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Just to give you a bit of local perspective: talking to the locals here in China (and actually a Chinese Malaysian guy I met too .. so it's not just confined to

Just to give you a bit of local perspective: talking to the locals here in China (and actually a Chinese Malaysian guy I met too .. so it's not just confined to the people agrarian paradise), they ofcourse know that this is happening, but they don't envy our free for all either. The article says "a massive effort to distract its citizens from bad news and sensitive political debates" but of course that's just one angle. The local perspective is seeing it mostly as an effort by the government to try to moderate sensationalism, things getting spun out of proportion and down right fabrications (ie. US-TV news, Buzzfeed et al) They see our CNN having some 24hr coverage of a kitten stuck in a tree - which they will not stop till either half the nation is foaming at the mouth with rage at the government's incompetence or it just becomes too absurd to keep up - and they are understandably horrified

nxzero 10y ago
"My neighbor likes to yell, so I yell louder so I don't have to hear what they're saying. One day, there was a fire in my house, they were yelling for me to get out, but... I just yelled back and almost died." Answer is not to fight noise with noise, or to hide from reality because it's not Disney Land. There is no easy answer, but propaganda is the wrong answer. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda
- gggmaster 10y ago
  You are assuming when yelling the neighbor is in good will.
  - nxzero 10y ago
    No, I'm saying that you listen, but filter out the volume and noise in a way that doesn't attempt to make the situation more noisy, add volume, or hide the reality of it.
okc 10y ago
The question is how much are the local views influenced by the government and also how much people are willing to disagree with the government view. The local perspective you present, is a good example of a perspective which sounds like it endorses government activity but also identifies it as a case of government suppression. It says noting as a personal opinion. I'm not sure that Chinese people are "understandably" horrified at CNN. I actually think theres a big cultural gap in understanding between both countries, perpetuated part by both governments. Either way, its government propaganda of news set against a backdrop of fear and conformity. That means that the very idea of presenting a 'local perspective' is one intimately linked to government control. Its nothing to do with kittens on CNN. You don't outright say it, but the way you wrote this seems to be saying that government controlled news ain't that bad compared with CNNs 24hr coverage of kittens. What do you think, personally?
- gbog 10y ago
  Ideally newspapers would control themselves and would not be tight to the number of eyeballs generated by a given piece of news. If the government or the law making process can be considered as an emanation of the citizen, it becomes legitimate for them to control the public expiration to some extent. For example racism (hatred for a race) is banned from public expression in many European countries. For China it's difficult to understand, but cpc has had a strong popular legitimation in the past, and priorities are different in the mind if Chinese people, public expression is secondary too many other topics, like corruption, inflation, food safety, etc.
  - okc 10y ago
    How about the article we are discussing? would that be censored? how about if the facts underlying a case are seen to provoke something like racism - is it then legitimate to change the facts or censor them to the public. "If the government or the law making process can be considered as an emanation of the citizen, it becomes legitimate for them to control the public expiration to some extent" Unbelievable paradoxical statement: Starts with an If.. Ends with a vague to some extent.. and sticks the massive assumption of "it becomes legitimate for them to control the public expiration" - Why? Why is that legitimate?. Perhaps in a democracy you might very carefully start to make such conclusions, but the Chinese people don't pick their government. There only chance of change is rebellion. Perhaps thats why news is suppressed? Please, elaborate your statement - in laymans terms if possible, as I find the semantics in your statements quite difficult to follow.
pmarreck 10y ago
So the solution to a combination of human nature and an unfortunate profit motive in the Western news is... Lying? I mean, we already know that China is both governmentally AND culturally OK with pervasive deceit: http://shanghaiist.com/2015/11/19/study_says_china_least_honest.php http://shanghaiist.com/2015/11/19/study_says_china_least_hon... https://thelinguafranca.wordpress.com/2008/03/25/do-the-chinese-lie-that-depends/ https://thelinguafranca.wordpress.com/2008/03/25/do-the-chin... http://fortune.com/2015/12/14/china-fake-economic-data/ http://fortune.com/2015/12/14/china-fake-economic-data/ Lying is, and should be, universally reviled.
- optforfon 10y ago
  I think they'd characterize click-bait sensationalism as effectively lying and their censorship as a means to dampen it I'm not condoning their censorship. Yeah, obviously it leads to the government twisting the truth to toot it's own horn. On the political side of things its terrible
studentrob 10y ago
> they ofcourse know that this is happening, but they don't envy our free for all either Try talking to some Falun Gong, anyone in Tibet, family of those killed in accidents such as the Tianjin chemical explosion, or family of victims of police violence. These people have no voice and no peace. They can only look forward to dark prisons if they speak up.
- pstuart 10y ago
  The history of the United States is littered with equal tragedies. Less censorship, yes, but plenty of abuse and corruption. Try talking to members of the Black Lives Matter movement and get their take about freedom and justice in America. We need to be careful about the stones we throw.
  - studentrob 10y ago
    > Try talking to members of the Black Lives Matter movement and get their take about freedom and justice in America. Many American politicians have been quite receptive to the BLM movement. China, on the other hand, regularly imprisons protesters indefinitely.
    - pstuart 10y ago
      > Many American politicians have been quite receptive to the BLM movement. Oh, so I guess institutionalized racism has been eliminated from the country. I never got the memo.
      - studentrob 10y ago
        Free speech and democracy do not tell people what to believe. These give people a voice at higher levels of government. It is a way to avoid conflict and enable everyone to contribute to the progress of society. Government officials in China are not chosen by the people. The "People's" republic is a farce. Those who disagree with policy are expelled or imprisoned. BLM may be ignored and discounted by some, but they have a voice and can effect change. Tibetans, people of Xianjiang, Falun Gong, and countless other would-be activists have no such path in China.
sievebrain 10y ago
> they don't envy our free for all either The Chinese are constantly brainwashed to believe that yes, it's true, China is a dictatorship and other countries aren't (this fact cannot be totally hidden no matter how much their firewall tries to block keywords like 'democracy') ... but that's not really a problem and democracy vs dictatorship are just two different styles with neither being better than the other. China has dictatorship and America has democracy but that's fine because China's needs are different, etc. Any student of international history knows full well that this viewpoint is complete crap. The track record of totalitarian dictatorships is awful. But don't underestimate the power of total information control to warp and distort people's minds. I've encountered a Chinese person who believed they are well educated and understood the West well, and then came out with ridiculous statements like "people in the west have to wait a week for emergency medical care" as justification for why a "paternal" government is not so bad really. The local perspective of Chinese people is essentially worthless for judging what's actually going on in China. They are fed a constant diet of lies, and unlike in other parts of the world their access to organised debunking of those lies is severely restricted. They can't even judge what's going on by measuring the opinion of those around them because the government subtly distorts that too (as seen by this article).
- optforfon 10y ago
  I think you've completely missed the point. I wasn't talking about politics at all, nor was I condoning censorship and saying it's some moral good. I'm just illustrating its perceived benefits. While we as a country have a national freak-out and foam at the mouth because we saw a nipple during the super bowl - some people might see that are media manipulation of mass psychology When it comes to politics they're obviously using it for their own benefit, keeping their people in the dark and trying to rob the country as much as possible without being too obnoxious about it. These things are completely obvious to any outside observer and it's not interesting to just repeat them ad nauseum. I find it much more interesting to think that the censorship lets them say... contain hysteria about terrorism after the attacks in Xinjiang, or stop the whole place from turning into a crazy anti Japanese riot when some PM decides to go visit Yasukuni. Then you can stop and think "Oh okay.. I can see how they can end up thinking it's a good thing..." B/c at face-value it makes no sense for them to put with it
allemagne 10y ago
This is also what they're telling a foreigner. Even a Chinese Malaysian may identify himself as Chinese and automatically react defensively against criticism of the regime, or (like you seem to) might have been intrigued by the idea of this argument to the point of believing it.
brendyn 10y ago
I have also travelled China and speak Mandarin. I have seen this view, and have discussed and pondered it a fair bit, but I've concluded it's wrong, and dangerously so. Take what I say with a grain of salt, I'm no doubt wrong about many things. Every society gets indoctrinated with it's own mix bag of beliefs and taboos. I went to a talk in Bejing discussing all the reasons why China's economy was fantastic and stable. It did not seem they could even consider the possibility things might not. They were even optimistic about climate change. I had to ask someone if it was the moon or the sun I was looking at in the sky one day. One of my opinions is that when the world breaks out into a global slaugtherfest like WW2, it becomes essential for the survivors to research the causes of such an event with the explicit goal of of ensuring that it won't happen again. As far as I have seen, not a single society anywhere has done this, rather, we have minutes of silence to remember those who took part in the heroic massacre. I would not kid myself that I wouldn't also torture and kill if I was placed in a horrible enough environment, so I have put explicit effort into reading the works of Khaneman and others. Milgram's Experiment, Stanford prison experiment, etc. I was watching a fire start in a bin outside our library the other day, counting all the people walking by as smoke came out, some of them throwing rubbish in and walking off. Fortunately I'd read about bystander apathy so I just went and told someone and they put it out. The "moderating sensationalism" view is clearly wrong when one looks at the list of search items blocked. Let's see... Top result for Tiananmen massacre in Mandarin produces no results (六四), in English, the top result is "Tiananmen massacre a myth". How can China become a better place when it's people are forbidden from even researching such events? Another fascinating delusion in China is the distinction between "Chinese" and "foreigner", and then perhaps "Japanese" will be refereed to separately, because fuck Japan. It's quite difficult to explain. In their minds (this is all "statistically speaking" of course", everyone takes on the "Chinese" or "foreigner" label and thus they take on distinct beliefs and behaviours associated with them. It's not trivial racism or anything, actually, they are typically more polite to "foreigners", which they call me even in my home country. One of the scary things that comes from this is the hard wired belief that "Taiwan is China", despite being and separated and independent for 70 years. I have tried explaining this very carefully to many Chinese, and they will understand each point individually, but at the end of the discussion they say "but Taiwan is China!" and continue on with their insanity. Meanwhile Taiwan has the day to day trouble of trying not to be massacred by China wanting to "save" them and "bring them back" (actually things I've heard from Chinese). It is as if one had a ex that still believed they were together and the only thing stopping them from rape was the lingering threat of getting beating up by the slightly less deranged partner (the USA). Of course, Chinese people happily assure me that China would never use force in resolving this. Actually, the official stance says they would only use force if Taiwan officially claimed independence, and the idea of Taiwan actually being independent is unpalatable, so everything is fine. So in summary, I have zero confidence when Chinese people assure me this censorship is all for the greater good. Orwell's essay on freedom of the press (which was edited out of the first edition): http://home.iprimus.com.au/korob/Orwell.html http://home.iprimus.com.au/korob/Orwell.html

nxzero 10y ago

"My neighbor likes to yell, so I yell louder so I don't have to hear what they're saying. One day, there was a fire in my house, they were yelling for me to get out, but... I just yelled back and almost died." Answer is not to fight noise with noise, or to hide from reality because it's not Disney Land. There is no easy answer, but propaganda is the wrong answer. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda

gggmaster 10y ago
You are assuming when yelling the neighbor is in good will.
- nxzero 10y ago
  No, I'm saying that you listen, but filter out the volume and noise in a way that doesn't attempt to make the situation more noisy, add volume, or hide the reality of it.

okc 10y ago

The question is how much are the local views influenced by the government and also how much people are willing to disagree with the government view. The local perspective you present, is a good example of a perspective which sounds like it endorses government activity but also identifies it as a case of government suppression. It says noting as a personal opinion. I'm not sure that Chinese people are "understandably" horrified at CNN. I actually think theres a big cultural gap in understanding between both countries, perpetuated part by both governments. Either way, its government propaganda of news set against a backdrop of fear and conformity. That means that the very idea of presenting a 'local perspective' is one intimately linked to government control. Its nothing to do with kittens on CNN. You don't outright say it, but the way you wrote this seems to be saying that government controlled news ain't that bad compared with CNNs 24hr coverage of kittens. What do you think, personally?

gbog 10y ago
Ideally newspapers would control themselves and would not be tight to the number of eyeballs generated by a given piece of news. If the government or the law making process can be considered as an emanation of the citizen, it becomes legitimate for them to control the public expiration to some extent. For example racism (hatred for a race) is banned from public expression in many European countries. For China it's difficult to understand, but cpc has had a strong popular legitimation in the past, and priorities are different in the mind if Chinese people, public expression is secondary too many other topics, like corruption, inflation, food safety, etc.
- okc 10y ago
  How about the article we are discussing? would that be censored? how about if the facts underlying a case are seen to provoke something like racism - is it then legitimate to change the facts or censor them to the public. "If the government or the law making process can be considered as an emanation of the citizen, it becomes legitimate for them to control the public expiration to some extent" Unbelievable paradoxical statement: Starts with an If.. Ends with a vague to some extent.. and sticks the massive assumption of "it becomes legitimate for them to control the public expiration" - Why? Why is that legitimate?. Perhaps in a democracy you might very carefully start to make such conclusions, but the Chinese people don't pick their government. There only chance of change is rebellion. Perhaps thats why news is suppressed? Please, elaborate your statement - in laymans terms if possible, as I find the semantics in your statements quite difficult to follow.

pmarreck 10y ago

So the solution to a combination of human nature and an unfortunate profit motive in the Western news is... Lying? I mean, we already know that China is both governmentally AND culturally OK with pervasive deceit: http://shanghaiist.com/2015/11/19/study_says_china_least_honest.php http://shanghaiist.com/2015/11/19/study_says_china_least_hon... https://thelinguafranca.wordpress.com/2008/03/25/do-the-chinese-lie-that-depends/ https://thelinguafranca.wordpress.com/2008/03/25/do-the-chin... http://fortune.com/2015/12/14/china-fake-economic-data/ http://fortune.com/2015/12/14/china-fake-economic-data/ Lying is, and should be, universally reviled.

optforfon 10y ago
I think they'd characterize click-bait sensationalism as effectively lying and their censorship as a means to dampen it I'm not condoning their censorship. Yeah, obviously it leads to the government twisting the truth to toot it's own horn. On the political side of things its terrible

studentrob 10y ago

> they ofcourse know that this is happening, but they don't envy our free for all either Try talking to some Falun Gong, anyone in Tibet, family of those killed in accidents such as the Tianjin chemical explosion, or family of victims of police violence. These people have no voice and no peace. They can only look forward to dark prisons if they speak up.

pstuart 10y ago
The history of the United States is littered with equal tragedies. Less censorship, yes, but plenty of abuse and corruption. Try talking to members of the Black Lives Matter movement and get their take about freedom and justice in America. We need to be careful about the stones we throw.
- studentrob 10y ago
  > Try talking to members of the Black Lives Matter movement and get their take about freedom and justice in America. Many American politicians have been quite receptive to the BLM movement. China, on the other hand, regularly imprisons protesters indefinitely.
  - pstuart 10y ago
    > Many American politicians have been quite receptive to the BLM movement. Oh, so I guess institutionalized racism has been eliminated from the country. I never got the memo.
    - studentrob 10y ago
      Free speech and democracy do not tell people what to believe. These give people a voice at higher levels of government. It is a way to avoid conflict and enable everyone to contribute to the progress of society. Government officials in China are not chosen by the people. The "People's" republic is a farce. Those who disagree with policy are expelled or imprisoned. BLM may be ignored and discounted by some, but they have a voice and can effect change. Tibetans, people of Xianjiang, Falun Gong, and countless other would-be activists have no such path in China.

sievebrain 10y ago

> they don't envy our free for all either The Chinese are constantly brainwashed to believe that yes, it's true, China is a dictatorship and other countries aren't (this fact cannot be totally hidden no matter how much their firewall tries to block keywords like 'democracy') ... but that's not really a problem and democracy vs dictatorship are just two different styles with neither being better than the other. China has dictatorship and America has democracy but that's fine because China's needs are different, etc. Any student of international history knows full well that this viewpoint is complete crap. The track record of totalitarian dictatorships is awful. But don't underestimate the power of total information control to warp and distort people's minds. I've encountered a Chinese person who believed they are well educated and understood the West well, and then came out with ridiculous statements like "people in the west have to wait a week for emergency medical care" as justification for why a "paternal" government is not so bad really. The local perspective of Chinese people is essentially worthless for judging what's actually going on in China. They are fed a constant diet of lies, and unlike in other parts of the world their access to organised debunking of those lies is severely restricted. They can't even judge what's going on by measuring the opinion of those around them because the government subtly distorts that too (as seen by this article).

optforfon 10y ago
I think you've completely missed the point. I wasn't talking about politics at all, nor was I condoning censorship and saying it's some moral good. I'm just illustrating its perceived benefits. While we as a country have a national freak-out and foam at the mouth because we saw a nipple during the super bowl - some people might see that are media manipulation of mass psychology When it comes to politics they're obviously using it for their own benefit, keeping their people in the dark and trying to rob the country as much as possible without being too obnoxious about it. These things are completely obvious to any outside observer and it's not interesting to just repeat them ad nauseum. I find it much more interesting to think that the censorship lets them say... contain hysteria about terrorism after the attacks in Xinjiang, or stop the whole place from turning into a crazy anti Japanese riot when some PM decides to go visit Yasukuni. Then you can stop and think "Oh okay.. I can see how they can end up thinking it's a good thing..." B/c at face-value it makes no sense for them to put with it

allemagne 10y ago

This is also what they're telling a foreigner. Even a Chinese Malaysian may identify himself as Chinese and automatically react defensively against criticism of the regime, or (like you seem to) might have been intrigued by the idea of this argument to the point of believing it.

brendyn 10y ago

I have also travelled China and speak Mandarin. I have seen this view, and have discussed and pondered it a fair bit, but I've concluded it's wrong, and dangerously so. Take what I say with a grain of salt, I'm no doubt wrong about many things. Every society gets indoctrinated with it's own mix bag of beliefs and taboos. I went to a talk in Bejing discussing all the reasons why China's economy was fantastic and stable. It did not seem they could even consider the possibility things might not. They were even optimistic about climate change. I had to ask someone if it was the moon or the sun I was looking at in the sky one day. One of my opinions is that when the world breaks out into a global slaugtherfest like WW2, it becomes essential for the survivors to research the causes of such an event with the explicit goal of of ensuring that it won't happen again. As far as I have seen, not a single society anywhere has done this, rather, we have minutes of silence to remember those who took part in the heroic massacre. I would not kid myself that I wouldn't also torture and kill if I was placed in a horrible enough environment, so I have put explicit effort into reading the works of Khaneman and others. Milgram's Experiment, Stanford prison experiment, etc. I was watching a fire start in a bin outside our library the other day, counting all the people walking by as smoke came out, some of them throwing rubbish in and walking off. Fortunately I'd read about bystander apathy so I just went and told someone and they put it out. The "moderating sensationalism" view is clearly wrong when one looks at the list of search items blocked. Let's see... Top result for Tiananmen massacre in Mandarin produces no results (六四), in English, the top result is "Tiananmen massacre a myth". How can China become a better place when it's people are forbidden from even researching such events? Another fascinating delusion in China is the distinction between "Chinese" and "foreigner", and then perhaps "Japanese" will be refereed to separately, because fuck Japan. It's quite difficult to explain. In their minds (this is all "statistically speaking" of course", everyone takes on the "Chinese" or "foreigner" label and thus they take on distinct beliefs and behaviours associated with them. It's not trivial racism or anything, actually, they are typically more polite to "foreigners", which they call me even in my home country. One of the scary things that comes from this is the hard wired belief that "Taiwan is China", despite being and separated and independent for 70 years. I have tried explaining this very carefully to many Chinese, and they will understand each point individually, but at the end of the discussion they say "but Taiwan is China!" and continue on with their insanity. Meanwhile Taiwan has the day to day trouble of trying not to be massacred by China wanting to "save" them and "bring them back" (actually things I've heard from Chinese). It is as if one had a ex that still believed they were together and the only thing stopping them from rape was the lingering threat of getting beating up by the slightly less deranged partner (the USA). Of course, Chinese people happily assure me that China would never use force in resolving this. Actually, the official stance says they would only use force if Taiwan officially claimed independence, and the idea of Taiwan actually being independent is unpalatable, so everything is fine. So in summary, I have zero confidence when Chinese people assure me this censorship is all for the greater good. Orwell's essay on freedom of the press (which was edited out of the first edition): http://home.iprimus.com.au/korob/Orwell.html http://home.iprimus.com.au/korob/Orwell.html