85% of Chinese Citizens Like Internet Censorship 609
cynagh0st writes "A Pew Internet & American Life Project report indicates that of an overwhelming majority of Chinese people that believed the Internet should be 'managed or controlled,' 85% want the government to do this managing. This is resulting from surveys on Internet use over the last seven years in China. 'The survey findings discussed here, drawn from a broad-based sample of urban Chinese Internet users and non-users alike, indicate a degree of comfort and even approval of the notion that the government authorities should control and manage the content available on the Internet.' The report goes further into describing the divide in perspective between China and Western Nations on the matter and discusses the PRC's justifications for Internet control."
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Misleading headline- (Score:2, Informative)
How many people in China felt that the internet shouldn't be controlled? And, with the political climate the way it is over there, how much can we really trust those numbers - even if the poll was administered by a supposedly neutral organizations?
Is the headline damaged or is it me? (Score:3, Informative)
Is the headline actually proper grammar someplace in the world? I know in the US it would be "85% of Chinese like Censorship". I know that in the UK you have this weird thing where you refer to a single corporation in the plural, but this is referring to a plural with the term for a singular...
Re:the other 15% (Score:3, Informative)
The first question was whether they thought content should be controlled at all. This had a majority yes.
The second question was if content was controlled, who should carry out the control - the ISP? Parents? the government? And 85% picked the government. Note that the options were not mutually exclusive - 50% picked parents, for example.
At no point were they asked whether they approved of government control in general.
Re:Real News (Score:5, Informative)
Every culture and language has "lean" words, words that have special significance and emotionally potent. In America, those words include, "freedom", "liberty", "justice", "dream", and "oppression". Here, people have great fear of "oppression", and words and concepts like that.
In the Chinese culture, the individual's greatest fear isn't "oppression". It is "luan", or "anarchy", "disorder". The Chinese people in general will tolerate a great deal of "oppression" so long as the government is doing its job: keeping the nation from running into chaos. "Human rights" in China doesn't include the right to be free; instead, it includes the right to be live a peaceful life.
-Q
Cultural Difference (Score:3, Informative)
"Censorship" title misleading (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Real News (Score:2, Informative)
People in the Chinese culture fear disorder, chaos, and anarchy. Ask a Chinese sometime about "luan" and watch his face. If someone tried to sell a war on terrorism to the Chinese using, "protecting Chinese freedom", the people would not really understand. What's so great about freedom? But show how terrorism in China is threatening anarchy and civil disorder, the citizens will want Something Done About It. Think about that in context of Tibet. This is the reasoning/emotional chain that leads Chinese to pro-government Chinese. You can test this theory by asking your Chinese friends what would happen if the Chinese government became too incompetent to keep civil disorder.
People in America wants politicians to be honest, or at least, act honestly. Despite evidence pointing the contrary. For the Chinese in Chinese culture, it is assumed that a politician has a hidden agenda and a cover story. People are not offended by the idea that a politician is lying to them. In general, that is how average, mature Chinese citizens deal with each other.
Here in the "West", the cultural value systems is heavily skewed towards Judeo-Christian values, even if that person may be atheist. We're talking culture here, not religion. There's a vague notion of good and evil, of sin and redemption. That is why people can talk about "history has demonstrated that even the best intentions are almost always corrupted." That is loaded with these cultural values that simply don't exist in China. When you read the Chinese classics such as the government-spiritual-philosophies of Confucius, the consequence of bad government rule is civil disorder, anarchy, and chaos. There's certainly no mention that liberty needs to be renewed with the price of blood.
-Q
Re:Unless they are older than 65... (Score:5, Informative)
Do you mind sourcing that? The closest I'm able to find is that "74% would prevent public school students from wearing a T-shirt with a slogan that might offend others." Source [firstamendmentcenter.org] I've no doubt that many people have very different views than me on what the first amendment guarantees, but I honestly doubt your figure, particularly considering the other data on the same site.
On the subject of the article, I must say that I'm rather skeptical. It's possible that Chinese citizens really do appreciate censorship by such an overwhelming majority, but I am reminded of this article [npr.org], particularly the line "Having lived in a society where millions were arrested for speaking inadvertently to informers, many older people are extremely wary of talking to researchers wielding microphones (devices associated with the KGB)." This was last December, mind you, more than a decade after the fall of the USSR.
Re:BAD MOD (insightful) (Score:2, Informative)
Mentioning Gitmo might be a valid rebuttal and not an offtopic troll, however:
-1, factually incorrect. People aren't being rounded up and sent to Gitmo because they disagree with American policy. They are being sent there because they were captured as illegal combatants and/or provided support to a terrorist orginization. We can debate the wisdom and legality of that all day if you'd like -- but the fact remains that the GP made blatantly incorrect statements that appear designed to incite anger -- not a productive conversation.
I'll be marking this moderation as 'fair' on the off chance I see it in meta-mod. I would encourage everybody else to do the same.
Re:the other 15% (Score:5, Informative)
Hardly. China has 1.5 million [homeoffice.gov.uk] people in jail, only 0.1% of the population. The United States, by comparison, has 2.3 million [washingtonpost.com] people in jail, or 0.8% of the population. That's about eight times more, so let's not have the pot calling the kettle black.
Re:the other 15% (Score:3, Informative)
Re:the other 15% (Score:3, Informative)
Also, very likely no other country has such a race-biased jail population.
I sincerely hope you're not american, otherwise that was the dumbest comment you ever made on
Re:makes perfect sense (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Unless they are older than 65... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Unless they are older than 65... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Unless they are older than 65... (Score:3, Informative)
Communism in China has gone a great deal off course in the last 60 years, and has a lot to answer for, but from all I've read(some of which was published accounts of CIA operatives in China at the time), in 1940 if I'd had to choose between Mao and Chang Kai Shek I would have chosen the same way the people did.
Since then Mao and his successors have done a lot of reprehensible things(though some of them can probably be attributed to the consequences of someone who believes they know better than the people and who has the power and authority to force them to change), and the Taiwanese government seems to have done some relatively good things, but when the decision was made the KMT were literally fascists(in the Italian not German sense mind you).
Chinese locals don't want to change... (Score:2, Informative)
Chinese people will very rarely say anything bad about the government for fear of consequences so these stats make sense.
Take my girlfriend for example (we live in Beijing) she's far more open to outside influences than most Chinese. Was talking to her about starting a blog to protest the new Chinese visa regulations for foreigners. Her response...please don't because the Chinese government will punish me if they find out I live with someone who does this. Like most people in any country she does not like to hear bad things about the Chinese government. Part of it is the old Confusion ideology and ancestor worship...what is done by those above must be respected.
She is educated but still has no idea of what censorship is and what is censored in China. Believe me I have tried and showed her info about the 3T's, human rights, etc... but her response is that western media is publishing this and they are not to be trusted as much as the Chinese press. Truth is most Chinese do not understand what censorship is and will not learn about it from foreigners or foreign media. China is booming and the people in cities with influence are happy, they do not want change.
From a westerners point of view it would be nice to find a happy medium between Chinese media and western media. Every time I go back to Canada the news is full of gloom and doom. It may be free media but I find it kind of depressing. Meanwhile in China it's an absolute joke and everything is 'good'. Was reading on the main page of a newspaper the other day about an old man who helped society by trying for years to stop a tree from falling over. Every day he would go out and try and push the tree straight...ridiculous stuff. The earthquake would be on 24 hours a day if it happened in the US. Meanwhile I'm working in front of the TV and find it hard to find any news about the earthquake. Chinese media is filled with feel good stories. Why can't there be a middle ground?