4 ms·

Search Baidu for "Tiananmen square massacre" - guess how many results?

20 points by chrisb 17y ago

chrischen 17y ago
I wish apple would stop making stuff in China. Not only have I replaced 3 Iphones because of defects, I'm also legitimizing Chinas government by doing business with them. On the otherhand it does help the people.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- pegobry 17y ago
  Let's be realistic here for a second. If Apple manufactured in the US, not only would its products be twice as expensive, I'm pretty sure they would be equally, if not more shoddy. GM and Chrysler, after all, aren't exactly known for the reliability of their products or the quality of their manufacturing... Companies that have had shoddy products coming out of China are companies that don't pay attention to their supply chain -- and Apple is fanatical about supply chain management. Furthermore, the ethical problem of manufacturing in China isn't the same as that of practicing censorship in China. If tomorrow Western companies got out of China, besides unleashing an economic apocalypse that would make the last two years look like a rainy picnic, China wouldn't suddenly turn into Sweden. It would turn into Cuba, or North Korea. An angrier, more nuclear-armed North Korea. Nobody would win in this scenario, least of all the Chinese citizens we all want to eventually live in a prosperous, democratic country.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  Apple and everybody else. Manufacturing in China is the norm, not the exception. If everything that was made in China would disappear from the Western hemisphere society would collapse.
  - chrisb 17y ago
    Doubt it. Although it might take a few months to get sorted out. There are many other places to get goods manufactured, and the free market is extremely good at sorting out problems like this.
  - bad_user 17y ago
    They can always move those factories to India or Eastern Europe. And the biggest reason for outsourcing labor is for reducing the costs involved ... that's why I don't get why aren't they working on more advanced industrial robots and why is Japan the only one having breakthroughs in this regard ... probably because of unions, but what's worse ... outsourcing work or fully automated factories in your own country (that creates more jobs for engineers)? IMHO, it's the former. And please note that with this statement I'm probably shooting myself in the foot ... since working on outsourced projects is at times my only source of income :)
    - pavs 17y ago
      >They can always move those factories to India or Eastern Europe. I think there is a popular misconception that most companies prefer China simple because they are cheap and you can easily replace them with x country which also has cheap labor. There are several advantage of doing business in China besides cheap (skilled) labor. They have better infrastructure than most third world country with cheap labor I can think of. I don't know much about eastern Europe and what it bring to the table besides cheap labor. But from my experience I can tell you India (or any south-east asian country) is not an alternative to the manufacturing goods produced in China. There is some kind of international trade pact (no reference handy at the moment) that forces most western nations to divide imports of manufactured goods from third world countries. If this was not the case - I have little doubt that most western countries would have relied on China, even more than it already does. Perhaps exclusively.
      - bad_user 17y ago
        > They have better infrastructure than most third world country with cheap labor I can think of. That's probably true, but this is a chicken&egg problem, isn't it ... if the westerners would outsource to India / Eastern Europe ... with economic growth their infrastructure will be better and better. And cheap labor is the primary reason ... you take that away and I don't think anything else will matter. Because of its economic growth, costs in China will rise, it's only a matter of time.
- pavs 17y ago
