Posted on 09/10/2017 9:29:15 PM PDT by Olog-hai
China’s campaign to stamp out use technology that allows web surfers to evade its internet filters is disrupting work and study for entrepreneurs, scientists and students. […]
After Beijing began clamping down on use of VPNs in January, dozens of activists and lawyers have been detained and a cybersecurity law tightened control on online data.
How many people might be affected is unclear, but consumer research firm GlobalWebIndex says a survey of Chinese web surfers this year found 14 percent use a VPN daily. …
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
China is a totalitarian country, still officially communist, a dictatorship under which people do not have rights which we take for granted. It’s not surprising that China wants to censor the internet.
So many ‘American’ companies have sold out lock, stock and barrel to China.
Everyone.
Look at the computer you are using right now. 90 percent of all computers, are made in China.
Look at everything you spend, all the time. In every Walmart in America. In every Target in America. In every K-mart in America. Most of the stuff for sale there, is made in China.
Look at your cell phone. Most of them, made in China.
Sporting goods. Made in China. Air conditioners. Made in China. Again there is a small amount made here. But less all the time.
We run a HUGE merchandize trade deficit with them. China does not import cars, it requires companies to set up factories there.
Almost everything now is imported. MUCH of it from China. Basically food is still grown in America, oil products are still produced here. And our national defense establishment is still here.
Otherwise every single administration for the entire last generation, has sold off ever more of what (used) to be made here in America.
Both parties.
Donald Trump is the first American president in the entire last generation, who has said America needs to make things right in America once again.
About darned time.
And the mini me fascist dictator of Facebook happily complies to everything China wants.
Until about 2005 China was becoming a freer place. Since Zhang zemin retired or has been getting slowly worse.
“It’s not surprising that China wants to censor the internet.”
By doing this, China is depriving itself of a fantastic set of tools that could greatly multiply their productivity and, thus, their GDP.
Chiang Tse-min’s “Three Represents” are a restatement of hardcore Marxism. Chiang was also very friendly with Iran during his time in power; his was only the second by a leader of the PRC since the Islamic Revolution, and the purpose was to boost ties; not very conducive to either the PRC or Iran becoming more free places at all.
Governments that think like gangster cartels do not care about such things.
Internally Jaing Zemen really opened up China. By letting the Chinese go abroad without minders and experience what the outside world was really like first hand.
I am not claiming he was a Saint (Though his wife regularly attended the patriotic Chinese Catholic Mass) and yes the things you say are true but, under the last part of Deng Xiaoping’s administration and through Jaing Zemen China was becoming a freer place. Hu Jintao reversed that trend. When I was in graduate school in Wuhan we could freely access the international portions of the internet. The professors in the university posted ways to get around the censors (For research purposes you understand) and the instructions were signed by the university bookkeeper (party apparatchik in charge of making sure everything was OK’d by the party.) There was even talk at the time of allowing multiple versions of the party to run against each other (More Capitalist vs Maoist vs Stalinist?) All that stopped with Hu, Jintao.
In some ways though, in my experience, China is at this point freer than the US. They don’t bow to the idol of PC platitudes. You can criticize the government if you are careful and do it right.
I don’t think that China is, in actuality a communist nation anymore despite the rhetoric. The PRC abandoned socialized health care. It has, more-or-less a market economy though highly regulated. It has transitioned into a good old-fashioned Fascist Dictatorship. I’m not sure if that’s better, worse or about the same.
My observations may be, at some level wrong but that is what I saw when I lived in China from 2002 to 2005 and in Hong Kong starting from 1996 until I moved to Guam in 2012.
If the control of the internet is not the most draconian expression of “PC platitudes”, I don’t know what is. That which is not politically correct is certainly censored, and those that use VPNs to get around it are punished. How many political prisoners like that do we have in the USA?
China is most definitely still communist. A “highly regulated” health care system is a socialized one; compare the USA’s Zerocare. Nothing about ostensibly privately-owned businesses goes against either the Communist Manifesto or the Principles of Communism.
“Almost everything now is imported. MUCH of it from China. Basically food is still grown in America, oil products are still produced here. And our national defense establishment is still here.”
Let’s not fool ourselves even on the above: I have NO DOUBT that we’d be picking corn by hand if we lost access to Chinese electronics (i.e., how many tractors now DO NOT have electronic ignition and computer control overall?). Some for oil drilling - we’d be using shovels. Probably the same for defense, at least at the low level, such as piece parts (transistors, resistors, etc.).
And considering that we don’t have a strategic reserve of imports for the above (along with many other items), I think China would fare MUCH BETTER than us if trading stopped tomorrow.
Do China’s leaders care? Perhaps they would rather stunt their economic development so they can maintain strong control over the country?
Obviously, there is no need to define acronyms around here. Everybody knows what VPN means.
/s
A virtual private network (VPN) extends a private network across a public network, and enables users to send and receive data across shared or public networks as if their computing devices were directly connected to the private network. Applications running across the VPN may therefore benefit from the functionality, security, and management of the private network.[1]
So ... is Huma her “Max”? Plenty of candidates to qualify as Joe, a hired ally who is found at the bottom of the swimming pool at the start of the movie.
You don’t need the dictators in China to have censorship, when you have Google & Facebook. At least the dictators in China have the authority they claim to have, while Google and Facebook merely appointed themselves the job of top censors or the Internet.
This is all because George H.W. Bush decided to cast America’s lot with globalist investors and not with the individual Chinese who were fighting for freedom in Tiananmen Square.
Thanks. :-)
Yes, that was a sad turning point in modern Chinese history.
You don’t hear much about the Tiananmen Square massacre anymore. China would have evolved towards greater freedom and even throwing off of communist control, if not for that crackdown.
I’ll always remember how the people were moved by the statue they named “The Goddess of Democracy”, which became a rallying point and inspiration during Tiananmen Square protests.
While we don’t hear about Tiananmen Square anymore, movements for freedom may rise again in China. We’ll see. My hope is that as China has moved towards more free market reforms, and engagement with the outside world, that China will change eventually.
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