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China's bloggers, filmmakers feel chill of internet crackdown
- onetokeoverthe 9y agoReuters is blocked in China. China has been "closing" for 5 years now. According to "china watchers", this is expected to continue. Blame Xi.
- usnigg 9y agoI've been a long time reader of reuters. I still use it sometimes. It certainly used to be more neutral and balanced in the past. Now, sadly I find it often publishes articles propagating anti-chinese sentiments. Therefore I am not too surprised by the chinese authority's decision. Incidentally, I can recommend having a look also at xinhua and china daily from time to time. It's quite refreshing to leave the western propaganda bubble and take a glimpse at the world from "the other side". Let a hundred flowers bloom ;-)
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago5 years? China has been closing ever since the Olympics ended in...2008. Its been almost a decade now. Theory is they'll start opening up again in the run up to 2022...they can't really hold an Olympics while blocking all the major worldwide internet sites, too much face lost. This definitely isn't just Xi's fault.
- gus-8 9y agoI see. Reuters hasn't been blocked in US and a pussy graber got elected. Do you have a point?
- MAGACUCKS 9y agoSpotted the salty libtard cuck!
- AznHisoka 9y agoNewbie question but what is China's rationale for their internet censorship and firewall? What are they afraid of?
- melvinmt 9y agoThey've known for ages that the biggest threat to China is not some foreign enemy but China itself. This also applies to the US btw, we just haven't fully realized it yet.
- shp0ngle 9y agoYou can't make socialism with too much freedom. People would look at homosexual stuff and wouldn't go to party meetings.
- diggan 9y agoEh? Don't think socialism is to blame here. Sweden, as an example, is a very socialist country and also with a high degree of freedom to look at whatever you want (almost).
- kristofferR 9y agoSweden isn't socialist at all, it's a social democracy. Social democracies do not aim at making means of production a common good.
- j7ake 9y agoI think the confusion is that socialism is used to refer both the economic policies as well as political policies, which are actually orthogonal to each other.. In the case of China it is socialism in political policies but very capitalist in economic policies. Sweden is socialism in the economic sense but politically it values freedom much more than China , you will see this if you notice the differences in tax rates in Sweden vs China.
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- visarga 9y agoProbably not Xi's problem but China will lag economically and creatively because of this restriction. It's just ceding the entertainment initiative to other creators, outside of China. Even if they ban all creative content from outside China, don't they know that a terabyte HDD can hold enough movies to last for a year, and be copied easily?
- grtgtsb 9y agoLag economically? For censoring overtly gay content homemade by some people trying get money from advertising or just searching for attention on social media? You can have an issue with this attacking some personal freedoms, but thinking that some people showing their gay/rich/silly/whatever lifestyle in order to get some likes in FB or some ad money in Youtube affects the economy is just disingenuous.
- nickrio 9y agoHa! CCP don't give any shit about creativity. They want to be in control, including controlling creativity. In fact, if you're a Chinese people like me, you probably learned CCP's "Three Represents" when you in mid school. Which is: - "Represents advanced social productive forces" stands for economic production - "Represents the progressive course of China's advanced culture" stands for cultural development - "Represents the fundamental interests of the majority" stands for political consensus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Represents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Represents What that said is: - We (CCP) decide what is important to this country - We decide what you can do when you're boring - We decide what you can have (and your needs) So, I won't be surprised one day we had that Sea Ban thing and what's followed all over again. FYI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haijin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haijin
- themodelplumber 9y agoWow, I didn't realize that Japan had mimicked this sea ban. I only knew about the Japanese version. But how could such a move be reconciled with China's recent expansion into global politics?
- NOSHSHNACKERS 9y agohow much of this is happening here but more subtly? Are we in danger of this from the ruling classes here in the US or are we being manipulated to well already? Its hard to say..
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- ePierre 9y agoWell... Fortunately, there is still Taiwan, the only Chinese-speaking country where creativity and freedom of speech is nurtured and not censored!
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoWell, Singapore isn't that bad. Regardless, I'm not sure what Taiwan is going to save us from.
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- xiaoma 9y agoSingapore's not that bad as long as you're not gay (which is illegal and punishable by a prison term), a political activist for the opposition party, too independent thinking or otherwise labeled as undesirable by the government.
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoOh, sure, totally. But they aren't as bad as the PRC.
- forkLding 9y agoIn terms of cultural-inspired creativity, Taiwan isn't a great representative of Chinese creative media, Taiwan can only represent certain parts of the Southern Coastal and South-Eastern China/Asia culture in terms of where they draw inspiration for their creativity. Also the general Taiwanese "creative media" industry like films isn't particularly welcoming to Mainland culture or influences.
- indescions_2017 9y agoAnother fascinating "censorship" story playing out right now: Tencent Loses $14 Billion After Criticism From Chinese Media http://variety.com/2017/biz/news/tencent-loses-14-billion-hong-kong-stock-exchange-criticism-chinese-media-1202487199/ http://variety.com/2017/biz/news/tencent-loses-14-billion-ho... To call this "chilling" is a gross understatement!