  Can you explain why only Apple, when overwhelmingly majority of american consumer goods are manufactured/assembled in China? Just to take Apple's example (they also rely on other asian countries for certain parts, ie. Korea & Taiwan comes to my mind right now), if they were to not rely on China to assemble/manufacture their products Apple products would have been even more expensive. Also your iphone being defective has nothing to do with the fact that they were manufactured in China. While China made goods tends to be of low quality. High end computer gadgets like apple/dell goes through a certain high standard of manufacturing than your typical Chinese stuff. Companies tends to have a more hands-on approach to maintaining a certain standard and quality, which is generally missing in other chinese made products. The problem is not that apple / google / MSFT invests and does business in China. The problem is that our government have legitimized Chinese style of government (a unique variant of communism), regardless how much they criticize on the side. Our government does not confront Chinese government directly. Its already too late to do anything now - we are too connected with their economy. If they go down - we go down, if we go down - they go down too. The government can't do anything or the companies can't do anything without shooting their own leg. The only way we could pressure Chinese government is to start some kind of mass movement where we refuse to buy products manufactured in China (or similar government with questionable human-right records). Its easier said than done, but the change has to come from us.
  - allyt 17y ago
    the change has to come from us Why? Do you have any other historical examples of consumers from one country pressuring another country to reform its government through boycott? And why China? China has a significantly more organized and helpful government than most countries in the region (say, the ones in which most of your clothes are made, or where some of the raw materials for those gadgets are mined). But most importantly, why do you feel the need, as an American consumer, to act on the relationship between China and its citizens?
    - pavs 17y ago
      >Why? Do you have any other historical examples of consumers from one country pressuring another country to reform its government through boycott? I don't know of any example but do you really need a precedence to follow for everything or can you not take extraordinary steps to counter extraordinary circumstances? >And why China? China has a significantly more organized and helpful government than most countries in the region (say, the ones in which most of your clothes are made, or where some of the raw materials for those gadgets are mined). The subject of this thread is China's human-rights record. More on next question. >But most importantly, why do you feel the need, as an American consumer, to act on the relationship between China and its citizens? You can't have double standard in reference to human rights. You (government, not you as in _you_) can't cry foul about communism and human rights record and use it as a reason to sanction some countries and even use it as (one of the) reasons to go to war at the same time blissfully do business with China. As far as human rights go, China is one of the worst offenders out there, and by human-rights I don't only mean not being able to search the internet unrestricted. If you say something against the government or try to start a movement, they will hunt you down and kill you. You can't even talk about those killings they will hunt you down and kill you. You don't hear about it much because they do a very good job of keeping things tight - do some digging around and you will see what I am talking about. You can start from here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_China http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_China If any other country did what China does, there would have been massive sanctions if not war. But of course, no one wants to fight with a nuclear-powered military strong nation.
chrisb 17y ago
But surprisingly it doesn't ban you from searching on this, unlike searching for "google.blogspot.com": http://www.baidu.com/s?wd=google.blogspot.com http://www.baidu.com/s?wd=google.blogspot.com Edit: I realise this has been pointed out before, but I find it curious that "google.blogspot.com" gets you banned, but "Tiananmen square massacre" doesn't.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  I think you should be taking in to account the IP address you're searching from as well as the language that you are searching in. My guess is that searching from within China and in Chinese would yield different results. Maybe someone on the other side of the great firewall could run a test ? On second thoughts, maybe better not...
  - chrischen 17y ago
    I have a friend vacationing in china. Searching baidu for google.blogspot.com does get you banned. Not sure about other stuff though.
  - chrisb 17y ago
    I doubt that the IP address I'm searching from has much to do with it, as it they won't show any more results to me (who isn't in China), presumably they won't show any more results to someone who is in China. Although I agree the language of the search term might have an effect. If anyone can try this in Chinese I'd be interested in the result.
    - jacquesm 17y ago
      > presumably they won't show any more results to someone who is in China. But they might show different results or even less of them.
