

China's instructions on reporting on Google - yanw
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/24/AR2010032402511.html

======
MikeCapone
We all knew they were doing this, but for some reason, reading the actual
guidelines is chilling.

I can only imagine the people who wrote this and expanded lots of mental
energy in trying to make sure that their propaganda/censorship plan was as
airtight as possible...

~~~
va_coder
To me it's also chilling that the US owes a country like this 1 Trillion
dollars in debt.

Also related, I think Google is f@$# awesome for standing up and doing what's
right.

~~~
Locke1689
When you owe someone $1 million, you have a problem. When you owe someone $1
trillion, they have a problem.

~~~
bendtheblock
Not sure I follow the reasoning here. Can you explain?

~~~
fleitz
When you owe someone 1 trillion dollars and you and your citizens have the
fruits of their labor, if you decide not to pay them they are screwed. Since
China is politically unpopular it would be fairly easy to orchestrate a
politically suitable reason for not paying them.

e.g. We're taking a stand for the citizens of the world and refuse to trade
with China until they implement the Kyoto protocol.

e.g. Due to human rights abuses and the refusal to make progress on the issue
we are suspending trade with China.

I'm sure there is some more politically suave reason but if we can't pay look
for China's human rights / eco record to become an issue, ultimately
culminating in our refusal to pay them.

~~~
IsaacL
If the US could make excuses for not paying off its debts, US Treasury bonds
wouldn't have a triple AAA rating.

~~~
Locke1689
US Treasury bonds are not rated.

~~~
miked
Yes they are, and all three major bond rating agencies have recently publicly
stated that treasuries are in danger of being downrated due to the massive
increase in federal debt.

~~~
Locke1689
Actually no, they are not. Rdtsc is correct that _sovereigns_ are rated, which
is why I upvoted him.

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raquo
Note how it's written in a totally non-bureaucratic language. You don't need
it when everyone is afraid of you. Just make sure you're understood.

~~~
Estragon
I expect that's more a function of the translation, or of how Chinese
bureaucratic language works.

~~~
raquo
I can't read the "original" text in Chinese, but it is also very short.
However, it could be shortened on purpose, so that the leak would be harder to
track.

~~~
toisanji
where is the original chinese text?

~~~
albertsun
Original here. [http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2010/03/the-latest-
directives-f...](http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2010/03/the-latest-directives-
from-the-ministry-of-truth-032310/)

------
dsplittgerber
This certainly speaks for itself and is a drastic measure. Be aware of a
strong anti-chinese bias in the general US media, though. James Fallows (spent
some years in China as senior editor for The Atlantic and has written lots of
articles about China) has often argued that it's not as extreme of a picture
as is often presented in the mainstream media. The Chinese government has
relaxed quite a topics of regulation in the last years (e.g. introduced some
kind of property laws for farmers, for the first time ever) and it can be
argued that they have indeed helped several hundred million people rise out of
extreme poverty, the most in the world. China is just really intend on tightly
controlling a few important parts of society, public opinion being one of
them. Chinese society in general can probably be said to place more importance
on getting out of poverty and growing into materialism than fighting for
individual rights with a 'dubious material value' to them.

~~~
smallblacksun
I'm not going to applaud China for being ever so slightly less evil than they
used to be.

~~~
dsplittgerber
You could applaud them for helping several hundred million people get out of
extreme poverty, a grand social experiment if there ever was one. I know it's
easy to take the moral high ground here, just think about if any other country
recently has accomplished something remotely similar. You probably cannot
accomplish such a feat by going from socialism to capitalism in a day
(simplified).

~~~
adrianwaj
Who put them into poverty in the first place?

~~~
gloob
Poverty is the default state, so...no-one?

~~~
adrianwaj
What, poverty is the default state for all humans everywhere, or just China?
Is silence part of the "default state" too?