- gus-8 9y agoSo its okay to design games that treat kids like addicted lab rats aslong it makes 14 billion right. Fuck you. Grow up.
- infecto 9y agoCan we have discussion like adults instead of children please?
- prklmn 9y agoTo say they lost $14b is not even remotely true. Their stock dropped $14b in market cap. they are certainly making money on the game, not losing money.
- thinkfurther 9y agoSo, 4 something percent. Do you find this chilling, too? http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/11/investing/donald-trump-press-conference-markets-economy/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/11/investing/donald-trump-press... > Trump said that many companies were "getting away with murder" and that there would be more competitive bidding practices for federal contracts in his administration. > Dow component Pfizer's (PFE) stock fell more than 2% immediately after the comments. > Mylan (MYL), which has already come under Congressional scrutiny for dramatic price hikes of its life-saving allergy medication EpiPen, fell 3.5%, and Bristol-Myers Squibb dived 4%. > Allergan (AGN) and Valeant (VRX), two other biotechs that have been criticized for raising drug prices, also fell more than 3%. And the iShares Nasdaq Biotechnology ETF (IBB), which owns many of these companies, fell 3% too. That's just the first hit for "stock prices fell after criticism". There's plenty of that, and four percent are nothing. What's so chilling? That 4 percent of anything can mean billions of dollars? The mechanism of stock markets? That social media and "traditional media" have this reach and effect just by things being said? That the gaming industry became this huge and heartless after such short time, and how some in it would LOVE to be able to "capture" audiences like the pharma industry can? None of these things? Or really just mostly the Chinese Communist Party, the one thing most of us have no say and no responsibility in, rather than those aspects of this which we share in every day? And what comes after chilling? Freezing? Is it really "gross" to merely call this chilling? What would be neither an under- nor an overstatement?
- girzel 9y agoI work in Chinese publishing, and the same thing is absolutely happening there. Books are being pulled off the shelves, publishers are being warned away from anything potentially controversial. The basic attitude is, "Don't risk it", and it's absolutely deadly to creativity and culture. On the one hand, the central government is trying to encourage Chinese culture to "Go Out" and wow the world. On the other, it is absolutely strangling the country's cultural creators.
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- enoemos 9y agoThere're two/three forces in PRC ideological and cultural ministries repsenting the worldviews of Han, Manchu and Hui respectively. In Mao era, the three had been forged into one piece by iron fist of the communist ideology. After Mao era, the three founding groups of the CCP separated as the minorities' ethnicity awareness grows. Manchu and Hui elites have concentrated in arts, culture and media related 'soft power' agencies. Therefore, it's not hard to see the conflicts in these domains. In fact , the ethnic Hui controlled CCTV removed all words, images and performances about pigs in the 2007 Spring Festival Gala Show for the Year of Boar. There've been severe cultural conflicts under the hood of harmonic society and the Han majority are losing control of many domains in recent years, including the law enforcement ministry. Don't be shocked if the PRC becomes a Islamic state with Chinese characteristics in the next 60 years if the Han majority still can't find something unique to believe in (no,the western ideology failed in 1989 already, though Christian Han are growing rapidly). Forget the Uyghur, focus on Hui, one of the three founding ethnic groups of the CCP. President Xi resorts to Neo Conficius Ideology to spirit up the money-addictive Han majority.But Hui has Allah and 陈克礼. Let's see if there will be any pig related shows in the next CCTV Gala for the year of Boar 2019.
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- jxramos 9y agoThis is very concerning. I'm curious how all this is delivered as far as the actions of officials to enact this behavior in general populace. How exactly do they pull it off? Are there new strategies employed or do they leverage years of chilling requests and punishments for people to generally know better not to cross the government? Do people personally know political prisoners and what not or see punished individuals paraded on TV and what not? Thanks for sharing.
- techrich 9y agoNo Teresa May this is not to be copied!
- woodandsteel 9y agoXi Jinping is pushing massive censorship because he thinks it is good for China, but I think that is a big mistake. History has shown that when you don't have open, public debate on important issues, the government becomes close-minded and makes poor decisions. Yes, democracy is messy, but the alternatives are worse. Part of the problem here is that China is still running according to Confucianism, which was a wonderfully effective political philosophy for a largely agrarian society, but is quite ill-suited for the modern world. The Chinese need to think out what is the right form of government for the modern industrial world, but to do that they need free discussion, which is just what Xi is making impossible.
- asdfologist 9y agoNo, Xi Jinping is pushing massive censorship because he thinks it is good for Xi Jinping.
- 68c12c16 9y agoI feel stringent censorship is among the most unbearable things. If we look at the censorship history in different countries over the world, such as France (before the 20th century) and USSR, the only way to end a very stringent censorship in a society is by ending the ruling government itself, which is usually an autocracy, or an oligarchy at best. But that could mean a period of turmoil that would destroy many people's lives across the entire country. It seems one way to avoid this great destruction is for most of the population in the country to rise up in synchrony and simultaneously topple down the government together -- but this concurrency at a society level is one of the major targets that the current censorship implemented in China aims at. Sigh...It just seems impossible to have hack out a consensus in a distributed system when the powerful system admin with his privileges at the root level constantly interferes...