This overview of Chinese political control and the internet has an interesting premise:
The Internet is supposed to herald the end of authoritarian government. And China is supposed to be the test case. But the Chinese Communist Party is adept at blocking Web sites it doesn’t want people to see. Will the Internet play a role in a political transformation of China, or will it just help the government exert new controls?
Part of a series called China and the Internet, NPR explores the role of not only censorship and dissent on the web, but also the embracing of ICT by the Party to consolidate its control over the people.
One interesting point brought up is that Chinese people who are on the net tend to be those that benefit from government policies. The peasants who harbour the most anti-government feelings are not able to “organize” on the web, thus the show concludes that the internet is not really bringing about a revolution, but is playing a more evolutionary role in respect to slowly changing people’s relationships, knowledge of the outside world and the economy.
What I would like to point out is that many revolutionary leaders throughout history tend to be from the same kind of background described above: upper-middleclass households, affording socially mobile elites the time to think about something other than daily survival. But I don’t think this heralds revolution, at least in the East. The west, on the other hand, is a completely different beast.
On a related note, here is a article in the LA Times about an Iranian blogger’s crime against the state.
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COMMENTS / 4 COMMENTS
Liberals Against Terrorism added these pithy words on Feb 23 05 at 5:37 pmExciting New Logo Discussion!
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texas hold em added these pithy words on Apr 17 05 at 6:47 amtexas hold em
Science is no longer the quintessence of knowledge and of what is worth knowing, but a way. It is a way of addressing and penetrating into unexplored and unmasked realms. by
Adamu added these pithy words on 19 Feb 05 at 8:50 pmI think people in the cities are basically thinking what the reporter says: “stay out of politics and you can do anything you want.” As long as they can carry on with their daily lives, they regard their inability to read certain web sites with the same annoyance I feel when Penny Arcade won’t load.
Dan added these pithy words on 20 Feb 05 at 11:15 pmPragmatically, it may be good that the most disenchanted aren’t the most impowered. For the past decades, China has been good at slow, evolutionary, progressive change. They are a state on the right track.
If there is a change of government in China, I would rather have a bourgeois revolution such as in eastern Europe than a return to the “barrel of a gun” movements that have so destroyed China in the past 150 years.
