Internet Censorship in China

FYC Ruoxuan (Catherine) Yuan mesh Censorship has cast out effects on chinaw ar Censorship in mainland china has adopted overmuch attention recently beca usance of the conflict amid Google and the Chinese regime activitys self- security re ingest policies. In fact, censoring has been practiced since ancient China and the long suit tot every last(predicate)y increases by the years. Nowadays, the or so notable measure of security review is being through on the net income. More and more restrictions remove been put into actions by the Chinese disposal, which make the life of Chinese net income users, the Chinese netizens, really inconvenient.With the intensity of security review increasing and the censoring technology improving, lucre censoring has primarily negative effects on Chinese society. To start off, the current security review situation needs to be described. In China, censoring is determined by the ruling party, the communistic Party of China, so Hong K ong, Macau, and Taiwan, extra administrative regions that atomic payoff 18 close toly self-governing, ar not fully affected by it. precisely in mainland China, Internet censorship has great impacts on the society.Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, which tribe use everyday around the arena, argon banned in mainland China. Every sequence a Chinese netizen tries to open these orders, a blank page with rude words 404 not found appears. This is very inconvenient for Chinese netizens. Moreover, the number of websites that ar in companionable is increasing. Also, Chinese government has forced pursuit engines to adopt the self-censorship policies that force them to filter the search results for certain words. This triggered the withdrawal of Google from the mainland Chinese market.Attempting to search those hand virtually terms not lonesome(prenominal) results in little or no entropy being displayed hardly too in the settlement of ones Internet connection for a short spot of time. Some people charge suspect that doing so whitethorn turn over to being spied on and arrested by the government. With so numerous dogmatic protocols, Internet censorship affects China in numerous different aspects, especially in miserliness, politics and culture. First of all, to boost the interior(a) economy, the Chinese government believes that victimization Internet censorship for scotch protectionism is a good method.However, Internet censorship actually hinders the development of economy inside China. No matter in which commonwealth, the best way to repair its economy is to utilize the most updated technologies and to conc give in on scientific innovations. China has perpetually emphasized the development of cognition and technology and on erudition the latest innovations from opposed countries, and the ex-leader of China Xiaoping Deng resplendently take aimed that science and technology constitute the primary rich forces. However the unfermented tech nology and innovations need a market of free competition in order to expand their influence and earn more benefits.Without good charge ideas and marketing theories, these technologies cannot be applied properly in order to pay back qualified commodities. This is exactly what the Chinese Internet censorship has caused. According to the national condition of China, a market combining socialism and capitalism is inevitable to rejuvenate the economy. However, the Chinese government proclaims its socialist ideology and promotes local anaesthetic anesthetic jobes in a socialist manner and refuses the influx of some constructive theories, which whitethorn contain capitalist ideas in order to maintain the stability of the commie Party and to create a harmonious society. The restricted and narrow-minded economy strategy of the Chinese government, resulted from the Internet censorship, has undermines the development of the Chinese economy. The Chinese Internet censorship not lonesome(pre nominal) blocks useful information, but in any case interrupts parley amid companies, thitherfore negatively affecting the Chinese economy. Nowadays there is growing cooperation among companies from different countries, which is an main(prenominal) way to promote economic evolution in a nation.However, the partial blocking of pop email serve and the shutdown of multiple chat rooms has created many problems for local business contact with irrelevant ones. A famous example took place in May 2006, when Chinese netizens encountered difficulty connecting to Hotmail, which is an important method to communicate with foreign partners, since it is used all around the world. Also, soon after this event, Chinese netizens again reported that the access to POP mailboxes in many mail providers was difficult.Although Chinese netizens absorb tried to use blogs and forums to maintain communication, many blogs have been s crest ever since thence, including Xanga and the LiveJournal. This m akes world-wide cooperation difficult. From this, the efficiency of producing commodities and the quality of the products in China cannot buzz off up with international standards, thus the Chinese economy pay offs. Internet censorship and the requirement of self-censorship not only harm the economy inside China, but also are negatively affecting China in aspects of international commercial trade, even as globalization ferments the trend of todays world.Chinese Internet censorship is applied to both directions not only blocks Chinese Internet users access to certain foreign websites, but also prevents foreigners from grappleing the truth or so China through refusal of releasing current information. So when foreign companies want to enter the Chinese market, they face a serious question How do you assess an investment opportunity if no reliable information somewhat social tensions, corruption or local trade unions is available? It is impossible. All this information is necess ary for a society to make wise decisions, to figure out a general computer program and to find strategies that suit this market.Since most companies do not dare to enter a new market without analyzing and planning ahead, in this way, China disconnected the potential influx of many investments, technologies, and new get awayment ideas. Even though some corporations were brave enough to challenge the Chinese market cod to the lack of information and the restricted policies, most of them have plumped. Examples are many, especially when concerning the Internet companies. Many Internet giants have retreated from the country In fact, no major American Internet company has dominated its heavens in China. These companies, who are armed with cash, intellectual property and an ability to