      - chrisb 17y ago
        Agreed. Contrasted with the > 1,000,000 results on google.com And curiously, google.cn gives ~42,000 results - and they still say they are censoring (据当地法律法规和政策，部分搜索结果未予显示。 = According to local laws, regulations and policies, some search results are not shown.)
rmoriz 17y ago
Search for "Falun Gong" and baidu will ignore all your future request for a period! horrible!
- dchest 17y ago
  This is not Baidu's work, it's the Firewall. Add ?falun+gong to any request to a server located in China and you'll be banned from it for a few minutes, e.g. http://search.news.cn/language/search.jspa?id=en&t=1&t1=0&ss=&ct=&n1=falun+gong http://search.news.cn/language/search.jspa?id=en&t=1&#38... This has been discussed a few days ago on HN.
  - jambo 17y ago
    Image search for Tank Man does this, too. I get a "Connection Reset" error. http://image.baidu.com/i?tn=baiduimage&ct=201326592&cl=2&lm=-1&fr=&pv=&ic=0&z=0&word=tank+man&s=0 http://image.baidu.com/i?tn=baiduimage&ct=201326592&... Edit: Searching for 王維林 returns results, if useless ones. http://image.baidu.com/i?tn=baiduimage&ct=201326592&cl=2&lm=-1&fr=&pv=&ic=0&z=0&word=%CD%F5%BES%C1%D6+&s=0 http://image.baidu.com/i?tn=baiduimage&ct=201326592&... Testing this from outside China.
    - charltones 17y ago
      When I clicked on the image search link you gave above, amongst the images of pop stars I got this gem: http://pic.yupoo.com/ifrency/12778789e82f/ts51s6si.jpg http://pic.yupoo.com/ifrency/12778789e82f/ts51s6si.jpg
  - chrisb 17y ago
    But not here: http://news.cn/?falun+gong http://news.cn/?falun+gong And apparently its IP address is in China.
    - pavs 17y ago
      Its not returning a search result - just sending you back to home page. You just added Falun+gong at the end of the address - you are not doing any search request. Here I tried in the english version of the same page. Got blocked: http://search.news.cn/language/search.jspa?id=en&t=1&t1=0&ss=&ct=&n1=falun+gong http://search.news.cn/language/search.jspa?id=en&t=1&#38...
motters 17y ago
We need to be careful that this is not also the fate of the internet in the west.
- ytinas 17y ago
  Assuming it isn't already to some extent. This point should be made louder and more often. It's easy to see China as some big evil empire but there aren't many governments that haven't committed major atrocities.
CalmQuiet 17y ago
And who would dare even enter such a search result from an ISP in China? One of the "search results" would probably not appear on your screen... but in some sort of government database of "suspected dissidents." A government-run search engine is a must for any totalitarian regime.
- chrischen 17y ago
  When I went to china I did it all the time to see what was banned and what wasn't. As far as I can tell, nothing has happened to my relatives. Also if you were a dissident you'd probably be smart enoguh to use an encrypted connection anyways.
raphar 17y ago
Have you make the search in CHINESE?
discodancer 17y ago
Search for "square massacre" and you'll get results for Tiananmen square massacre :)
Entlin 17y ago
Of course searching in english is not going to prove anything. Here is a Baidu search in chinese for "Tiananmen Square protests": http://www.baidu.com/s?wd=%C1%F9%CB%C4%CA%C2%BC%FE http://www.baidu.com/s?wd=%C1%F9%CB%C4%CA%C2%BC%FE It says "31 hits" (but it's actually 23) And here is a Baidu search for "Tiananmen Square": http://www.baidu.com/s?wd=%CC%EC%B0%B2%E9T%8FV%88%F6 http://www.baidu.com/s?wd=%CC%EC%B0%B2%E9T%8FV%88%F6 - 7.7 million hits. You can translate keywords easily by using the wikipedia interlanguage links, which is what I did. I bet that every single one of those 23 hits was tweaked and tuned to make the event sound like an irrelevant, small event in chinese history.
- chrischen 17y ago
  Not that Most Chinese would Even care. I think most of them are worried about getting their children into university so they can lead a better life. Stuff like politics is of little concern. Governments censorship efforts are pretty futile, and the only reason there isn't revolt is because it's good enough for people to not care. I mean we care because most of us have cushy jobs, or have already made it in a developed country, so we have time to think about philosphy and politics. But honestly it's no big deal, because their censorship is a meaningless effort. When I went to china no one had false understanding of the living conditions in china comapred to the USA, and most people were enjoying what they had to care. With the Internet, telephone, mail, it really becomes impossible to censor. It's just a facade to make the government feel like it's in control.
cmars232 17y ago
I wouldn't click on the results with anything but Lynx.

