just one thought on this situation: why don't Chinese netizens protest loudly against such policies??
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> "why don't Chinese netizens protest loudly against such policies??"
Here in the West we take the right to protest quite for granted, as this post demonstrates :)
Not ragging on you at all, really, but who exactly would the Chinese protest to? How would they do so? And what would prevent them from being jailed or worse for their efforts?
Many Chinese forums are abuzz with complaints about the censorship. Many of these postings get removed or partially censored, but there are millions of people online complaining. This is certainly protest and anyone on the web in China can see it.
Although I'm not sure who would bother to do so...you can go to a government office and file a complaint without fear of being whisked off to a secret prison. Its if you're becoming a successful organizer of activists that you may end up in trouble.
What is puzzling to me is that although there are literally millions of Chinese people living abroad, apparently there's hardly any human-rights activism done by Chinese expats. I'd love to hear of counterexamples.
The West rails on China pretty relentlessly, sometimes with little provocation or justification. Nowadays China is like the boogeyman the government likes to pull out of their pocket on-demand - a lot like the Soviets back in the Cold War.
I know expats who are uncomfortable protesting openly against China because of this - to protest against China is to side with the West, and thereby tacitly support this sort of boogeyman tactic.
I don't follow this issue closely but it strikes me as ridiculous. Descent against China's human rights is not exactly something that many people think about all the time unless it affects them directly.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/8607769.stm
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/chinese-dissident-...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/24/nobelpeaceprize....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_dissidents#Chin...
Chinese dissidents seem to be in the news quite a lot to me, in fact it would seem part of the west's objections is due to the voices of some immigrant Chinese.
Unfortunately, the United States discredited itself in the minds of many young Chinese over here when Bush Jnr took the US, UK, and Australia into Iraq after "creating" evidence of WMD's.
I'm not sure I follow. What do the troubles of the U.S. have to do with the price of tea(or freedom) in China?
I don't see the point either. Besides, there are lots of Chinese immigrants in countries other than US.
It's curious how Bush-bashing gets automatic upvotes even when it's completely irrelevant (in this point HN isn't much different from reddit).
I'm writing from inside China.
The US has the moral high ground with regards not blocking Dropbox, Google Groups, Blogspot, etc wholesale within the country, but China has the moral high ground with regards not invading foreign countries simply because "when you can you should". As thiopental wrote: "It's futile to expect others to adhere to your moral standards (here: truthfulness) when they think you should clean up your own act first."
It's futile to expect others to adhere to your moral standards (here: truthfulness) when they think you should clean up your own act first.
Because a lot of the Chinese coming here are part (or aspire to be) of the ruling class & don't want to openly challenge the status-quo?
I've seen plenty
You must be young. A few years ago, a bunch of students did. In a central square in Beijing called Tienanmen square. The government ran them over with tanks. China is not the West.
Yet looking back to what happened during Vietnam demonstrations, it seems to me that it is quite clear that the same would also happen in the west.
once upon a time, they did:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tankman/
I always hoped that poor fellow ended up ok after that. My gut tells me that no one ever heard from him again. I don't think any other photograph defines courage as much as that one.
As for the business restrictions, what can you do? I do admire companies like Google that can take a moral stand against Beijing's censorship.
I gather that what happened to him has grown into something of an "urban legend" of sorts, with some saying he was summarily executed and others claiming that he lives peacefully in Tibet, etc.
"He lives peacefully in Tibet". Romantic wishful thinking. There's no peaceful Tibet anymore.
For me, it's probably the iconic picture of 20th century political action.
And here's a picture of 21st century political action:
