Incommunicado
July 9, 2006 | Category: China, Internet censorship, Media
Something posted on or connected to this blog apparently ran afoul of China’s Great Firewall. Since I’m in China at the moment, I’ve been prevented from posting. Problem has been solved now, at least for the time being.
If the blockage is a result of content, I’m mystified. No mention of certain cults or famous June crackdowns anywhere on these pages.
Whatever the reason, the block is in keeping with China’s recent bout of information-control recidivism. China Digital Times—a China news blog that operates in the safety of Berkeley and for years has managed to slip through the Chinese internet filters—has been blocked for the past few months. Then there was the Google.cn controversy. Finally, a little over a week ago, rumors began that a draft law that would impose fines on Chinese media for reporting disasters without consulting the goverment might be extended to foreign media as well.
Hu Jintao’s government has been wrapping its fat little fingers ever more tightly around the Chinese information artery for a few years now, but attacks on English language media are new—at least for them.
China has been letting most English writing on China through the firewall ever since the New York Times reportedly huddled with Jiang Zemin in July 2001 at a Party retreat north of Beijing to get their own site unblocked. The assumption since then has been that English news just isn’t a big enough threat in a country where few read it, while goodwill from foreign media and bloggers eager to see their own work appear in China might be useful.
Not so, apparently.
The question now: What has changed?
None of the journalists and bloggers I’ve talked to have a convincing theory. The best—and least satisfying—explanation seems to an internal fight over media control in the shadows of the Party’s upper echelons, unrelated to anything that’s happened in the past few months. A Chinese acquaintance of mine, a sort of journalistic double-agent who studied at Berkeley, told me last year that the Party’s stodgy hardliners had taken control of media policy, apoplectic over the thrashing the government had taken with its opaque handling of SARS.
If that’s the case, foreigners writing in China can expect reason to be suffocated along with information in the forseeable future, the only strategy being to wait for the old crows to die.
2 Comments
Leave a Reply
-
Search
-
Categories
Blogroll
Other Links
-
Archives
-
Admin
About the Author
Josh Chin is a freelance journalist based in Beijing. He also once worked as a sous chef in a French restaurant in San Francisco. Neither job has been good for his health.Photos
| www.flickr.com |
This firewall thing reminds me YTHT, the most famous BBS in China closed by Chinese government two years ago. I don’t exactly know why they closed it. But I personally think it’s because this BBS opened by PKU students, who have caused some significant influence on that ‘89 things, can be posted by anybody with whatever they wanna express. That perhaps made government be afraid of another ‘89 waves’ . They wanted to prevent people especially students from hearing some adverse voice about China which may cause disturbance. Further, another BBS called WEIMING, which administrative leader is our president, was forbidden to poeple whose IP are not PKU’s . But I’m always thinking about what changes this measure has made. I mean, when you closed YTHT, a new BBS called LQQM has been opened; when you forbided people signing in WEIMING, IP proxy could also make them ramble on it. Nothing is changed but students’ discontentment to the government. A Chinese traditional proverb said “You make measure, I have countermeasure”. More stuff like such firewall thing and forcible policy would make more retroactions.
PS. it’s funny that we can’t visit google’s blogger but can post something on it. I only can suppose that Chinese government like MSN Spaces more than blogger.
I am not familiar with the BBS things cus I usually logged into them just as a visitor, and getting information not living in the fabric of bbs, but I know clearly what tingting mentioned. About one years ago, when wikipedia was blocked by Chinese government, I was still secretly cheerful that I can still get access to CDT in China mainland. in the early of this year, it finally was caught by the “censorship detector”.
I think Chinese government knew very well that whatever it do could not prevent those who eager to know from getting information. Just like those contermeasures tingting said. It is no use at least to students only makes them to think out more advanced cracking methods. hehe, good for China’s computer science education. I guess that government firmly know from the bottom of its heart that Chinese youth already live in the fabric of world information system. plus, 80% of the total information are written in english, Chinese government cannot block them all.
From a positive side, I think this censorship is just a temporary measure in China. to block sth is to “creating” a Macro-stable situation in the near 5 or 10 years (at most). And those who can still find the mirrorsites are a group of people who recive high education, maybe they are the most selfcontrolled and cannot be instigators without heavy think.
in addition, 89 waves cannot easily reappear nowadays, beside its drastic appearance, students in china become more utilitarian. 89 was a pronoun for idealism. Sad for that ? maybe it is a much better way for self-developing.