Chinese Official Vows to "Purify" the Net

Sleeping Kirby writes to tell us China's Communist party leader, Hu Jintao today announced the intent to leverage the economic potential of the web while seeking to "purify the internet environment". He proposes to do this by maintaining "the initiative in opinion" on the internet and to "'raise the level guidance on the internet," thus civilizing and purifying the internet environment.

They're going to what?

[MECC]

Don't they mean purify humanity?

Re:Bolshevism vs. Fascism

[ShaneThePain]

I am a fascist, and I take great offence to your comment.
Fascism is not "anti-freedom"
American Fascists in particular, uphold the Bill of Rights with great esteem.
We just dont believe that the most popular politicians are the best.
Meritocracy is the name of the game.
Fascism Forward!

The Register isn't qualified to report on this.

[It's a thing]

Anyone who confuses the Web and the Internet isn't qualified to report about either.

And anyone who puts a ® at the end of an entire article as if it was a copyright symbol isn't qualified to copyright or register as a trademark anything.

Re:They're going to what?

[User 956]

I don't know, but it's ironic that they want to "purify the internet environment", while their actual environment goes to complete shit. [newscientist.com]

And this is unique to "Bolshevism" how?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

...the Bolshevik state would prevent you from agitating in the first place by limiting the set of stimuli that comprise your world...

And this is unique to "Bolshevism" how? Controlling the media to present a picture of fair and rational government has been the aim of almost every government/state/ruler in history and it continues to the present day. You need to hit the books if you think fascists (or democrats - small "d") don't practice this too...

Doug in a Dress

[Ace905]

I think it's obvious the entire slashdot community is going to be 'against' this initiative. We all have experience using 'more than average' time on the internet and particularly the world wide web ; it is completely impossible to 'guide' people on the internet.

China would have to have a ginormous amount of 'censors' constantly surfing and updating their own database of acceptable internet sites to have anything close to a 'guidance initiative'. This is just a media spin on what china has been doing all along, blocking major portions of the internet off completely from it's own citizens.

You can see the ridiculous tracert douginadress.com [douginadress.com] takes to reach chinese citizens right now ; another comment on China's inability to even provide standard censorship

Re:Bolshevism vs. Fascism

[MrAnnoyanceToYou]

I hate to put it this way, but that's nowhere near true. If you look at the wikipedia entry on Nazi Propaganda [wikipedia.org], it will be a great enlightenment to you. Fascism always included extensive information management. Democracy shouldn't, and isn't designed to, but the last fifty years have had backsliding induced by fearmongers.

Bolshevism and Fascism are both comparatively bad forms of government by certain standards. Government rooted in non-militia military power generally is.

Actually no

[Anonymous Coward]

If you didn't buy "Made in China", the Chinese economy would suck. Nobody would be able to afford computers and they won't have access to any sort of information. Only the information printed on the local propaganda newpaper or the (propaganda) radio. With an advanced economy people have computers which they can use to educate themselves and get past the Chinese petty little "censorship" efforts. Do you really think the Chinese govt. can even have mediocre success in censoring? It's all talk.
Also by buying Made In China you build a nation of consumers who need services from the US (airplanes, farm equipment, high tech stuff). Even China wouldn't have the needed workers to sustain an developed modern economy .. because there physically aren't enough workers. So that would benefit both countries and other countries in the world. This will continue until automation helps reduce the number of hours people need to work (and people will be paid more as they work less because the amount of work needed to afford a good lifestyle would be reduced).

Re:Small problem for Mr. Hu

[gstoddart]

A vast majority of the world's servers are in countries not named the People's Republic of China. Therefore, to do as he insists, he would have to take control of those servers.

Or, he tries harder to make the 'great firewall of China' even more efficient so that the stuff that he can't directly control, he can supress. If his little corner of the world seems to have been purified, and his own citizens can't see anything to refute it, his plan must have worked.

I suspect that's a more likely strategy.

Cheers

Re:Is the Chinese Constitution a sham?

[Jerf]

You missed Article 51:

Article 51. The exercise by citizens of the People's Republic of China of their freedoms and rights may not infringe upon the interests of the state, of society and of the collective, or upon the lawful freedoms and rights of other citizens.

And guess who decides what interests the state?

For all the bitching about the United States you see on Slashdot, at least our government actually has to try to subvert the Constitution, and we have ways of fighting back. The US Constitution doesn't have an "Oh, and everything we promised you you have, you don't have." escape hatch built in. Technically, we have the exact opposite, whatever our dear Attorney General may think. (The closest thing to an all-purpose escape hatch is the Commerce Clause, and that's not without controversy, nor is it total; the Supreme Court has interpreted it more broadly than I'd like but they have rejected some uses of it.)

Re:Bolshevism vs. Fascism

[Kadin2048]

All that Commmie ignorance and the Russians still managed to put a man into space before anyone else.

