Post-Quake, China Cuts Access to Entertainment Web Sites

thefickler writes "The Chinese Government has issued orders that all entertainment web sites and regular television programming be shut down completely for the next 3 days. Only web sites covering the recent tragic 7.8 magnitude earthquake and television stations broadcasting CCTV earthquake programming will be allowed to remain live." Can anyone with Web access in China confirm this report? From an AP story on the state of communications in the country right now, it appears at least that China is (despite ongoing monitoring) allowing freer than usual communications in the wake of the quake.

Whats the point?

[Redlazer]

What the hell is it supposed to do?

I would think that after a tragedy, it would better to OPEN the internet as much as possible.

I'm really starting to hate China.

-Red

Over the top

[tsa]

I think this is a bit over the top. Many people lost relatives or friends in the quake. Some entertainment can help them get over the grief. Now they're constanty reminded of the quake by the media. That can't be good for them.

China can't read slashdot

[fractalVisionz]

Can anyone with Web access in China confirm this report?

No they can't, since this is an entertainment website.

Re:Slashdot misses the point as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is a useful cover for all sorts of things. As the US has demonstrated with the rampant nationalism that followed 9/11, all sorts of things can get pushed through that normally would not happen. So it is now with China. Any Chinese citizen that objects to the impeding atrocities will branded "unChinese" and dealt with accordingly, to the cheers of his neighbours.

Re:Whats the point?

[cyfer2000]

I hope you understand what "national mourning" means and at least understand what the title means.

Re:monitored is not free

[Vectronic]

So?

Not that I agree with TwITter having multiple accounts, but 'it' does make valid comments fairly often. It may simply for the purpose of modding up his trolled accounts, or maybe just genuine comments, doesnt matter "why" it just matters what was said.

Mod down his trolls, and mod up his interesting/insightful/funny comments as you see fit, as you would anyone else.

Treating it differently just creates scepticism, more problems for the modding system. If everyone was wondering if the person had other accounts, and therefore was hesitant to moderate properly, or down-mods for the sake of spite, the system fails.

Re:Whats the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell is it supposed to do?

I would think that after a tragedy, it would better to OPEN the internet as much as possible.

I'm really starting to hate China.

-Red

But China has been more open and receptive about this than they ever have. Look at their history.

If you want to see real government relief effort problems, look at Burma. China pales by comparison.

Re:Whats the point?

[name*censored*]

It's possible that America isn't the only place with a Ted Stevens in high places, claiming that the information regarding relief effort and coordination "got tangled up with all these things going on the Internet commercially.". From there, it's a short logical (logic? hah!) bound to say that cutting off all unrelated content will speed the recovery effort up (although there might be a grain of truth to this thought, if you could prove that Chinese pirates are taxing the infrastructure to the limit, which I highly doubt).

Re:Closure of Channel BT.

[SanityInAnarchy]

This is no reason to hate China... What did the rest of the US do when Cyclone Katrina hit?

Whatever they wanted, which is the point.

didn't want to know about their fellow citizens people drowning.

Some did, some didn't. Why is it alright for the government to force everyone to know about it?

China is opening

[religious freak]

China is opening, and I think it's apparent by the way they are covering the quake. No, they will not be a fully functioning democracy tomorrow, but this coverage of the quake is big news.

To the Chinese natural disasters were, in the past, covered up and silenced. They are embracing not only independent local coverage, but independent FOREIGN coverage as well (foreign access is truly amazing).

I think despite some obvious failings even today, China is truly moving forward into a more open society. Give credit where credit is due...

-------
-1 nonconforming opinion

Re:Over the top

[digitalunity]

Just to put this into perspective, look at the raw unmitigated loss of life.

In the span of 1 minute, more people in China died than all the american lives lost in the "War on Terror" during the last 7 years.

Add it up and I dare anyone bashing China right now to respond saying this mourning isn't a natural and healthy response.

Re:Over the top

[RiotingPacifist]

I live in Beijing. Such sentiments as above sound so selfish and self-indulgent. Great shows of national mourning are not unusual, even in our own western countries (or at least they used to be). I am no apologist for China but, on this, please cut the Chinese a bit of slack. You have no idea how this tragedy has affected people in China and while three days of mourning might seem excessive it is not necessarily so here. Moreover, it helps focus the national mind on what has to be done next: no more hope for rescue, the need for rebuilding, fund raising, etc.

BTW, I have so far not been affected in my access to the internet or TV, etc.

Mourning should be optional, it should not be used by any goverment to 'focus' a 'national mind', and distract it from other atrocities ( Read human rights, tibet, etc). The fact you even use the phrase 'national mind' just re-enfoces how well the patriot re-education act has worked.

p.s assuming your not brain-dead enough to think everything i write are western lies, stop to consider for a second how you can put a percentage correctness on philosophical writings? Mao would hate the Chinese government more than I do.

