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Q: what "GOOD" does blocking the internet/VPN's do for China?
I am a simple man.... and I just can't see anything good about fiddling around with internet connections. It does irritate me, but it certainly doesn't stop me from getting whatever I am after.
It's like bad children, but they are not children. .. so they must have a reason that I just don't get. What is it?
In order to maintain one's status as the victim, one must first find ways of hiding those occasions when you were actually the aggressor or wrongdoer.
(Not a quote - I've just made it up but it sounds good).
Hotwater:
You might have made it up but it's spot on! China can't keep claiming to be the poor oppressed country of Asia to its own people if the find out about how china colonised other places on its periphery so it could get so big.
MissA:
Yep. Also, it's not just about the past, too. China's current activities in parts of, say, Africa are less than ideal. But the gov't finds it highly convenient to maintain the victim label.
RandallFlagg:
They cry out in pain and outrage as they strike others.
Do not be alarmed, do not be concerned. You will be assimilated. All the world will see the logic of the Chinese way and no other way will be desirable.
Do not be alarmed, do not be concerned. You will be assimilated.
Animal Farm and 1984 are becoming a reality right here, right now.
Grandaddy Xi, never serving properly in the military, doesn't realize, if you seal in an area that's about to explode, the results will be far worse.
I've had really bad results tonight trying to chat over Viber with a friend in Melbourne. This internet situation really sucks !!
In order to maintain one's status as the victim, one must first find ways of hiding those occasions when you were actually the aggressor or wrongdoer.
(Not a quote - I've just made it up but it sounds good).
Hotwater:
You might have made it up but it's spot on! China can't keep claiming to be the poor oppressed country of Asia to its own people if the find out about how china colonised other places on its periphery so it could get so big.
MissA:
Yep. Also, it's not just about the past, too. China's current activities in parts of, say, Africa are less than ideal. But the gov't finds it highly convenient to maintain the victim label.
RandallFlagg:
They cry out in pain and outrage as they strike others.
This has bothered me for a while...
If China (or is it the CCP) wants to grow, be respected, play a leading role in the world and sees itself as a strong, vibrant nation.....why is it scared of outside ideas or comment?
Perhaps its because its all just a facade. Its the superiority / inferiority complex running wild again.
The Great Wall mentality didn't work too well in the past ....
"We have no need of your ingenious manufactures" until those ingenious manufactures sailed up the Yangzte.
The other argument is that China doesn't need western style ideas....but hang on...where was Marxism/Communism/Socialism formulated?....Yep, the west!
So its only some ideas.
I personally got very narked when they play "The Internationale" at the conferences. Read the lyrics to that song and then look about....its a bit of a sick joke.
So I guess the answer must be "Ideas are dangerous, control the ideas, control the people"
RandallFlagg:
The Internationale... unites... the human... race! Except when it's a laowai getting near my daughter.
The Nationalists are playing defense. They don't feel secure enough about their ideology to let it stand on it's own. To stay in power, they must keep the simple people ignorant. It's that simple. Open communism is a dead end. Has there ever been an open communist society? People are people. If given a choice, they want freedom and their iPhone.
RandallFlagg:
But now the CCP lets them have the iPhone, and for a fundamentally materialistic people denuded of any spirituality or free thought thanks to decades of communism, that's usually enough. A few will grumble, but "the revolution" is still a long way off.
It does no good, it keeps people ignorant about the world, they still see the rest of the world through some biased stereotypes, it limits access to knowledge, entertainment and news, if China is not a very stimulating country intellectually speaking it's mostly due to the lack of access to these three things.
If Chinese artists were able to freely browse the internet they could find inspiration from what they see, and I know that there are many talented people in China, they just can't express themselves because of the CCP, or do so in underground communities so can't be heard from most people.
It would do great good to most Chinese and consequently to China if they were able to easily exchange ideas and points of view with people from other countries and other cultures. And I am not talking about those living in China, most are only here temporarily and will say whatever Chinese want to hear in order to avoid problems.