20 points by chrisb 17y ago

I wish apple would stop making stuff in China. Not only have I replaced 3 Iphones because of defects, I'm also legitimizing Chinas government by doing business with them. On the otherhand it does help the people.

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
pegobry 17y ago
Let's be realistic here for a second. If Apple manufactured in the US, not only would its products be twice as expensive, I'm pretty sure they would be equally, if not more shoddy. GM and Chrysler, after all, aren't exactly known for the reliability of their products or the quality of their manufacturing... Companies that have had shoddy products coming out of China are companies that don't pay attention to their supply chain -- and Apple is fanatical about supply chain management. Furthermore, the ethical problem of manufacturing in China isn't the same as that of practicing censorship in China. If tomorrow Western companies got out of China, besides unleashing an economic apocalypse that would make the last two years look like a rainy picnic, China wouldn't suddenly turn into Sweden. It would turn into Cuba, or North Korea. An angrier, more nuclear-armed North Korea. Nobody would win in this scenario, least of all the Chinese citizens we all want to eventually live in a prosperous, democratic country.
jacquesm 17y ago
Apple and everybody else. Manufacturing in China is the norm, not the exception. If everything that was made in China would disappear from the Western hemisphere society would collapse.
- chrisb 17y ago
  Doubt it. Although it might take a few months to get sorted out. There are many other places to get goods manufactured, and the free market is extremely good at sorting out problems like this.
- bad_user 17y ago
  They can always move those factories to India or Eastern Europe. And the biggest reason for outsourcing labor is for reducing the costs involved ... that's why I don't get why aren't they working on more advanced industrial robots and why is Japan the only one having breakthroughs in this regard ... probably because of unions, but what's worse ... outsourcing work or fully automated factories in your own country (that creates more jobs for engineers)? IMHO, it's the former. And please note that with this statement I'm probably shooting myself in the foot ... since working on outsourced projects is at times my only source of income :)
  - pavs 17y ago
    >They can always move those factories to India or Eastern Europe. I think there is a popular misconception that most companies prefer China simple because they are cheap and you can easily replace them with x country which also has cheap labor. There are several advantage of doing business in China besides cheap (skilled) labor. They have better infrastructure than most third world country with cheap labor I can think of. I don't know much about eastern Europe and what it bring to the table besides cheap labor. But from my experience I can tell you India (or any south-east asian country) is not an alternative to the manufacturing goods produced in China. There is some kind of international trade pact (no reference handy at the moment) that forces most western nations to divide imports of manufactured goods from third world countries. If this was not the case - I have little doubt that most western countries would have relied on China, even more than it already does. Perhaps exclusively.
    - bad_user 17y ago
      > They have better infrastructure than most third world country with cheap labor I can think of. That's probably true, but this is a chicken&egg problem, isn't it ... if the westerners would outsource to India / Eastern Europe ... with economic growth their infrastructure will be better and better. And cheap labor is the primary reason ... you take that away and I don't think anything else will matter. Because of its economic growth, costs in China will rise, it's only a matter of time.
pavs 17y ago
Can you explain why only Apple, when overwhelmingly majority of american consumer goods are manufactured/assembled in China? Just to take Apple's example (they also rely on other asian countries for certain parts, ie. Korea & Taiwan comes to my mind right now), if they were to not rely on China to assemble/manufacture their products Apple products would have been even more expensive. Also your iphone being defective has nothing to do with the fact that they were manufactured in China. While China made goods tends to be of low quality. High end computer gadgets like apple/dell goes through a certain high standard of manufacturing than your typical Chinese stuff. Companies tends to have a more hands-on approach to maintaining a certain standard and quality, which is generally missing in other chinese made products. The problem is not that apple / google / MSFT invests and does business in China. The problem is that our government have legitimized Chinese style of government (a unique variant of communism), regardless how much they criticize on the side. Our government does not confront Chinese government directly. Its already too late to do anything now - we are too connected with their economy. If they go down - we go down, if we go down - they go down too. The government can't do anything or the companies can't do anything without shooting their own leg. The only way we could pressure Chinese government is to start some kind of mass movement where we refuse to buy products manufactured in China (or similar government with questionable human-right records). Its easier said than done, but the change has to come from us.
- allyt 17y ago
  the change has to come from us Why? Do you have any other historical examples of consumers from one country pressuring another country to reform its government through boycott? And why China? China has a significantly more organized and helpful government than most countries in the region (say, the ones in which most of your clothes are made, or where some of the raw materials for those gadgets are mined). But most importantly, why do you feel the need, as an American consumer, to act on the relationship between China and its citizens?
  - pavs 17y ago
    >Why? Do you have any other historical examples of consumers from one country pressuring another country to reform its government through boycott? I don't know of any example but do you really need a precedence to follow for everything or can you not take extraordinary steps to counter extraordinary circumstances? >And why China? China has a significantly more organized and helpful government than most countries in the region (say, the ones in which most of your clothes are made, or where some of the raw materials for those gadgets are mined). The subject of this thread is China's human-rights record. More on next question. >But most importantly, why do you feel the need, as an American consumer, to act on the relationship between China and its citizens? You can't have double standard in reference to human rights. You (government, not you as in _you_) can't cry foul about communism and human rights record and use it as a reason to sanction some countries and even use it as (one of the) reasons to go to war at the same time blissfully do business with China. As far as human rights go, China is one of the worst offenders out there, and by human-rights I don't only mean not being able to search the internet unrestricted. If you say something against the government or try to start a movement, they will hunt you down and kill you. You can't even talk about those killings they will hunt you down and kill you. You don't hear about it much because they do a very good job of keeping things tight - do some digging around and you will see what I am talking about. You can start from here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_China http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_China If any other country did what China does, there would have been massive sanctions if not war. But of course, no one wants to fight with a nuclear-powered military strong nation.

chrisb 17y ago

But surprisingly it doesn't ban you from searching on this, unlike searching for "google.blogspot.com": http://www.baidu.com/s?wd=google.blogspot.com http://www.baidu.com/s?wd=google.blogspot.com Edit: I realise this has been pointed out before, but I find it curious that "google.blogspot.com" gets you banned, but "Tiananmen square massacre" doesn't.

jacquesm 17y ago
I think you should be taking in to account the IP address you're searching from as well as the language that you are searching in. My guess is that searching from within China and in Chinese would yield different results. Maybe someone on the other side of the great firewall could run a test ? On second thoughts, maybe better not...
- chrischen 17y ago
  I have a friend vacationing in china. Searching baidu for google.blogspot.com does get you banned. Not sure about other stuff though.
- chrisb 17y ago
  I doubt that the IP address I'm searching from has much to do with it, as it they won't show any more results to me (who isn't in China), presumably they won't show any more results to someone who is in China. Although I agree the language of the search term might have an effect. If anyone can try this in Chinese I'd be interested in the result.
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    > presumably they won't show any more results to someone who is in China. But they might show different results or even less of them.
    - chrisb 17y ago
      Agreed. Contrasted with the > 1,000,000 results on google.com And curiously, google.cn gives ~42,000 results - and they still say they are censoring (据当地法律法规和政策，部分搜索结果未予显示。 = According to local laws, regulations and policies, some search results are not shown.)

rmoriz 17y ago

Search for "Falun Gong" and baidu will ignore all your future request for a period! horrible!

