Well, no surprise there… China fears everything it cannot control, and thus it is stomping on China’s blogosphere.
The site Blogbus.com was closed on 11 March “until further notice” for allowing a letter to be posted that was critical of the government. It was the turn of Blogcn.com to be shut down on 14 March.
We tried to see if we could get banned in China and it did not take that long to get us shut off from Chinese readers a while back (I have not checked recently to see if we are still a China no-no).
The linked Vigilant.tv article at the top of this entry even helpfully provides a link to his wonderful Invisiblog system to allow Chinese bloggers to deftly avoid the best efforts of the Chinese state’s attempts to silence them.
Yet in the long run it will avail them naught. As the Chinese state increasingly liberalises its economy in order to provide more wealth that it can tax, which of course means assuming less state control over that most entrepreneurial of people, the Chinese, that very process will eventually cause alternative power centres to appear as a direct consequence of creating more wealth without directing where that wealth is created.
The revolution will not be televised, it will certainly be blogged!
–Carpe Diem
As a devoted Samizdata fan, I attempted to read this blog on my recent trip to Macau. Sadly it turned out that even in Macau (now part of China) I was blocked from accessing this site, among others.
The one thing I could not figure out was that the CNN website was blocked, but I could freely watch CNN on my tele in my hotel room. The weird world of censorship rarely makes any sense.
It is always fascinating to watch what are typically called “powerful central governments” quake in fear when confronted by anything new or different from their own moldy preconceptions about how things should be done. Whenever there is some type of crackdown, as in the recent arrests in China and Cuba, it is always described as an act of strength and control, when nothing could be further from the truth.
Authoritarian systems of all kinds are not driven by confidence and strength, but by fear and paranoid uncertainty. It is so foriegn to those of us who live in relatively free societies that a simple exchange of varying views or the printing of some contrary opinions might be viewed as a threat to our whole way of life. It IS our way of life.
In any discussion of potential social plans, it should be pointed out that the more collectivist the platform, the more fearful the operators must be that someone might have a differing view. Statism is invariably built on fear, not the confident outlook that can permit varying points of view.
One can only hope that Fidel’s and Kim’s nightmares are commensurate with their crimes. It would help maintain one’s faith in a just Universe.
I am sitting in Beijing reading Samizdata right now, so it’s not blocked any more.
The Great Celestial Nanny that runs the show around here is becoming more and more tolerant of English language content. The BBC and Time magazine are the only major media sources whose websites are always blocked.
But Chinese language websites are different — the Nanny is always on the lookout for bulletin boards and other sites where people can post anonymously.
I am sitting in Beijing reading Samizdata right now, so it’s not blocked any more.
The Great Celestial Nanny that runs the show around here is becoming more and more tolerant of English language content. The BBC and Time magazine are the only major media sources whose websites are always blocked.
But Chinese language websites are different — the Nanny is always on the lookout for bulletin boards and other sites where people can post anonymously. Recent events – the Taiwan elections and the annual parliamentary session in Beijing – have caused in increase in Nanny interference.
Jeremy: Interesting! Thanks for the information, straight from the dragon’s mouth, as it were.
I’m also in Beijing and have had no problems accessing Samizdata recently. However, Blogspot and other major blog service providers have been off limits for the better part of two years now.
Likewise, reading from China (Shenzhen). But cut it out, Perry! It is possible to get blocked like Blogspot, and I really enjoy Samizdata.
Sam
The fuckers! Typepad.com hosted sites seems to be blocked, as of this evening – March 25.
So while I can read Samizdata rants, and look at Tibetan flags etc. on your good site, I can’t read my own website in Beijing without a proxy server.
Man!