where a government agency issues regulations to protect the monopolistic status of industries under its watch.

As for this specific proposal, well, it is not enforceable. I remembered earlier this year the Police department of a city in Western China issue rules that require every web surfer in that city, that’s right, everyone who browses internet, to register with the police to curb online crime. Not much real effect other than becoming the laughing stock of the country.

The bureaucrats in China haven’t quite figured out the difference between non-enforceable regulations and butt of the joke.

Whenever I hear about the latest “scandal” to happen in China, I always take it with a grain of salt. Sure, maybe us in the west aren’t accustomed to having every single video we upload to Google checked; but surely that isn’t too different to having every film, video, television programme and the like checked to ensure it has no indecent content. You could argue they are checking this material to ensure it doesn’t depict ideologies inconvenient or opposed to the current Chinese government, which I can’t deny might not be true. But I have never seen any Chinese person complain about a lack of “freedom”. You could again argue that is because of the censorship in China, but even Chinese bloggers, and Chinese people I know IN PERSON, have never complained about life in the country. It’s simply a question of what people have been bought up to believe and how to live. American people are bought up to fight for freedom. The Chinese are taught to respect each other. The British are taught to make cups of tea every five minutes (trust me, I’ve spent my entire life here :P). Most people know that you shouldn’t swear or be disrespectful to your elders, and you should watch what you say in order to be kind. What’s the difference between this and censorship in China? “Choice” I hear you say? Freedom of speech? Hmm.

Most of these arguments are coming from people living in the same country that hands over their internet reigns to the RIAA, and other such organisations, in order to put people in prison for “sharing music”. How is this different from letting the government censor the opinions of others? Most people’s browsing habits are recorded when they do a search on google (or even Yahoo, or MSN) but you hear few people complaining about that, and even when someone does, it doesn’t stop most people. It’s all for the same thing: power (just the difference being that power is money in the west). Even google censors some of its content. How would this be different if the company became a monopoly?

I’m not saying these are good things, that the way of life in China would be great for me, because I have been bought up to have a certain lifestyle and be able to do certain things (and makes cups of tea every five minutes). But if you went to the country, I bet the chances are high that you will hear the Chinese moaning about how America has become too corporate, and that the media have a control over society and what people should like, or even the types of people other people should like (I sure as hell know that people in Britain do!). I completely hate all of this control, I hate monopolies, I hate conservatism, tradition, and I hate the government becoming too involved with what I personally do, or the fact they might be monitoring everything I do and say. And I don’t claim to know the Chinese people; for all I know things really could be as bad as the media says it is (although I feel that the media and public’s outlook on China has a lot to do with America’s Anti-Communist roots, from their break from the British Commonwealth – Which I completely agree they should have done! – to the cold war with Russia, etc).

But if people are happy with life, wherever they are, than no one really has the right to step in and say that a certain way of life actually isn’t right.
~Ronius