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."
Re:Look! (Score:5, Interesting)
A report about the reliability of it's own references? This report would have to be taken with a block of salt.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:85% of Chinese likes censorship (Score:3, Interesting)
The question defines the answer (Score:5, Interesting)
So: "do you beleive in free speech?" 99% of the respondents say yes (1% don't know)
Or: "Should the internet be regulated, to protect your children?" .. now we're getting into interesting territory - I'd be willing to bet that most parents of 18 or less year-olds would say yes.
How about: "Should the ISPs do more to reduce pornography on the internet?"
Try this: "Is it reasonable for your employer to restrict your net surfing?"
Finally: "Do you think the government should protect internet users from violent or inappropriate content?"
Now tell me: which one of these questions defines censorship? The answer will depend on your individual outlook and where you live, whether you're responsible for other people. The final point about censorship is that no matter what your personal opinion of it is, you don't have the right to impose your view on others. Even if they're in favour of it and you think you know better.
Re:Skewed results (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Unless they are older than 65... (Score:4, Interesting)
(shrug)
The Founders always said that "democracy is are worst disease", the masses were not competant enough to run the government, and therefore we should have a Republic run by educated men. i.e. People with enough common sense to realize scrapping the first amendment is a bad idea.
Re:Real News (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/14/world/asia/14response.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2&hp [nytimes.com]
The following paragraphs provide some good contrasts with "democratic" governments.
Before you cast stones... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's easy to think, "Wow, that's crazy," but then, an atheist doesn't stand a chance in hell of being President of the United States of America [nytimes.com]. (Pun only slightly intended.) I think that's pretty stupid.
Not saying one's better or worse than the other, just that no country has a monopoly on stupid citizens.
Re:Unless they are older than 65... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Real News (Score:1, Interesting)
I would always say no to censorship in a heart beat. I always thought that everyone would answer the same. Specially someone that is or was directly affected by it. I would still say no in a heart beat. But when I do it, I no longer think I know everything I need about it.
I share this story because it definitely made me think about how a person's upbringing can lead them to think so differently. Not that I didn't knew this already, but never about subjects I would expect to be agreed by everyone (nowadays).
Re:If you gave the same survey in the US or UK... (Score:3, Interesting)
Another time I was arguing on a fairly conservative message board with some people who were proclaiming that shows like "Will and Grace" should be forced off the air because they shouldn't be broadcasting homosexual-approving shows. When I brought up the free speech issue one of the posters actually had the nerve to suggest that "Free speech shouldn't apply to public airwaves.". The sad part was that the side wanting the show censored was by far the most common opinion there. The owner of the board actually threatened to delete my user account for "voicing support of homosexuality" and accused me of being homosexual myself (because obviously if I don't think that gay people should be lynched then I must be one of them . .
Re:Real News (Score:3, Interesting)
The time you when were in Taiwan is also probably significant. They went from a single party military dictatorship to a more or less fully democratic country in the past 30 years. If the GP was in Taiwan a few decades ago that Taiwan might be quite different from the Taiwan you know.
Re:Unless they are older than 65... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yep, there's a big difference between disagreeing with the First Amendment, and believing certain clothes shouldn't be allowed in public schools attended by minors. If you want to wear an offensive t-shirt, you can do it all you want at home, or walking on public streets or public parks etc. Public schools aren't free-speech zones. The attendees are minors, and don't have the same rights and privileges as adults. They can't decide not to go to class, or to sit outside class with signs and protest. If they don't have the right to even decide if they want to go or not, they certainly don't have any inherent rights to wear offensive t-shirts, or say offensive things (such as in the middle of class when the teacher is talking). Even public university students don't have that right.
Re:Real News (Score:4, Interesting)
I was born in Taiwan, raised in Canada, and have been dating a Chinese girl for a while now. I think I have some insights into the situation.
I also have to agree with GP, his description of the Chinese people's priorities are pretty much on the money. Keep in mind also that while there are some cultural differences between Taiwanese and Chinese (particularly the stuff that came about after the split), the fear of chaos and disorder is something that has been ingrained in the Chinese mentality for perhaps thousands of years.
If you dig into a Chinese history text you can easily see why the people see it this way. For a very long time China has been made up of multiple warring factions, along with regional warlords hell bent on destroying each other. This obviously is not great for the population at large, what with being drafted, raped, pillaged, killed, etc etc. The people crave stability, and are willing to pay a heavy price for it.
