Simon World :: China's internet censorship

← "Any colour you like" | Return to Main Page | "Chinese cinema" → | TrackBack (2)

April 29, 2006

You are on the invidual archive page of China's internet censorship. Click Simon World weblog for the main page.

China's internet censorship

The Economist has a long article on China and the internet, and it doesn't require a subscription: The party, the people and the power of cyber-talk. It is a good summary of China's battles to censor the internet and contain free expression by both the internet and the mobile phone. It ends on an optimistic note:

But the market is likely to prevail over restrictions. Limiting phone-card sales to just a few shops with the ability to process registration requirements would be a blow to mobile-phone companies and huge numbers of private vendors who thrive on such business. It is hard to see how it could be enforced any more rigorously than, say, China's ban on the unauthorised reception of satellite signals. Illegal sales of satellite dishes and cable services offering uncensored foreign satellite channels are big underground businesses in urban China.

China's news portals, in their competition for traffic, will continue to test the limits of official tolerance. And in a competitive market few internet-café operators pay attention to government requirements that users' identities should be registered. An hour on a broadband connection in an internet café in a small town can cost as little as one yuan—about 13 cents.

Research by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences suggests the scale of the government's task. Over 20% of people surveyed in five Chinese cities last year said the internet had increased their contacts with others who shared their political interests—a far higher proportion than found in a similar survey conducted in America (8.1%) by collaborators in the investigation. Nearly half of the respondents said going online increased their contacts with people who shared their hobbies, compared with less than 20% in the United States (networked role-playing games, growing fast in popularity in China, may partly account for this). And nearly 63% agreed that the internet gave them greater opportunities to criticise the government.

“China is changing, it's improving,” says Jack Ma, head of Alibaba, which last year took over the running of Yahoo!'s Chinese operations—for, despite an early start in China, Yahoo! has been elbowed aside by domestic rivals. “Ten years ago, 20 years ago, in Chairman Mao's time, if we came here to talk about these things [government censorship],” he begins. Then he puts an imaginary pistol to his head and, with a grin, fires it. That, of course, was when power just grew out of the barrel of a gun. Now it also grows out of the infinite, albeit virtual, barrels of the internet.

One thing that crops up is again this idea that China employs 30,000 internet censors, on top of the many hundreds or even thousands more that the portals employ to self-censor. Assuming each government employed censor costs 10,000 yuan a month in wages and technology support costs (I welcome discussion if that number is too high or low) that makes the effort a 300 million yuan per month cost, or about US$450 million a year.

Are they getting value for money?

posted by Simon on 04.29.06 at 04:37 PM in the China internet category.

Trackbacks:

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://blog.mu.nu/cgi/trackback.cgi/165709

Send a manual trackback ping to this post.

China and internet censorship
Excerpt: Following on from my post on Power to the Bloggers, some countries are taking serious note of the power of bloggers. On his blog Simonworld, SE Asia commentator, Simon has posted an entry on internet censorship in China. You can
Weblog: The Zen Guide to the Wired World
Tracked: May 3, 2006 05:19 PM

Government Rules
Excerpt: Eisenhower Foundation claims the predictions of the 30 year old Kerner Commission have come true: A ...
Weblog: Government Rules
Tracked: May 11, 2006 12:21 PM

Comments:

The Second Amendment means nothing outside of hunting.

Our forefathers gave us that right to fend off a military takeover in the U.S. - by
either the left or the right.

Apparently, since most gun owners are far right they didn't see fit to fight the far
right takeover so here we are. On the verge of martial law.

You'll imitate your German counterparts of 70 years ago. You'll allow them to take away
any weapon that gives you parity with the military. You know you barely made a peep when
the Brady Bill took away your assault rifles, which is what you'll need to effectively
combat troops.

What a bunch of cowards, and what a sore disgrace you are to our forefathers who gave
their blood for the likes of you.

