Internet Censorship in China
As multiple sources report is the technology that is behind the internet censorship in China better then anywhere else in the world. That means the freedom to read or write anything critical of the upper class in Beijing is mutliplicly crippled. Yet China seems to be en vouge around the globe. A lot of people who do not like current US policy are embracing China as the last global power that could confront Washingtons military forces. Yet China kills 50 times more people on the death row each year (roughly 5.000 last year) it prepares for war and surpresses ethnical minorities. If you think I am full of it ask a Chinese student what he thinks of the Tibet problem for example. Typical answer: What problem? Everyone is living happily side by side! To see that this is not the case you just have to visit Tibet once and see the destruction that not only happened under Mao but subsequently forced relocation of the Han Chinese Minority and the laws against their freedom of religion take their toll on the whole cultural society of the Tibetans.
The students can not know - all they read and see are censored news censored to a point where all reality blurs. And yet Chinas Corporate Identity Brand is growing in acceptence around the world. Our own chancellor Schröder is considering lifting a weapons ban on the country. Let the vast military put a man in space seemed to be enough to convince the world that China is the right answer to the hegemonic power of the US. Yet in part this might be - on the other part Kapitalism is taking over in the country once so full of red thought and that brings instability - locally in provinces with ethnic minorities seeing uprisings and the few who are able to get to alternative news sources are also embracing to bring down the centralized government down and favor a decentralized model closer to that of Germany or the USA - but generally all want China to become a new western role model - a task that has not a single chance as the culture and inheritance of china is so vastly different then anything the west has to offer. Splitting China up will cause major instability in a region with over one billion people.
So maybe the hard measures from centralized Beijing are right? Maybe they should let the people stay dumb? Its a decision that is in the hands of only few people and the decision is not obvious. I would say everything they do from now on will cause instability - but freedom to let the people read what they want and be what they want might be the best option - even if it causes large scale war?!
I personally always thought that censoring the internet is a thing impossible to do but if you have many people monitoring it could at least make it hard enough that the mass population will not get precious information which makes it impossible for a large mass of people in china to get the full conclusion which gives a lot of power to the few decision makers. Should the growth in China collapse prepare for the worst down there - its cooking hot.