Rebecca MacKinnon was one of the founders of Global Voices and now has her own blog RConversation. As she lives and works in Hong Kong her "beat" is very much what is going on in China.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal Asia under the headline "The Chinese Censorship
Foreigners Don't See" she instances that there is more than just what has become known as the "Great Firewall of China":
"Beijing's Internet censorship hit global headlines recently, when foreign journalists in town to cover the Olympics discovered their access to well-known overseas Web sites was blocked. Yet while the government has now unblocked some of those sites, those journalists shouldn't think the broader problem is solved. Censorship of ordinary Chinese people's electronic communications within China has changed little. Visiting reporters just aren't noticing because these forms of censorship relate to Chinese-language content they're not familiar with, hosted on Web sites and services located on computer servers inside China, which foreigners generally don't use.
The "Great Firewall," the common moniker for China's filtering system that blocks various Internet addresses and keywords, really only pertains to Internet sites and services hosted on computer servers outside China. Inside China, companies that host Web sites, blogs and chat rooms are held responsible for objectionable content posted on their services. All of China's blog-hosting services, YouTube-style video sharing sites and the like hire entire departments of people to flag and delete things that may get them in trouble with the government authorities who could revoke their business license.
This context is key to understanding the wide-ranging conversations, many of them political, that are now happening on Chinese blogs and chat rooms. There is indeed a vastly larger space for public discourse on matters of public concern than existed even a few years ago. But that space still has limits. Chinese Web users now experience a more targeted and subtle approach to censorship than before."
Writing in the Wall Street Journal Asia under the headline "The Chinese Censorship
Foreigners Don't See" she instances that there is more than just what has become known as the "Great Firewall of China":
"Beijing's Internet censorship hit global headlines recently, when foreign journalists in town to cover the Olympics discovered their access to well-known overseas Web sites was blocked. Yet while the government has now unblocked some of those sites, those journalists shouldn't think the broader problem is solved. Censorship of ordinary Chinese people's electronic communications within China has changed little. Visiting reporters just aren't noticing because these forms of censorship relate to Chinese-language content they're not familiar with, hosted on Web sites and services located on computer servers inside China, which foreigners generally don't use.
The "Great Firewall," the common moniker for China's filtering system that blocks various Internet addresses and keywords, really only pertains to Internet sites and services hosted on computer servers outside China. Inside China, companies that host Web sites, blogs and chat rooms are held responsible for objectionable content posted on their services. All of China's blog-hosting services, YouTube-style video sharing sites and the like hire entire departments of people to flag and delete things that may get them in trouble with the government authorities who could revoke their business license.
This context is key to understanding the wide-ranging conversations, many of them political, that are now happening on Chinese blogs and chat rooms. There is indeed a vastly larger space for public discourse on matters of public concern than existed even a few years ago. But that space still has limits. Chinese Web users now experience a more targeted and subtle approach to censorship than before."
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