Items Tagged With China Censorship

So before everyone starts freaking out over drive by media coverage of the new regulations in China affecting video sharing sites, I thought I'd get my friend and CEO of CultureFish Media, Lonnie Hodge to weigh in on what he thinks the new regulations likely mean. In his own words:

It feels a bit like everyone is crying "wolf" or "totalitarian"a bit early.
The government has not said anything specifically about Youtube yet. In the case of Skype a few years ago China openly threatened to restrict access because they perceived Skype as a threat to China Telecom. But in the end, when CTC's stock kept blowing through the roof, the saber-rattles ceased. I use Skype daily.

The Chinese video share sites are not pulling in a lot of revenue and costs are high, so part of this new mandate may be in part protectionist.
Christine is right: this does not differ from controls already in place for websites, individuals and portals. China is choosing to regulate the Internet in much the same way the FCC controls TV and radio in America.

I think it is too soon to get hysterical. And my guess is the average Chinese netizen is going to prefer Chinese content--censored or not--over lots of Youtube offerings. And as stated above: any savvy user here knows how to bypass the controls. Also, Youtube loads terribly slow here on this developing system of relays and bandwidth, so a lot of Chinese just avoid Youtube anyway. I no longer assign Youtube videos to my students to watch because the school servers are just to slow to make it a reasonable request.

Google videos have been blocked here for as long as I can remember. How will this be any different?

I also think the comments that have been left regarding this on the TechCrunch article are quite interesting for getting other people's thoughts and concerns.

My own personal take on it is there too. Basically, I spent 5 years in China working for a foreign company involved in both retail and broadcast television - 2 industries that were hands off to foreign companies on the books. Key word, on the books. The government needs to put something regarding online video sharing on the books. As Lonnie mentioned, no different from the FCC in the U.S. and its regulations right? I don't think these regulations are going to be detrimental to the online video sharing sites as regardless of people's personal issues on the matter, companies operating in China already practice their own form of self censorship anyways.

For more insight you can also refer to a few good blogs who's weighed in on this issue as well:

China Media Project

Danwei.org

Ogilvy Digital Watch

TechBlog86

Little Red Blog

By now, many people have heard about a man in China who was beaten to death after he was caught filming a clash between the local city management officers aka "Chengguan" and citizens protesting an urban trash dump encroaching into their residential area.

Whenever I hear about China news of this nature hitting the Google News headlines and written up in CNN Headlines as "China blogger beaten to death" the first thing I do is turn to the inside sources of China news and commentary I trust. Either Global Voices Online, China Herald or Danwei.org

I learned a long time ago, that I can't trust CNN headlines. They're there to catch world attention, not to necessarily provide in depth coverage of a story. Afterall, this is the same company that inserts "scary intro music" along with threatening titles such as RED STORM RISING when it comes to covering segments on China courtesy of Chinaphobic Lou Dobbs. You would think from the headlines and the way people repost and blog about it afterwards that this was about the Chinese government cracking down on bloggers in China.

For starters, can anyone confirm this man was a blogger? There is something emotional about the word blogger amongst the blogger community. I appreciate it. I get it. But there is nowhere in credible news sources that this man was a blogger. No link to a blog of his. It appears he was an unfortunate man with a cell phone camera who didn't realize the Chengguan would turn on him in the way they did. I mention this because had the title of the news story reflected what actually took place

"Man Beaten To Death By Corrupt Local City Management Officers For Taping Clash With Citizens Over A Trash Dump"

...I highly doubt that it would've gotten the attention of widely read tech blogs such as TechCrunch

But insert the word "blogger" in there, and it makes a huge difference as to who pays attention. It also leads to the story being debated in the wrong context. Before you know it, I'm reading about suggestions by TechCrunch readers for an international boycott by bloggers of the Beijing Olympics over this incident.

Anyone care to read between the mainstream media headlines? According to John Kennedy's post on Global Voices Online, the incident is less to do with the Chinese government cracking down on Chinese bloggers and more to do with the growing outrage over the corruption of local government employees who often abuse what little power they are given.

It’s important to note that the Chengguan in China who often abuse their local power are often no more than a bunch of uneducated thugs who overstep the boundaries of what little power is given to them at the municipal level. The beating of this man was not sanctioned by the Chinese government. It appears it was an attempt by these local “municipal authorities” to ensure they weren’t exposed for their corrupt ways. In fact, I would bet that the 4 guys that were arrested are headed for some serious punishment - especially since this incident made it to the international press and caused another loss of face for the Chinese government.

I just want to point out that what is often portrayed by generic coverage by CNN and reposted on blogs like TechCrunch often reflect a shallow level of understanding that instantaneously translates in our RSS readers as “evil Chinese government cracks down on bloggers in China” — without a better understanding of what sparked the situation to begin with and what the outrage in China internet is about. The Chenguan did not beat this man to death because he was a blogger. They were trying to keep from getting in trouble themselves for having their actions taped and exposed by a passerby.

This issue is more about growing outrage of citizens in China over the corruption in the country by local officials than it is about bloggers getting singled out and silenced by the Chinese government.

True, whether or not this man was a blogger doesn't take away from the fact that an innocent man was killed over trying to capture something unjust that he was witnessing. Just wanted to get the facts straight as there is much more to the story than censorship of bloggers in China. The bigger issue at hand is rampant corruption at the local government levels that threaten stability in China as citizens grow tired of having to put up with it.