Meet The Press

Chinese State television - the hilariously named 'CCTV' - has been broadcasting highlights packages of the Communist Party Congress which took place last week in Beijing's Tiananmen Square (left).
This morning's news featured a bizarre 'Meet the Press' session where the nine big wigs from the government's all powerful Central Standing Committee lined up in front of photographers and reporters.
President Hu Jintao made a lengthy speech setting out the challenges ahead. It was thin on detail but that has become common at political conferences these days.
The funny thing was that when he reached the end of the script he thanked the journalists and exited to the stage left.
There were no questions, but reporters politely applauded the speech and headed off to file their copy.
The President had just been handed a new five year term and didn't even have to face the scrutiny of a genuine press conference.
This is the new superpower...

China censors Press Freedom Index

Last Tuesday, Reporters Without Borders published its annual World Press Freedom Index, placing China seventh from bottom.
I picked up that little nugget of info on another website but can't give you the full list of censorious nations because the Reporters Without Borders site is blocked! I'm betting North Korea was propping up the table though.
So I Googled 'World Press Freedom Index' to see if somebody else had published the report second hand - and I got the all too familiar 'Connection to server was reset'. That's what happens when a site or page has been blacklisted by the government.
I wonder how far from the bottom of the list you have to go before you find a country that actually allows publication of the World Press Freedom Index. I suppose it's not something you'd want publicized. Still, it seems a bit pointless. The only countries that are aware of it are those who live under regimes permissive enough to allow the media report on it.
The other theme I picked up from secondary reporting of the Reporters Without Borders document is that bloggers are facing increasingly strict and sophisticated censorship.
I'm just begging for this blog to be purged. To be honest, it'd be a bit disappointing if they ignored it.
Did I mention that I think the Dalai Lama is a gentlemen and that the Taiwanese should be allowed join the UN?
Just sayin'...

Censorship plot thickens

Theories on why China decided to block YouTube focused on last week's Communist Party Congress in Beijing and the fact that YouTube launched a Taiwanese version of its site on Thursday.
Now though, there are suggestions that the government was 'shielding' the public from images of George Bush feting the Dalai Lama in Washington. Have you seen the Dalai Lama? He's the most inoffensive old geezer you could imagine. All he does is smile and talk about peace. Subversive bastard.
And it appears YouTube was not the only victim. Users of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft search engines all founds themselves directed to the Chinese site Baidu.
The theory goes that popular sites were disrupted to force the public to consume news from official State media rather than see what the world was saying about the Dalai Lama and/or the Party Congress and/or YouTube's implicit acknowledgment of Taiwan as a separate entity to mainland China.
Add to this the fact the BBC News and Wikipedia remain off limits and it's not exactly a picture of a 21st century superpower.
Of course the authorities never comment - or even admit - to censoring the media, and researching censorship is a tricky business. The Party don't see the irony in blocking websites that refer to its habit of censoring anything it views as sensitive.
On the upside, Blogspot has been inexplicably unlocked so bloggers can get the word out of China - even if it's not as easy for information to get in.

Bye bye YouTube?

In a bizarre twist, China appears to have unblocked Blogger but has axed YouTube. It's next to impossible to get information on why that is because, naturally, they've also blocked all news stories about it. You can see the headlines on Google News but the links take you to a dead end.
I know YouTube launched a Taiwanese version of its site last week so that could well have something to do with it. The Chinese Communist Party Congress also took place last week and they tend to be extra sensitive when there's anything political happening.
Hopefully it's just temporary. Google, which owns YouTube, is supposed to be on good terms with the government but it may have dirtied its bib by behaving as though Taiwan was independent of China.
Bring back the Tube!

The Great Firewall of China

Greetings from Beijing.

I'd hoped to be an avid blogger here in China once I got settled, but alas it hasn't panned out that way. My main excuse, apart from being distracted by all the weird and wonderful things Beijing has to offer, is censorship.

Seasoned Sinophiles will already be familiar with the Great Firewall of China, but for the uninitiated (which included me until a couple of months ago), the internet is heavily monitored by the authorities here.

The Great Firewall prevents bloggers from posting freely and also limits what can be downloaded from the net. Wikipedia is completely blocked where I am, although I believe you can get limited access depending on your service provider. Don't attempt to visit the pages on Tibet though. BBC News, the home of biased and reckless western propaganda, is completely out. And just about all blogs are inaccessible. Even certain YouTube videos - on Tiananmen Square for example - 'cannot be found' if you click on them from China.

In ex-pat bars everybody is talking about proxy servers and other ways of getting around online censorship. You can try to find a proxy site online which would trick the government into thinking that you're accessing the web from Japan or the US, but it's not always that easy to do an internet search for that kind of thing.

Google did a deal with the authorities here which means they tailor search results and play ball with the censors, in return for access to China's swelling ranks of internet junkies.
Just for the laugh, I've Googled 'Great Firewall of China' and each of the first 10 results were blocked!

