‘inside’ the great firewall of China
The BBC gives us three brief responses to ‘what the internet means for people in China.’ A dissident, a filmmaker and a journalist provide us with a ‘behind the scene’ insight to this question. I appreciate the BBC and its reporting, but isn’t it somewhat ridiculous to presume that one, even remotely representatively, answers the question ‘what the internet means for people in China’ with three responses from a) a dissident, b) a filmmaker and c) a journalist? What about the migrant worker, the rural farmer, the female professional and the teenager in the city (etc!)?
It would have been more accurate if the BBC instead had written that they provide an insight to ‘what the internet means for people in China who highly depend on freedom of speech and press‘. This is not an incidental case, as the Western press is often obsessed with reporting about the internet in China through a democratization frame, disproportionally interested in the question whether the internet leads to democracy, turning a blind eye to other developments such as the large spread popularity of online gaming.
Posted in censorship, china
July 20th, 2006 at 10:14 pm
speaking of the chinese interwebs, did the bbc report mention the construction of the great tube of china? i hear it will do wonders for keeping back the filthy, barbaric invading hordes of packets.
July 21st, 2006 at 2:57 pm
rencently read this book chapter by yuezhi zhao, titled ” who wants democracy and does it deliver food?”. you might want to check that out as well.
July 22nd, 2006 at 3:49 am
i agree that …means for *people* in China… is grossly misrepresenting. however, internet for chinese workers, teenagers and professionals is not that different as other parts of the world (i would think so). internet as a predominately western (mis)info source is used and perceived very differently in places within strict cencorship by people dealing with infomation. i haven’t seen the documentary. was it any good?
July 22nd, 2006 at 9:46 am
yin, i think the internet is not a predominantly ‘western info source’ for chinese internet users. the internet for ‘people in china’ is mostly a ‘chinese info source’ – surf the internet and you get a totally different picture of reality than you do when you surf it in the west.
for example, only 60 percent of internet users in china regularly use e-mail. but more than 33 percent do online gaming. these are pretty different statistics than in the west.
we should focus more on what the internet means for the people in china, instead of focusing on what we think the internet _should_ mean for the people in china.
May 29th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
China firewall is lame – use Freedur.com to bypass it. You can bypass China Great Firewall and access youtube.com and all other sites which are blocked.