dchest 17y ago
This is not Baidu's work, it's the Firewall. Add ?falun+gong to any request to a server located in China and you'll be banned from it for a few minutes, e.g. http://search.news.cn/language/search.jspa?id=en&t=1&t1=0&ss=&ct=&n1=falun+gong http://search.news.cn/language/search.jspa?id=en&t=1&#38... This has been discussed a few days ago on HN.
- jambo 17y ago
  Image search for Tank Man does this, too. I get a "Connection Reset" error. http://image.baidu.com/i?tn=baiduimage&ct=201326592&cl=2&lm=-1&fr=&pv=&ic=0&z=0&word=tank+man&s=0 http://image.baidu.com/i?tn=baiduimage&ct=201326592&... Edit: Searching for 王維林 returns results, if useless ones. http://image.baidu.com/i?tn=baiduimage&ct=201326592&cl=2&lm=-1&fr=&pv=&ic=0&z=0&word=%CD%F5%BES%C1%D6+&s=0 http://image.baidu.com/i?tn=baiduimage&ct=201326592&... Testing this from outside China.
  - charltones 17y ago
    When I clicked on the image search link you gave above, amongst the images of pop stars I got this gem: http://pic.yupoo.com/ifrency/12778789e82f/ts51s6si.jpg http://pic.yupoo.com/ifrency/12778789e82f/ts51s6si.jpg
- chrisb 17y ago
  But not here: http://news.cn/?falun+gong http://news.cn/?falun+gong And apparently its IP address is in China.
  - pavs 17y ago
    Its not returning a search result - just sending you back to home page. You just added Falun+gong at the end of the address - you are not doing any search request. Here I tried in the english version of the same page. Got blocked: http://search.news.cn/language/search.jspa?id=en&t=1&t1=0&ss=&ct=&n1=falun+gong http://search.news.cn/language/search.jspa?id=en&t=1&#38...

motters 17y ago

We need to be careful that this is not also the fate of the internet in the west.

ytinas 17y ago
Assuming it isn't already to some extent. This point should be made louder and more often. It's easy to see China as some big evil empire but there aren't many governments that haven't committed major atrocities.

CalmQuiet 17y ago

And who would dare even enter such a search result from an ISP in China? One of the "search results" would probably not appear on your screen... but in some sort of government database of "suspected dissidents." A government-run search engine is a must for any totalitarian regime.

chrischen 17y ago
When I went to china I did it all the time to see what was banned and what wasn't. As far as I can tell, nothing has happened to my relatives. Also if you were a dissident you'd probably be smart enoguh to use an encrypted connection anyways.

raphar 17y ago

Have you make the search in CHINESE?

discodancer 17y ago

Search for "square massacre" and you'll get results for Tiananmen square massacre :)

Entlin 17y ago

Of course searching in english is not going to prove anything. Here is a Baidu search in chinese for "Tiananmen Square protests": http://www.baidu.com/s?wd=%C1%F9%CB%C4%CA%C2%BC%FE http://www.baidu.com/s?wd=%C1%F9%CB%C4%CA%C2%BC%FE It says "31 hits" (but it's actually 23) And here is a Baidu search for "Tiananmen Square": http://www.baidu.com/s?wd=%CC%EC%B0%B2%E9T%8FV%88%F6 http://www.baidu.com/s?wd=%CC%EC%B0%B2%E9T%8FV%88%F6 - 7.7 million hits. You can translate keywords easily by using the wikipedia interlanguage links, which is what I did. I bet that every single one of those 23 hits was tweaked and tuned to make the event sound like an irrelevant, small event in chinese history.

chrischen 17y ago
Not that Most Chinese would Even care. I think most of them are worried about getting their children into university so they can lead a better life. Stuff like politics is of little concern. Governments censorship efforts are pretty futile, and the only reason there isn't revolt is because it's good enough for people to not care. I mean we care because most of us have cushy jobs, or have already made it in a developed country, so we have time to think about philosphy and politics. But honestly it's no big deal, because their censorship is a meaningless effort. When I went to china no one had false understanding of the living conditions in china comapred to the USA, and most people were enjoying what they had to care. With the Internet, telephone, mail, it really becomes impossible to censor. It's just a facade to make the government feel like it's in control.

cmars232 17y ago

I wouldn't click on the results with anything but Lynx.