bets on communism in china?

[zerojunkie]

So how long before it's gone? 10 years? 15?



http://www.newscientisttech.com/arti...ine-news_rss20

Users rage against China's 'Great Firewall'


Yang Zhou is no cyber-dissident, but recent curbs on his web surfing habits by China's censors have him fomenting discontent about China's "Great Firewall."

Yang's fury erupted a few days ago when he found he could not browse his friend's holiday snaps on Flickr.com, due to access restrictions by censors after images of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre were posted on the photo-sharing website.

"Once you've complained all you can to your friends, what more can you do? What else is there but anger and disillusionment?" Yang says after venting his anger with friends at a hot-pot restaurant in Beijing.

Flickr is the latest casualty of China's ongoing battle to control the internet. Wikipedia and a raft of other popular websites, discussion boards and blogs have already fallen victim to the country's censors.

China employs a complex system of filters and an army of tens of thousands of human monitors to survey the country's 140 million internet users' surfing habits and remove content deemed too sensitive.
'Healthy environment'

Its stability-obsessed government says the surveillance machinery, commonly known as the "Great Firewall," is necessary to let internet users enjoy a "healthy" online environment and build a "harmonious" society.

Yang just thinks it's a pain. "I just want to look at some photos! What's wrong with that?" says the 24-year-old accountant, typical of millions of young urban-dwelling professionals who are increasingly aware of and fed up with state intrusions into their private life.

Privacy, once regarded with suspicion in pre-reform China, has become a sought-after commodity among China's burgeoning middle class, according to Nicholas Bequelin from Hong Kong-based Human Rights Watch.

"Of course, privacy is the first thing people seek when they have the economic resources," Bequelin says. "We see this growing in China in the wake of ideas of ownership and property."

Away from cyberspace, the battle for privacy between China's secretive government and its increasingly active citizens has turned violent in recent months. In Bobai county, in the southern region of Guangxi, hundreds of farmers smashed government offices and burned cars after local officials imposed punitive fines on residents who had defied family planning laws and had too many children.
History of control

The battle for control of China's internet, however, will remain much more covert than confrontational, according to Liu Bin, an IT consultant with Beijing-based consulting firm BDA.

He believes it will take a long time before the government loosens control over web content, especially because the internet-savvy middle class is unlikely to take to the streets over lack of web access.

"Many educated people feel they can accept the current status quo because it doesn't have much impact on their daily lives ... They have been living with government propaganda for over 1,000 years," Liu says.

Such an attitude grates on Du Dongjin, a 40-year-old IT worker in Shanghai.

Du has decided to sue his internet service provider, the Shanghai branch of state-owned behemoth China Telecom, who he said had blocked a website that carried financial software he hoped to market. "If the court authorities aren't influenced, and they can hear the case fairly, I will win," Du said.

Most frustrated web surfers, however, would rather air their grievances in the relatively safe realms of internet anonymity.
Playing catch-up

That anonymity still exists only because a state push to have China's millions of bloggers register their real names to ensure they only posted "responsible" web content was abandoned after an outcry from the internet industry, and due to the impossible task of keeping lists of exploding numbers of users.

"The thirst for information in China is so strong, it is very difficult for the [Communist] party to stay ahead of the curve," Bequelin explained.

Within days of blocking Flickr, links to browser plug-ins and how-to explanations of ways to subvert the filters and view photos on the site were gleefully posted on blogs and in chat-rooms.

Many posts were preceded by tirades against the censors for "harmonising" Flickr. One blogger posted an image of a voodoo doll, calling it the Great Firewall and inviting users to – digitally – stick pins in it.

Yang said restrictions on Flickr probably wouldn't motivate him to write a blog, much less push him down the road of "potentially dangerous" activism. But he liked the idea of the Great Firewall voodoo doll. "Have you got the link? Maybe I'll go stick a pin in it," he said.

[Deff Gordon]

on the whole, they are pretty content over there. the economy is booming in the cities and the communist party have a lot of people signing up.

[Funkenstein]

Communism going out of style in China is like making the bet that our government did against Fidel surviving the 60s.

/looks at Fidel in 2007 with stogie in hand

[david austin]

much like cuba i think it will take a good 30-40 years.

the current populous is happily content in their growing bubble. they are modernizing at a breakneck pace and for the most part are keeping every dime for themselves. i think that as they come further into the tech/information age the younger generation will cry for less censorship and more democratic views. but until then...

[Deff Gordon]

Originally Posted by david austin

much like cuba i think it will take a good 30-40 years.

the current populous is happily content in their growing bubble. they are modernizing at a breakneck pace and for the most part are keeping every dime for themselves. i think that as they come further into the tech/information age the younger generation will cry for less censorship and more democratic views. but until then...

side note:

it's almost like the US is a 3rd world country. we export the raw materials to them for manufacturing for us.

another side note:

my wife is the factory manager for a huge children's toy & furniture company. she controls about 45 factories over there. her main one went on strike last week and was all over the news.

[PETA]

Originally Posted by nitetripp

on the whole, they are pretty content over there. the economy is booming in the cities and the communist party have a lot of people signing up.

the Party is buying off the middle class with improved quality of life. Here's the problem... as the economy continues to grow so does the size of that middle class and so do their demands for improvements.... which include liberty interests. Supposedly the Party is trying to juxtapose the rural and urban populations against one another and float on top of that tension. Seems to me that is having two tigers by the tail rather than one.

20 years tops and even less if the economies of the West cannot sustain China's growth through their consumption of their artifically value deflated products