So I just found out that WordPress has been blocked in China since 2006! I was on Wikipedia surfing around for articles about China and got to the topic of censorship in China. I remembered hearing on NPR the other day that China is reinforcing its crackdown against websites with “vulgar” or “obscene” content by censoring and blocking fourteen new websites, such as Microsoft’s MSN, so I was interested in seeing which notable websites were blocked in China.
According to Wikipedia, websites like The New York Times and BBC News are blocked, but surprisingly I saw many more that were blocked before but now aren’t, such as Yahoo! Taiwan and AOL news. Scrolling down, I saw a list of blogs and vlogs that are blocked, and was shocked and yet not surprised when I spotted Blogspot, Livejournal, Flickr, and WordPress on the list! Wikipedia did note that WordPress seems unblocked at times, but when I googled “WordPress blocked in China?” all of the top results said that indeed WordPress is blocked. 😦
So now I’m wondering, how am I going to disseminate my experience in Shanghai? I’ll still try to access WordPress there, but now I will be surprised if it works. Maybe I’ll have to take regular trips to the American embassy to beg for wireless access to foreign websites. Luckily, Facebook isn’t blocked in China anymore, so if I need to, I can go back to posting there instead until I get home to update everything here. Anyway, this entire situation is so infuriating!
My parents insist that the American media has a negative bias against China because it sees China as an economic competitor and a threat to the continuing status of the U.S. as the world’s only superpower. However, I’ve pointed out to them that the news they’re getting through Chinese cable is probably just as skewed towards giving the Chinese government a positive image. At least in the U.S., the government can’t filter which news is appropriate for the government’s own image and which isn’t, unless the speech goes beyond the purview of the 1st Amendment right to free speech. Ever since the FCC abolished the Fairness Doctrine, which required the “fair and balanced” (however subjective that actually turns out to be) presentation of any significant controversial news, the American media has been free, even if we have much to complain about the things that are said throught it. Whichever way things are skewed, which I’m not at all denying they are, different viewpoints can at least still get air time, regardless of the ascribed to political ideology. This is extremely different from media in China, in which the government can censor the media without justification and ensure that there are no negative portrayals of the government on TV or even foreign websites.
At least with free media here in the U.S., we can decide for ourselves what the “truth” is, after hearing both sides of a story, which happens when multiple voices all compete to tell their version of it. This echoes the adversarial system of law that we use here in America, in which lawyers from two competing sides verbally duke it out to convince the judge or jury of their “truth.” And while some minority voices are certainly underrepresented, at least Americans don’t just see and hear the only strained, filtered, and purified b.s. news that makes it through the giant sieve that is the Chinese government. The language of the PRC’s actions reveal the way in which it views the Chinese people–as children who can’t responsibly handle vulgarity or (God forbid) viewpoint diversity. It’s as if the government is a movie theater and the Chinese people can’t get into a rated R movie, no matter what ID they show.
It’s no wonder films and TV shows in China are often vapid retellings of ancient legends, the Qing dynasty, martial arts, or most commonly all three. To the government, anything else would be too dangerous for the Chinese people, too close to the present, and too “Westernized,” all of which of course they can’t have. I understand that China’s pride in its ancient history and the interrelatedness of Buddhism and the martial arts tradition (as in the case of the Shaolin monks) are also substantial reasons behind these types of movies and shows, but I can’t help but wonder cynically about alternative reasons why the Chinese film industry lacks movies about the extremely interesting topics of the rapidly changing landscape of China and the relationships and lives of the modern Chinese.
It hasn’t escaped my notice that all of my entries so far have been somewhat angry in tone, and perhaps I can’t deny that I often find a lot to complain about. But all in all, all I’m doing is exercising my right to free speech and hoping that by raising awareness about some of the problems in the world, we can make progress in fixing them. I promise that in real life I’m actually quite a nice person who does not complain most of the time.
Warmly,
Dorothy
Oz Evolving 