Standing up against censorship
Google's announcement: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-china.html
And from www.newyorker.com/:
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While Chinese Web users on Thursday considered the prospect of life without Google, the issue, viewed from a Chinese perspective, seemed to boil down to this: Well-wishers who showed up to lay flowers and candles, in mock-mourning, at Google’s Beijing headquarters on Wednesday discovered that the flowers were promptly removed. A security guard from the neighborhood informed them that they would need to “apply for permits at the relevant department; otherwise they were conducting an ‘illegal flower tribute.’ ”
The Illegal Flower Tribute just might be the perfect framework through which to view the whole sorry episode. The battle lines can fairly be described as those who believe in the need for vigilant regulation of floral tributes versus those who do not. Web comments and blog items that expressed support for Google’s actions were promptly censored Thursday, so only the savviest Chinese Web users were posting to Twitter, which lies beyond the Great Firewall for those with the technical know-how (a proxy) to reach it.
Some of the more memorable comments from the Chinese Web:
From CXZJ: “This is not Google withdrawing from China, but China withdrawing from the rest of the world.”
From joaniu: “I suspect that eighty per cent of Google users in China will begin to use a proxy [to get around a prospective government ban on Google], meaning that, in one year, there will be forty million more Web users breaking through the wall of censorship. So Google’s leaving is not an end, but the beginning of an era.”
Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/evanosnos/2010/01/china-and-google-illegal-flower-tribute.html#ixzz0cd4rQa5m
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And some history:
And from www.newyorker.com/:
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While Chinese Web users on Thursday considered the prospect of life without Google, the issue, viewed from a Chinese perspective, seemed to boil down to this: Well-wishers who showed up to lay flowers and candles, in mock-mourning, at Google’s Beijing headquarters on Wednesday discovered that the flowers were promptly removed. A security guard from the neighborhood informed them that they would need to “apply for permits at the relevant department; otherwise they were conducting an ‘illegal flower tribute.’ ”
The Illegal Flower Tribute just might be the perfect framework through which to view the whole sorry episode. The battle lines can fairly be described as those who believe in the need for vigilant regulation of floral tributes versus those who do not. Web comments and blog items that expressed support for Google’s actions were promptly censored Thursday, so only the savviest Chinese Web users were posting to Twitter, which lies beyond the Great Firewall for those with the technical know-how (a proxy) to reach it.
Some of the more memorable comments from the Chinese Web:
From CXZJ: “This is not Google withdrawing from China, but China withdrawing from the rest of the world.”
From joaniu: “I suspect that eighty per cent of Google users in China will begin to use a proxy [to get around a prospective government ban on Google], meaning that, in one year, there will be forty million more Web users breaking through the wall of censorship. So Google’s leaving is not an end, but the beginning of an era.”
Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/evanosnos/2010/01/china-and-google-illegal-flower-tribute.html#ixzz0cd4rQa5m
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And some history:
posted by stephilix at
1:23 PM
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