

Search Baidu for "Tiananmen square massacre" - guess how many results? - chrisb
http://www.baidu.com/s?wd=Tiananmen+square+massacre

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chrischen
I wish apple would stop making stuff in China. Not only have I replaced 3
Iphones because of defects, I'm also legitimizing Chinas government by doing
business with them. On the otherhand it does help the people.

~~~
pavs
Can you explain why only Apple, when overwhelmingly majority of american
consumer goods are manufactured/assembled in China?

Just to take Apple's example (they also rely on other asian countries for
certain parts, ie. Korea & Taiwan comes to my mind right now), if they were to
not rely on China to assemble/manufacture their products Apple products would
have been even more expensive.

Also your iphone being defective has nothing to do with the fact that they
were manufactured in China. While China made goods tends to be of low quality.
High end computer gadgets like apple/dell goes through a certain high standard
of manufacturing than your typical Chinese stuff. Companies tends to have a
more hands-on approach to maintaining a certain standard and quality, which is
generally missing in other chinese made products.

The problem is not that apple / google / MSFT invests and does business in
China. The problem is that our government have legitimized Chinese style of
government (a unique variant of communism), regardless how much they criticize
on the side. Our government does not confront Chinese government directly. Its
already too late to do anything now - we are too connected with their economy.
If they go down - we go down, if we go down - they go down too.

The government can't do anything or the companies can't do anything without
shooting their own leg. The only way we could pressure Chinese government is
to start some kind of mass movement where we refuse to buy products
manufactured in China (or similar government with questionable human-right
records).

Its easier said than done, but the change has to come from us.

~~~
allyt
_the change has to come from us_

Why? Do you have any other historical examples of consumers from one country
pressuring another country to reform its government through boycott?

And why China? China has a significantly more organized and helpful government
than most countries in the region (say, the ones in which most of your clothes
are made, or where some of the raw materials for those gadgets are mined).

But most importantly, why do you feel the need, as an American consumer, to
act on the relationship between China and its citizens?

~~~
pavs
>Why? Do you have any other historical examples of consumers from one country
pressuring another country to reform its government through boycott?

I don't know of any example but do you really need a precedence to follow for
everything or can you not take extraordinary steps to counter extraordinary
circumstances?

>And why China? China has a significantly more organized and helpful
government than most countries in the region (say, the ones in which most of
your clothes are made, or where some of the raw materials for those gadgets
are mined).

The subject of this thread is China's human-rights record. More on next
question.

>But most importantly, why do you feel the need, as an American consumer, to
act on the relationship between China and its citizens?

You can't have double standard in reference to human rights. You (government,
not you as in _you_) can't cry foul about communism and human rights record
and use it as a reason to sanction some countries and even use it as (one of
the) reasons to go to war at the same time blissfully do business with China.
As far as human rights go, China is one of the worst offenders out there, and
by human-rights I don't only mean not being able to search the internet
unrestricted. If you say something against the government or try to start a
movement, they will hunt you down and kill you. You can't even talk about
those killings they will hunt you down and kill you. You don't hear about it
much because they do a very good job of keeping things tight - do some digging
around and you will see what I am talking about. You can start from here:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_China>

If any other country did what China does, there would have been massive
sanctions if not war. But of course, no one wants to fight with a nuclear-
powered military strong nation.

~~~
allyt
_If any other country did what China does, there would have been massive
sanctions if not war_

Wow, calling for war with China, really? Did you support the war in Iraq for
the same reasons? Do you also support war with Saudi Arabia, Russia, and
Pakistan?

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motters
We need to be careful that this is not also the fate of the internet in the
west.

~~~
ytinas
Assuming it isn't already to some extent. This point should be made louder and
more often. It's easy to see China as some big evil empire but there aren't
many governments that haven't committed major atrocities.

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Entlin
Of course searching in english is not going to prove anything.

Here is a Baidu search in chinese for "Tiananmen Square protests":
<http://www.baidu.com/s?wd=%C1%F9%CB%C4%CA%C2%BC%FE> It says "31 hits" (but
it's actually 23)

And here is a Baidu search for "Tiananmen Square":
<http://www.baidu.com/s?wd=%CC%EC%B0%B2%E9T%8FV%88%F6> \- 7.7 million hits.

You can translate keywords easily by using the wikipedia interlanguage links,
which is what I did.

I bet that every single one of those 23 hits was tweaked and tuned to make the
event sound like an irrelevant, small event in chinese history.

~~~
chrischen
Not that Most Chinese would Even care. I think most of them are worried about
getting their children into university so they can lead a better life. Stuff
like politics is of little concern. Governments censorship efforts are pretty
futile, and the only reason there isn't revolt is because it's good enough for
people to not care.