manage complex networks and introverted workers, have failed in the Chinese market. Therefore, it is natural for those companies who are less equipped and less experienced to presume that they lead fa il as well. Although some scholars assume that Chinas restriction whitethorn decrease in the future, the block in February 2007 of the cut organization Observatoire world(prenominal) des Crises website after it posted an article on the risks of trading with China, makes the claim less convincing. This case of censorship, affecting a very specialized site with solely French-language content, shows the government attaches as much importance to the censorship of economic data as constitution-making content, Reporters Without Borders quoted the organizations comment. Hence, Internet censorship has discouraged foreign business to invest in the Chinese market, and it whitethorn keep doing so. Internet censorship has also been used as an businesslike tool for economic protectionism in recent years, but the effect may hurt both sides.Renren, (original name is Xiaonei) the Chinese version of Facebook, was founded in 2005, and then in 2009 Facebook was banned in mainland China. Tudou, f ounded in 2005, and Youku, founded in 2006, both are Chinese versions of YouTube. Their dowers of the market greatly increased after YouTube had been banned in 2007. The most notable example occurred when Google decided to quit the Chinese market. later warning in January that it might pull out of China, Google shut its mainland Chinese-language gateway and began rerouting searches to its Hong Kong site in late March to avoid self-censorship demands from Beijing.Because China recognize that losing ties to the worlds largest global search engine would dampen its innovation and business blowup efforts, and Google certainly wasnt happy at the prospect of losing Chinas online advertizing market, both sides reached a compromise when China renewed Googles operating license in July 2010. Yet the damage had been done. Baidu, the Chinese version of Google and Chinas top Internet search company, profited greatly and gained a much larger share of the market after Google exited. However, B aidus gain is Chinas loss. The integral industry will become worse.Without competition with Google, Baidu has no motivation to innovate. verbalise Yu Yang, chief executive of Analysys International, a Beijing research firm. Baidu is known for providing criminal music downloads, although it defended the practice, (Google vs China 2010)saying it simply provides the links. Also, Baidu faced criticism after the local media published reports saying Baidu gave high search rankings to companies selling illegal drugs. before long after, Baidu signed a multimillion-dollar sponsorship deal with China profound Television, which had broadcast a fake investigative piece on Baidu to clear its name.Furthermore, Baidu is very cooperative with the governments censorship efforts. So with Googles absence seizure from China, Chinese citizens are forced to use Baidu, whose ethics are questioned and which will increase the intensity of censorship by following every government order. Chinese netizens are the biggest loser in this accident. Additionally, the lacking of information and the coercive use of native providers caused by Internet censorship affects citizens not only economically, but governmentally as well.As mentioned in the previous paragraphs, censorship does not only apply to one direction it affects both Chinese and foreign websites. So the Chinese drive cannot post any reports on certain issues online, and they cannot report on those issues in any publications, because the Chinese government has always considered these issues sensitive and capable of inciting subversion of the national regime or overthrow of the socialist system. Therefore, when the Internet was first introduced to China, many Chinese netizens discover that the Internet can be a great way to gain access to foreign inspire.In this way, they were able to listen to opinions and comments, even critics, from all areas, which is an important step in learning about the governments advantages and di sadvantages and to participate in political lives. However, the Chinese Internet censorship has a focus on neutralizing critical online opinions, especially those that come from foreign press, and the most common way to execute this is to simply make whole websites completely unavailable in mainland China.By doing so, Chinese netizens are unable to know what the international reaction is about a new Chinese policy, or to see the evaluation of China in an international scope and to view the like issue from different sides. For example, the website of BBC, a relatively target British TV channel, has been banned in mainland China since 2007. Before it was banned, BBC had provided many Chinese citizens access to the latest review on China from an international blame of view. CNN, another TV channel, was banned for some time and now is accessible only partially.Chinese censorship policies are applied on Chinese websites as well. Many big Internet companies have to cooperate with the Chinese government, assisting and reinforcing the system of censorship, because they do not want to lose the Chinese Internet market. Therefore, these companies allow the Internet policies to examine their contents and remove anything inappropriate ones proper(a) after constabularys disapprove them. Even worse is that the number of the Internet polices is rumored at more than 50,000.With such an intense level of Internet censorship, critical comments appearance on Internet forums, blogs, and major portals usually are erased within minutes. In this way, Chinese netizens can never gain a full concord of their own politics and their own government, because all they are exposed to is the governments propaganda. The function of censorship is focused on preventing Chinese citizens from learning more about past and current failures of the Communist Party and about alternative systems of governance. However, as time passes by, the censored subjects are not trammel to theCommunist Party any more. Anything about politics can be termed sensitive, and reports on political contents are censored carefully since censorship about news reports is always a focus in the censorship systems. Although censorship does not follow any specific laws or regulations, the censorship system is vigorously implanted and the apparatus of Internet repression has become the most advanced and most extensive in the world. Moreover, Amnesty International notes that China has the largest recorded number of imprisoned journalists and cyber-dissidents in the world. The offences of which these people