Censorship Perception

November 13, 2010

I read Don’t Call China’s Internet “Censored”, at Good Magazine.  It’s rather brief and biased, which is usual from a Western media source that judges China from a Western cultural perspective.

However, what I found interesting were two comments to the post.

Shaun Pen’s comment was, “Chinese people in China don’t consider it censorship, much the same way we Americans don’t consider anti-child pornography laws “censorship.”

Nathan Heath says, “But Shaun is also missing a few things.  The average Chinese internet user uses the internet completely differently than Americans do.  In fact, I honestly think it would take a long time for Chinese internet usage to change in China even if the “Great Firewall” were lifted tomorrow.  The vast population just doesn’t care. (Except Facebook. We want FB back.) THAT is the cultural difference between China and the West.”

Then there is The Economist, which had opinion pieces about China’s censorship in two recent issues.

The Oct. 23 issue had Gagging to be free, which claimed if Marx lived in China today he wouldn’t have been able to publish the Communist Manifesto. 

Not true.

There is a thriving underground in China that translates and publishes censored books into Mandarin, and I’ve often found books in Beijing and Shanghai’s English language bookstores that are on China’s censorship list. If the books are in English, China doesn’t seem to care.

Considering that learning English is mandatory in China’s public schools, why bother to censor anything. If there is money to be made, there are Chinese that will figure a way to earn it.

The Oct. 30 issue of The Economist had another go at China’s Net Nanny with Breaching the great firewall. The complaint here focuses on Twitter being blocked and replaced with a popular copy-cat called weibo, which is heavily monitored for “subversive” content.

When you discover what the West is doing to monitor subversive content on the Internet, you’ll see the hypocrisy.

Wired says, “In the US, American spy agencies want to read your blog posts, keep track of your Twitter updates — even check out your book reviews on Amazon.” 

In fact, the investment arm of the CIA and the wider intelligence community is putting cash into software that specializes in monitoring social media.

If these agencies are developing and buying this software, you can be sure they are using it.

In addition, if most Chinese don’t consider the Net Nanny censorship, then it isn’t. There is software available in the US so parents may censor and monitor their children’s’ activity on the Internet. That’s how most Chinese see the so called “Great Firewall”.

Those in the West who complain the most are probably the same people who want to influence and subvert Chinese thought until the globe is filled with Western clones.

Discover why Internet Censorship May be Going Global

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

Leave a Comment » | America, American culture, China, Chinese Culture, cultural differences, media, politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Policing the Internet

November 12, 2010

Live Crunch.com says, The Internet was created by the United States government for universities to exchange knowledge. In 1994, Bill Clinton let private companies open up the Internet to the public. What happened next is the wild Wild West. If you wanted to say hateful or racist things that you would never say if others knew, you could say them. If you had snapped a naked picture of your neighbor…

You could put it online and anyone with a 56kb modem could look and there basically wasn’t anything anyone could do. Same deal with the URL address. URLs were basically given away. If someone else got there first, they kept it.

However, things on the Internet are slowly changing as the Internet regulators tighten rules.

Policing the Internet is exactly what Shanghai is doing. Besides, China’s famous Net Nanny so many in the West grumble about, Shanghai’s government has blacklisted 80 netizens and exposed their user names and IPs.

Most of the listed netizens are charges with offenses such as “spreading rumors” and “disturbing social and public order”.

However, what the definitions for these offenses are would differ between nations.  I’m sure that there are behaviors that would be tolerated in the United States that other cultures and countries would frown on.

In fact, many netizens have exposed China’s most sensational cases of corruption.  Some officials have lost jobs due to these exposures. Let’s hope Shanghai’s blacklist of netizens doesn’t include any corruption fighters. After all, only criminals need to fear them.

Learn more about Internet Censorship May be Going Global

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

Leave a Comment » | America, China, cultural differences, government, legal system | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Dealing with Anger

November 11, 2010

I bought a copy of The Economist for October 30.  The cover has President Obama surrounded by an angry American crowd with signs that shout, “Jobs Now, Jobs Stupid, Throw the Bums Out, Taxed Enough Already, Obamacare Makes me Sick!”

When there is a protest in China where people carry signs, the Western media rants about the Chinese being denied the right to a democracy, which includes the right to protest.

What if the majority of Chinese don’t want the kind of freedom or democracy the West has?

In fact, the only freedom most Chinese don’t have these days is a vote in Party elections. According to the Eurasia Review, the Chinese do protest often.

The Eurasia Review says of Labor Unrest in China, “To some degree, strikes are not something new in China. There are studies that speak of tens of thousands of protests taking place in China every year over a wide range of issues from workers’ back pay to illegal land seizures. Most end peacefully after the government meets some demands.”

However, ignoring these facts, the Hoover Institute of Stanford University urges the United States to be more aggressive in pushing for democracy in China by supporting and linking together Chinese groups and a few thousand individuals that call for democracy.


Let’s not forget that there are 1.3 billion Chinese and they do have a voice.

If they can organize tens of thousands of protests and negotiate settlements with the government, they can also call for changes in the political system if that is what the majority of Chinese want. 

