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China's bloggers, filmmakers feel chill of internet crackdown

reuters.com

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Re: China's bloggers, filmmakers feel chill of internet crackdown

#91

Post by coldtea »

em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #57
coldtea wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Newbie question but what is China's rationale for their internet censorship and firewall? What are they afraid of? Aside from the CCP wanting to maintain its control in-land, there's this little real issue, that 80% the internet is mostly controlled from a handful of companies, all in the hands of foreign nationals (who are all "patriotic" and all reside in countries other than China). That is, things like search,…

It is not just the foreign aspect. China government will shut down private Chinese actors who voice opinions or provide an independent platform which goes against the party line.

Sure, but my point was more about why any, even a totally democratic national government, might want to control those things, not just China.

Re: China's bloggers, filmmakers feel chill of internet crackdown

#92

Post by 68c12c16 »

jxramos wrote: post #80
girzel wrote: post #58

I work in Chinese publishing, and the same thing is absolutely happening there. Books are being pulled off the shelves, publishers are being warned away from anything potentially controversial. The basic attitude is, "Don't risk it", and it's absolutely deadly to creativity and culture. On the one hand, the central government is trying to encourage Chinese culture to "Go Out" and wow the world. On the other, it is ab…

This is very concerning. I'm curious how all this is delivered as far as the actions of officials to enact this behavior in general populace. How exactly do they pull it off? Are there new strategies employed or do they leverage years of chilling requests and punishments for people to generally know better not to cross the government? Do people personally know political prisoners and what not or see punished individu…

One of the most well-known political prisoners in the country is Xiaobo Liu, who was awarded a Nobel Peace prize in 2010. He has been a long time dissident there. He participated in the Tiananmen Square protest in 1989 and led the drafting of the Charter 08 (in brief, one can think of Charter 08 as some document in a similar strain as Magna Carta to early Britain -- but of course, this document was easily ignored by the Chinese government...)

Xiaobo Liu has been sent to jail for multiple times in the past 30 years, and was just released on a medical parole from his latest imprisonment -- as a result of being diagnosed with terminal liver cancer -- 10 days ago.

Re: China's bloggers, filmmakers feel chill of internet crackdown

#93

Post by 68c12c16 »

girzel wrote: post #82
jxramos wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very concerning. I'm curious how all this is delivered as far as the actions of officials to enact this behavior in general populace. How exactly do they pull it off? Are there new strategies employed or do they leverage years of chilling requests and punishments for people to generally know better not to cross the government? Do people personally know political prisoners and what not or see punished individu…

The framework of control has been in place for a long time, it's just that they've been tightening down the (already-in-place) screws over the past couple of years. The basic mechanism is control of ISBNs: the supply of these numbers is tightly restricted, and a book cannot be published without them. A fixed number of state-owned publishers is able to issue ISBNs, though privately-owned publishing companies can buy t…

Well, I feel for any form of censorship, the essence is to disrupt the communication among the people in the society. The goal of this disruption is to prevent a formation of synchronization in the population. It could be carried out on all kinds of communication media and for all their different stages.

A system of censorship could be much easily implemented when one has the visibility over the entire society and the access to all its social resources. Before the age of internet, their focus was on book/newspaper publishing; and in our current age of internet, the focus was on internet as well as book/newspaper publishing.

And in terms of their practical methods, you can just imagine what you would do when you want to disrupt the information flow and when you have the absolute control of every sub-system in a society (i.e. the courts, the police, all the newspapers/websites/tv channels/radio stations, as well as the ability of not needing to worry about your livelihood when you do not work on anything else...)

It's almost an impregnable castle, as long as it does not crumble from inside the ruling system itself...

Re: China's bloggers, filmmakers feel chill of internet crackdown

#94

Post by KaoruAoiShiho »

em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #84
KaoruAoiShiho wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's just a difference in perspective, but I see all these problems and I think, wow, China has come so far DESPITE all these issues, yet there is so much more low hanging fruit to be picked and so much more potential to be obtained. All these problems seem incredibly manageable, and many are being fixed rapidly, and with their resolution growth will speed up even faster.

I don't disagree with that. But I do think the lack of free speech/press/elections is a basic foundational problem which will hamper progress on the rest of these problems.

It probably does hamper progress, but China never had free speech since the cultural revolution so it's not like things can get worse, the free speech situation is still much improved from the 70s and the 90s (the 80s were a rare period of relatively free speech). So any political changes will be yet another turbo boost on the economy.

Re: China's bloggers, filmmakers feel chill of internet crackdown

#95

Post by KaoruAoiShiho »

woodandsteel wrote: post #86
KaoruAoiShiho wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's just a difference in perspective, but I see all these problems and I think, wow, China has come so far DESPITE all these issues, yet there is so much more low hanging fruit to be picked and so much more potential to be obtained. All these problems seem incredibly manageable, and many are being fixed rapidly, and with their resolution growth will speed up even faster.

The question is not how far China has come in recent decades, it is what is going to happen in the future. You seem to be taking the position that it is absolutely impossible that China will get in serious trouble and wind up going backwards.

Why would it? Aside from a black swan like a war or a super disease or something. The common list of problems I see are all problems that China always had and like I said, still grew despite those problems. Every single problem I see is becoming less problematic and any tiny bit of progress on them are tailwinds for growth.

Re: China's bloggers, filmmakers feel chill of internet crackdown

#96

Post by asdfologist »

woodandsteel wrote: post #89

Xi Jinping is pushing massive censorship because he thinks it is good for China, but I think that is a big mistake. History has shown that when you don't have open, public debate on important issues, the government becomes close-minded and makes poor decisions. Yes, democracy is messy, but the alternatives are worse. Part of the problem here is that China is still running according to Confucianism, which was a wonder…

No, Xi Jinping is pushing massive censorship because he thinks it is good for Xi Jinping.

Re: China's bloggers, filmmakers feel chill of internet crackdown

#97

Post by siidooloo »

mistermann wrote: post #63
netcan wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn’t mean that literally. The biggest idea that the CCP specifically wants kept out of China is open elections. Anti-nationalism is not really on the radar, and the CCP itself has some anti-nationalist roots from its Marxist heritage.

Anti-nationalism is synonymous with Nazism with many people in the west, and the west sets many cultural trends, I think it is perfectly reasonable for Chinese leadership to be cautious.

? How is anti-nationalism synonymous with Nazism? The Nazis were the exact opposite. They were ultra-nationalists.

Re: China's bloggers, filmmakers feel chill of internet crackdown

#98

Post by seanmcdirmid »

xiaoma wrote: post #48
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Singapore isn't that bad. Regardless, I'm not sure what Taiwan is going to save us from.

Singapore's not that bad as long as you're not gay (which is illegal and punishable by a prison term), a political activist for the opposition party, too independent thinking or otherwise labeled as undesirable by the government.

Oh, sure, totally. But they aren't as bad as the PRC.

Re: China's bloggers, filmmakers feel chill of internet crackdown

#99

Post by [deleted] »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #33
kristofferR wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweden isn't socialist at all, it's a social democracy. Social democracies do not aim at making means of production a common good.

By that token, china isn't socialist at all. It is an autocratic corporatist state that relies heavily on capitalism.

[deleted]

Re: China's bloggers, filmmakers feel chill of internet crackdown

#100

Post by dilemma »

JPKab wrote: post #45
mtgx wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's almost like having a single political party is a bad thing for a society or something.

Being limited to only 2 parties is fucking awful. I can't imagine how bad the USA would be if we were suddenly forced to just have one.

It would be exactly the same.
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