People seemingly nostalgic for the Red Bear seem to love to belabor the "man in space" point, but also seem to avoid noting that the Soviet Union failed the ultimate intelligence test, when it neglected to ensure its own survival.

If the system was that good, obviously it should have easily managed to hang on -- obviously that would have been the prime national priority. And yet it did not. Perhaps the take-away lesson is that while the system worked admirably on concentrating a lot of resources on a few key problems, it was unable to manage the delegation of a lot of resources, to a lot of smaller problems. (This isn't particularly astute or surprising; control centralization allows for concentration, but at the expense of flexibility.)

TFA said nothing

[grumpyman]

TFA has absolutely no context and everybody just can't wait to pitch in their brilliant 2 cents on 'purification', state control, philosophy in life...etc. Anybody bother to check what is he referring to? TFA is atypical Chinese government bashing rhetoric. I have no problem bashing them, but FFS in what context does he meant by purifying? What if the context is 'kiddie porn', 'online crack sale', WTF is it??? Network virus? Zombie bots?? DOS attack????

Every time there's this knee-jerk, robotic reaction I totally don't get. Believe in what you WANT TO believe in. In this case, there's no FA to read.

Re:Actually no

[Em Adespoton]

This will continue until automation helps reduce the number of hours people need to work (and people will be paid more as they work less because the amount of work needed to afford a good lifestyle would be reduced).

Ah yes... 1950's optimism... with the advent of the automatic dishwasher, laundry machines, improved automobiles, etc. people will no longer have to work 8 hour days! What's that? 50 years have passed and you work an 8.5 hour day now? You can't work an 8 hour day because then you won't be competitive with the people working 8.5 hour days, and you won't be able to keep a job to support yourself? How is that possible, when you live in a country with such a massive food surplus?

Re:Is the Chinese Constitution a sham?

[Hoi Polloi]

I'm thankfull for countries like China. Every time I get disgusted with how the US is run I can look at China and gain some perspective. It could be better but it could also be a lot worse.

Re:Bolshevism vs. Fascism

[DuChamp Fitz]

Are you talking about the Soviet Union and Communism? Or Athens and Democracy?

Re:Bolshevism vs. Fascism

[nomadic]

People seemingly nostalgic for the Red Bear seem to love to belabor the "man in space" point, but also seem to avoid noting that the Soviet Union failed the ultimate intelligence test, when it neglected to ensure its own survival.

Every civilization falls, eventually.

Re:Is the Chinese Constitution a sham?

[edwardpickman]

Where have you been? Here in the good ole US of A we have hundreds perhaps thousands of laws that are blatantly unConstitutional. Virtually all the forfeiture laws related to drug possession and sale are illegal. Many parts of the Homeland Security Act were obviously unConstitutional. The Supreme Court excuses them as being for our own good but the founding fathers made no such exceptions. Rationalizing exceptions to Constitutional Law are very scary in any society. The Supreme Court should not be allowed to change the Constitution through interpretation only the States have the power to change the Constitution.

Re:Is the Chinese Constitution a sham?

[pangur]

What one hand gives, the other takes away. From the same link:

Article 1. The People's Republic of China is a socialist state under the people's democratic dictatorship led by the working class and based on the alliance of workers and peasants. The socialist system is the basic system of the People's Republic of China. Sabotage of the socialist system by any organization or individual is prohibited.

Article 28. The state maintains public order and suppresses treasonable and other counter- revolutionary activities; it penalizes actions that endanger public security and disrupt the socialist economy and other criminal activities, and punishes and reforms criminals.

Article 53. Citizens of the People's Republic of China must abide by the constitution and the law, keep state secrets, protect public property and observe labour discipline and public order and respect social ethics.

I'll leave it to you to decide what constitutes "sabotage of the socialist system", "other counter-revolutionary activities", and observing "labour discipline and public order" means.

Re:From the good-luck-with-that dept.

[apt142]

Considering how few females there are in china, I'd say he's better off leaving the internet full of porn.

Fascism .... yay!!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's still why I think Bolshevism* and its sequelae are more insidious than fascism: sure, the fascists will shoot you if you agitate against them....

According to my uncle who got arrested by the Nazis for the abominable crime of being a Social Democrat and who was subsequently shipped off to the KZ camps; fascists will do more than just shoot you. They are quite innovative and enterprising people. They'll arrest you and confiscate all your possessions, assessing the value of even the most worthless objects with nauseating meticulousness before auctioning them off. Then they will torture you. When the torturers are done with you you'll be hauled into a court room where you will be screamed at by an idiot judge in a kangaroo trial where the only sentence ever passed is death. Your defense lawyer will not open his mouth even once during the 20 minutes or so the trial lasts except perhaps to yawn. Once you have been sentenced things start to get interesting because you now have the choice of several fascinating and miserable ways to die. You might for example be of use to the state as a participant in a perverse medical experiment. Another popular option is gassing you and having your corpse processed into fertilizer. If you have a valuable skill or education that can be put to practical use you may also be lucky enough to suffer a slow death by a combination of starvation and being worked to death that is if you don't get your head blown off first by a passing storm-trooper because who doesn't like the squeak your shoes make. If you are a good looking female you might even have end up in an army brothel servicing 20 stinking soldiers every day, 7 days a week until you are so broken down and unappetizing that management decides to have you put down with a pistol shot to the neck. Come to think of it the list of ways a fascist regime might decide to kill you is in near endless.....

