China Makes Arrests To Stop Internet Porn 204
thefickler writes "The Chinese Government is expanding a crackdown on Internet pornography. Xinhua news agency, which is owned by the government and can safely be used for reporting in China, says the campaign to scrub the country's Internet of 'vulgar' content has so far resulted in 29 criminal cases. Police have ordered the removal of 46,000 pornographic and other 'harmful' items from websites. The latest crackdown comes after official warnings of rising social unrest as the economy slows. It's no coincidence that this year is the twentieth anniversary of Tiananmen Square, or, to use the acceptable nomenclature, 'the June 4th incident.'"
What for? (Score:5, Insightful)
Prejudice abounds in the summary (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it really _is_ a coincident that China started targeting porn sites on the twentieth anniversary of 'the June 4th incident'.
You think they looked at the calendar and realized... OMG, this is the year we must start censoring internet porn!
Re:numbers (Score:5, Insightful)
What I don't understand is that if there are so many damn people in China why they don't just overthrow their government... it wouldn't be difficult.
Well, a lot of chinese people happen to like the chinese government and approve of what's going on, at least enough to put up with it. I'm sure a lot of people around the world were probably wondering why Americans didn't overthrow Bush. I personally hated the guy from before day one, but I wouldn't want to overthrow the government even if we were facing 8 more years of Bush. Probably similar in China, they don't agree with everything, but the government does reflect a lot of their values, an overthrow would be damaging, and they don't see a lot of other people willing to rise up.
It's not like the government holds on to power entirely by force, in other words.
Re:What for? (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably the keyword is: control. They can't leave something in the hands of people (no pun :) over which they don't have control.
Loosing control in one area of society (namely sex) leaves the door open for loosening up in other areas.
That's why dictators try to control everything.
Re:Xinhua news agency (Score:5, Insightful)
Countries that censor news often don't explicitly define what is acceptable, and the standards can change often, hence why internal political commentators need to rely on such gauges to see what the current acceptable topics are.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Modesty and sexual conservatism, which are not unique to the Chinese culture, but rather understood and appreciated by almost all [organized] societies. Nobody, however, has ever been able to 'enforce' these things, which is what the Chinese don't get. If you are in a Free(TM) country, consider yourself lucky.
Re:Why? (Score:2, Insightful)
Masturbation *is* sexual conservatism. It doesn't take a billion Chinese to figure this out.
Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, i don't know what you classify as "sexual conservatism", but i sure don't think that we have that now - neither in the US nor here in Europe.
Porn is everywhere and completely legal, prostitution is legal in most places in Europe and some places in the US.
12 year olds that want to dress up as whores as the idols on TV also dress like that isn't my idea of "sexual conservatism".
However, sex is often a somewhat "taboo" topic, which leads to problems like teenage pregnancies, transmission of STDs, etc.
Re:What for? (Score:4, Insightful)
Forget factors like poverty, education of women, and social expectations. It's being stupid that drives up the birth rate.
And I know that because a movie told me so.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Some of the ancient and beautiful temples in India happen to have bas-reliefs depicting bestiality. Illustrated sex manuals were a popular form of literature at one point in China's history. Japan has had tentacle porn since at least the 18th century.
Sure, every culture has its sexual mores. But that's not exactly the same thing.
Re:Prejudice abounds in the summary (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it really _is_ a coincident that China started targeting porn sites on the twentieth anniversary of 'the June 4th incident'.
You think they looked at the calendar and realized... OMG, this is the year we must start censoring internet porn!
Well, since there are so many important Chinese anniversaries this year, how come the author picked Tian'anmen? Why not the ban of Falun Gong (10th anniversary)? Why not the declaration of The People's Republic (70th anniversary)? Or May 4th Movement (90th anniversary)?
I'm sure there are some more, but I can't think of them off-hand.
Re:What for? (Score:5, Insightful)
Forget factors like poverty, education of women, and social expectations. It's being stupid that drives up the birth rate.
In either case, the whole point of the movie is that evolution favours those that breed the most.
So by your definition you eventually wind up with a population full of poor people with badly educated women and no social expectations. Similar net result, different cause.
Re:An IT analogy (Score:4, Insightful)
I believe that the best way to go is to follow an evolutionary path, following the experience of countries like Britain or Switzerland, which essentially evolved democracy from what had gone before. Don't impose a democratic structure from the top: create thousands of village councils, each with enough teeth to make an impact but not enough to do severe damage. Ensure you have an effective and ethical policing and judiciary function. As people get used to dealing with their problems through local politics and courts, extend it up the way.
I reckon that in ten to twenty years time Iraq will freely elect yet another lunatic, and we'll be going back again to try and straighten out another mess. You heard it here first.
Re:What for? (Score:4, Insightful)
Fortunately, the impact of poverty, education, and social norms on population growth can be mitigated. And of those three, the one with the biggest impact--education for women--is the easiest to deal with. There's a tremendous drop in the birth rate with available birth control and only a primary school education for women.
Re:What for? (Score:1, Insightful)
OK, I understand why they would want to choke civil unrest by censoring dissidents online, but porn? How's that helping them?
I have no idea if it is the case here, but it could be a moral issue. Like "Porn is just wrong.". Isn't that why people usually object to porn?
Re:numbers (Score:5, Insightful)
The Chinese government has managed to rocket China from an impoverished post-WWII and post civil-war famine-plagued disaster into the modern China of today in under sixty years.
That's absolutely amazing.
To expect our idea of freedom and democracy to work in China is to ignore its situation and culture. The US and Europe haven't had serious famines in living memory. China has.
