Originally Posted by Wynonie Harris (Post 805629)

A bit worrying that we haven't heard from Blazey for two days now. Do you think she's finally driven the Chinese police beyond the point of endurance? "We velly, velly sorry, missy, we tell you be quiet. Still you yakety yakety yak. Now you go to clinkee!" :eek:

Originally Posted by cashman (Post 805630)

Nah shes away in the mountains fer weekend, was on news tonight- All the Yetis have fled.:D

Originally Posted by blazey (Post 805929)

In case you didn't notice, forums aren't necessarily blocked in China, so discussion isn't necessarily blocked out.

And you're right, people don't know things here that maybe they should know. People lack information on Tiananmen Square for example. The difference is that they know it exists, the use of proxy servers is pretty widespread here to access information that is censored, and generally they just choose to not bother finding out. I don't think it is a massive issue. The students that I've spoken to here don't mind it, and they live here. They've been pretty honest about how they feel about other things, so I don't see why they would lie about their feelings on censorship.

The whole Google thing here isn't an issue because it isn't China's biggest search engine. There are more popular social networking sites here than facebook as well so that isn't an issue for them. If anything, China isn't blocking discussion and information at all, it just wants to keep China as China, and not taken over by global companies. That is the impression I've got from the whole thing anyway.

And I couldn't get on either website through ordinary web browsing, but with the use of a proxy server I can. And it isn't a difficult thing to do here. Just not legal, but I suppose the nearest equivalent is downloading music illegally at home. Using bandwidth to facilitate the acquisition of information that is prohibited. The only difference is that we see different things as acceptable I guess. Nobody is harmed by not being able to access negative information here, just living in ignorant bliss I guess. Or that is the idea behind it at least :p

Originally Posted by garinda (Post 805938)

'Human rights activists say more than 30,000 people are employed to keep an eye on websites, chat rooms and private e-mail messages.'
BBC NEWS | Technology | Behind China's internet Red Firewall

Originally Posted by jaysay (Post 805939)

Oh in China, thought you were on about GB for a minute:rolleyes:

Originally Posted by blazey (Post 805947)

Are people naive enough to think our activity isn't accessed on a regular basis in the UK?

England could probably learn a lot from China, but there tends to be a pretty negative attitude taken towards learning anything from another culture in general, hence why we're so well known for being lazy with languages I guess, so it isn't surprising to find that China isn't actually as bad as what people think at home and it is actually a ridiculously safe and lovely place to be.

Originally Posted by garinda (Post 805944)

We keep an eye on you here, but don't get paid for it.

;)

Originally Posted by jaysay (Post 805952)

But who is watching you:rolleyes: