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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

by 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.
  - gbog 10y ago
    A nation gives its government the mission to drive it trough hard times toward the future. One part on this mission can include some limitation on public speech, why not? I personally think it is dangerous and often useless, but some other people may have different priorities. Then the problem is the legitimacy of the government. This is obvious in China for the cpc but I would not say they are completely illegitimate. And our western governments are not always legit either.
    - okc 10y ago
      Why not? So you really want me to explain why people should have free speech, at this level of debate, it is unbelievable you could ask - why not? Let me give you the big why not: because your opinion right now is free speech on a forum of free speech. Please don't back pedal and say your just talking about dangerous hate inducing free speech. Because we both know that isn't the case. The context is a government which has always tortured dissenters. A government which drove tanks over peaceful protesters. A government based on the notion of rebellion not reform, which is doing everything humanly possible to stop rebellion ever happening again. That's the communist paradox. That's the ultimate source of propaganda.
optforfon 10y ago
EDIT: Just to clarify, there is definitely brainwashing in terms of government agendas and things of that sorta. It's terrible. I'm illustrating what is locally perceived as the positive aspect of censorship outside of politics Well people for the most part are pretty a-political. When you don't have 24/7 coverage of clowns running for president people don't really have it at the front of their minds. And while in the west we have very little agency when it comes to political affairs, here of course it's basically non existent. So people while there are strange/strong opinions on Russia, Taiwan, the US, islands in the Pacific, no one is foaming at the mouth - and in terms of priorities it's all somewhere slightly below the latest NBA results. With regards to censorship I think it's an interesting perspective - that's all. I try not to judge it too much. I prefer the chaos of the western media where you can find nuggets of gold in the piles of clickbait trash. I'd love for them to get there in the long term ofcourse, but I guess i can see how horrifying it must seem to them to have that in a very rumor prone under-educated society of over a billion people. I'm very hopeful for the coming generation. They seem incredibly educated (they learn calculus in middle school!!) and openminded. But looking from here at places like Pakistan and Egypt where rumors and completely fantastical ideas about the US, government conspiracies etc. etc. are the norm - that seems a lot more frightening. I mean even Americans are prone to some fantastical thinking (I remember asking at a hostel "who believes 9/11 was a conspiracy?" - I think 6 out of 7 people did . The one guy who didn't was part Israeli. here is a depressing read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polls_about_9/11_conspiracy_theories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polls_about_9/11_consp...) Barring the dis-functionality angle, the psychology/sociology of it is interesting. It's sorta like cocacola ads, (no one thinking it really affects them) no one really think they consume "trashy" media, but we acknowledge that as a society we are consuming a ton of it. So if you were to not have black and white view on civil liberties (I mean it's already an autocratic government, why not make the most of it haha ) at first blush it seems kinda reasonable to say "hey, why don't we just cut out this crap and only show the BBC, PBS and some quality historical documentaries? That way people will stop wasting their time having aneurysms over total garbage" (if you think about the collect man hours spent watching something like Pawn Stars it's pretty depressing) To be clear the censorship hasn't gone as far as cutting out crappy TV shows or anything like that (though the new anti-video game stuff seems to suggest they're moving in that direction). But stamping out rumors and media sensationalism is definitely going on (along with completely legitimate news that people should be aware of that paints the wrong people in a bad light). And yeah, there are totally skewed perceptions of the west here - for sure. And they have their own garbage feed by the government. It's shocking at times. A good friend was telling me that China should make a stronger case internationally for "retaking" Siberia. I'm kinda trying to do my part in bridging the divide and bring maybe a window into the way people are thinking (or not thinking!) about these things here. It's not just a bunch of brainwashed commies that have no idea what's going on in the outside world - it's more nuanced than that and has it's own self consistent logic to it. It might not be the ideal, it may be worse than our system, but it is what it is and it doesn't hurt to appreciate it

by okc 10y ago

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.
- gbog 10y ago
  A nation gives its government the mission to drive it trough hard times toward the future. One part on this mission can include some limitation on public speech, why not? I personally think it is dangerous and often useless, but some other people may have different priorities. Then the problem is the legitimacy of the government. This is obvious in China for the cpc but I would not say they are completely illegitimate. And our western governments are not always legit either.
  - okc 10y ago
    Why not? So you really want me to explain why people should have free speech, at this level of debate, it is unbelievable you could ask - why not? Let me give you the big why not: because your opinion right now is free speech on a forum of free speech. Please don't back pedal and say your just talking about dangerous hate inducing free speech. Because we both know that isn't the case. The context is a government which has always tortured dissenters. A government which drove tanks over peaceful protesters. A government based on the notion of rebellion not reform, which is doing everything humanly possible to stop rebellion ever happening again. That's the communist paradox. That's the ultimate source of propaganda.

optforfon 10y ago

EDIT: Just to clarify, there is definitely brainwashing in terms of government agendas and things of that sorta. It's terrible. I'm illustrating what is locally perceived as the positive aspect of censorship outside of politics Well people for the most part are pretty a-political. When you don't have 24/7 coverage of clowns running for president people don't really have it at the front of their minds. And while in the west we have very little agency when it comes to political affairs, here of course it's basically non existent. So people while there are strange/strong opinions on Russia, Taiwan, the US, islands in the Pacific, no one is foaming at the mouth - and in terms of priorities it's all somewhere slightly below the latest NBA results. With regards to censorship I think it's an interesting perspective - that's all. I try not to judge it too much. I prefer the chaos of the western media where you can find nuggets of gold in the piles of clickbait trash. I'd love for them to get there in the long term ofcourse, but I guess i can see how horrifying it must seem to them to have that in a very rumor prone under-educated society of over a billion people. I'm very hopeful for the coming generation. They seem incredibly educated (they learn calculus in middle school!!) and openminded. But looking from here at places like Pakistan and Egypt where rumors and completely fantastical ideas about the US, government conspiracies etc. etc. are the norm - that seems a lot more frightening. I mean even Americans are prone to some fantastical thinking (I remember asking at a hostel "who believes 9/11 was a conspiracy?" - I think 6 out of 7 people did . The one guy who didn't was part Israeli. here is a depressing read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polls_about_9/11_conspiracy_theories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polls_about_9/11_consp...) Barring the dis-functionality angle, the psychology/sociology of it is interesting. It's sorta like cocacola ads, (no one thinking it really affects them) no one really think they consume "trashy" media, but we acknowledge that as a society we are consuming a ton of it. So if you were to not have black and white view on civil liberties (I mean it's already an autocratic government, why not make the most of it haha ) at first blush it seems kinda reasonable to say "hey, why don't we just cut out this crap and only show the BBC, PBS and some quality historical documentaries? That way people will stop wasting their time having aneurysms over total garbage" (if you think about the collect man hours spent watching something like Pawn Stars it's pretty depressing) To be clear the censorship hasn't gone as far as cutting out crappy TV shows or anything like that (though the new anti-video game stuff seems to suggest they're moving in that direction). But stamping out rumors and media sensationalism is definitely going on (along with completely legitimate news that people should be aware of that paints the wrong people in a bad light). And yeah, there are totally skewed perceptions of the west here - for sure. And they have their own garbage feed by the government. It's shocking at times. A good friend was telling me that China should make a stronger case internationally for "retaking" Siberia. I'm kinda trying to do my part in bridging the divide and bring maybe a window into the way people are thinking (or not thinking!) about these things here. It's not just a bunch of brainwashed commies that have no idea what's going on in the outside world - it's more nuanced than that and has it's own self consistent logic to it. It might not be the ideal, it may be worse than our system, but it is what it is and it doesn't hurt to appreciate it