Well, once again the big news is that the GFC (a terms introduced by Michael Froomkin) is all cranky today. Yes, the blockage is inconsistent, as it usually is, and yes, it might be working in some areas or for some period of time, but, nonetheless, once again we are being told what media we can and cannot consume. As if that changes anything.
Its maddening, its irritating, but most of all, it is just dumb. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. Anyone with any real desire to circumvent the blockage will do so. Hilariously, in this modern, tech-enabled world, one smart software engineer can make a tool in a few days that will aid those who want to get around the filter. Hell, the very fact that the wall is there is sufficient to cause some to wish to get over it. That is what walls are for, you know!
So, what is the result? Wow, we can’t watch videos on youtube today. Gee, that seems so effective. But we will be able to tomorrow, or the next day. And if I suddenly hear about some important video, you know what? I will find it online. It isn’t that hard, and the internet police can’t stop me.
It just really pisses me off sometimes. The blockage is so stupid and causes so much irritation. Does everyone know the blog called Calculated Risk? Excellent source for news about the real estate meltdown in the US, and more recently general economic news. Originally, it was hosted on blogspot, and of course blocked, as were all blogspot sites. Then, blogspot was no longer blocked, which was nice.
However, at least three months ago, they moved to their own domain, www.calculatedriskblog.com. And you know what? The damn site has been blocked for its entire existence! Nothing to do with China, nothing to do with human rights (oh, am I allowed to write that? Will I now be blocked? Quelle Horreur!!) and yet, still blocked to this day. That is just one of too many examples.
Dear internet police: I know you need to rationalize why you even have a job. In this economy, you are probably worried that your entire department will be downsized, or if not, you should be. However, I am sorry to tell you that this blocking of half the freaking internet makes you look weak. It makes you look scared, and puts you in a group with such globally-leading nations as Saudi Arabia, Belarus and Syria. Congratulations on that.
In addition, it significantly damages China’s international reputation. People from Taiwan see that and say, why the heck would we let this authoritarian country have any additional power over us? All this just to make it a little harder to get a particular piece of information. It is just embarrassing, frankly.
The middle class know what is going on, and it embarrasses them as well. They want China to be a forward-looking country, and this is not the type of policy that forward-looking countries maintain. It is impossible for anyone with half a brain to rationalize that this activity is ‘protecting society’, not when the censors are so aggressive.
I remember a mass incident, in Guizhou, I have forgotten the name of the town. During that time, all the domestic websites were busy ‘harmonizing’ the comment boards, and people just kept posting, even saying things like ‘you just keep deleting, and I will keep posting, ok?’. In other words, open defiance of authority. Not because of some sort of deep hatred of authority, (well that will need to be discussed in more detail at some point), but because the authority was too overt, too self-serving, and way, way too weak.
In law we talk about a ‘chilling effect’ when free speech is curtailed or when someone is punished as a method of ‘sending a message’. In China, this is ‘killing the chicken to scare the monkeys’. However, the authorities should be careful about trying to control things too tightly. When you get in people’s faces, they push back. Such is human nature.
I will return to this topic soon. For now, /rant.
Except it is only futile in as much as anyone who is bothered by it is already lost to the CCP cause. Border guards no longer bother to take subversive books away from foreigners – but foreigners are not the target audience for them anyway. The people targeted are those who are not fluent in foreign languages, and who grow up surrounded by media under direct or indirect editorial control from central government – these are the people whose relative ideological purity must be maintained. These are the people who, if asked, will say with a straight face that all Taiwanese want to ‘return to the motherland’, these are the people who believe that whilst the local government is sub-stellar central government really is working in their interests, these are the people who know only what they have been told and do not seek to access free media because they know already what to expect of it – because they’ve been told.
I guess I should also add that the blocking is only one part of the control mechanism which Jeremy Goldkorn over at Danwei calls ‘the net nanny’ – that is, the shepherding of the Chinese internet through fake commentary, astro-turfing, talking points, media blitzes etc. Essentially it is what any political party would do if it could gain unlimited power over the internet.
I do not think it is that simple. First of all, China very much cares about its international standing, so I believe the damage to China’s international reputation is relevant.
Another issue is basically the tendency of organizations to self-perpetuate and self-rationalize. Hu Jin Tao does not have the luxury, as Obama does (to some extent) to simply remove officials with whom he is ideologically incompatible from the net nanny agency(s), or downgrade the agency(s) themselves. Instead he must build consensus on a change of direction first. Or at least that is my understanding of the process involved.