Monday, November 12, 2007

Blogspot vanishes again



Yet again, all blogspot pages are inaccessible from Beijing for no apparent reason. As usual, I can post whatever I want but only those in the free world can read it.
Censorship is, by a country mile, my least favorite thing about living in China.
I'm not sure whether next year's Olympic games will make things better or worse.
During big events, like last month's Communist Party Congress, the censorship is usually cranked up. But when the world's media descends on China's capital next summer, censorship will be a big part of the story if the authorities don't loosen up.
Although the decent people of China may never know it.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I know a lovely chinese girl who had lived in Ireland for a few years and, would you believe it, agrees with the type of media censorship you are experiencing. She knows what I do and finds it interesting but feels that censorship in China is often in the interest of the people- i.e she mentioned a story where some guy working high up in the public sector ripped off the state for about 5 million. However the real amount he stole was closer to 10 million but she said it would just make the state look bad and make people feel outraged that he stole so much if it had been accurately reported. She also agrees that outside countries shouldn't be given too much information on 'big' news items in china-such as death figures from natural disasters etc as she feels western media is often unfairly negative to China and that it is none of our business! So censorship is a form of state love for the people Gary...