
China's bloggers, filmmakers feel chill of internet crackdown - davidst
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-internet-content-idUSKBN19O21X
======
girzel
I work in Chinese publishing, and the same thing is absolutely happening
there. Books are being pulled off the shelves, publishers are being warned
away from anything potentially controversial. The basic attitude is, "Don't
risk it", and it's absolutely deadly to creativity and culture. On the one
hand, the central government is trying to encourage Chinese culture to "Go
Out" and wow the world. On the other, it is absolutely strangling the
country's cultural creators.

~~~
jxramos
This is very concerning. I'm curious how all this is delivered as far as the
actions of officials to enact this behavior in general populace. How exactly
do they pull it off? Are there new strategies employed or do they leverage
years of chilling requests and punishments for people to generally know better
not to cross the government? Do people personally know political prisoners and
what not or see punished individuals paraded on TV and what not? Thanks for
sharing.

~~~
girzel
The framework of control has been in place for a long time, it's just that
they've been tightening down the (already-in-place) screws over the past
couple of years.

The basic mechanism is control of ISBNs: the supply of these numbers is
tightly restricted, and a book cannot be published without them. A fixed
number of state-owned publishers is able to issue ISBNs, though privately-
owned publishing companies can buy the numbers or work with a state-owned
house to publish their books.

An ISBN acts as a chain-of-custody token for the publication of books. While
some books are subject to approval before publication, the vast majority are
not, and publication is done at the publisher's discretion. Should a book
cause problems _after_ publication, however, the consequences are
catastrophic. The ISBN (and a "responsible editor" whose name appears on the
copyright page of the book) allows the government to track down everyone who
was involved in the production of the book, and squash them. People lose their
jobs, in some cases publishing companies are suspended or dissolved outright.

It's a system carefully designed to make writers and publishers more cautious
than they would actually need to be.

Publishing, while highly controlled by the government, isn't really an area
where people end up in prison, or you see televised trials. The worst that
usually happens is the ruining of a career, or in extreme cases the
dissolution of a company (in journalism, by contrast, people get put in jail,
or disappear). I've written about this distinction before[1], which I think is
lost on most international observers.

[1]: [https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/17/opinion/the-real-
censors-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/17/opinion/the-real-censors-of-
china.html)

~~~
68c12c16
Well, I feel for any form of censorship, the essence is to disrupt the
communication among the people in the society. The goal of this disruption is
to prevent a formation of synchronization in the population. It could be
carried out on all kinds of communication media and for all their different
stages.

A system of censorship could be much easily implemented when one has the
visibility over the entire society and the access to all its social resources.
Before the age of internet, their focus was on book/newspaper publishing; and
in our current age of internet, the focus was on internet as well as
book/newspaper publishing.

And in terms of their practical methods, you can just imagine what you would
do when you want to disrupt the information flow and when you have the
absolute control of every sub-system in a society (i.e. the courts, the
police, all the newspapers/websites/tv channels/radio stations, as well as the
ability of not needing to worry about your livelihood when you do not work on
anything else...)

It's almost an impregnable castle, as long as it does not crumble from inside
the ruling system itself...

------
indescions_2017
Another fascinating "censorship" story playing out right now:

Tencent Loses $14 Billion After Criticism From Chinese Media

[http://variety.com/2017/biz/news/tencent-loses-14-billion-
ho...](http://variety.com/2017/biz/news/tencent-loses-14-billion-hong-kong-
stock-exchange-criticism-chinese-media-1202487199/)

To call this "chilling" is a gross understatement!

~~~
thinkfurther
So, 4 something percent. Do you find this chilling, too?

[http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/11/investing/donald-trump-
press...](http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/11/investing/donald-trump-press-
conference-markets-economy/index.html)

> Trump said that many companies were "getting away with murder" and that
> there would be more competitive bidding practices for federal contracts in
> his administration.

> Dow component Pfizer's (PFE) stock fell more than 2% immediately after the
> comments.

> Mylan (MYL), which has already come under Congressional scrutiny for
> dramatic price hikes of its life-saving allergy medication EpiPen, fell
> 3.5%, and Bristol-Myers Squibb dived 4%.

> Allergan (AGN) and Valeant (VRX), two other biotechs that have been
> criticized for raising drug prices, also fell more than 3%. And the iShares
> Nasdaq Biotechnology ETF (IBB), which owns many of these companies, fell 3%
> too.

That's just the first hit for "stock prices fell after criticism". There's
plenty of that, and four percent are nothing. What's so chilling? That 4
percent of anything can mean billions of dollars? The mechanism of stock
markets? That social media and "traditional media" have this reach and effect
just by things being said? That the gaming industry became this huge and
heartless after such short time, and how some in it would LOVE to be able to
"capture" audiences like the pharma industry can? None of these things? Or
really just mostly the Chinese Communist Party, the one thing most of us have
no say and no responsibility in, rather than those aspects of this which we
share in every day?

And what comes after chilling? Freezing? Is it really "gross" to merely call
this chilling? What would be neither an under- nor an overstatement?

