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China Blocks Web Access to The New York Times After Article

nytimes.com

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Re: China Blocks Web Access to The New York Times After Article

#51

Post by wilfra »

tokenizer wrote: post #38
wilfra wrote: post #37

The truly sad part of this is most Chinese people wouldn't really mind the site being blocked because of this, nor even be all that surprised to learn what the article said. They don't get offended and angered by their government hiding things from them or abusing their power in the same way people in Western countries do, nor do they have a strong desire to learn the truth. They just accept this as the way things ar…

Not just in China, I'm sure if this was AlJazeera being blocked in the US the majority of Americans wouldn't care as well.

If the Obama Administration started regularly deleting tweets and removing things from Google search results, a pretty big chunk of the American people would be really pissed off about that - including the Supreme Court and most Attorneys General. And people would vigorously hunt down the information that was being hidden from them. Generally speaking, this is not the case in China. The people know this is being done, don't really care and don't go out of their way to learn the truth.

Ultimately I guess thats why they can get away with it. If this were something the average Chinese person got really angry about, it would never work. They'd have another revolution on their hands.

Re: China Blocks Web Access to The New York Times After Article

#52

Post by bduerst »

viviantan wrote: post #42
matthewrudy wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people here in Hong Kong don't regard themselves to be part of China. We have our own legal, visa, financial, and political system. Although Beijing occasionally steers the political system, censorship of any kind usually ends up in protest. I can't imagine what would happen if they tried to do censor the internet here.

Hong Kong's awesome. Love the food, love the people, love the incredible cityscape, love everything :) I heard that Beijing's trying to phase out the Cantonese language in Hong Kong. Has it been enforced?

Doubtful - last I checked they were trying to shift the financial center from Hong Kong to Shanghai.

Re: China Blocks Web Access to The New York Times After Article

#53

Post by kooshball »

codewright wrote: post #43
tokenizer wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just in China, I'm sure if this was AlJazeera being blocked in the US the majority of Americans wouldn't care as well.

That's not true at all. Not only are westerners rather proprietary about their freedoms, but most of the more politically engaged people I know read AlJazeera. One of the most conservative people I know, a PoliSci major, gets a large portion of his news from AlJ. If you took that away from him he'd hoist the black flag and start slitting throats the next morning.

>That's not true at all. Not only are westerners rather proprietary about their freedoms, but most of the more politically engaged people I know read AlJazeera.

Lets be realistic. Only a small portion of Americans follow AlJ. Just like I'm sure there are small proportion of Chinese that follow western news stories about china closely. The parent post was talking about average citizens not political engaged people.

Re: China Blocks Web Access to The New York Times After Article

#54

Post by evoxed »

greyboy wrote: post #45
jcromartie wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that they used their control over the information available to their "population" to retaliate against and block journalism that revealed information unfavorable to their internal narrative. I'd say that's the exact same tactic.

Then they could go down the road to the local coffee shop/home/mobile network and browse the internet, unblocked. No? They have options. I'm not sure the Chinese population have (such an easy) option to get around it.

Having several friends and relatives who are either attending or alumni... no, AFAIK it's pretty isolated for students without a car. Not that you can't get away, just that for most people leaving the campus isn't a daily activity. Also, I would be surprised if many of the nearby businesses had public wifi, unless there's a Starbucks I've missed.

Re: China Blocks Web Access to The New York Times After Article

#55

Post by evoxed »

woodhull wrote: post #40
wilfra wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dear god, get a VPN. I used strongvpn.com when I lived in China, worked great. There are many others.

Agreed. I think the set of people who read HN from China and do not have a VPN account would probably consist of just this one person.

Some may not have had the best luck. China has been actively trying to block VPN providers as well, and even StrongVPN was apparently affected earlier in the year. Actually I'm a little surprised that they haven't gone after them harder, even if it seems pointless (since I assume the vast majority of people using them are other expats).

Re: China Blocks Web Access to The New York Times After Article

#56

Post by [deleted] »

kooshball wrote: post #53
codewright wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true at all. Not only are westerners rather proprietary about their freedoms, but most of the more politically engaged people I know read AlJazeera. One of the most conservative people I know, a PoliSci major, gets a large portion of his news from AlJ. If you took that away from him he'd hoist the black flag and start slitting throats the next morning.