In my case, Skype works like a charm, usual blocked websites are still blocked by I have a VPN. However I want to complain that playing Garry's Mod on Steam has become a nightmare in the past few days, only the servers located in Mainland China are accessible, that means a very limited choice of games, only 3 servers for Props Hunt, 5 for TTT and 7 for Murder, from hundreds of existing servers for each of these games. Don't even get me started about Just Cause 2 : Multiplayer, can't stay connected to a server for more than 10 minutes then it takes 20 minutes to see it in the servers list again, forget about the survival oriented servers, only some quick chaos/fighting before being disconnected. And the problem comes from China, while in Hong Kong I have no problems playing anything on Steam, even in Mongolia that's far from like everywhere else and censors the internet I was able to play without any issue.
Now something that's even more bothering is when I need to find an information or download something from the internet for my work, must use a VPN because let's face it no other search engine gives as good results as Google and most torrent trackers or hosting websites are blocked here. China is probably slowing down its own growth by censoring the internet, the time spent finding something on a super slow and censored internet is time that's not used by office workers to be more productive. Just saying.
The internet censorship is one thing that really bothers me and that could be a good reason for me to move in another country.
Considering this is a Chinese website and controlled by Chinese government officials, I think I will refrain from providing a detailed answer. I will say that they have learned their lessons well from the past. And, they are very good at maintaining the powers they have and promoting their agendas to the people.
DrMonkey:
You don't have to restrain your speech. I always been a hard critic of the powers to in China here. I never been in any troubles. This place is insignificant in terms of readership.
dongbeiren:
Random foreigners complaining about shitting, pollution and corruption in a general sense won't upset the powers that be. Show any success in organizing locals politically and you might run into problems.
Scared of "outside" ideas, a will to control information, and it can give an edge to the national companies. It shows who's the boss and can bend every aspects of life.
Although it isn’t actually possible I personally wished Google could somehow pull the plug on Android OS. How do you think they would feel if about 1Billion of them woke up with no phone tomorrow? I get the feeling the powers that be are getting really nervous about something, not sure what it is, but I hope I can get my wife and stepdaughter out of here before “it” hits the fan. At least I got to spend a couple of fairly good years here before things went further downhill.
DrMonkey:
Boiled frogs : you just have to raise the temperature of the pound slowly enough, and the frogs won't feel a thing until they get boiled. The Internet censorship is ramping up little by little.
RiriRiri:
Android OS is a consortium and is not "owned" by Google. They "just" are its main contributor.
Therefore they can't pull the plug on it. And you should hope so, because it would be frightening if they could.
Englteachted:
That would be a dumb idea. Fucking over your customers who are innocent in all this would push them away permanently and have serious ramifications with other foreign companies. It would support the idea of not relying on foreign companies.
1 - The ideal to be reached is that anything published should be controlled, and if not controlled at least it should have a traceable origin. The government wants to feel home with every website out there, just like they do with every street out there. This is why they have their ICP label just like you can see on the bottom of ECC, probably coming with a list of requirements. I assume webmasters are asked to store IP addresses, and if you're in mainland then this IP is deemed to be linked to some piece of ID from you or someone you know. Therefore, should you post unpatriotic material about, say, corruption, or just embarrassing stuff of any nature, you will be found. Obviously allowing websites from Foreignland to be accessed is in total contradiction to that ideal.
2 - Baidu, Tencent, Netease, Alibaba group, Youku, Tudou, you name it. What is it exactly that those companies own that is of any value? Any patent or intellectual property anyone would desire? Answer is none whatsoever. Their sole and only asset is their exclusive access to the Chinese market. Take it away, they're gone. What's sad is that should they have been placed in a real competitive environment, they might have had prospered in the global scene, or at least done well in the Chinese market and stand in better shape than they do now.
3 - Obviously some historical facts and events from the past cannot be seen and discussed. Better obfuscate them than confront them. But there's also one aspect that people often overlook, which is that it also allows them to rewrite reality, like crediting a number of western inventions to Chinese engineers, as I have seen it happen several times on Baidu Baike. After all, when you protect yourself from reality, everything goes.
