“The internet and mobile phones have undermined attempts by China’s secretive rulers to control the news, a senior Communist party official admitted today.
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He said governments used to believe that they could muffle 90 per cent of all bad news. But this was no longer the case. In the internet age, he said, the party had to become adept at managing and controlling information, rather than covering it up.
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He said: “There are people who don’t want the public to know anything negative. Progress takes time. But there are struggles between the forces of openness and of conservatism.â€
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Reporters Without Borders, the media watchdog, describes the Chinese Government as an “enemy of the internetâ€. In its annual report in February, it said China used armies of cyberpolice and spearheaded an increasingly sophisticated movement to restrict the internet.
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In January, President Hu Jintao said China’s rulers intended to keep as tight a rein on the internet as they did on traditional forms of the media such as newspapers and television.”
Surprised? Not me!
Sounds to me like the Chinese government is starting to feel the effects, of what is simply inevitable.
You just can’t oppress people forever! Eventually they will want freedom. We saw this in 1989 during the large protests on Tiananmen Square, and now we’re starting to see something similar on the internet. What the guys in China’s communist party doesn’t seem to realize is that the internet offers possibilities that are just “uncensorable” (If that’s even a word). Thanks to the efforts of Phil Zimmerman, Bruce Schneier, Werner Koch, Theo de Raadt and thousands of others, tons of cryptography software is freely available for anyone in China to use to get what they ought to have, freedom of speech. If you wanted to prevent this, you’re gonna have to block access to millions of public FTP servers around the globe, and even then, you can’t block P2P networks like BitTorrent or private servers of individuals like myself. Looking at China’s history over the past 30 – 40 years, has shown it slowly evolving, and I think, and honestly believe, that that evolution will eventually lead to democracy, and a free society. The more you try to stop people, the more you push yourselves back, why not just drop this stupid human-rights-violating regime you have going on RIGHT NOW, and make a better country for everyone? You carry a huge responsibility, your country consists of over a billion people!
Mr. Hu Jintao, tare down this firewall!
Something big is going to happen in China in the coming years, lets just hope for the good of the Chinese.