I mean we care because most of us have cushy jobs, or have already made it in
a developed country, so we have time to think about philosphy and politics.
But honestly it's no big deal, because their censorship is a meaningless
effort. When I went to china no one had false understanding of the living
conditions in china comapred to the USA, and most people were enjoying what
they had to care.

With the Internet, telephone, mail, it really becomes impossible to censor.
It's just a facade to make the government feel like it's in control.

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chrisb
But surprisingly it doesn't ban you from searching on this, unlike searching
for "google.blogspot.com": <http://www.baidu.com/s?wd=google.blogspot.com>

Edit:

I realise this has been pointed out before, but I find it curious that
"google.blogspot.com" gets you banned, but "Tiananmen square massacre"
doesn't.

~~~
jacquesm
I think you should be taking in to account the IP address you're searching
from as well as the language that you are searching in.

My guess is that searching from within China and in Chinese would yield
different results. Maybe someone on the other side of the great firewall could
run a test ? On second thoughts, maybe better not...

~~~
chrisb
I doubt that the IP address I'm searching from has much to do with it, as it
they won't show any more results to me (who isn't in China), presumably they
won't show any more results to someone who is in China.

Although I agree the language of the search term might have an effect. If
anyone can try this in Chinese I'd be interested in the result.

~~~
jacquesm
> presumably they won't show any more results to someone who is in China.

But they might show different results or even less of them.

~~~
chrisb
Agreed.

Contrasted with the > 1,000,000 results on google.com

And curiously, google.cn gives ~42,000 results - and they still say they are
censoring (据当地法律法规和政策，部分搜索结果未予显示。 = According to local laws, regulations and
policies, some search results are not shown.)

~~~
jacquesm
I had this really weird idea: allow proxied access to google from _any_
webserver.

Simply reconfigure apache on a world-wide basis to allow it to proxy requests
for search results.

The 'great firewall' would presumably have a bit of an issue with filtering
out all the websites on the planet running apache.

~~~
bensummers
Since they do content based filtering (sending a RST if they don't like the
contents of your packet) the actual IP address of the server returning search
results is irrelevant.

~~~
jacquesm
Any page with 10 or more links on them is supect then.

I'm fairly sure that if they blocked all forms and all results pages with more
than 10 links on them that the internet would cease to be an asset to China.

Censorship is a delicate thing, censor too little and it is useless, censor
too much and you might wake the dragon.

~~~
bensummers
Don't you think they'd block on keywords, not link counts? These people aren't
stupid, and are supplied by purveyors of the very best western technology.

~~~
jacquesm
Witness the ability of spammers to circumvent the best of filters there are no
doubt enough cracks to squeeze forbidden information through.

I never said they were stupid, and I'm aware of the credentials of the parties
colluding with the Chinese government in this respect.

------
CalmQuiet
And who would dare even _enter_ such a search result from an ISP in China?

One of the "search results" would probably not appear on your screen... but in
some sort of government database of "suspected dissidents." A government-run
search engine is a must for any totalitarian regime.

~~~
chrischen
When I went to china I did it all the time to see what was banned and what
wasn't. As far as I can tell, nothing has happened to my relatives. Also if
you were a dissident you'd probably be smart enoguh to use an encrypted
connection anyways.

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rmoriz
Search for "Falun Gong" and baidu will ignore all your future request for a
period! horrible!

~~~
dchest
This is not Baidu's work, it's the Firewall. Add ?falun+gong to any request to
a server located in China and you'll be banned from it for a few minutes, e.g.
[http://search.news.cn/language/search.jspa?id=en&t=1&...](http://search.news.cn/language/search.jspa?id=en&t=1&t1=0&ss=&ct=&n1=falun+gong)

This has been discussed a few days ago on HN.

~~~
jambo
Image search for Tank Man does this, too. I get a "Connection Reset" error.

[http://image.baidu.com/i?tn=baiduimage&ct=201326592&...](http://image.baidu.com/i?tn=baiduimage&ct=201326592&cl=2&lm=-1&fr=&pv=&ic=0&z=0&word=tank+man&s=0)

Edit: Searching for 王維林 returns results, if useless ones.
[http://image.baidu.com/i?tn=baiduimage&ct=201326592&...](http://image.baidu.com/i?tn=baiduimage&ct=201326592&cl=2&lm=-1&fr=&pv=&ic=0&z=0&word=%CD%F5%BES%C1%D6+&s=0)

Testing this from outside China.

~~~
charltones
When I clicked on the image search link you gave above, amongst the images of
pop stars I got this gem:
<http://pic.yupoo.com/ifrency/12778789e82f/ts51s6si.jpg>

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discodancer
Search for "square massacre" and you'll get results for Tiananmen square
massacre :)

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cmars232
I wouldn't click on the results with anything but Lynx.

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raphar
Have you make the search in CHINESE?