~~~
gloob
All humans everywhere. It takes rather a lot of work to get out of it; it
takes a lot more for newborns to be somewhat reliably not-in-it. I suppose the
same would go for silence, too, but the road from silence -> sound is a lot
shorter than the one from hunter-gatherer -> first world industrial economy.

~~~
allenp
I think the big difference here between hunter-gatherer and 3rd world poverty
is that your stone-age people weren't living in the toxic waste dumps of an
industrializing nation that doesn't care about the environment.

Typical hunter gatherers would have had better nutrition and better access to
clean water and the ability to relocate/move without the government forcing
them into only certain areas.

------
adrianwaj
"3. All websites please clean up text, images and sound and videos which
attack the Party, State, government agencies, Internet policies with the
excuse of this event."

"4. All websites please clean up text, images and sound and videos which
support Google, dedicate flowers to Google, ask Google to stay, cheer for
Google and others have a different tune from government policy."

\-- attacking government perceived as dirty, so must be cleaned up. So too is
cheering Google, and must likewise be cleaned up. How sick.

------
BrandonM
Those instructions read eerily like a passage of _1984_ , namely the parts
where workers are getting instructions on how to rewrite history to portray
the State in an infallible, beneficial light.

~~~
netcan
What struck me was the opposite, like raquo pointed out elsewhere: this is
eerily non-Orwellian.

Virtually no euphemisation, no wink-wink double-think. No figure it out
yourself using your subtle semi-conscious understanding of the party
philosophy. This is strangely conscious and straightforward, cold.

I wonder what Orwell would have had to say about this.

~~~
tjgabbour
I've seen things like that in the west... for example, in the corporate world,
they're often straight to the point about disciplined damage control. Which
might not sound so bad, except that corporations are so omnipresent that the
media is dominated by them. (Like with this Washington Post article; both the
advertisers and the media company are corpoate.) So by an analogy, I guess it
feels kind of like working for a really big corporation, where everyone knows
you're basically supposed to say what the bosses want, refined by specialized
PR organs. (One where they don't merely control the government; they ARE the
government.)

Maybe China's censors get to work in pleasant offices, and have incentives
like climbing the job ladder, more luxuries and status, greater pay if they
move to the private sector, etc. Some might be ideologues, others cynical;
maybe most just treat it like a job and they're just cogs who kind of know
better but are too comfortable where they are, like the people I know about
working on facial recognition for CCTV systems.

But yeah, the Chinese system is a lot cruder. The cost of disobedience isn't
just losing your job and healthcare; it can be jail, maybe worse.

~~~
netcan
I wasn't commenting so much on the content as on the, for lack of a better
word, style.

In Orwell's world, which I believe correctly describes many real corporate,
religious and government worlds, such things are emphasised, alluded to. Never
directly acknowledged. People still respond as if they were given a clear,
directive, but it's never said.

" _News recommendations should refer to Central government main media
websites._ "

should be

" _News recommendations should refer to accurate official sources_ "

" _Online programs with experts and scholars on this matter must apply for
permission ahead of time. This type of self-initiated program production is
strictly forbidden._ "

should be

" _Online programs with experts and scholars on this matter must be recognised
authorities in their field. Verify the reputation of such individuals with the
appropriate sources ahead of time._ "

If not for their content, such clear directives might be construed as the rule
of law.

------
Neon2012
It's odd that certain societies don't value discovering or reporting the
truth, but instead attempt to create it.

~~~
MikeCapone
Don't confuse a whole society with the people who hold power (and thus control
the guys with the weapons).

~~~
ahk
Unless I'm mistaken a majority of Chinese actually support their government
and matters such as this are viewed through the prism of nationalism.

One could argue it's because of the education/brain-washing but the facts
remain.

~~~
MikeCapone
> Unless I'm mistaken a majority of Chinese actually support their government
> and matters such as this are viewed through the prism of nationalism.

How do you know that? Without free elections and trustable surveys, it's hard
to know.

~~~
Groxx
Because I, at least, pretty frequently hear from person X about their friend Y
in China who supports their government and what's being done.

Yes, it's effectively impossible to actually measure it, but I get that
feeling too from my browsing history.

------
maxklein
Sometimes people ask me: why do you support China? My answer is this: Every
economic development has been accompanied by huge misery and death. In Africa,
South America, India, etc. When you stop shaking hands with the upper class
business men and go live with the poor, you'll understand suffering.

