reading and writing under the radar

Allow me to introduce you to my friend, the Cyber-nanny. She is also referred to as The Great Firewall of China, but I prefer to personify her. 'Cause that’s what friends do.

The Cyber-nanny and I have what you might call a love-hate relationship. I hate how she won’t let me see some of my favorite sights. How I long for the hours I would spend wasting time on Wikipedia or reading blogs hosted by blogger.com (it’s true LVE is hosted by blogger, but I am crafty and post on a custom domain)!

On the other hand, I love how she - well, no, there isn’t much that I love about what she does. But, I’ve been here for almost eight months now and have come to have a little respect for how she gets things done. So, if by this time we aren’t the best of friends, we are, at the very least, cordial acquaintances.

The Cyber-nanny is like any other nanny you might know; she is strict, unyielding, she knows how to keep things running in a way that suits her employer and she is no fun at all. This nanny’s employer is the Chinese government and the kiddies she has been employed to watch are the residents of the PRC and the Internet.

For the most part she is a fair nanny who lets us while away the hours in other more “healthy” ways; there are some newspapers she lets us read and a few of the more innocuous blogs are readily available.

But, every once in a while something happens to make the cyber-nanny strengthen her control on the internet. At the moment, due to recent occurrences in a western region of the country – I think you know what I’m talking about - the cyber-nanny is super strict. From danwei we get this:

Youtube is blocked in China as of 22:45,
Beijing time.
See no evil, hear no evil...

Alas, she’s taken youtube away again. I can deal with that. It’s information that I want - the very information that the cyber-nanny doesn’t want me to get. Blogs are being blocked left and right.

But this doesn’t stop most bloggers in China. Some continue to discuss the issue in face of the restrictions put in place. One of these rebels is Michael Manning over at The Opposite End of China. If you aren’t in China you can check out his reports about the recent “occurrences”.

Others write about the events in a more round-about way (if you haven’t noticed, that’s what I’m trying to do here – I’d rather be readable in China). Dan over at China Law Blog is writing about “China’s Big Current Thing” and what he refers to as “you know what”. Yeah, we know. But, his is a technique that works because he is not using any of the key words that are “taboo” right now.

In short: people are still talking, despite efforts to suppress discussion. And people are still reading the stuff that is blocked - there are several ways to do this.

So, is the cyber-nanny just dumb? Nope, she’s in control of what is important. James Fallow thoroughly discusses the purpose of the firewall. It's an article worth reading for everything about how the complex system works, why it’s still fallible and why the government is ok with that.

With the Olympics coming up, there is talk of loosening the control over the Internet for the event. – just to show the 外国人* (the foreign visitors) a good face.

I wonder if such matters will be the least of Beijing’s worries come August.




*外国人 wài guó rén – literally: “outside country people”