So, I can't read my own blog from here and an American colleague who managed to get some of her stuff online says it's not uncommon for posts to go live only to disappear later. I've also read of blogs going down for a few days and returning minus one or two 'offensive' articles. Obviously the definition of what is unacceptable varies wildly.

I'm attempting to post this as an experiment. The irony of having a piece on web censorship blocked or taken down will be lost on the army of censors diligently searching for keywords in a government department somewhere in Beijing. Just for them, I'd like to bring up the following: Mao, Bush, One-Child policy, Olympics, human rights, Tibet, Taiwan, Falun Gong and, er, the death of communism.

If anybody (other than the censors) actually read this, please let me know. I have no way of checking.

By for now,

Gary
ps I didn't coin the term 'Great Firewall of China' - I just wish I did

Chinese whispers

Yep, it's true. I'm heading East in a month or so, Beijing to be precise.

Myself and Liz are packing up our tent and swanning of for the sake of adventure. Chances are I'll keep writing - once I get my journalism accreditation sorted out with the authorities - but I'm not sure whether I'll be able to access the Blogger account.

Anyway, I'll post up contact details for anybody who might want to contact me in Beijing. In particular, anybody who wants to put freelance work my way is encouraged to get in touch! Email me at garyfinnegan-at-oceanfree.net with anything relatively urgent. Don't post anything important on the blog please because I don't check it often enough at the best of times.

My mobile is +353 86 856 8710. Hopefully I'll still have that in China, but will post up a new local phone number if/when I get one.

Mary Harney's slight return

Well, that's it. The 2007 Irish General Election is well and truly history. The votes have been cast and counted, a Programme for Government has been hammered out, and...things are a lot like they were before polling day. Sigh.

Most of the same Fianna Failers have collected their seals of office from the President and eased their back sides into ministerial Mercs. The only real difference is we now have two Green ministers - although they are more likely to opt for bicycle saddles than the leather upholstery of a State car.

But my obsession is health. I'll have to admit that I was 99.9% certain that there would be a change of Health Minister, but Mary Harney defied the odds and returns to the toughest portfolio in cabinet.

Maybe I spend too long thinking about the health services, but when the cartoonist at Irish Medical News asked whether he should put money on Harney keeping her job, I sagely advised him not to. He sagely ignored me and slapped E20 on her at 10/1. If he'd been a little quicker, he could have got her at 14/1 - but I'm hardly in a position to criticise.

Apparently the Greens wanted Harney shifted to a cushy number in Foreign Affairs but she was having none of it.

This is a genuinely brave move. She could easily have feigned reluctance and shuffled off on five years of foreign junkets. There's no bad news in Foreign Affairs - unless we get invaded and that hasn't happened in ages.

However, her bravery in asking for the Health Ministry three years ago bought her a lot of public sympathy. She probably looked at how Micheal Martin was doing the job and reckoned she could easily show him up. But things aren't much better now than in 2004.

How much more leeway is this latest act of self-sacrifice going to buy her? Before the election, it seemed like everybody thought health was the big issue. The hospitals were in a mess, the service was being privatised and health staff were on the streets. But somehow, nobody thought it was Mary's fault.

Obviously the problems weren't all down to her - and she's making an honest effort to shake things up - but there's a bizarre double-think at play here that allows the public to be furious about how the health services are being run, while still backing Harney to the hilt.

Still, maybe continuity is better than handing over to somebody who will spend two years undoing Harney's policies before trying to put their own stamp on it - only for the baton to be passed again and the process repeating itself.

And, as the Minister herself has pointed out (while holding back a smirk), the opposition's main health spokesperson and a bunch of independent hospital candidates were all given the boot by the electorate. Harney has a mandate.

Even her controversial (and in my view, poorly thought out) plan to build shiny new private hospitals next door to run-down old public hospitals has been given the thumbs up by voters.

So it's full steam ahead for better or worse. But the new Government does have a green hue. There will be two senior Green Party ministers around the cabinet table for Harney to contend with. Speaking in the Dail after she had been re-appointed Health Minister by the Taoiseach, Harney went on a fairly amusing riff about entering a new political ecology; a new biosphere and embracing all forms of human life - in reference to her new Green pals.

She won't have it all her own way at cabinet this time around, but it might take more than two Green TDs to stop her building private hospitals. Things will be the same, but different.

What will be interesting to watch is whether there is any limit to the public sympathy for Harney the Health Heroine. Every time things go badly she seems to benefit from it.

But enough cynicism. Maybe Mary Harney now has the mandate, the time and the mentality to achieve lasting reform. After all, she has nothing to lose.

Harney has indicated that she won't seek re-election, so popularity does matter much. The Taoiseach has backed her by re-appointing her. The Tanaiste and Finance Minister is a former Health Minister so he understands her pain (it was Cowen who dubbed health 'Angola' because of political landmines have a habit of blowing up in Ministers' faces).

So, Minister, go for broke. Even if the system is even worse in five years, the public will forgive you.