Most people know that the Internet is heavily censored in China. For example, very few blogs are available here (like this one, for example -- I can post to it, but people in China can't read it). And the CCP takes a pretty aggressive stance toward censoring anything remotely critical of it. In short, entire areas of the WWW are blocked from users in China, some for no apparent reason.
When I try to access a blocked website, this is what I see:
This is a sight that I encounter many times a day, every day. Aside from the lack of access, I find this error announcement to be incredible irritating and disingenuous. After all, nowhere in the list presented does it say that the website has been blocked by government censors. They just do it and pretend like users aren't wise to their shenanigans.
And it's not like they even have to be sly. In my (albeit limited) experience, most Chinese don't care at all about the censors. Some of my students, for example, seem to believe that the government bans sites because "they are bad for us" (exact quote). In fact, some of them are so well-trained that they hesitated to use Wikipedia for an in-class assignment because that site is usually blocked. They asked me, "Is it okay to use this?" (And no, they weren't talking about the quality of research, they were talking about access to it). What could I do? I just told them, "Well, if it's not blocked now, it must be okay to use it, right?" Never mind that tomorrow/next month/next week it will be blocked again. Of course, I suspect that most of them probably just have their workarounds for finding information. Truth be told, they're not all that keen on researching the topics that their government censors (e.g., that place up North with all the monks; that thorn-in-the-side 'renegade' nation to the East of Fujian province; the dude-in-front-of-tank episode). They're much more interested in Japanese pop singers and NBA stats.
The lack of access to the Internet is one big reason why I could never live in China long-term. It doesn't just interfere with my YouTube addiction, it interferes with my research. It's possible that the government will one day case to play net nanny to its citizens, but I don't think that's going to happen any time soon. And while there are "workarounds" to accessing banned sites, they don't always work, and they're a PITA* to use.
* = Pain in the Ass
2 comments:
Haha. The annoying message is an artifact of the underlying technical tomfoolery they're using to make the "great firewall."
Good example of misleading technical language that should never, ever be visible to the end user.
google: tcp reset or RST
I will have your room ready early! Just in case :) MOM
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