Er, are we talking about the same Taiwan? Southern Taiwan is consisted mostly of "native" Taiwanese (i.e. Chinese who have immigrated over hundreds of years, not due to the communist thing). Northern Taiwan like Taipei is consisted of Chinese who had fled the communists.
They tolerated decades of martial law, police firing on protesters, and a whole slew of other oppressive actions. Why? Because the country was dirt-ass poor. People were willing to put up with almost anything if it meant their livelihoods were improving. China is much the same way. If and when the majority of them become relatively well off, freedom will become an issue.
I suppose... Freedom is for people who have something to eat, somewhere to sleep, and a whack of spare time to ponder philosophy. :)
Re:BAD MOD (insightful) (Score:5, Interesting)
"illegal combatants" is an arbitrarily defined term invented by the very government that does the jailing for it. Likewise, "terrorist organization" is an arbitrary term that doesn't even have an official definition. I'm pretty sure I know at least one reason why: It would be awfully hard to find a definition that would not include the CIA, Mossad or other "friendly services".
So in summary, arbitray foreign people are sent to Gitmo for arbitrary reasons. That's slightly better than for speaking out against the government, but only very slightly, and only because of the "foreign" in there.
Re:Unless they are older than 65... (Score:5, Interesting)
On the other hand, if that wild mustang gets all the food it can eat, has owners that groom it regularly and let it have free run of the ranch, then why should it want a life without horseshoes?
Westerners, and especially Americans, seem to have a really difficult time understanding other cultures, and specifically cultures where authority is still trusted to do the right thing. You saw in the news just over the past few weeks how shocked we seem to have been by the fact that Chinese citizens actually came out to protest in favor of their government on the issue of Tibet as it relates to the Olympic torch relay - the tone of the news reports was "what's wrong with these people?" Well, there's nothing wrong with them. Under their present government, the vast majority of Chinese live in peace, their economy is growing at 8-10% per year, they're about to host the most prestigious sporting event in the world, etc. etc. Beyond those abstracts, personal wealth is at levels never before seen in China.
Why shouldn't they trust the government? The government seems to have done pretty well for them - unlike our "democratically elected" government that can barely manage 1-2% growth, gets us involved in unnecessary foreign wars and has presided over a doubling of gas prices and foreclosures in the last year. Given warrantless wiretapping, detention without trial of "enemy combatants", the movement towards prison sentences (even life sentences) for copyright violations, not to mention the Patriot Act, I would argue that we really don't have a hell of a lot more freedom than they do either. Yeah, so they've got an internet firewall. But my bet is they don't have stormtroopers knocking down their doors if they say the words "ammonium nitrate" over the phone and it gets flagged as a keyword in some NSA remote listening database.
Which side is more "brainwashed"?
We've simply learned to distrust government based on how non-functional and even harmful our own is. Well, theirs (like most of the world's) actually works pretty well for the vast majority of the country, so they've learned the opposite lesson.
Re:Real News (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course some are valid criticisms, but they are far and few between. Some are good intentioned criticisms, but are nonetheless flawed by the lack of deep understanding of the situation in China. And some are just... bashing China for the sake of it.
I can tell you personally that I was quite confused about the facts, and it was notoriously hard to differentiate facts from propaganda (by either China or the anti-Chinese groups). For example it took me some time to dig through lots of crap for quality information until I was satisfied that I had a basic understanding of the issues in Tibet. I'm still not exactly sure about the Tienanmen Square event (not just what happened, but the causes and effects etc.). I'm not in mainland China, but in Hong Kong, which there is no internet censorship at all (AFAIK), and I'm Chinese so I could read Chinese sources. Basically the "best of both worlds" for understanding these issues if you will, since I'm not hampered by internet censorship nor the language barrier. Yet the amount of irrational stigma on these issues and the extent at which both sides (the Chinese govt and the critics) are willing to exaggerate facts and zoom in on things that incite emotions makes it quite hard for me to conclusively believe in anything. I don't think not everybody spends the time to check things up, and probably just tends to believe in those who rants most loudly. (i.e. those "TANKS!! OMFG!!! TANKSS!!" [the objection here is that focusing on the tanks simply doesn't give an understanding of the full picture... which is much more complicated...])