Now arguably the Internet as it is in 2015 is very likely to be a huge obstacle to research, innovation and simply new ideas in various industries. Not reaching that far, it is also very likely to be a huge obstacle to the everyday productivity of a modern employee. I assume the politburo is not oblivious to this fact and already pondered on creativity/productivity vs control and decided that control was more important. Probably a safe bet, last time I checked, this country still runs on factories and people with low expectations.
royceH:
Re 1 above; Everything I write should be embarrassing to the Chinese, but I've never been confronted with it by 'whomever'. This would be because they can't understand a thing...
Firstly, no English...Secondly, no sense/concept of sarcasm, innuendo, irony.
Dumb fkers. And they don't help themselves in any way by continuing to live in their fairyland existence.
Actually, some do.
I have been told, by some commie members, the obvious true reasons.
1.
"The America want to control the world and the internet."
2.
"The Google maps reveal the positions of army facilities."
I went deeper into discussion, and asked, what will help to block it in china, while the whole rest of the world can access the info and see it for themself. and that chinese people themself know where are the army buildings and so on.
On the end, he admited that it is Chinese goverment who want to control the internet and people. But still, "it is good for people".
So my reply to your question is :
I do not know what good it brings to people of China. It brings only bad temper of mine to be thrown to my wife while attempts to sign to some sites are taking 20 minutes and many reloads.it leads to my hate of china rising more and more. so, nothing good for china, nothing good 
Once the cup is full , it will overflow...
RiriRiri:
The first point actually makes sense and this is the very argument that could make me support some degree of temporary "censorship".
Blocking some of the companies with a bad record (Google, Microsoft and others) until they show evidence they'll respect their user's machines is what every government should have been doing a few years ago in my opinion.
Any Android phone is constantly connected to one or several of their services, and god knows what is being/can potentially be transferred through the tubes.
Banning every Microsoft and Apple machine from government facilities in favor of free systems should also be a must do. For the safety and for the example.
Simple, China is becoming North Korea.
DrMonkey:
It's not exactly helpful to put at the same level two very different thing. The level of paranoia and isolation in North Korea is way, way, way higher. Foreigners are only allowed to be tourists in restricted areas, with controlled interaction with the North-Koreans. Food supply is still a major issue. Not the same thing at all.
Zhang Ming, a politics professor at Renmin University in Beijing, noted on his microblog that “ideological indoctrination can only succeed in a closed environment.” China today, Zhang said, is a “semiopen environment so mandatory indoctrination will cause an antagonistic psychology … the more forceful the indoctrination is, the more superficial obedience is.”
China basically only wants foreigner countries to sell their goods.Other than that they want to create closed community to the world.
Ideological indoctrination can only succeed in a closed environment.
Stiggs:
And they want foreign technology and expertise too. Aside from that you're right.
i asked a student why he hates japan so much. i mentioned that japan killed 19 million in wartime, while unkie Mao killed 40-79 million while at peace. his translated reply: "is that true?"
censorship definitely plays a role.
dongbeiren:
Ballsy to bring that up. I'd be afraid to broach the topic.
To be certain that ignorant people stay ignorant... but actually... it isn't working.
Just the other day my niece said she thought Mao Ze Dong was a horrible man and she wished she was a student NOT in China.
I asked her why she thought that... and she said they he did so many horrible things and made China the way it is today without expression of freedom. I asked her how she found out... she told me... people talk... they find out things.
The Great Firewall of China is doomed to failure.
diverdude1:
totally accurate. I've also had quite a few young people tell me they would like M to go do himself....
The firewall has to be really hurting businesses, scholars, scientists .. people who rely on it to do their jobs.
For a country that wants to move from being the world sweatshop to an innovator, and in the meantime keep the economy growing blocking VPNs seems like a backwards move to me.
Makes you wonder what is happening behind the scenes that they'd do something that drastic.
its not what a mature government does. you have to be scared of your own people and scared of having accountability, if you feel the need to chose what information people receive.
royceH:
The people can take it. They do take it. They'll keep taking it. This will make it so much easier when China fucks up big time, gets itself into an awkward position, and retreats. The only ones left behind will be the poor and the brainwashed. All the rest will have left the building.