Yet, there is little or no evidence that the majority in China want political changes except for a handful of malcontents spurred on by the likes of the CIA, the Hoover Institute and the Noble Peace Prize Committee in Europe.

As for a free press in China, how can a press be free when it belongs to the government? When President Bush lived in the White House, his staff often censored news coming out of NASA and other government agencies and that was in the US.

In China, the situation is similar—the media in China belongs to the government as the US. Post Office and NASA does in America.

In fact, there is freedom of expression in China. The Chinese Blog more than any nation on the globe and used the Internet to organize national labor strikes in recent months that were spread across China.

China’s government supported those labor movements and chastised private businesses for not paying workers more.

Getting back to the anger that was splashed on that cover of The Economist. Correct me if I am wrong when I say that the anger in China isn’t that much different from the anger in America.

However, it seems the Chinese may be more civilized and open to compromise to solve disputes peacefully and avoid the anger and partisanship that has all but frozen progress in a debt-ridden US.

Learn more and see What is the Truth about Tiananmen Square?

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

2 Comments | America, China, cultural differences, politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Party Women

November 10, 2010

Starting with the I Ching, The Book of Changes, almost five thousand years ago, the central focus of Chinese philosophy has been how to live an ideal life and how best to organize society.

When the Communist Party of China gained power in 1949, previous schools of Chinese philosophy, except Legalism, were denounced as backward and purged during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.

However, their influence on Chinese thought did not vanish since China’s Central Committee continues to plan and organize modernization and changes to China’s five thousand year old culture and society.

Most Chinese believe that true advancement and growth should only happen slowly, at a steady, measured pace, which means to grow but grow slow like a tree while following a well thought out plan to bring about the changes.

Even the United States doesn’t change quickly. 

In fact, it took almost ninety years to free the slaves, and women first sought the right to vote in 1848 at the Seneca Falls Woman’s Rights Convention.

Then seventy-two years later in 1920, American women finally earned the right to vote when the Nineteenth Amendment was adopted by Congress and was ratified by the states becoming a national law.

The last time women had relative freedom in China was in the seventh century during the Tang Dynasty when Emperor Wu Zetian, a woman, ruled the country.

Since 1982, when China ratified its Constitution, women in China have gained more freedom, power and rights than at any other time in China’s history including the Tang Dynasty.

Anyone that does not consider this progress is stupid, blind and deaf.

Critics in the West might point out that under the Communists, no woman has ruled China, but I could say the same of the United States and many other countries.

Today, The most likely woman candidate for Politburo status — and a remote possibility for the Standing Committee — is Lin Yandong, a senior Party official responsible for winning over non-Communists.

In fact, Chinese women’s participation in politics has grown since 1982. There are now 230 or more women provincial and ministerial officials, 670 or more are mayor, which is twice the number of 1995.

“Chinese women leaders have much in common. They generally all have a good education background, being mainly science majors, and solid experience in government. They are of a caliber equal to that of their male counterparts,” an All-China Women’s Federation expert said.

If you hear anyone demanding quick changes in China, be cautions. Moving fast may result in tragedy.  I suggest that China continue to change steadily and slowly like an oak tree.　

Why do so many of China’s critics expect China to move faster than the US did? Is it because they want to see China fail?

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

2 Comments | America, China, Chinese women, cultural differences, government, history | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Anna May Wong – The Woman Who Died a Thousand Times

November 10, 2010

Almost half a century after her death, Anna May Wong (1905 to 1961) has not been forgotten.

As a child, Anna loved going to the movies and even cut school to go to the show.

Between 1919 and 1961, she acted in 62 films. The Internet Movie Data Base says she was the “first Chinese-American movie star”.

However, to act, Anna had to play the roles she was given. The Western stereotype cast her as a sneaky, untrustworthy woman that always fell for a Caucasian man. The dark side of achieving her dream of acting in movies was that Anna had to die so the characters she played got what they deserved.

Anna often joked that her tombstone should read, “Here lies the woman who died a thousand times.”

Until Chinese started to emigrate to the U.S. in the mid-19th century, they had never encountered a people who considered them racially and culturally inferior.

The discrimination against the Chinese in America was only exceeded by the racism and hatred directed at African-Americans.

In fact, in the 1960s, many of the anti racist laws enacted during the Civil Rights era focused on protecting African-Americans, which created a protected class.

Since the Chinese—due to cultural differences often did not complain—they were left behind.

In many respects, this racism toward the Chinese still exists in the US today and manifests itself through the media as China bashing, which supports the old stereotype.

When Anna May Wong visited China in 1936, she had to abandon a trip to her parent’s ancestral village when a mob accused her of disgracing China.

After her return to Hollywood, she was determined to play Chinese characters that were not stereotypes, but it was a losing battle. To escape the hateful racism, she lived in Europe for a few years.

Since U.S. law did not allow her to marry the Caucasian man she loved, and she was afraid that if she married a Chinese man he would force her to give up acting since Chinese culture judged actresses to be the same as prostitutes, she never married.

Anna May Wong smoked and drank too much. She died of a heart attack in Santa Monica, California at age 56.

Discover The Home Song Stories

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

1 Comment | America, American culture, China, Chinese women, cultural differences, history | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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