China's bloggers, filmmakers feel chill of internet crackdown
reuters.com
reuters.com
The basic mechanism is control of ISBNs: the supply of these numbers is tightly restricted, and a book cannot be published without them. A fixed number of state-owned publishers is able to issue ISBNs, though privately-owned publishing companies can buy the numbers or work with a state-owned house to publish their books.
An ISBN acts as a chain-of-custody token for the publication of books. While some books are subject to approval before publication, the vast majority are not, and publication is done at the publisher's discretion. Should a book cause problems after publication, however, the consequences are catastrophic. The ISBN (and a "responsible editor" whose name appears on the copyright page of the book) allows the government to track down everyone who was involved in the production of the book, and squash them. People lose their jobs, in some cases publishing companies are suspended or dissolved outright.
It's a system carefully designed to make writers and publishers more cautious than they would actually need to be.
Publishing, while highly controlled by the government, isn't really an area where people end up in prison, or you see televised trials. The worst that usually happens is the ruining of a career, or in extreme cases the dissolution of a company (in journalism, by contrast, people get put in jail, or disappear). I've written about this distinction before[1], which I think is lost on most international observers.
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/17/opinion/the-real-censors-...
A system of censorship could be much easily implemented when one has the visibility over the entire society and the access to all its social resources. Before the age of internet, their focus was on book/newspaper publishing; and in our current age of internet, the focus was on internet as well as book/newspaper publishing.
And in terms of their practical methods, you can just imagine what you would do when you want to disrupt the information flow and when you have the absolute control of every sub-system in a society (i.e. the courts, the police, all the newspapers/websites/tv channels/radio stations, as well as the ability of not needing to worry about your livelihood when you do not work on anything else...)
It's almost an impregnable castle, as long as it does not crumble from inside the ruling system itself...
Xiaobo Liu has been sent to jail for multiple times in the past 30 years, and was just released on a medical parole from his latest imprisonment -- as a result of being diagnosed with terminal liver cancer -- 10 days ago.
Tencent Loses $14 Billion After Criticism From Chinese Media
http://variety.com/2017/biz/news/tencent-loses-14-billion-ho...
To call this "chilling" is a gross understatement!
http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/11/investing/donald-trump-press...
> Trump said that many companies were "getting away with murder" and that there would be more competitive bidding practices for federal contracts in his administration.
> Dow component Pfizer's (PFE) stock fell more than 2% immediately after the comments.
> Mylan (MYL), which has already come under Congressional scrutiny for dramatic price hikes of its life-saving allergy medication EpiPen, fell 3.5%, and Bristol-Myers Squibb dived 4%.
> Allergan (AGN) and Valeant (VRX), two other biotechs that have been criticized for raising drug prices, also fell more than 3%. And the iShares Nasdaq Biotechnology ETF (IBB), which owns many of these companies, fell 3% too.
That's just the first hit for "stock prices fell after criticism". There's plenty of that, and four percent are nothing. What's so chilling? That 4 percent of anything can mean billions of dollars? The mechanism of stock markets? That social media and "traditional media" have this reach and effect just by things being said? That the gaming industry became this huge and heartless after such short time, and how some in it would LOVE to be able to "capture" audiences like the pharma industry can? None of these things? Or really just mostly the Chinese Communist Party, the one thing most of us have no say and no responsibility in, rather than those aspects of this which we share in every day?
And what comes after chilling? Freezing? Is it really "gross" to merely call this chilling? What would be neither an under- nor an overstatement?
They want to be in control, including controlling creativity.
In fact, if you're a Chinese people like me, you probably learned CCP's "Three Represents" when you in mid school. Which is:
- "Represents advanced social productive forces" stands for economic production
- "Represents the progressive course of China's advanced culture" stands for cultural development
- "Represents the fundamental interests of the majority" stands for political consensus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Represents
What that said is:
- We (CCP) decide what is important to this country
- We decide what you can do when you're boring
- We decide what you can have (and your needs)
So, I won't be surprised one day we had that Sea Ban thing and what's followed all over again.
But how could such a move be reconciled with China's recent expansion into global politics?
I used to live in China when I was a kid. There are vast aspects both wonderful and terrible that never seem to make themselves known in the Western world. China has tremendous potential. It also has deep, systemic problems with no easy solution (or even a solution at all) in sight.
Why?
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2...
There was actually quite a lot of discussion on HN on the slate article, with many people who live(d) in China attesting to the truth of the article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10173395
This is not because Chinese people are dicks. Frankly, if you're a (white) foreigner, you're going to be treated better than average by almost everyone as it is. But people hold back, because helping other people has the potential to have huge negative consequences if you get involved.
Here in the states, people are amazingly open to helping someone they've never met. This cultural assumption works because everyone 'just knows' that the person helping is not responsible for anything beyond that particular interaction. We even have Good Samaritan laws on the books that ensure that it is legally safe to do your best to render assistance in extreme circumstances.
It is the complete opposite in China. If you help someone, it is assumed that you are taking responsibility for their entire problem. (Yes, I am oversimplifying, there's more to it than this. But this is an accurate general gist.)
I don't know anything about this fellow, but this particular video of his, at least, does an excellent job explaining what is going on:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Y4vXYfa06k
He is talking about the modern experience, but it is the same as what I remember from the 80's. The only thing I disagree with him about is that I do not see it as a new phenomenon.
But anyway, I'm not optimistic considering the legal/cultural reasons for the pedestrian issue and the "Broken Vase Scam" in the video will get applied to bigger social challenges.