Re:Think it's a showcase?

[Max Littlemore]

Do you think maybe the government feels they are doing such a great job there's no need to clamp down?

Yeah, I think it's a way to show the world that they are a lot better at handling a humanitarian crisis than totalitarian governments like Burma's junta after the cyclone or the USAs rebublicans after the hurricane. They are doing well with this and are keen to show it - as many governments on Earth would be.

Disgusted

[ChameleonDave]

The sort of reactionary and racist anti-Chinese attitudes that are commonplace on Slashdot really sicken me.

A short period of mourning is declared, with very little enforcement, and all you want to do is seize the opportunity to make it look like censorship, in particular censorship of the disaster. It is the exact opposite. Frivolous entertainment is being scaled down a bit for a mere three days, and the TV networks are saturating the public with quake information. Never has the Chinese government been more open. With previous tragedies we saw secrecy and a desire to save face, but this regime is clearly much more modern. The contrast with the terrible Burmese regime is very clear.

I don't actually agree with the declaration of mourning, and I wish that this government could be replaced with one truly chosen by the people, but this doesn't mean that the non-stop stream of slurs and vilification is OK.

In particular, I find the concept of a period of mourning to be much less offensive than Bush's 16 Sept official day of prayer for hurricane Katrina. Separation of church and state, please!

Re:Over the top

[Anonymous Coward]

1.2 billion people living 80 years give you over 41 *thousand* natural deaths every single *day*. The quake resulted in doubling of that rate for 1-2 days. Less than 1% increase in mortality over a year's time - smoking and pollution result in many more unnecessary deaths than that. Hence the real loss of life is almost insignificant compared to the infrastructure damage.

People are shocked at the number dead without knowing the number of dead and born each day. The numbers are staggering.

The numbers are for comparison.

Re:monitored is not free

[something_wicked_thi]

I couldn't resist answering your idiotic post that just asked lots of pointless, stupid questions (without a question mark no less!), that seemed to lead the reader into random circles of thought like a labyrinth with no exit.

I note with interest, over the past 6 months, the noticiable uninformed anti chinese bias of the articles on Slashdot.

Um, do you even read Slashdot? Point to one topic here that isn't covered in a biased manner.

You didn't need to dig very far to find out that China is in 3 days of mourning.

So if the government declares a day of mourning, I'm not allowed to laugh at a funny television show? That sounds completely unhealthy. I don't care what your culture is.

You guys appear intellegent but incapable of independent thought when it comes to China.

It seems that you really just don't get the cultural differences and you don't understand the inter-realtionship between responsibile reporting and control.

Ooh, this one's easy. Responsible reporting and control have nothing to do with each other. If it's controlled, it's propaganda, not reporting. Deal with it.

You flap about over freedom of the press, and yet appear to have no understanding of what that is or what it means.

Another easy one. It means the press can report whatever they like without fear of being prosecuted for it.

China is made up of 56 different ethnics groups, 800 million of which are on less than $2 a day. You want to throw into that the irresponsible, almost unaccountable, sensationalist press we have in the West?

So what? The US started off with lots of poor farmers, too. I frankly don't see how this can have anything to do with freedom of the press. Do people get docked pay every time a reporter criticizes the government?

Yeah that would really work. Reporting without responsibility great invention.

And reporting with censorship is better, how? I can think of a number of ways it's worse.

A truely free press is a dangerous thing. It allows everyone to peddle whatever truth the desire and to encourage others to believe it.

Oh, so you criticize the people on Slashdot for not thinking for themselves, then say that you need to limit the spread of opinion because people might actually believe it? Either you want people to think critically or you don't. Make up your mind.

Do you believe that any Western country allows a truely free press in that sense.

Well, no. But again, I don't see your point. Just because the west does it doesn't mean China should. If we don't have a perfect free press, then maybe China could beat us at it. As-is, though, the Western system seems quite superior.

Push a negative story a little, someone starts a rumor, and you have a blood bath on your hands.

A blood bath? Really? Where? The only blood bath I can think of is Iraq, and that wasn't the media, though you can maybe blame the media for not being critical enough. You certainly can't blame them for warmongering (well, except Fox, but that's not news).

In the UK many kinds of story are not covered here by agreement between the press and Government. There is a code of practice for journalist and editors covering what should be reported.

Well, whatever works for you. It might even make sense assuming it's a gentlemanly agreement to be civil rather than a "I'll scratch your back" thing.

The reason you have this is to try to instil some degree of responsibility into the press. Even with this totally ficticious and inflamatory stories are still run.

So it doesn't work? Go figure. Of course, you spoke of an agreement not to cover stories, not about making sure they were true, so it's an even bigger surprise that it fails to accomplish a goal it doesn't seem to have in the first