Choosing between extreme right and left wing politics, i.e. Stalinism and Fascism is choosing between bad and worse. Id say that Fascism is still worse although thanks to North Korea the margin is getting rather slim.

Re:Is the Chinese Constitution a sham?

[The_Rook]

compare

Article 51. The exercise by citizens of the People's Republic of China of their freedoms and rights may not infringe upon the interests of the state, of society and of the collective, or upon the lawful freedoms and rights of other citizens.

with the united states constitution tenth amendment.

Amendment X

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

perhaps the best way to compare the two constitutions is to say that according to the united states constitution, all rights and powers belong to the people except those specifically reserved for the state while the chinese constitution says that all rights and powers belong to the state except those that are extended to the people.

Politicians full of shit. News at 11.

[gsn]

Wow there is a lot of anti-China rhetoric out here. Sure I hate the great firewall as much as the next /.ter but...

How is this any different than local efforts to purify the internet like segregating the dirty pics into .xxx domains, Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA), DOPA, banning online gambling...

You can find out all about international efforts to purify the net here. [privacyinternational.org] And its already outdated.

Every politician will talk about purifying the internet, making it safe for you and your children because most people have a knee jerk reaction, and it distracts from real issues.

Re:I think what he means is...

[ColdWetDog]

just look at that mess of spam emails, phishing attempts, viruses

And coming from China [slashdot.org]. Think of that.... Maybe he's on to something.

Re:Bolshevism vs. Fascism

[paeanblack]

The last fifty years of what? If you're talking about the US, it isn't a democracy; it's a limited republic with some facist elements. Democracy is where every "person" being governed has an equal say in the governing of society. Needless to say, it doesn't scale well.

A pure democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner. As a form of governance, it is only effective for highly homogenous societies.

Re:And this is unique to "Bolshevism" how?

[RAMMS+EIN]

``What I find at Slashdot is often groupthink that anything from the government is automatically wrong and any gossipy rumours that come from "underground sources" (who are more appreciated the more they try to look victimized) are automatically true. The world isn't that simple.''

No, but it's good to be skeptical. In my corner of Europe, many people seem to have a blind faith in the government, and will reject anything that resembles a conspiracy theory. I don't have any reason to believe my government seeks to harm me, but even if they mean the best, they can do harm. They have certainly been wrong, uninformed, and naive on some issues. And even the wildest conspiracy theories are sometimes true. So the right approach is to treat everything with a healthy dose of skepticism, and _always_ think for yourself. The problem is, of course, that nobody has time to become an expert and think about everything government decides about.

Can't purify the Human Race

[Anonymous Coward]

The Internet is made by people.
From Teenagers to Big Business, the best and the worst of human behavior is digitally displayed for all the world.

Don't blame the system, it shows life as it is,
not some idealist utopia.

Perhaps researchers of human behavior can learn more about how people really behave
in our modern world.

There are those who do try to purify the human race,
but they are known as war criminals,
the worst of all crimes,
destroying humanity and free will, in the name of government or religion.

And what about the Olympic Games?

[master_p]

Shouldn't the Olympics of 2008 be boycotted just like the Olympics of 1980? China has done far worse things to the people and environment than Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan.

Put down that crack pipe, your Mommy's calling

[Anonymous Coward]

And if you step ALL the way back to Marx's day, it's fairly clear that he was right.

Clear to who? A sheltered, pampered useful idiot?

Marx viewed economics as a zero-sum game. That fundamental problem makes all his theories as utterly worthless as tits on a bull. Or posts from an ignorant college twerp who has never been responsible for anything his entire worthless life and worships Castro's executioner.

Care to tally up how many millions of people have been murdered in the name of Marx in the past 150 years or so?

To quote Ronald Reagan: "A Communist is someone who reads Marx. An anti-Communist is one who understands Marx."

Re:Bolshevism vs. Fascism

[VJ42]

So how would you define the UK, in your system? I define it as a democracy, as we vote for MPs to represent us, and parliment is soverign. Most people would call that form of decision making representative democracy. Our form of government however is that of a constitutional monarchy, as the head of state is not elected but born into the role. I repeat, being a democracy does not exclude you from being a republic or a constitunial mornarchy.

However it's perfectly possible to have republics or monarchies that are undemocratic, see current day China or WWII Japan. What you have to remember is that a democracy is a form of decision making, not a form of government in itself; unless you are takling about direct democracy, and the nearest we have to that are the Swiss.