

Hundreds of sites down for "Chinese Internet Maintenance Day" - sho
http://www.danwei.org/net_nanny_follies/chinese_websites_under_mainten.php

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embeddedradical
_"starting with the Tıаnanmen anniversary"_ , and it's renewal kind of
behavior. is this a clever way of protesting without getting sent to prison?

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sp332
Unfortunately, no. It's to prevent people from talking about the event on its
anniversary, and to prevent Chinese people from hearing other people talk
about it.

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sho
And it's also a veiled warning: "Don't even think about it". Read the comments
below, though, for some discussion on the nuance in the situation, and why
it's not really a subject anyone should be getting too outraged about before
they understand the environment in which it's happening.

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est
The funny thing is we don't call a "Maintenance Day", we call it a "Been
Maintenance'd Day"

[http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22%E8%A2%AB%E7%BB%...](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22%E8%A2%AB%E7%BB%B4%E6%8A%A4%E6%97%A5%22)

Just like there are two kind of suicides in China, suicide and 'been
suicided'.

[http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%E8%A2%AB%E8%87%AA%...](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%E8%A2%AB%E8%87%AA%E6%9D%80)

~~~
rms
Do you think this US media talk about apathy and ignorance about June 4th
among the Post-80's generation is meaningful? Do most Chinese youth really not
know what happened? How many anniversaries do you think it will take before
they stop maintaining the internet?

~~~
est
> Do you think this US media talk about apathy and ignorance about June 4th
> among the Post-80's generation is meaningful?

Yes to you, maybe no to us. Because it's not really some fresh ideas, since
'western' media is full of these things everyday.

> Do most Chinese youth really not know what happened?

on some degree. We all know some shit happened to China, East-Europe, Russia
in the late 80's & early 90's. some of us probably do not know the tankman
though.

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jhancock
I kind of like the idea of a "global internet maintenance day". Sysadmins get
to do patches, upgrades, and backups with the sites offline. Sweet.

~~~
icey
Except in this case it's being used to gloss over any coverage of the
anniversary of a horrific event.

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jhancock
yeah well, yes, no, sort of...this view of it being a cover-up of a horrific
event is not exactly how the majority of Chinese view it IMHO. The Chinese
certainly know why the Internet sites are down. The general population are not
ignorant of this history.

Do you consider the U.S. Civil War a horrific event? Certainly lots of people
suffered; it was a war. But lots of change occurred (still occurring).

I don't consider June 4th in China "as only" a slaughter of innocents. History
might show it to be one of the least bloody events relative to the significant
change that happened as a result. 2009 China is far different from 1989 in
part because this event happened.

Please do not be upset with me for my opinions. My view has come after a very
long time of me holding my U.S. views while living in China and coming to
understand that most local Chinese do not agree with me.

~~~
sho
Very good comment, similar to what I too have experienced.

Perhaps a better comparison to US history is the Kent State shootings, a
protest in 1970 in which 4 people died at an anti-war protest. While awful,
you would be hard pressed in 2009 to find an American hanging too much
significance on the event; it was an isolated incident in a period of intense
social change.

The situation, I think, is similar in China, whose own social upheaval is
occurring at a far greater rate. It is difficult to think of any precedent, in
fact, in which a country of such size and diversity has managed such a
wrenching transition without a lot more bloodshed than that.

It's because of this, actually, that my position on the government there has
softened, too. Chinese society sits on a powderkeg the likes of which it is
difficult for westerners to understand. The govt's actions might seem heavy-
handed, but their stewardship of the change process has undeniably been
impressive, even exemplary.

And if you don't think the US Govt would temporarily pull the plug on a few
websites in order to abate what they considered a genuine chance of widespread
civil unrest, think again.

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bokonist
_The govt's actions might seem heavy-handed, but their stewardship of the
change process has undeniably been impressive, even exemplary._

I actually think the Chinese government did the right thing in Tiananmen. They
had the fortitude to do what Louis the XVI and Czar Nicholas the II should
have done, but did not. Americans forget that most revolutions have had
horrible results. And in China in particular, the worst time periods have been
times of internal chaos ( the Taiping Rebellion and the Cultural revolution).
Order and security are prerequisites of liberty. The Chinese government put
down the mob (a mob that did have weapons, btw), and helped ensure that the
past twenty years have been the best twenty years in China in a long time.

~~~
est
your ideas fit with some of the older-Chinese, they think the CCP did the
right thing to keep China from breaking like USSR

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vaksel
doesn't the whole banning thing give more exposure to it?