Order and prosperity are more important than freedom.
People don't generally revolt because they aren't free, they revolt because freedom is seen as the path to prosperity they do not have.
Re:What for? (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps the Chinese have suddenly turned Christian. It certainly sounds like something Pat Robertson or other fundamentalists would say:
"the campaign to scrub the country's Internet of 'vulgar' content"
Re:An IT analogy (Score:3, Insightful)
I reckon that in ten to twenty years time Iraq will freely elect yet another lunatic, and we'll be going back again to try and straighten out another mess. You heard it here first.
More likely a major nation will decide that the freely elected government isn't to their liking and stage a coup. That's how most aspiring democracies around the world end.
Re:What for? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, I think the main problem is that people assume the way to decrease a population boom is to keep teens from from . This doesn't work. Because teens want to have sex. And they will. They always have and they always will. Instead of preventing them from being near members of the opposite sex and then expecting them to understand and live properly with them a la homeschooling, or the good ol' method of an angry health teacher telling them that if they have sex even ONCE before marriage they'll get pregnant with the AIDS, or the timeless "Almighty God, in his infinite mercy, will painfully smite your ass for eternity if you so much even LOOK at a pair of breasts, you horrific sinner (P.S. He loves you, though)" we might consider, I don't know, telling teens "You really shouldn't go wild with sex, but if you do have it, at least be safe."
It's crazy, I know, but I just think it might work.
Re:numbers (Score:3, Insightful)
The Chinese government has managed to rocket China from an impoverished post-WWII and post civil-war famine-plagued disaster into the modern China of today in under sixty years.
Also notice that all that rocketing happened in the last half of that time frame. The first half was spent wasting staggering amounts of human life.
So, after holding back China for a few decades, they're back to the single-party capitalist system of Republic they overthrew -- while proclaiming the new model was actually "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics" (ie, not Socialism). Given their past history and what they've done to the nation, I absolutely refuse to give them any credit for their belated accomplishments, which they came upon by making every single wrong decision first.
Re:numbers (Score:5, Insightful)
It was a lot of American students that were pushing the Chinese students to fight the government.
No, it was not. That is a little conspiracy theory that the most patriotic of Chinese will peddle as a catalyst for the Tiananmen Square protests. Blame the Americans rather than their own people. It has no basis in fact.
Re:An IT analogy (Score:1, Insightful)
Can I ask AC, have you spent much time in CN, outside of where ever in GuangDong you visited?
It just seems like your view is pretty extreme compared to most of the foreigners I know living and working in both CN and TW.
We could spend a few hours debating most of your points, whilst many have an element of truth you've twisted them or pushed some of them way beyond the real situation.
instead I wanted to focus on the last point, Chinese can't change tack as new facts appear...
in engineering?
holycrap dude.
I DO work with design engineers in CN, JP and TW and have done for years (disclaimer: I am a laowai living in CN and spend about a 3rd of my time in either JP, KR or TW).
Your comment doesn't align with failing design industry in TW (look at the big name TW businesses shifting R&D to the mainland), the almost niche industry of JP and general clusterfuck that is the design industry of KR.
There were some dark dark days in the past and there still is some very fucked up practices especially in the downstream / manufacturing segments, but even just the last 5 years of progress here is a clear example that the country (including her leaders) knows how to deal with rapid change and knows how to deal with it on a huge scale.
perhaps the TW parent doesn't like / trust their CN divison / contractor to make changes on the fly. you'll also find in downstream businesses like manufacturing, they pride themselves on doing exactly as theyre told and not being creative thinkers... ...it's part of the job.
apparently posting through a proxy, self censoring and fearing those were to be your last words on the internet... I haven't been in THAT china since the late 90s.
wake up, ffs.
Re:arrests not necessarily due to porno (Score:1, Insightful)
It's not really an argument for or against prostitution, merely a point that it isn't just China that cracks down on prostitution Websites, Catholic organizer charged in online sex sting [usatoday.com].
Re:An IT analogy (Score:5, Insightful)
Talking about problems will get you fired, beaten up, locked up or even killed.
I had lived in China for years and managed a group of software developers. While I agree that they are less inclined to point out problem. That's more like a cultural / educational thing. (Even if I put up awards for filing bugs, they rarely did.) But "Talking problem ... get you ... killed." I found that exaggerated too much. I've yet to read of anyone get killed speaking out problems in a *factory*. Did you actually know of an example? Or you just make it up?
And outside of works, Chinese make a lot of complains from the cost of healthcare to the lack of ... democracy ... (though they don't really demand it desparately.) There are plenty of criticism against the government in the Internet too, just ask the 91589 people complaining about the lack of train tickets in one website [sina.com.cn].
You are either not living in China or you have a wrong perception of what happen around you.
Re:"no coincidence" (Score:3, Insightful)
(Why do people get so excited about anniversaries anyway?!)
You're asking the wrong crowd. Ask your wife.
Re:What for? (Score:4, Insightful)
During the USSR days, it was customary for Mr. Putin's agency to declare political dissenters as common criminals to soften the West's attempts to free them.
Your asking the question and its high moderation both explain, why the tactics worked. Unable to perceive the actual levels of evil of the Communist regimes, Western "liberals" (who seriously think, G.W. Bush is vilest creature ever to rule a country) fall for their lies:
Similarly:
Re:What for? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, population crash is one (though unpleasant) way of solving the overpopulation problem. If people are too fussy to consider population control now, then after a generation or two of starvation and resource wars all the currently politically unacceptable population control methods will seem quite ok.