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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

#81

Post by jcromartie »

spinchange wrote: post #60
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.

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 simi…

I understand this.

However, in both cases the censorship is an effort to save face with their supporters. China doesn't want its Communist supporters to know how rich their party leaders are (a big no-no in communism), and Liberty doesn't want its conservative students to know that they receive massive amounts of federal money (a big no-no in American right-wing anti-government-spending rhetoric).

Obviously it's a futile effort, but it's obvious that China and Liberty both had the idea of punishing journalists and suppressing information in the same way and for the same fundamental reasons.

Am I completely crazy, or does anybody else see the obvious parallel?

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

#82

Post by rohern »

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…

I think you are correct for the most part. When I lived in China, my experience was that most people felt the way that you describe or they simply were not going to embarrass their country by admitting to a foreigner that they felt that things were unjust in China. There were some persons with whom I became good enough friends for them to feel comfortable talking about politics, and among these people disappointment in their government was the dominant emotion. Some of them showed considerable shame about the treatment of Tibet, for example, though most of them had little concept of the history of the situation.

There is also a strong reaction among most Chinese people that while the Chinese themselves might not like the policies of the government, they will not stand to have an outsider -- good old waiguo guizi ("foreign devil") -- tell them their business nor criticize their country. They will handle their own problems, thank you very much. This is an attitude one finds no shortage of in the United States.

You also need to understand the general ignorance of the wider world among the populace in China.

There is the stereotypical case: Shanghai is a major tourist destination inside China. One of the many attractions in Shanghai are all the weird looking foreigners! Walk down the Bund, the main boardwalk, and you'll be stopped every ten meters for a picture. A friend of mine with a red beard was a huge hit.

Even university teachers were misinformed about the world. I would sometimes casually question them, having traveled a lot myself, on what they thought the world was like. They were certain that Beijing was as advanced as any other city in the world. Tokyo and New York were basically the same as any big city in China. They were not aware how strange the pollution is to outsiders. They did not know that in most large cities in other countries, you can see the sky.

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

#83

Post by jcromartie »

spinchange wrote: post #65
evoxed wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The thing is, attendance at Liberty is non-compulsory. I'm sure it does feel like China to the more worldly of its student body, but there is no law compelling them to attend there. (Maybe family is, but that's different story ;) I think it is very inaccurate to portray the environment and "conditions" at Liberty as a microcosm of the US, let alone as an apt comparison to the people of China being kept in the dark by…

It is inaccurate to call it a "microcosm". That's why I noted the error and corrected my post 4 hours ago.

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

#85

Post by seanmcdirmid »

codyZ wrote: post #76

I'm not sure what's worse: People thinking that Chinese nationals do not care, that they are unaware, or perhaps both. Most of the people that I know in China, who are at all, remotely informed about anything knows not to get their news from regular news channels. Particularly anyone skilled enough to setup a Weibo account. Within minutes, most news gets out anyways via Weibo (Chinese Twitter)... In fact it was two o…

Its hard to make generalizations about 1.2 billion people from 3 or 4 data points. It is even harder if these are educated middle class Chinese in a first-tier city like Beijing or Shanghai. I'm sure this topic was shutdown on Weibo already, and you would have to be in a special circle to understand any code used to talk about the subject.

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

#86

Post by jcromartie »

snowwrestler wrote: post #67
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.

I block Hacker News in my hosts file at work to maintain productivity, so I guess I'm no better than China either.

You're not blocking Hacker News in a shallow attempt to keep embarrassing information from supporters and punish those who disclose it.

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

#88

Post by JumpCrisscross »

cs702 wrote: post #73
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Latest PDI and IDV figures: http://www.clearlycultural.com/geert-hofstede-cultural-dimen...

The full data are available on Hofstede's site, too

http://geert-hofstede.com/countries.html

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

#89

Post by jarek »

nicholas_tuzzio wrote: post #71
ihsw wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They already do it with torrent websites and nobody cares, how much of a stretch is other politically inconvenient sites being unilaterally blocked?

Said torrenting sites are by and large against the laws of the US and many other nations and shouldn't be compared to the NYT.

Defaming sovereign leaders is against the laws of many other nations - laws as popular as Anglo-Saxon copyright laws.

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

#90

Post by harlanlewis »

jseliger wrote: post #75
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>Note that Russians, in surveys, explicitly prefer social stability to free speech and a free media. I wonder how much this is informed by Russians being conditioned by their media to "prefer social stability to free speech and a free media."

American individualism is hardly a natural born trait, we are all influenced by our environment. What people value and how they act in the interest of those values is what culture is all about.
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