are charge include communicating with aggroups abroad, opposing the persecution of the Falun Gong, signing online petitions, and calling for reforms and an end to corruption. chthonian such circumstances, the Chinese netizens can only read reports from the Chinese press which are untruthful and biased on the other hand, the relatively objective reports from the foreign press are inaccessible. The lack of truthful reports harms the political reason of Chinese citizens. If one cannot even know about the truth, he or she cannot be aware of the real situation he or she is facing.For example, the Chinese news report website about the seism in Sichuan mainly contains the Communist Partys propaganda, and lacks useful data or updates of the process on this event. When probing this website, people are more focused on emotions, and they cannot bear many statistics or real information on the earthquake itself. except when looking at the Japanese news site about the same event, it is clear that its major contents are plain descriptions about the earthquake and the reconstruction process.There are abundant amounts of data, and the reports are largely found on facts and very objective. The American website of the earthquake, although it may not appear to be as objective as its Japanese counterpart, is still very truthful. great deal can find useful information about the earthquake, and the press also provides some comments and analysis on it. Chinese netizens desperately need the information provided by the foreign press to be politically conscious, but in reality, they cannot gain access to any of these websites, as they are banned by censorship.The government claims that their censorship practices can harmonize society, but in fact, they are only intensifying social conflicts and slowing down the progress of political development. In todays world, as cultural transfigure, which is as important as political communication, becomes more and more frequent, Internet censorship harms China from the perspective of cultural development and cultural communication. A culture is always in a continuous state of change. By communicating and getting knowledge from another culture, it is able to learn about the trends of the worlds cultures and update itself.Thus, such a culture will be greatly changed towards a more modern mode. An important compartment of cultural exch ange is the exchange of popular culture. With the gradual spread of globalization, popular culture becomes similar crosswise nations and cultures, and the entire world contributes to its further development. In a manner of speaking, popular culture in the world today is a combination of many cultures, each providing its own features and advantages to make the combination attractive to all kinds of people.By contributing to and learning from this popular culture, a nation can improve its own cultural features, thus providing better contents and even star(p) the trend in the world. However, Chinese Internet censorship inhibits the flow of foreign popular culture into China. A noticeable case is YouTube, an icon for fashion, exemption, personal identity and novelty, which has beens inaccessible in mainland China since March 2008, right after lashings of pics about protests in Tibet appeared. The issue about Tibet has long been a sensitive topic in China and the Chinese government h as used many ways to keep the media out, even if this act is considered violation of the freedom of press. However, in this case denying the access of YouTube not only prevents people from knowing about the issue but also eliminates the communication and interaction between American popular culture and Chinese popular culture. Now it is hard for Chinese netizens to acquire the latest information on fashions in America, and they lose a good chance to be inspired by ideas presented through video clips and to develop their own cultural innovations.In conclusion, Chinese Internet censorship undermines economy improvement, hinders political development, and slows down cultural innovations. Although the Chinese government never admits their censorship policies in public, and although there are no specific laws or regulations addressing the censorship policies, the negative effects caused by Internet censorship are obvious. The president of China, Jintao Hu, vowed to purify the Internet, s aying China needed to strengthen brass section and development of our countrys Internet culture. However, censorship is not the solution, even though the Chinese government does not want to face the reality. It is attempt its best to stop people from discovering the truth and to feign a utter(a) society. Nevertheless, the public cannot be fooled and Chinese citizens are waking from the mirage. A group of former senior Communist party officials in China have criticized the Internet censorship, stating that strict censorship may sow the seeds of disaster for Chinas political transition.Although a government spokesman responded that the governments rules are fully in line with the rest of the world and that no one had been arrested just for composition online content, reports from the international society opposed this announcement, and Chinese citizens, who are experiencing Internet censorship every day, know the announcement to be a lie. The Chinese people can sense the deep sorr ow under the superficial harmony. The nation seems to be prosperous and progressive, but no one knows what unpredictable crisis may happen if the government still insist on the censorship policy so arbitrarily.Although ordinary people may be powerless and threatened individually, the strength of the mass cannot be ignored. Chinese netizens have developed some Internet memes to ridicule Internet censorship. Some of them, for example the famous fastball Mud Horse, have become icons of resistance against Internet censorship and have gained media attention globally. These images and slangs cannot change the difficult reality, but they show the citizens increasing ken of problems brought up by censorship.Hence, there is hope that by the effort of the mass, the increasingly pervasive and draconian censorship would end one day, and the government could become as democratic as it always claims to be. Works Cited Barboza, David. Baidus name from Departure Could Be Chinas Loss. spic-and -span York Times, January 13, 2010. Blum, Suan Debra. Happy news censorship, nationlism, and language ideology in China. Notre Dame Ind The Helen Kellogg Institue for International Studies, 2010. Cheung, Anne S. Y. Self-censorship and the struggle for press freedom in Hong Kong. The Hague, the Netherlands New York N. Y. 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