Curbing Chinese Internet censorship
Edward Cody wrote in the Washington Post about a law suit in China that may or may not indicate a trend, but does illustrate the Chinese censorship system. The details should help students understand the extent of government action in China.Dog Owner Takes On China's Web Censors
"Outraged that his Internet posting about dogs had been banned, Chen Yuhua wrote to the mayor of Beijing. No answer. He wrote to the city council. Still no answer. When all else failed, he consulted a lawyer, studied China's civil code and marched into court with a lawsuit...
"Chen's suit, filed Nov. 26, was a bold challenge to the legal authority of the Communist Party to decide what China's 1.3 billion people can say and read on their computers. It was a rare... gesture in a country where the power of the Public Security Bureau and Propaganda Department to regulate speech is usually considered absolute...
"Chen's posting was an attack on the Beijing municipal government's regulations barring any dog over 14 inches high and restricting each family to only one dog...
"Criticism of government policies and nonconformist political views, however, are not taken lightly in China.
"More than 30,000 censors are employed to monitor the Internet alone, specialists estimate. They are equipped with advanced technology to block sensitive sites and sound the alarm when words deemed off-color or politically incorrect show up on the screen. The system, part of a vast apparatus extending to newspapers, theaters and art galleries, remains part of life for most people in a China otherwise modernizing at breakneck speed..."Labels: China, policy, rule-of-law
posted by Ken Wedding @ 8:41 AM
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