In Jesus' Glorious and Holy name,
Dean Berry -- Real American

http://www.deanberryministries DOT org

dinoberry@frontiernet.net

posted by: DEAN BERRY -- REAL AMERICAN on 04.29.06 at 05:34 PM [permalink]

Dunno how the above paranoid gun-suckin' "Real Amuurican's" spam above contributes to discussion about Internet monitoring on the mainland, so I'll ignore it and just say re: salary for Internet monitoring that my SZ girlfriend has a friend works as one and she says he makes between 3-4,000 yuan/mo.
He's also told her it's immensely boring but allows him plenty of time to pursue his real passion: World of Warcraft.

posted by: Justin on 04.30.06 at 09:27 AM [permalink]

Justin - methinks there could be an interview in there somewhere.

posted by: Simon on 04.30.06 at 11:09 AM [permalink]

It's my understanding that Chinese internet monitors do not read English-language content. Is that true?

posted by: Andrew on 05.01.06 at 01:00 AM [permalink]

It seems to be that as much as China wants to censure content, a lot will still be able to get through. This is a very good thing, especially considering how controlled their media is. I'm sure users can get at a variety of smaller political blogs to find out what's really going on.

posted by: PoliticalCritic on 05.01.06 at 01:08 AM [permalink]

How to Get All the Website Traffic You Want with No Effort at all

In order to have a successful site you need of course a lot of website
traffic. But in many cases, even if you work really hard and you create
a
professional web page you still do not get too many visitors and in
conclusion the profit that you deserve.

First, let us review the most poplar methods of directing traffic to a
certain website.

-link exchanging - cheap method but many say that overall it drives
people
away from your site instead of to it, because adding a large number of
links
to you pages makes them look unprofessional and may drive visitors
away.
Adding only a small number of links does not have any noticeable
effect.
Also making link exchanges it's mot always so easy because you have to
convince webmasters to trade links with you. I can tell you from my
experience that if you have a new site this thing could get really
difficult
because almost no one will want to exchange links with you. Over time a
good link
can build your website traffic but it is hard work.

-free ezine ads - another cheap method but it rarely does anything
because
that are thousands of ads out there that try to attract attention and
yours
will just blend in with the others.

-search engine submissions - this may be the most effective method but
it
requires a lot of work and time, plus some money, and it only works if
you
get a high position in the search engines, which is very difficult to
do,
and you can loose that position in a few weeks.

-Buying one way links to increase you link popularity and your search
engine
rankings could be a method but having top positions in the major search
engines it's not so easy. Every one knows that search engine website
traffic
is the best but to get it you must have thousands of good quality links
which can get really expensive.

The solution is easier than you may think it is.. you can buy traffic!
For a
small amount of money you can purchase all the website traffic that you
need
and boost you business profits. Without people visiting your pages you
can
not promote and sell your products, so if you want to increase your
profits
you have to get as much website traffic as you can. Therefore, the
simplest,
easiest solution is to buy traffic. It is not expensive at all and you
will
definitely gain much more money than what you spend on buying traffic!

Now, a new innovative method was developed - the redirected visitors
technology. This tehnique brings, just as its name suggests, redirected
visitors to your site. It works perfectly and it is guaranteed to bring
a
lot of website traffic to you!

People who are working with this technology purchase all the abandoned
domain names that had a website with good traffic on them. Those
abandoned
websites are listed in the search engines and they are marketed,
therefore
they used to be visited by quite a lot of people. When you enter this
kind
of program, your website will be scanned, and those abandoned websites
will
be redirected to yours. When someone searches for something in a search
engine and clicks on the link that used to point to the abandoned
pages, it
will lead them to you instead! Unlike popups this method is not
annoying for
users, because what they find has the same subject as what they
searched
for, so they will most likely not even notice the redirection.

This way you will get all the targeted website traffic you need.
Instead of
working really hard you can simply buy that traffic! And as i saw on
the net
the prices for this kind of services are really cheap. Furthermore,
this
tehnique is not a spamming tehnique and it brings real traffic to you,
thousands of visitors!

If you are interested in learning more about the Increase Traffic
redirecting
technology or if you would like to know how to buy traffic just follow
these
links.
http://www.redirectedvisitors.com

posted by: Increase Traffic on 05.10.06 at 06:51 PM [permalink]

The situation in China is definitely improving. Yet I don't think internet censorship doesn't have its positive impact. It could at least minimise the social unsettling in China. There's so many people there, a rumour spread through the internet could easily spark a riot and this is the last thing we want to see.

Of course, the government should take measures to improve and reduce censorship one step at a time.

posted by: China101 on 05.19.06 at 08:45 AM [permalink]