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Q: Do you think it's a good thing when a website gets blocked in China?
I saw that the Guardian got blocked today, for no apparent reason. Is this also a case of no publicity is bad publicity. I know that I, for one, want to go on the Guardian now and try and see what the published that might have gotten them blocked.
10 years 14 weeks ago in Web & Technology - China
For an engineer or a scientist, it sucks massively, can't do proper documentary research without a VPN. For instance, you find a lot of tutorials, how-to, commented examples on blogs, which are running on blocked blogging platforms such as Blogspot or Wordpress. Many researcher comment on their on-going work on blogs too. So it cuts you from a wealth of fresh, cutting-edge knowledge. You're a student looking for more insights ? You're a teacher who want to point out some nice additional materials, like that awesome Youtube video or this great class of Professor Roblochon on Vimeo ? Nope, censored !
The absurdity does not stop there, it goes beyond. For a long time, typing 'degree of freedom' on any search engine would be blocked. But 'degree of freedom' is a common technical term used in applied math, engineering and statistics !!! It have been fixed recently, but once in a while I bump into such absurd censorship.
So *even* if you avoid the political things (freedom of press, decoupling media & political power so as to make reporting on corruption much easier, thus building a protection against massive abuse, yada yada), it's a massive pain in the ass that cripples the country and its population. And then, you can include the political side for extra butthurt.
TMaster:
Oh, no, this censorship is a wonderful opportunity for Chinese science actually.
Lots of inventions/technologies now get credited on Baidu Baike to Chinese researchers or Chinese companies that didn't even exist when their technological breakthrough was made. Of course it's a whole different story on wikipedia, but who cares since it's blocked.
DrMonkey:
It's a Pyrrhic victory, at best. After decades of copying & modifying, rather developing new concepts, most engineers and researchers are just SCARED to try new things. I had to kick my student's asses to make them drop the book and stop the copy-pasting, and actually make something on their own. So, with such an innovation capacity, you are condemned to follow, copying and produce cheaper than others. It works if the work force is cheap and docile. Chinese workforce is not as cheap as it used to be. For many industries (poster child : solar panels), to produce soon-to-be-obsolete stuffs cheaper than others, they build massive factories. Problem, they got a massive over production, financed with a massive debt that won't ever be reimbursed : other countries can produce more efficiently newer designs, they can innovate and invested in innovation, not massive factories.
Of course, censorship is not 100% the origin of the problem! but it's more thing crippling the industry in a China. So, even politics aside, even evil foreigners aside, censorship is bad for the country.
My thought from experience :
- It's sometimes totally random.
- It's sometimes global to all foreign IPs. Might be an occasionnal bug.
- It's either complete blockage or just a slowdown.
- It's different per city.
Therefore we can't really say a new website got blocked, I'm sure they have developed a whole set of grades, purpose being, among others, that they don't make the news every time they add a new entry to their blacklist.
It was a bad thing for me until I got a VPN.
It may or may not be good for the website. For news I think it makes no difference as they all read China Daily or other state sites exclusively. They laugh at anything that conflicts with what they are told.
Ya it can be a major pain in the arse! But thats how whatever issues are dealt with here.
Its very expedient but also, I think very juvenile.
A good recent case in point ~ 'The New York Times' did an expose on Wein Jia Bao (wrong spelling, I'm a bit pissed!) the 2nd hand man to Hu Jintao. Who retired last year, with some $3.5 Billion attributed not necesarily to him personally, but to many 'companies' controlled by his relatives/family??!
Now, there's plenty of tabloid papers in the world raking up shit to make the money, but TNYT isn't of them! They are very reputable (well..in my humble opinion) as it turns out the reporter spent 2 yrs, I repeat 2 YEARS investigating all Co's & investments made by his 'family' & it turns out he/family, did in fact have holdings worth 3.5 BILLION DOLLARS on retirement.
Any kind of responsible govt (esp that 'fighting' corruption) would think....gee there might, just might.. be something in this, we should investigate.
Fuck No! Cant do that. Let's just ban the paper. And so be it, I cant read the TNYT.in China.
What a joke. Idiots.
philbravery:
If the populations of other countries saw what Chinese write about them on Chinese web pages Like China Smack, The Government would have to ban them from being seen outside of China , Because People would most likely rethink investing in China .
No it is not a good thing, but that's from my perspective. From the point of view of the people in power. It is a good way to control the population. There was a political party that was elected back in the mid 30s. They used Communication to control the people and justify hatred... Well you know the story.
Scandinavian:
actually. had Germany had internet at the time, had it not been censored, do you think Hitler would ever have been elected ?
donnie3857:
Good "what if" question. Many historians debate these kind of questions. I imagine it might have been. On the other hand the USA is a democracy and we just read about the NSA over the past few months.
The era surrounding the Nazi Party was much different than the issue in China. I have a strong feeling Hitler would have been elected even if there was the internet and it was not censored.