>That's not true at all. Not only are westerners rather proprietary about their freedoms, but most of the more politically engaged people I know read AlJazeera. Lets be realistic. Only a small portion of Americans follow AlJ. Just like I'm sure there are small proportion of Chinese that follow western news stories about china closely. The parent post was talking about average citizens not political engaged people.

[deleted]

Re: China Blocks Web Access to The New York Times After Article

#57

Post by spatten »

evoxed wrote: post #54
greyboy wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then they could go down the road to the local coffee shop/home/mobile network and browse the internet, unblocked. No? They have options. I'm not sure the Chinese population have (such an easy) option to get around it.

Having several friends and relatives who are either attending or alumni... no, AFAIK it's pretty isolated for students without a car. Not that you can't get away, just that for most people leaving the campus isn't a daily activity. Also, I would be surprised if many of the nearby businesses had public wifi, unless there's a Starbucks I've missed.

You don't even need to move a centimeter. All you need is an iPhone with 3G.

Or is that not allowed for students of the university? Sorry, I didn't read the full article.

Re: China Blocks Web Access to The New York Times After Article

#58

Post by JumpCrisscross »

wilfra wrote: post #37

The truly sad part of this is most Chinese people wouldn't really mind the site being blocked because of this, nor even be all that surprised to learn what the article said. They don't get offended and angered by their government hiding things from them or abusing their power in the same way people in Western countries do, nor do they have a strong desire to learn the truth. They just accept this as the way things ar…

An influential Dutch researcher in cultural economics identified, in 1981, a cultural dimension he terms "power distance", defined as "the extent to which the less powerful members of institutions and organisations within a country expect and accept that power is distributed unequally".

On PDI, scaled zero to one hundred, the U.S. scores 40 and China scores 80 (Russia scores 93).

Another dimension of significance is individualism, defined as "the degree of interdependence a society maintains among its members".

On IDV the U.S. scores 91 and China 20 (Russia scores 39).

China (and Russia) value social cohesion along implicitly informative, i.e. highly contextual, information flows. Leaders are given tremendous leeway to do their jobs and are to be questioned only in cases of extreme breach of obligation, i.e. when they threaten social harmony.

Note that Russians, in surveys, explicitly prefer social stability to free speech and a free media. Chinese find the legalistic contortions American politicians have to go through to do something generally favoured as awkward and wasteful. We see allowing elites to enrich themselves off market reforms to help them buy into the idea of change as distasteful whereas from a social utilitarian perspective it's strategically kosher.

Re: China Blocks Web Access to The New York Times After Article

#59

Post by d503 »

evoxed wrote: post #54
greyboy wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then they could go down the road to the local coffee shop/home/mobile network and browse the internet, unblocked. No? They have options. I'm not sure the Chinese population have (such an easy) option to get around it.

Having several friends and relatives who are either attending or alumni... no, AFAIK it's pretty isolated for students without a car. Not that you can't get away, just that for most people leaving the campus isn't a daily activity. Also, I would be surprised if many of the nearby businesses had public wifi, unless there's a Starbucks I've missed.

Having access to Google Maps... there's a Starbucks (and Panera) basically next door. Granted the area isn't all that walkable and "next door" is still kind of far without a car.

Re: China Blocks Web Access to The New York Times After Article

#60

Post by spinchange »

jcromartie wrote: post #27
danielweber wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Liberty is a private university, and its students choose to attend knowing full-well its policies. (And it blocks a lot more than WaPo.) FIRE and the Virginia ACLU both agree with Liberty's right to do so: http://thefire.org/article/10717.html You are, of course, free to criticize LU for its policies.

The point is that they used their control over the information available to their "population" to retaliate against and block journalism that revealed information unfavorable to their internal narrative. I'd say that's the exact same tactic.

It's not a good analogy because Liberty is a private, evangelical Christian school whose population is there by choice and China is a secular nation whose population is largely there by birth.

Those who make up Liberty's "population" are students attending by their own volition and are there specifically because they share the same cultural worldview as the institution -whatever its censorship tactics or however similar they may seem to China's.

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