China Blinders….
This post was written exactly a year ago and I opted to reprrint it as some things never seem to change…..
In today’s news:
Club.cn.yahoo.co is a new blogging network for Chinese netizens. According to Reuters and Wired magazine the new service designed to give bloggers a place to exchange ideas and photos. Wired posited that this seemed pretty dangerous in light of Yahoo’s admitted role as a snitch for folks who might advocate such atrocities as democracy and human rights. While I like that they took a shot at Yahoo! for its ongoing hypocrisy, it seems typically naive and Sinophobic. QQ is the world’s third most popular IM service and easily the largest in China. It is an incredible pipeline for information among everyday Chinese citizens. There are now so many blogs, bulletin boards, cell phones and messaging services that the Chinese government is soon going to be busier than a one-armed paper hanger with the hives and hopefully unable to police even a fraction of the traffic out there. I am looking forward to more of the Chinese information/communication explosion. Wired and media worldwide ought to be applauding any vehicle that further taxes the censors and they should be providing links to groups that will help further that cause. But, it is easier to demonize a country we really know little about in the west and play to people’s perceptions of China.
While Yahoo is trying to get folks on the net the Chinese government is trying to get some of them off: The long anticipated restrictions on gaming will take effect on July 15th. Emboldened by a report that claims some 2,000,000 Chinese kids are addicted, the government will penalize minors who spend more then three hours a day playing video games like WoW online. The consequences: After three hours players will only earn half the credits they would normally accrue and if they play for five hours online they will stop earning any credits at all. It isn’t exactly a firing squad, but some folks are calling this a fascist policy. Should I be sent to Guantanamo for believing it is not really a very bad policy and the punishment seems pretty benign?
And speaking of fascists: Google, Yahoo! and MSN are taking heat from some bloggers for refusing to to sell ads for China is Evil. CIE is a pretty poorly done site with kind of rambling rant which includes: “ In recent years maoist rebels have tried to take over Nepal. I have no evidence that China is supporting them, but it is highly probable that they are.” It ain’t the International Herald Tribune and I am even not sure there enough content on his one page site to get him banned in Beijing. I say sell him the ads. As advocates of free speech we should be defending his right to sound dim, especially if he is paying for it.
But he seems typical of most Americans and bloggers to whom I speak with about China: It is a given, in my experience, that Westerners will buy information in any news release that helps paint China as a bastion of oppression and don’t do a lot of research on their own. My stories about China’s ills are syndicated 10 times more frequently than my calls for positive action.
I was guiding a class through keyword research in an SEO class today and looking up words relating to China/Asia. The results were telling:
China Politics receives 1,600 queries
Chinese Girls gets 61,000 searches a month by Americans in the three major engines
Human Rights China scores 2,345 hits
China News gets 17,000 visits
Chinese Zodiac slams in at 280,000
and Tiannanmen Square receives 15,000 searches a month…..
I get a bit weary of the negativity without good information or corresponding positive solutions. I heard candidate Obama on Letterman play to people’s fears that their jobs might be outsourced to China, but I heard little about how he’d further humanitarian ideals for an oppressed populace. China is new country we love to hate. But boycotting or ignoring issues and not participating in solutions isn’t going to do us, or the 1.3 billion folks in the Middle Kingdom, much good.
Scholarly and well articulated related articles: Mutant Frog (fantastic writing!), Simon World,
Posted 11 April, 2008 in The Great Firewall, The Internet, Blogroll Diving, Censorship, 中国, China Editorials, cartoons, In the news, China web 2.0
6 comments to “China Blinders….”
flotsam, April 11th, 2008 at 7:43 pm:
-
“It is a given, in my experience, that Westerners will buy information in any news release that helps paint China as a bastion of oppression and don’t do a lot of research on their own.” - depressing thought but unfortunately I have to agree. I know the majority of my friends/acquaintances have a very fixed, one-dimensional view of all things China [none of them have ever even seen the place]. I don’t object to discussing/debating/arguing with others about China and its people but when they start from a premise which is wholly wrong it becomes an impossible task.
There’s no simple answer . . .
wu, April 13th, 2008 at 2:47 pm:
-
Surely there is a long long way to go before China could be viewed objectively… Tibet thing these day makes Chinese people realize how westerners unfaily view them. How many of those people who criticize China goverment on this issue have been there and know the history and current conditions clearly?? I’ve lived there for years, I know how many preferencial policies Chinese goverment has there and how greatly life there has improved. It’s just inresponsible and sad for those people to say bad things to China.
Jay, April 13th, 2008 at 4:09 pm:
-
the misinformation Westerners have about China pales in comparison to the misinformation PRC citizens have about the West (and the Dalai Lama). I live in China and I know this firsthand.
Jay, April 13th, 2008 at 4:12 pm:
-
by the way, mutant frog is blocked by the chinese censors.
scroogle, April 16th, 2008 at 2:20 pm:
-
Jay,
Can you read Chinese? I guees you need to meet more people and then you will find how many people and how much they do know about the West and Dalai Lama. At the same time, how much do you think the Westerners really know about Dalai Lama and his Tantric Buddhism?
- Do they know the current XIV Dalai Lama was officiated, just like his predecessors, by the then Chinese Central Government, ran by Kuomingdang, which ran to Taiwan after its defeat to the CP, in Feb. 1940?
- Do they know that thanks to China’s Qing Emperor that Dalai Lama became the ruler of the Tibet for the first time in 1751?
- Do the know that the Tibetans lived in a feudalism serfdom under Dalai Lama’ theocracy rule and had no say about their lives?
- Do they know that this Dalai Lama was on the payroll of CIA with a monthly salary of 15,000 USD?
Do they know his “exile-government” got 1.7 million USD annually and military training from CIA?
-Do they know that the Tantric Buddhism is just one of the five most influencial Tibetan Buddhism in Tibet? Do they know the teaching of building a Buddhocratic Empire by waging “Jihad”-like wars against otehr religons?
This information is not from the commie China, you can find it by reading the follwoing articles/books:
- Feudalism: The Tibet Myth
By Michael Parenti- Behind Dalai Lama’s holy cloak
By Michael Backman- An Interview with Victor and Victoria Trimondi (Germany)
By James C. Stephenshttp- A History of Modern Tibet
By Melvyn C. Goldstein
scroogle, April 16th, 2008 at 2:25 pm:
-
By the way, watch the video filmed by the Amercian government in ca 1944 on youtube. It will tell you to which country Tibet belongs.
The video is called “Why We Fight: Battle of China (ca. 1944) 1/5 “. The map starts from 3rd minute onwards.