I prefer that the people lose a bit of freedom, but they have to suffer less.
Those who disagree - at least be sure you have once actually been in that
situation. Don't live your life in comfort and then forget that this thing you
demand called freedom of speech also has always meant people dying in the
streets.

You are the people that would have said in Rwanda: don't block the radio
stations calling for people to be murdered - speech should be free.

I've been in Africa, I've been in China, I've been in South America, in the
U.S and in Europe. I've seen the dead people, I've hung around with freedom
loving geeks, I've talked to favela children. And after all that, I have
chosen that I prefer that the people get educated and rich at the expense of
free speech.

I'd much rather see a blocked website than dead child.

~~~
poutine
While I cannot forgive the Chinese regime for their methods, there is a point
here that shouldn't be so quickly downvoted. China has raised 400 Million
people out of poverty in the last several decades.

~~~
kilps
I'm still yet to see a convincing reason why those people could not have been
brought out of poverty while there was freedom of speech at the same time.

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plinkplonk
wait for the Chinese Communist Party apologists to turn up and argue that
"China is not yet ready for democracy" and "The Communist party is doing this
to help protect the Chinese people from evil Western imperialists" any moment
now :-P .

More seriously, I think the coming years maybe the first time in the last
century or so that an iron fisted autocracy becomes the dominant economic
power in the world. Interesting times ahead.

------
davidmurphy
The Wall Street Journal's front page interview of Sergey Brin is a must-read
if you haven't already seen it.

 _China has "made great strides against poverty and whatnot," Mr. Brin said.
"But nevertheless, in some aspects of their policy, particularly with respect
to censorship, with respect to surveillance of dissidents, I see the same
earmarks of totalitarianism, and I find that personally quite troubling."_

[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870426650457514...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704266504575141064259998090.html)

I gotta say, Sergey Brin has my total respect right now.

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cglee
Reading the comments here, I was expecting worse. It's funny that this reminds
of a very typical corporate memo.

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code_duck
I wonder what sort of guidelines political parties in the US send to their
friends in newspapers?

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yannis
Here is another view:

[http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&h...](http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http://www.chinalabs.com/html/shiyanshiguandian/20100324/32434.html&sl=zh-
CN&tl=en)

and here is a Chinese view
[http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&h...](http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http://www.chinalabs.com/html/shiyanshiguandian/20100324/32434.html&sl=zh-
CN&tl=en)

that Google's departure will be bad for Baidu advocating that with Google's
departure Baidu will have less competition and hence will not evolve properly.

I picked up the links above randomly from my wife's computer (she is Chinese).

I do not support any repressive regime, but I also have reservations for
Google. There is a huge propaganda machine in China and a more subtle one in
the USA, either we like it or not.

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Frazzydee
I found the other set of instructions, regarding a truck overturning &
magazine's public letter, interesting.

Anybody know the source and original Chinese text? The article only says it
was "issued by the 'Ministry of Truth' on March 23, 2010"

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yumraj
And I thought we _all_ were still living in the 21st century.

I wonder if this is how it is in mainland China, what it must be like in
Tibet..

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btw0
As a citizen of this country and can't do anything on this, I feel SAD.

~~~
y0ghur7_xxx
Probably you will not be able to read this site any longer.

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mattcoolidge
It seems as if this Google-China row is indicative of a larger trend taking
shape: the divorce of Western capitalist enterprises and the Chinese
government. There was an article saying as much in yesterday's Wapo
([http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2010/03...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2010/03/23/AR2010032302487.html)). It will be interesting
to see how this affects other Western companies suffering under censorship
issues there--I heard something about Godaddy possibly pulling out of there as
well.

~~~
Estragon
Yes, it makes me very worried for the US. If it develops really bad relations
with a major creditor nation, things are going to get sticky here.

~~~
gscott
I believe this is different because the only thing holding up China's currency
is American Bonds.

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grandalf
Thankfully Google has announced that it will be furthering the anti-censorship
cause by hosting a Wikileaks server.

