I’m back in China after a year’s absence, and I note a subtle difference in the censorship.
The BBC news website is no longer blocked, but they’ve stopped Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Vimeo and other social networking and video uploading sites.
In other words, the Chinese authorities are now more worried about what their own people think, film and say than about news and views from the outside world.
The sites have been blocked since riots in the western province of Xinjiang in July. They feared the Iran phenomenon, when protestors used mobile phones to film events and sent messages out via Twitter when foreign correspondents were banned.
In fact, initially foreign reporters were allowed to report from Urumqi, because the government thought the story of how Uighurs had taken out their anger about discrimination on Han people would reflect badly on the Uighurs, not the government.
Now pretty much all information from Urumqi is banned, apart from brief government news reports of people being executed. I don’t know what’s happening there, but I have a nagging suspicion that the truth may conflict with the government message that “harmony” has been restored.
The latest clumsy attempts at censorship involve Obama’s interview here last week. The Americans refused to let him be interviewed by CCTV, the state network. Instead they said he would talk to Southern Weekend, a pioneering newspaper with a reputation for pushing the boundaries.
But even Southern Weekend comes under the dreaded Publicity Department, which duly sent a list of questions. The editors did not dare ask any others, because this was a matter of state.
The full interview, bland as it was, appeared in the newspaper, but the online version was censored in part. The questions had been written by the censors themselves, but some answers were clearly deemed dangerous.
A few months ago a Chinese diplomat asked me if China wasn’t much more open than when I first came here three years ago. From what I’ve seen since my return, I would say: “Up to a point, Lord Copper” .
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Imagine a world ruled by these? What an terrible thought. As there economical domination continues to grow, aided by rich scum in the west, the world had better watch out, or it’ll all be censored.
What a world this is turning into. Corrupt western capitalism and dictatorship regimes like China and, religious fanatic numpties including Cristianity.
The only policy I agree with in China is the restriction on offspring numbers.
Talking of countries whose media censor – the most important story about global warming – by definition at least equal to all the alrmist stories you have published over the years combined – is the public release of emails & data from Britain’s CRU whose collation of Data was responsible for the whole theory. This has proven that those involved have been fabricating, lying, censoring & that the data is so poorly collated as to be useless. Catastrophic warming is a complete & deliberate lie.
The fact that this is being reported worldwide in the blogsphere but censored by our MSM gives rather the feeling of East Germany just before its leaders admitted the Wall wasn’t working.
Don’t all governments censor to a degree.
The difference in regimes like China ,Korea,Zimbabwe and even Russia are that their citizens are not allowed to see and comment on events that affect their daily lives.
I would have thought Anthony , that with your loathing of Capitalism and its freedoms that China and other Socialist regimes would have been your cup of tea
You clrearly misunderstand me then. I looath UNRESTRAINED Capitalism. I also loath preditory scumbags that dominate resources, land, media, etc. and get a helping hand via their government cronnies in doing so. The corporate scum also perpetrate their evil domination and make for slavery and hatreds.
The concept of ‘reward’ for hard work is disproportionate in the capitalist system of the free market & predation. Government & rich scum know it and, they promote it. This is what leads to hatreds &b terrorism.
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