So yeah, that's one of the reasons for censorship if you get what I mean. I personally don't think it solves the problem (it only hides the problem), but then at least I could understand it as a temporary measure to alleviate the cultural shock when the Chinese people find out about the outside world. But if internet censorship in China goes on for longer, say a decade or so, that would worry me.
YOU have bad logic (Score:2, Interesting)
It is if the only behavior that Bob cannot control is the dog mauling people.
Avoid telling people their logic is bad when yours is worse, like it was in your last post.
Re:bad logic (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Unless they are older than 65... (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't see where you're making the connection of "freedom of information" and "Freedom to violate copywright." They aren't the same at all.
Re:Unless they are older than 65... (Score:2, Interesting)
Censorship in US also (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Unless they are older than 65... (Score:5, Interesting)
China has always been a dictatorship. Even the so-called "nationalist government" was little better than a congregation of power-grubbing warlords. Democracy in Taiwan only works because it's so small. And that's where things are different from the US. Chinese prefer one ruler over multiple regional warlords. Because if history is any indication, multiple rulers means war and strife. And that has happened so many times in the past that the peaceful periods in between the wars are more than welcome. Democracy brings about instability. It is, by its very nature, unstable. It is undesirable, and the reason why the populace fled to the communists in the 30's and 40's. Communism promised stability.
Besides, democracy doesn't exist in Chinese thought. Confucian values dominate, and Confucious was very strict on following the hierarchy of the faily (grandparents, parents, older siblings, self, younger siblings, children, grandchildren, etc.). This comes from the still-living tradition of ancestral worship, and makes absolute sense in that framework. Democracy has no place in this ideology.
Re:Unless they are older than 65... (Score:2, Interesting)
Basically. There are two wars going on.
Fighting file sharing and fighting "that stuff nobody wants to touch". Atleast in sweden it's fairly obvious that there is a correlation. Many times the techniques used against for example child porn is used against file sharing. We've had so far two direct uses of child porn as a weapon against The Pirate Bay. The first use was to use the child porn filter (censorship) to block the entire site. Once The Pirate Bay was removed from the filter, some kind of threat was done and after that TPB did some cleanup thing or something and then there was nothing more heard about that.
Notice that the UK has just created a law that makes it illegal to possess violent porn? This means in reality that a filter will appear soon enough. If the UK already has a child porn filter, then that filter will be expanded to violent porn. Next step is to expand the definition of violent porn further, or expand the definition of child porn, and we pretty much have censorship. For example in sweden they have expanded child porn laws to encompass drawings. This means that any sites that contain drawings that could be judged child pornographic could be blocked by the child porn filter. This filter isn't actually law (yet) either, but the list cannot be shared publically. This means that you can't actually check out what's on those sites (if you could the list would be useless) but at the same time they've just essentially said "these sites are illegal, don't go there. No you can't know what's there. No i told you there's illegal stuff there" so you can't actually KNOW for sure if the site that's being blocked actually CONTAINS any child porn. In short: They can block whatever site they want and there's no way to know if there's a legitimate reason.
Bonzai tree growing sites for example. (based on a true story)
Basically. The same weapons that are used against "questionable material" will be used against file sharing, and vice versa. And supporters of strong laws against one of these, will support strong laws against the other, as they, in a way, both represent different aspects of censorship and control and they are related for that reason. There was an attack in a swedish newspaper last year on the pirate bay and they actually used the child porn weapon against them by claiming that "they hosted a pedofile site". What they were doing was essentially protecting a site that was under attack by a certain online individual who goes vigilante against sites that are liberal towards pedofiles. They allowed that site to be hosted on their servers. (no afaik the site had no illegal content) but the article made a point of pointing out the fact that they were hosting it. As if that, in itself, was a problem.
Your comment is misleading. (Score:3, Interesting)
That may be true as far as it goes, but it is misleading. The kind of "imminent unlawful action" that they refer to is riot, or some other unlawful action that endangers the public... not just something that might piss off an individual. Those are two very different things.
One oft-cited example of speech that might fall under this rule is yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater. That could likely put people in danger of life or limb. Deliberately "inciting riot" is another example. None of these things are even remotely like a T-shirt bearing offensive words.