China Blocks Web Access to The New York Times After Article

I can remember when this was true of people in Taiwan, as I was living in Taiwan when it was still a dictatorship. But I also know people in China who have told me very explicitly, "If China had a free press, the Communist Party would only last a week." As information flows in, desire for freedom expands. The common people in China already do not enjoy "stability." By acknowledgement of the official Chinese press, instances of social instability (street protests and even riots) number in the many thousands each year, as peasants are displaced from their homes in land grabs by the local dictators, and as official corruption and party control of the police and the courts deny people recourse when their rights are violated. People I've met in China were embarrassed by the situation there already in 1982, the first time I was there, and they are losing hope that the current economic advancement is bringing with it political freedom. That is just what happened in Taiwan. People eventually gained the courage to demand their rights. I remember lots of people in both places who told me about their desire for freedom long, hard years before that freedom was won in Taiwan. Taiwan's example will point the way for people in China. They can have democracy and a free press if they stand up together.

Chinese social scientists are deeply frightened by the huge wealth disparities between the differing regions of China, which are greater than those that existed in Yugoslavia before Yugoslavia disintegrated. When you consider that barely more than half the population of China is even conversant in the standard national language,

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-03/07/content_5812838...

there is plainly a lot of possibility that China will repeat its historical pattern (experienced during my mother's childhood) of being split into regions not really united by a national government with effective control of all the territory now labeled as "China."

Mandarin use has increased in Hong Kong in recent years, but for economic reasons, as mainland visitors and businesses have flooded our small city.

No politicians would say outright that they want to eliminate a major language, but they could drastically reduce its usage by imposing specific restrictions. And not just on spoken Cantonese, but variations of written Chinese other than the official simplified characters.

I wish I could post an original article here with more details, but for some reason even the bilingual news sites don't cover this story in English. Wikipedia gives a pretty good summary: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Anti-Cantonese_regulations. The sources are all in Chinese (the only English link appears to be dead) but Google's translations weren't too bad.

The vast difference is 'Uncertainty Avoidance' - while Chines go with the flow and are able to accept Uncertainty, the Japanese will do nearly anything to avoid uncertainty. [J:92, C:30]

The second difference is in Competition/Cooperation [Masculinity/Feminity], (J:95, C:66]. Japanese society values hard work and competition and excelling in work far more than any other society.

God loves America, God loves Taiwan, he dose not love China.