Archive for the ‘ China ’ Category

Looking the Chinese Censorship in the Eyes

(Former title: 9/11 and the Chinese Censorship)

It was a warm summer night in a city in southern Mainland China.

I was sitting at a bar, reading a book, enjoying a cup of local tea, and joking around with the barkeeper.

Earlier that day… I was reading some news online, which was mostly covering the 10 years anniversary for the 9/11 terror attack on the twin towers in New York. Because I usually consume German and Hebrew-speaking news sources before turning to English ones, it was very tempting to do a little test of my own for the Chinese censorship and look at what of the English-speaking arena is accessible in China. I must admit I didn’t notice much difference, maybe I thought I did because I expected to, maybe because the Chinese censor has more urgent matters to filter then a 10 y/o terror attack on its love-hate mistress (a.k.a the United States), or maybe my Chinese is just not good enough to notice the absence of the issue from the Chinese speaking cyberspace.

Back to the bar: various kinds of videos were playing on the big screen above the bar that evening (music videos, interviews, and some of those cat videos you likely to find on youtube) and the barkeeper, who spoke an exceptionally good English, and me grew fond of each other, joked around, shared some drinks, and hoaxed some other guests.

At some point a 9/11 video started playing on the big screen and I recognized the images as part of the ones that were released that day for the first time, as part of the 10th anniversary to the event.

Considering the mixture of the videos that evening, it was quite an exceptional sight. I knew that the videos are running from the laptop behind the bar, so that someone had to download them first, it was no random choice of some online service. The next thing I know, I hear myself asking the barkeeper how they got this video.

She didn’t really understand what I meant and explained that the videos are running from the hard drive, so that the Internet connection won’t be overloaded. As I tried to explain myself, I got a partial answer to my question – she just didn’t know what I was talking about because the content of the video was foreign to her. So I told her about the 9/11.

Maybe…

it’s because it happened 10 years ago, maybe because she just doesn’t consume much news, maybe she has other news-topics that interest her. But from her fascination as I told her the story and showed her some pictures on my computer I understood that it isn’t one of the explanations I just mentioned.

So what is it than? How come an almost-perfect-English-speaker never heard of the 9/11 but a newly released video of it is running in her bar?

So I asked. I told her I was wondering if it is easy to access such news or videos there, or if it’s censored. Now she got it.

She tried to explain, mentioned the earth-quacks in Sichuan province a month ago to give another example, started to say something about the news coverage, and then stopped.

Silence.

The same perky girl that just up until now looked at me in the eyes and smiled, was looking down, confused, eyes trying to focus without success, I could literally see a million thoughts running through her head, but she just lost all words.

She looked back up and asked to change the subject; she doesn’t want to talk about it. Of course I understood, apologized from the bottom of my heart and told her we can completely forget about this conversation.

But I will never forget it.

With perfect timing, my meal came. I never ate so slowly in my life, my head was just someplace else. Later, as she was walking around with her charming smile and shining eyes, I apologized again, she again told me it’s no problem, and I hope it really isn’t.

The next morning…

I continued my trip, so that I never got to meet her again but this encounter kept me disturbed for days afterwards. It is impossible to put into words, but once I saw the sudden change in this lively girl, once I saw those eyes, I got a sneak peek of what it is like.

It has been several years since I started working on subjects such as freedom of expression, censorship etc. And believe me – one can know a lot. But now I also felt it. And it’s different.

It wasn’t a life changing experience; it was more of a reassuring one. I won’t deny feeling somewhat helpless, and I don’t fantasize about me changing the world.

But it won’t stop me from keep trying. Not after looking into those eyes.

2011
11/22
CATEGORY
Censorship
China
Freedom of Expression
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Fahrenheit WWW

Apparently Australia is joining a growing list of western / industrialized / democratic / liberal (*delete whichever is inapplicable) countries, which are starting to line up with China and censor its civilians’ Web access (a complete overview here). Not just that – the government is also going to keep track of what people are doing on the internet, because, like the German ‘Piraten Partei’ (a political party) said in their campaign, “you are a terrorist”.

I don’t know what horrifies me the most – that the government can access all of my information flow, including private information like emails, chat history, Skype calls etc. or that it can decide which information is suitable for me and which is not.

Today I’m going to discuss the latter.

The logic of censorship

Michel Foucault, a French philosopher and sociologist, argued that “This interdiction [censorship] is thought to take three forms: affirming that such a thing is not permitted, preventing it from being said, denying that it exists.” (The history of sexuality: The will to knowledge, 1976).

Although in some extremist countries things are also prevented from being said, in some they are prevented of being heard, read or watched. Australia is now at the stage of declaring some information as “not permitted”, the prevention is soon to come.

But is denying the existence of certain information, “bad” and harmful as it might be, really the way to deal with it? Of course not! I’ve already discussed my position to this matter in the post “Robin Who?!”.

Denial-mechanisms are a lot stronger than what one can imagine. When you deny existence – you are also preserving other existences.

Our society has different norms, they provide us stability, a status quo, something that governments have an explicit interest in keeping. When those norms are being challenged, there is a threat of structural change (best case scenario) or chaos (worst case scenario), and of course that governments don’t want that to happened, so it’s better to quiet up everything (and EVERYONE) that exceeds the norm.

Just think about it: are you Caucasian? 30-50 years old? middle class? heterosexual? married? male? educated? belong to the majority-religion in your country of residence?

If you said no, or even just hesitated, it’s you.

And as China proves us, like many other countries in the past, controlling your norms and eliminating structural threats is good for business (yes, I mean money).

Just one reservation

Despite and because of my (sometimes extreme) liberal opinions, I still think there is one kind of information that should be prevented, not only from consumption, rather from it’s mere production. That is information, which requires exploitation or abuse of other people in order to produce it.

What for example? Child pornography, probably the most damned kind of information running through the internet, whose prevention I can only support. Because, if we take a look back on information literacy and it’s social and moral dimension, it is not a matter of educating “information consumers” to view this information critically, it’s a matter of using ones power supremacy to exploit someone else and to harm him, in order to produce a desired “information-product”.

A book burns at 451°F (232°C)

Long before the internet, Ray Bradbury described in his novel “Fahrenheit 451” (1953) a future world in which books are completely outlawed and firemen’s task (since houses are completely burn-proof) is to burn books together with the houses they’re found in (in some occasions, also the residents of the house, the books’ readers). It all started with a few books, but their number kept growing until all books were excluded.

Putting Bradbury’s amazing observation of the western society aside, I’ve read the book with an overwhelming sense of Déjà vu.

“I know this!” I said to myself.

And then I thought about the internet.

2010
06/15
CATEGORY
Censorship
China
Freedom of Expression
Information Freedom
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