"anyone who comes across unhealthy online stories can file a report"

by iosaf Mon Oct 10, 2005 21:29

Benjamin Joffe-Walt, is a correspondent with "The Guardian" and works from Shanghai,on a visit to Taishi, in Canton, he witnessed the lynching of a Chinese provincial delegate.

Also present was a journalist of Radio France and another attached to the Hong Kong South China Morning Post.

The story broke this morning in english
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1588521,00.html
and over several hours was picked up across the world.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4325452.stm

It took six more hours to reach the "foreign reader news" of the Chinese information ministry controlled sites. It still hasn't reached the discussion forums of the Chinese internauts.

A man has been beaten to death, foreign journalists attacked and at source the story deals with a peasant rebellion and dirty allegations of corruption. Is this healthy news?

by JOD Mon Oct 10, 2005 21:55 China

but as they find new ways to suppress the people find new ways to express online.

Have to clarify that bit about the cost though. My always-on broadband costs RMB1300 (EUR135) per anum paid to the phone company. Works pretty good. Can't get the BBC though.

by JOD Mon Oct 10, 2005 22:05 Yeah the usual

you know that if you live here long. Legacy of the "struggle" thoughtcontrol sessions that were held under Mao in the fifties and sixties. One tzongchen (comrade) publicly admitted thinking erroneous (i.e. non-Mao-thought) things and a group of his peers vied to outdo each other in proving their loyalty by condemning the guy with as much volume and vituperation as possible.

Naturally, this is torture and would be likely to promote psychological regression in the afflicted. No longer mentally or emotionally autonomous, he turns to the State and becomes a snitch. When he rejoins the audience he screams louder and more condemningly than all the rest.

by Shipsea Mon Oct 10, 2005 22:14

How right this writer is. And we don’t need to take his word for it that Western governments are salivating at the prospect of reproducing the Chinese model. Consider our very own Taoiseach, Mr Ahern’s remarks on a recent visit to China where he said he

‘would like to have the power of the Mayor [of Shanghai]…I would just like that we can get through the consultation problem as quickly as possible’. (Jan 2005)

http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=71766&search_text=paddy

Of course Mr Ahern had business to do. He had urgently to signal that Ireland had no objection to anything inhumane going on in China. He had a plane-load of Irish business people with him to reinforce the point. And a few thousand more at home watching carefully for the anticipated Chinese-Irish profit dividends that might result. Above all he was not to mention the human rights 'problem'. His own 'consultation problem' must surely have been seen by the Chinese as the exquisitely coded message they would appreciate: we dont give a damn what your human rights record is, we just wish we had the same authority to do the same with our own irritating populace at home. Now where do we sign?

Of course, the 'consultation problem’ to which Mr Ahern was referring was in fact the legitimate right of the people of Ireland to have their views taken into consideration and reflected in government action. In Cork, Tara, Mayo, Waterford, Dublin and many other places around Ireland, the determination of our present government to deny the interests and wishes of the people is all too apparent.

So, we should study the Chinese example carefully because it is exactly what is in store for us if we dont put a stop to this very evident tendency in our own society now. Rossport 5? Autistic children taken into care for vindictive reasons? Are you going to let them get away with this? Are you going, for instance, to actually vote for them – or anyone like them again?

by - Sat Oct 22, 2005 11:47

wikipedia has been blocked by the Chinese since October 20th. Reporters with Borders and Humanrights watch annoyed. Willie O Dea inspired.
http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=15374

by JOD Sat Oct 22, 2005 12:22 JODPRC at gmail dot com China

They're blocking proxy servers and anonymous browsers as well curse them. BBC long since blocked and now no wiki as well.

The phenomenon of wangba, or online gaming, is already becoming notorious. The introverted Chinese character is particularly susceptible to spending unhealthy amounts of time in the Virtual Wurld.

Last week an elderly lady was murdered in Shanghai by young thugs who robbed her in order to pay off debts they had incurred buying online (un)"real estate". Thousands of kuai (Remninbi) are spent each day in China by online gaming addicts purchasing such fancies as virtual swords, castles, titles and so forth, none of which exist as anything but streams of data on some gaming server.

The cost of such "purchases" comes on top of the cost of actually playing online.

In China software piracy is so all-pervasive that there is little point trying to charge for gaming software supplied on physical carrier media like CD-ROM and so forth. The wangba profits by charging the player for online access to the game servers. No pay no play.

The Chinese government in its infinite pragmatism has come up with a novel way of enforcing its concerns as to the very great potential for social damage posed by the negative wangba phenomenon. This is anecdotal but I'd say with a high probability of being true.

The government has forced the ISPs and the server/software owners to impose a time limit on players but rather than simply kicking a player off line (they can come back immediately from a different IP address) they do it a lot more subtly. Once a player has been in the game for three hours; regardless of physical location, (internet cafe or bedroom for example) his character or avatar in the game begins to lose powers it needs to stay "alive" in the virtual world. By the fourth hour the avatar is down to half"power", by the fifth completely drained and an open victim to any other avatar to come along and kill i.e. permanently exclude from the game. With players paying good money to buy virtual real estate none want to lose it by dying ingame so the player is forced to leave off playing and not return until a prescribed period of time has elapsed.

Certainly a solution that well illustrates the complex and subtle thinking process of the world's most powerful one-party state.