My long time reader xge asked the question under my entry Dogs Unprotected. How about Human?
I sensed a lot of bitterness and anger in many of your recent posts. Does it reflect a real change in you? I wonder if it reflects a real mood change in the general population and what happens if it does.
Posted by: xge on June 11, 2009 2:16 PM
Here is my answer to the questions. I am not happy and I read many other bloggers are not happy these days.
Just like the financial crisis made people in many countries depressed, the politics environment in China made people depressed, and unhappy, especially in this year, and especially in this special June.
I am not sure whether the Chinese society changed, or just the way news spread changed, but obviously, serious changes have happened.
I don’t shy away from saying negative things – hmm… Let me think twice about making this statement. The better way to say it is, I generally is more optimistic and happy than many people, but when I really don’t feel happy, I want to say it, and write it on my blog.
However, the recent atmosphere of media control, and censorship is much tighter than any time before. It reached to a level I never experienced. That is the reason I am generally not happy.
Well. Don’t misunderstand me. I am still a very happy person in daily life – look at my son, and look at the lovely business I have, my wonderful friends, and all the great things happened to me! I am happy in my life. But as a blogger observing so many “social events”, ilke cases involving both innocent people and corrupted officials, and tragedy happening in many cities that should have been prevented, and injustice, and stupid laws getting passed everyday, I am not happy.
Oh not just to mention how we tormented the Great Firewall when Twitter went down on June 2nd! Within literally hours, a hashtag wishing ill on the GFW was the Number Two Topic on Twitter.
We actually had a party just today in Beijing — a tweetup — and, believe this or not, we had a cake to celebrate the unblocking of Twitter June 8th:
http://twitpic.com/741sw
So here you go — we had the dark days but slowly but surely, we’re coming out of the tunnel. I am optimistic that after especially early autumn this year, stuff will get better and better. Let’s be optimistic! :-)
As a long time reader of your blog, I am particularly interested in your ‘development’ from a young Chinese person with little exposure to the west to that of a more worldly, experienced, global citizen. I can’t help (correct me if I’m wrong here) but feel that your exposure to foreign ideas of fairness, meritocracy and justice have now taken hold in you and you are starting to see China in a different light, perhaps a light that other Chinese would never see if they were not exposed to foreign ideas.
Your unhappiness towards current events in China runs sometimes in stark contrast to what many other young Chinese say (but maybe or maybe not believe) about the direction of Chinese government and society. I, for one,think your ‘development’ is positive not because I am pro-western in all things but truly believe that SOME western ideas need to take hold for China to develop harmoniously. Hopefully, more young Chinese people take the same social development route and are able to understand the world and embrace and vice versa for foreigners with China.
Dezza, you are partly right. Influence of western world definitely plays a role in forming my current point of views, but there are many other things that people in China without any western influence will get to the similar conclusion.
Hi all,
My views on the censorship (and related issues)
I accept that each country needs to take its own route to development, and am willing to sacrifice some small things in order for dev. goals to be acheived. I also do not reject any system of government as long as long-term results are shown.
However, I think that the GFW and “Green Dam” etc. is going a bit too far, for they dont only block undesirable websites, but also political content and even youtube/wikipedia etc. Even if I am to accept the censorship of political content as a mere “inconvenience”, I cannot accept that mere media and information sites are also blocked. The internet by nature is a relatively freer media, and the blocking of such sites just to prevent the populace from viewing some politically questionable videos will only cause large amt of inconvenience.
I am not qualified to comment on the political side of this (censorship of pol. websites), except that I feel that it is also not favourable to do as the C. government does. More importantly, even the practical alone hinders the convenience of the people as well as dev’t of the internet industry in China. On this, I am already opposed to the overly strict censorship media. Politically, I’ll just say that Singapore, my country, is often slammed for its authoritarian “nanny state” government. However, it only blocks 100 undesirable (mainly x-rated) sites. Even so I understand that perhaps China’s situation is different and complex, so I will not comment.
In general, I am opposed to over-censorship on practical grounds.