"driving in China can be really frustrating sometimes. Now China has a problem with people baiting each other to break the law so that you can break the law and they can claim a reward. This is blackmail and extortion inCARnate"
I admire your optimism, but this has yet to be an accurate statement across the entirety of human civilization.
There are many, many Chinese who are working very hard for the betterment of their country, and there are many, many wonderful things about China. But it is virtually impossible to overestimate the difficulties they are going to be facing in the coming years. Their economic success, by becoming the manufacturing powerhouse of the world, has come at tremendous cost, and is not maintainable in the long term. We live in interesting times.
I recommend watching a few more of the video series that I linked earlier, as well. I've watched several of them since I last posted in this thread, and (for what it's worth) I find his observations accurate and fair, both the good and the bad.
As a reaction to the population explosion though, the CCP imposed the One Child Policy in 1980 (1979?). Consequently, China will now start to face the aging and shrinking workforce problem that has slowed Western economies in recent years--except China's version of the problem will be MUCH worse due to the extreme nature of its fertility swings. In fact, I believe the size of China's labor force hit its peak a few years ago.
In addition to the shrinking workforce, a historically rapidly aging society will have to face an explosion in healthcare costs... which tend to be a drag on the economy (though are obviously necessary). Furthermore, China doesn't have the retirement home infrastructure that the West has, which will absolutely need to expand as China has a huge retiring population who have few children compared to the rest of the world.
https://www.economist.com/news/asia/21648715-distorted-sex-r...
In the case of China it is socialism in political policies but very capitalist in economic policies.
Sweden is socialism in the economic sense but politically it values freedom much more than China , you will see this if you notice the differences in tax rates in Sweden vs China.
That's the official version.
It's most probably about rejecting the influences from the West, preservation of Chinese culture. Recently there's also quite a huge war on influence of Korean culture.
Said another way a bit more reductionist, it seems that any engagement between CNN vs Fox types is rather marginal (for expected outcomes), vs playing both sides and exploiting the cognitive dissonance/norms differential between the two.
I think this chapter in human nature could be described as a conundrum that arises from the allegory of the cave.
I have no beef in this fight, not being an American, but I see the same behaviour from Fox, CNN (probably the biggest offender), MSNBC, Breitbart and sometimes even BBC.
This is a sort of shorthand for discouraging people from developing strong, dissident, aberrant or divisive political positions. Discouraging people from taking on political identities in general, other than a unified chinese identity. Discouraging people from disparaging and/or distrusting the government. Keeping fringey social trends out of the mainstream.
If you think of how strong political identities are currently in the US, this is exactly what they are trying to prevent. They want to keep everyone on the same page in terms of political and social norms.
The skeptical take is that the CCP is protecting itself from popular and democratic revolutionary movements.
If I was leading China I'd most definitely want to keep this sort of bizarre thinking out of my country.
On the other hand, a country with 1.x billion people and several languages/ethnicities can become a huge hell-hole without social harmony.
This "revolution" thing didn't end that well in Libya, even if they managed to get rid of the old leader. Same with the "democracy" that was re-installed in Iraq and elsewhere.
So, one has to be careful what they wish for.
Aside from the CCP wanting to maintain its control in-land, there's this little real issue, that 80% the internet is mostly controlled from a handful of companies, all in the hands of foreign nationals (who are all "patriotic" and all reside in countries other than China).
That is, things like search, social media, etc services are not a neutral international ground, but mostly dominated by a single country's companies. Those foreign countries get to siphon the data, dictate what's acceptable, promote their culture, viewpoints and national interests 24/7, censor or bury what they don't like, etc.
So, while lesser countries might bend over and take it, it makes sense for a country that is a superpower in itself, and has billions of people, to take control of its own web and have its own search, social media, etc -- orthogonally to if they censor them or not.
Ask yourselves: if Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft where e.g. Russian or Chinese, would the US (as a state and as citizens) be using them them all the same?
We had no issue with Nokia or Toyota. We consume Anime. Lots of companies use Kaspersky despite apparent ties to RU intelligence services. There is some talk of the DoD pulling out from a contract --but that's DoD and I imagine Chinese version of DoD would do something similar.
Neither Nokia not Toyota were relevant on the pipes and on the culture/interest/spying/etc level. It was just buying foreign consumer products. (And neither is Anime an example of that).
None of those things are like using a foreign Google, Facebook, etc.
And even for those (which are entirely time), there were huge worries about the Japanese "buying everything" (in the 80s), and people saying people should "buy American" etc.
EDIT: Not sure why I'm being downvoted, everything I mentioned has been widely reported on and can be confirmed in ten seconds with a Google search.
If we look at the censorship history in different countries over the world, such as France (before the 20th century) and USSR, the only way to end a very stringent censorship in a society is by ending the ruling government itself, which is usually an autocracy, or an oligarchy at best. But that could mean a period of turmoil that would destroy many people's lives across the entire country. It seems one way to avoid this great destruction is for most of the population in the country to rise up in synchrony and simultaneously topple down the government together -- but this concurrency at a society level is one of the major targets that the current censorship implemented in China aims at.
Sigh...It just seems impossible to have hack out a consensus in a distributed system when the powerful system admin with his privileges at the root level constantly interferes...
Part of the problem here is that China is still running according to Confucianism, which was a wonderfully effective political philosophy for a largely agrarian society, but is quite ill-suited for the modern world. The Chinese need to think out what is the right form of government for the modern industrial world, but to do that they need free discussion, which is just what Xi is making impossible.
This definitely isn't just Xi's fault.