The People’s Republic of China banned the virtual private networks that hundreds of millions of the 730 million mainland Chinese citizens connected to the internet use to bypass the Communist Party’s “Great Firewall” and obtain truthful information. The Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced this crackdown on the use of unsupervised internet connections earlier this week. The Ministry said they would be monitoring all mainland internet service providers, content deliverers, and data centers for “illegal information”. Communists once again are attempting to be thought police as otherwise they would not be able to maintain power.
A slowing Chinese economy and a looming demographic catastrophe threaten the political fortunes of the Chinese Communist Party. The discontinued One-Child Policy was playing Jenga with the multi-generational ponzi-scheme that is socialism. An even more totalitarian Communist state will try to suppress dissent to maintain power as China’s economic growth tapers off.
Tags: censorship, china, communism, internet
Thanks for this useful piece of heavy metal news.
Obviously they like to keep updates on censorship in all of it’s various forms, which is very relevant to heavy metal. It’s pretty apparent that Daniel remains fairly consistent in what he posts here, so it really shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that this was posted…
take it like a good boy
“to bypass the Communist Party’s “Great Firewall” and obtain truthful information”>
By “truthful information” you probably mean Google’s search results and Facebook’s censored feeds?
Google and Facebook are banned in China.
The “totalitarian” commie party has actual mass support, so it’s probably better to call all (or most of) the Chinese totalitarian.
As a sovereign nation (or at least a nation state), they can choose to censor or not to censor what the blue-haired pseudo-humans have to say.
Also, does Chinese censorship really matter to a western metalhead? Do you grieve the potential loss of the Chinese part of metal audience?
As a sovereign nation (or at least a nation state), they can choose to censor or not to censor what the blue-haired pseudo-humans have to say.
As Chinese government, the Chinese government is legally entitled to do so by virtue of legalizing it itself. Reading the actual article, however, reveals that China didn’t “ban VPNs”, but now requires a government license, IOW, a regular payment to the party, from anyone running a VPN service in China. Dyeing one’s hair in $colour is still legal, though.
I don’t believe in large-scale oppression in China. The government is legitimate.
The small parts of China I’ve been living in for a few months didn’t seem particularly oppressed. Eg, prostitution is supposed to be illegal in China, yet, ‘commercial ladies’ are ubiquitous and can be a serious nuisance. One should also take into account that what works in the relatively ‘large empty spaces’ in Europe or in the USA (a lot larger and inhabitated by a lot less people) might not work as well for the seriously overcrowded situation in China.
OTOH, I think governments should restrict themselves to maintaining public infrastructure and public order so that people can engage in their own businesses safely and undisturbedly but shouldn’t try to regulate thought, art, speech or religion except (if at all) by example. There are always people aplenty who want to force their lifestyle choices onto others (for some reason I completely fail to grasp — what’s the point of involuntary compliance with something?) and these should be restricted to convincing (or failing to do so) whomever they disagree with. Preferably without making a lot of noise in the process.
“I think governments should…”
You have the possibility to influence your government in a way that it starts behaving as a good government “should”.
But the Chinese masses encourage (explicitly or by silent consent, which are both legitimate ways) their gov’t to act the way it does. The Chinese like control and commands; maybe they realize those are the only good options for their society. Anyway, what i’m trying to say is that you must change the average Chinese to change their gov’t policies.
The Chinese like control and commands; maybe they realize those are the only good options for their
society.
Der war gut (probably “Good one!”).
My personal view of China is myopic, considering the size of the country, being restricted to living in a hotel (not my choice) in what appeared to be an industrial slum outside of the Shenzhen special economic zone[*] and then in an ordinary rented flat in Hong Kong which isn’t really China for a few more months, but command and control is not something I found in evidence there (absent of watching the local police doing public martial arts training once), more “people throwing dead cats into the streets” or “one-legged beggars making atrocious sounds with a single-string fiddle” (for something nicer: Gathering with other people in front of a TV shop running what appeared to be a popular serial about some war band of sword fighters with supernatural powers).
[*] I gradually recovered some personal freedom of action after work as I somehow – no idea how – managed
to figure out which bus I had to take to the factory [working on programming project] and what to pay
for it and started to walk home after work when the person supposed to nanny me ‘in these alien
surroundings’ had a short illness. The idea seemed to fill him with some nameless dread I couldn’t
empathize with (“You can’t walk here. This is an industrial zone!”).