[Daniel ~]

Originally Posted by Kaitain

Rock, hard place.

If M$, Googl€ and ¥ahoo don't kowtow to the present Chinese administration's demands to censor the internet then they aren't allowed to operate. Since still 51% of all businesses operating in China must be Chinese-owned, then this can be forced by panicking the local franchisee.

If M$, Googl€ and ¥ahoo do submit to the Chinese government's demands, then they get heavy criticism from here.

My own personal experience of Chinese censorship is that there's a lot more bull faeces spouted about it than there is truth or evidence. Some high profile sites, such as the BBC and wikipedia are blocked, along with very overt references to certain subjects. (Actually, I think they're most sensible in clamping down on Falun Gong - it reads like an Easternised form of Scientology). However, I have read about the Tiananmen massacre in China without using a proxy, and about the occupation (ha, "liberation") of Tibet, and haven't (to my knowledge) been arrested or incarcerated for it.

The Chinese internet law states that internet cafés must keep records of who uses computers and which sites they visit. Every internet café I've used has systematically failed to do this.

Pornography is illegal, yet people happily sit in these cafés watching hardcore porn broadcast over the 'net. Over the last 18 months, Mei has never once seen a 'net bar raided for "subversive content".

Blogs and forums are monitored. In many ways, they're victims of their own success, as small blogs and fora are left pretty much untouched.

Dissident printed press is censored, but... it is here as well if we're being honest.

Internet censorship is Hu Jintao's cause célèbre, wrongly even in the opinion of elder statesmen from Jiang's rule. Hu has the ability to revolutionise and modernise China, democratise the regions (so as to end the corruption of lifelong regional dictators) and secure the governance of China back in Beijing, however he's wasting his time pissing in the wind over trifles like what bored teenagers write about in their bedrooms.

So people will be censored today, but either he'll wake up and address real problems, or his reign will collapse. Probably in about 10 years.

Fun times.

(Posting paused while Mei read it and made comments)

Then they SHOULD NOT operate. This is tyrants talking with tyrants and deciding how to deal with the peasants.

Revolution has a long history in China, I doubt they have forgotten how to bring one about... Wish we hadn't!