------
visarga
Probably not Xi's problem but China will lag economically and creatively
because of this restriction. It's just ceding the entertainment initiative to
other creators, outside of China. Even if they ban all creative content from
outside China, don't they know that a terabyte HDD can hold enough movies to
last for a year, and be copied easily?

~~~
nickrio
Ha! CCP don't give any shit about _creativity_.

They want to be in control, including controlling creativity.

In fact, if you're a Chinese people like me, you probably learned CCP's "Three
Represents" when you in mid school. Which is:

\- "Represents advanced social productive forces" stands for economic
production

\- "Represents the progressive course of China's advanced culture" stands for
cultural development

\- "Represents the fundamental interests of the majority" stands for political
consensus

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Represents](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Represents)

What that said is:

\- We (CCP) decide what is important to this country

\- We decide what you can do when you're boring

\- We decide what you can have (and your needs)

So, I won't be surprised one day we had that Sea Ban thing and what's followed
all over again.

FYI
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haijin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haijin)

~~~
themodelplumber
Wow, I didn't realize that Japan had mimicked this sea ban. I only knew about
the Japanese version.

But how could such a move be reconciled with China's recent expansion into
global politics?

~~~
pcr0
That was a totally different China. Since then there was the communist
cultural revolution and then "capitalism with Chinese characteristics" which
is where China is currently.

------
ePierre
Well... Fortunately, there is still Taiwan, the only Chinese-speaking country
where creativity and freedom of speech is nurtured and not censored!

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Well, Singapore isn't that bad. Regardless, I'm not sure what Taiwan is going
to save us from.

~~~
xiaoma
Singapore's not that bad as long as you're not gay (which is illegal and
punishable by a prison term), a political activist for the opposition party,
too independent thinking or otherwise labeled as undesirable by the
government.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Oh, sure, totally. But they aren't as bad as the PRC.

------
AznHisoka
Newbie question but what is China's rationale for their internet censorship
and firewall? What are they afraid of?

~~~
netcan
The concept they use is “social harmony.”

This is a sort of shorthand for discouraging people from developing strong,
dissident, aberrant or divisive political positions. Discouraging people from
taking on political identities in general, other than a unified chinese
identity. Discouraging people from disparaging and/or distrusting the
government. Keeping fringey social trends out of the mainstream.

If you think of how strong political identities are currently in the US, this
is exactly what they are trying to prevent. They want to keep everyone on the
same page in terms of political and social norms.

The skeptical take is that the CCP is protecting itself from popular and
democratic revolutionary movements.

~~~
perlpimp
China will consider democracy only when the credit bubble pops which will
delegitimize the Communist party. Tianamen square was at the inflection point
when Investment flooded into corrupt post maoist china, democratic movement
was everywhere but was quashed by increasingly belligerent communists
apparatchiks.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
The CCP has only been able to eliminate dissent by eliminating moral hazard.
They promised that the bubbles won't pop, so when they do, it isn't going to
be pretty at all.

------
68c12c16
I feel stringent censorship is among the most unbearable things.

If we look at the censorship history in different countries over the world,
such as France (before the 20th century) and USSR, the only way to end a very
stringent censorship in a society is by ending the ruling government itself,
which is usually an autocracy, or an oligarchy at best. But that could mean a
period of turmoil that would destroy many people's lives across the entire
country. It seems one way to avoid this great destruction is for most of the
population in the country to rise up in synchrony and simultaneously topple
down the government together -- but this concurrency at a society level is one
of the major targets that the current censorship implemented in China aims at.

Sigh...It just seems impossible to have hack out a consensus in a distributed
system when the powerful system admin with his privileges at the root level
constantly interferes...

------
woodandsteel
Xi Jinping is pushing massive censorship because he thinks it is good for
China, but I think that is a big mistake. History has shown that when you
don't have open, public debate on important issues, the government becomes
close-minded and makes poor decisions. Yes, democracy is messy, but the
alternatives are worse.

Part of the problem here is that China is still running according to
Confucianism, which was a wonderfully effective political philosophy for a
largely agrarian society, but is quite ill-suited for the modern world. The
Chinese need to think out what is the right form of government for the modern
industrial world, but to do that they need free discussion, which is just what
Xi is making impossible.

~~~
asdfologist
No, Xi Jinping is pushing massive censorship because he thinks it is good for
Xi Jinping.

------
onetokeoverthe
Reuters is blocked in China. China has been "closing" for 5 years now.
According to "china watchers", this is expected to continue. Blame Xi.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
5 years? China has been closing ever since the Olympics ended in...2008. Its
been almost a decade now. Theory is they'll start opening up again in the run
up to 2022...they can't really hold an Olympics while blocking all the major
worldwide internet sites, too much face lost.

This definitely isn't just Xi's fault.

~~~
mtgx
It's almost like having a single political party is a bad thing for a society
or something.

~~~
JPKab
Being limited to only 2 parties is fucking awful. I can't imagine how bad the
USA would be if we were suddenly forced to just have one.

~~~
dilemma
It would be exactly the same.

------
techrich
No Teresa May this is not to be copied!

