As China Attempts to Control Internet

BEIJING (AP) - China said Sunday it is imposing new regulations to control content on its news Web sites and will allow the posting of only “healthy and civilized” news. (My Way News)

Great try, China. Now, let us see just how successful you will be with trying to overcome natural law; man’s innate yearning to be free. It will be interesting but perhaps a bit bloody to watch China’s attempts to reign in the country’s 100-million Internet population, which is second to only the United States, with 135 million users.

The new rules take effect immediately to “standardize the management of news and information” regarding current events and politics. The stated goals of censorship are certainly laudatory: “healthy and civilized news and information that is beneficial to the improvement of the quality of the nation, beneficial to its economic development and conducive to social progress“. However, as humankind’s experience shows, quashing of the freedom to speak against the state does not lead to such dreams, only to the nightmares of human intellectual slavery.

The communist government already blocks Internet material it deems to be critical of the state, subversive, or pornographic. Online dissidents expressing contrary opinions are regularly arrested. Just this month, according to WaPo, e-mail account information provided by Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) helped lead to a 10-year prison term for a Chinese journalist who had written about media restrictions in an e-mail.

In a recent post I found that the believers in freedom of the “international” Internet community are finding stealth methods for the Chinese cyber freedom fighter to successfully use:

Blogging Anonymously
Bloggers are often the only real journalists in countries where the mainstream media is censored, such as in Iran and China. If they displease the government, they could be arrested. Reporters Without Borders has produced a PDF handbook to help them, with handy tips and technical advice on remaining anonymous and to bypass censorship. The “Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-dissidents“also covers how to set up and make the most of a blog, to publicise it using search-engines and to establish its credibility through the observing of ethical and journalistic principles. How to Blog Anonymously

In addition, bloggers living in the free world will be more than willing to publish onto their own blogs, news and commentary coming from the Chinese freedom-fighters.